As an 8th grade novitiate to speech and debate, I watch the team’s 9th grade apotheosis practice her oratory. Her delivery is impeccable, sans pause verbal or not. I am mildly surprised to learn after the weekend tournament that she placed only second. I am downright shocked in a subsequent practice to hear our coach suggest she introduce flaws, something like uncertainty, into her delivery. She immediately complies, making her delivery less perfect: sprinkled lightly with glances up and left, silent hesitation, gestures withdrawn in reconsideration. For the next three years I watch her win practically every oratory competition she enters.
Because our every weakness, failure, is completely bare to God, our only hope is faith’s confession, a confession giving confidence, not dread, because “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
In her perfect delivery, our high school Cicero hovered aloof from the audience. Feigning imperfection—pausing to “search” for the right word—she descended to her hearers, ascending to first place in one tournament after another.
Jesus feigns nothing: abandoning heaven’s prestige, adopting humanity’s humiliation, carrying our weakness, enduring our death—even crucifixion. Hebrews’ author appeals to that condescension as the reason we approach him with confidence. People will hear hope because they see faith sprinkled with our imperfections unfeigned: humiliation, weakness, mortality—the same things they face daily.
May those we serve this week find the perfection of our savior in the faith our imperfections require us to place in him.