But what if I could know the truth
Mister Rogers, from the song ‘The Truth Will Make Me Free’
And say just how I feel?
I think I’d learn a lot that’s real
About freedom
Jesus grants us life through the Spirit. The Spirit works and moves mysteriously, and Jesus sensed His spirit, sometimes like a groaning in His guts.
Jesus felt big emotions. He wept, got angry, was loving, funny, and affectionate. Emotions revealed the humanity of Jesus Christ, and He tapped into the fullness of His sensations to fulfill His divine destiny.
Emotions aren’t something we have to fear or hide, but learn from to become who we are according to the spirit of life and peace. As the Spirit searches us, our feelings lead us closer to the divine image within.
You see, I believe Jesus gave us an eternal truth about the universality of feelings. Jesus was truthful about His feelings.
Mister Rogers
Throughout the Gospels, we witness Jesus’ big feelings, which reveal what is important to the Lord and thus pleasing to God. As it is written, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?”1
To act justly
Jesus is a living demonstration of what God spoke through the prophet Isaiah: “Seek justice; defend the oppressed, take up the case of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” And when He did not observe these ethics in the actions of others, Jesus got angry.
Consider when He overturned the money tables and drove out the buyers and sellers from the temple courts. Jesus refused anyone carrying merchandise to walk through the sacred area on His watch. He made a scene to teach a crucial point.
“Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?’” Jesus said. “But you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’”
This isn’t blind fury. Jesus salted His speech with Scripture. He was prepared to teach this lesson and perhaps prayerfully planned it. As we see in Mark’s gospel, Jesus entered Jerusalem the previous day, observed the temple marketplace, retreated with the 12 apostles to Bethany for the night, and then returned to the temple the next morning.
Anger often sounds an internal alarm that our values have been disrespected. Jesus had to be furious upon seeing the temple, now clattering with coins and transactions, though built as a holy place for heavenly praise and worship – where Jesus even lost Himself as a young boy to interrogate the Scriptures, listen to the teachers, and be about “My Father’s business.”
But He did not act in momentary frustration, nor did Jesus ignore it or pretend it away as a means of maintaining a false peace. Overnight, Jesus learned from His anger, and through the mind of Christ, He sanctified it into Love and righteous action.
If Jesus had erupted immediately, others may have dismissed it as an odd outburst, but because He took time to seek the truth about what He was feeling, Jesus made a timeless impression. The story of Jesus cleansing the temple appears in all four gospel narratives.2
And to love mercy
Jesus acted most mercifully when he experienced His deepest sorrows.
When He wept at Lazarus’ tomb, His spirit groaned and was troubled.3 The night before He gave His life to save ours, Jesus experienced anguish and agony so intense He sweated blood. Jesus asked His disciples to pray with Him because His soul was overwhelmed to the point of death. Then Jesus withdrew privately into His pain and fell to the ground.4
“Take this cup from Me,” He pleaded.
“Not My will, but Yours,” He surrendered.
His spirit was willing, Jesus said, but the flesh was weak. The final steps of His earthly ministry were excruciating for Jesus.
What if He had not mentioned His big feelings? What if He had lingered a little longer at the Last Supper, comforted by the intimacy and nearness of His beloved companions? What if Jesus had not poured out everything to His Father in prayer?
Would the flesh have tempted Jesus to flee His fate? Living as Jesus the Nazarene but not dying as Jesus the Christ?
Instead, Jesus leaned into His feelings, and they crushed Him. So Christ the Lord could rise again.
And to walk humbly with your God
God stepped down from the throne of heaven to live among us and walk the earth as Jesus. He is our guide into humility.
Jesus is a living expression of compassion, empathy, and sensitivity to the needs of others. The revelation of good tidings and joy, Jesus shared that feeling of joy with everyone. Joy is the force He used to touch souls and open hearts to His perfect peace and truth.
The grieving disciples, who unknowingly walked with the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus, marveled afterward, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”5
Joy is not necessarily an emotion that is conveyed by words or gestures; it flows from the heart. In the presence of Jesus, people were safe and seen. They were held, even if not exactly in His arms, certainly by the way He listened and let others be heard.
We can understand that Jesus had immense joy because of the joy He gives to us, by how we feel when we are close to the Lord: Loved, hopeful, and known.
