“As it is, we do not yet see
everything in subjection to him. But we
see Jesus.”
Hebrews
2:8-9
It’s been a heavy week, hasn’t it?
The Russians have launched extensive bombing raids in Syria, massively
escalating the civil war, with numerous civilian casualties expected. News continues to surface about the extent of
Volkswagen’s emissions switch scandal, with maybe more than 11 million cars
effected worldwide. Several drug
companies have admitted to massive price gouging, with one pill used to treat
cancer and AIDS patients rising from $13 to $750 per dose.
And of
course, there was another mass shooting, this time at a community college in
Oregon, the 294th shooting this year. It was a shooting in the kind of place where
things like that don’t happen, except there aren’t any places like that any
more. We don’t know all the details yet,
but eyewitnesses reported that events unfolded in a distinctive way. The shooter stormed into the classroom with
an agenda. He wanted to know who was a
Christian. And our brothers and sisters
who stood firm and confessed our faith, those who claimed to be one of us, he
shot them point blank.
“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” We believe of course, that the Bible is God’s
Word to us, but if we’re honest, it sometimes seems like a word from long ago
and far away. But not this week. Not this word.
One
of you remarked to me the other day that there has been quite a lot to pray
about this week. There have been so many
reminders that the world is broken, that the power of sin is real and
destructive. The “evil powers of this
world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God”[1]
—we have seen them this week, not yet subject to the prince of Peace, the king
of love.
But
we do see Jesus. And when we see Him,
equal to the Father, crucified for us, risen victorious, seated at the Father’s
right hand—when we see Him, we know what will surely be.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is a sermon intended for people living in
anxious times, people who are overwhelmed by the chaos that surrounds them and
in need of a reminder of what God has truly promised.
The
Biblical scholars think that Hebrews was written right around AD 70, the year
that the Romans crushed a Jewish nationalist revolt in Palestine, destroyed the
temple in Jerusalem and expelled thousands of Jews from their ancient homeland.[2] That crisis changed Judaism forever. It also resulted in a decisive break between
Christians and Jews. The earliest
Christians, of course, were all Jewish.
The Book of Acts describes followers of Jesus who worshipped in the
temple, preached in synagogues and kept the laws of the Old Covenant.
But
this moment of national crisis was a time for drawing lines in the sand. More radical Jewish groups, like the
Christians, were expelled. A new
Biblical canon was drawn up. And a
series of daily prayers, the Eighteen Benedictions, were widely
distributed. The twelfth of them was
specifically directed at the Christians.
“Let the “Nazarenes” and the heretics,” it
read, “be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of
Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous.”
This epistle to the Hebrews is a message of hope to those people, the
Jewish Christians newly cursed by their friends and neighbors, cast out of the
synagogue, trying to make a life for themselves in the face of hostile words
and physical violence. The author would
note later in his message, that some of them had “drooping hands” and “weak
knees.”[3] He describes others who had forsaken the
assembly.[4] Out of fear or disillusionment they were
abandoning the way of Christ altogether.
Because at some point it becomes hard to hold fast to the faith when so
much evidence seems to point in the other direction. When your fellow Jews all seem to turn
against you, surely you must ask yourself: Can I really be sure that He is the
promised Messiah? Does He really fulfill
all those ancient promises? Do I know for certain that the apostles really saw
Him in that Upper Room three days after his death?
We read the headlines today. I pray that none of us aspires to an
assassin’s notoriety. But maybe we ask
ourselves other questions. Does it
really make sense to tell the truth and suffer for it when so many seem to
profit from lies? Is decisive violence
really more effective than the messy process of making peace? If I was in that classroom and they asked me
if I stood with Jesus, wouldn’t I just look the other way?
How do you answer questions like that?
What do you say to people who stand at the crossroads of faith and despair? You can try to minimize the drama of the
situation, of course, or urge a kind of stoical resolve—best not to get your
hopes up, this too shall pass. You can concede
that the other side has its reasonable points as well, that we’re best not to
be too dogmatic about these things. You
can offer emotive reassurances, saying that God is with us in our confusion and
pain, that He’s politely sympathetic, even if He doesn’t seem to be leading us
out of it in any particular direction.
Or then, you could write something like the introduction to the Epistle
to the Hebrews. You could set forth Jesus
Christ as God’s final and decisive Word, the One who holds the future in His
nail-scarred hands. “We do not yet see
all things in subjection to Him, but we do see
Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with
glory and honor because of the suffering of death.”
We do see Jesus. And who is He? In a majestic sentence, a perfectly turned
classical period with seven alliterative phrases, the author describes Jesus in
the most exalted terms possible. He is
the splendor of God’s radiance and bears the very stamp of His image. He created the world and sustains all
things. He became lower than the
angels, one of us, emptied of His glory to make purification for sins. And yet now, He has been exalted to the
Father’s side, enthroned in glory with all things subject to Him. The author traces what one commentator has
called “the parabola of salvation”[5]—Christ’s
eternal majesty, His humiliation and then His glorification, the certain path
assigned to Him and to all who belong to Him.
For we are His brothers and sisters, the
“many sons” of the Son of Man, who will surely reign with Him then as we suffer
with Him now. Jesus knows our pain, for He has borne it also. He sympathizes with our confusion and doubts,
for He has faced them too. He has gone
down even to death with us. But He does
not leave us there. He promises that
where He is, there we shall be also. We
will share in joy of the Father’s presence.
We will see an end to pain and cruelty, hunger and injustice. The kingdoms of this world will become the
Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, human life transformed to become what we
have so longed for but never found here.
Because He is there, in majesty, for us.
Because He has gone ahead so we may follow after, because He is our pioneer. We see Jesus, and we know the end of the
story, though all the world denys it—and it what a glorious end it is. Wesley’s great Easter hymn perhaps says it
best:
Soar we now where Christ has led
Following our exalted head.
Made like Him, like Him we rise
Ours the Cross, the grave, the skies.[6]
Christ is the source of salvation, the one
who holds the keys of destiny. His way
of joy, peace and love will finally triumph.
He is the new and better way, the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of
all nations. The Epistle to the Hebrews
will go on, in lessons we will read over the next two months, to recount just
how Jesus comes as the climax of Israel’s story. These troubled Jewish Christians do not need
to forsake God’s faithfulness to their ancestors, because Christ fulfills the
meaning of the temple. He alone can keep
the sacred law of God in its fullness.
He has made a new and eternal covenant that brings to fruition all that
was hoped for on that great day when the mountain shook and God’s voice
announced the precious commandments.
The author shows, you see, an openness to
those troubling questions raised by the leaders who had cast out the Christians
from the synagogues. He is willing to
listen and engage with those who turn against the Christian message. There’s remarkably little bitterness and
impatience in anything he writes.
He faces the questions, he hears the
doubts, but the author of Hebrews is unshaken by them. He has complete confidence that Christ is the
world’s only hope, that Christ will complete what He has begun at Calvary and
the empty tomb. “We do not yet see
everything in subjection to Him, but we see Jesus.” In those troubling days, that was enough. May it be enough for us as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment