A Faith that Does Not Retreat

 May 28 2023

Hebrews 10:19, 34-39, 11:1-29

         Well, we have at last made it to another Memorial Day, this time when we as a nation remember those who gave their lives in service to their country. Now, I don’t know much about the wars that so many have lost their lives in except what I learned through studying history yet I believe that it might be a safe assumption that during military operations its probably always better to advance against the enemy instead of having to sound retreat. You hear this same sentiment from the writer of Hebrews when, at the end of the tenth chapter of Hebrews, he cries, “No retreat! No retreat lest you be destroyed! Have faith, forward on, preserve your souls”. Do you get this sense that the writer of Hebrews wants us to know that faith is a battle where our retreat from this line we’re holding is a sure way for us to be defeated.

         Ok, I get it, in some ways, the writer of Hebrews seems to be a little over the top in comparing our faith to a battlefield maneuver where retreat is just not an option. But maybe he is just trying to wake us up to just how vitally important our faith really is. Of course, what we have to first figure out is just what is meant by faith? We all have some idea what somebody means when they tell us to just have a little faith, that we just have to trust God to handle what we’re dealing with. Yet, this is not how the writer of Hebrews has defined faith for us because his understanding of faith is somewhat different than just a simple trusting in God. You see, what the writer of Hebrews insists on is that faith must be connected with what we have placed our hope in. We hear this in his definition of faith as found at the beginning of the eleventh chapter where we find that faith is defined as being the assurance, or the reality of the things hoped for. So, if we are hoping for a home in glory then, through faith, we will live in such a way that this truth is real for us to live in right now.We get a better understanding of what the writer of Hebrews is trying to teach us when we hear him say in the middle of the tenth chapter, “Therefore since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus…” When we read this what should jump out at us is that this is, first of all, a statement of our hope, because our confession is that we are absolutely certain that we can enter into the holy place of heaven because of Jesus. Now, faith we are told is to, “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” In other words, we are to go ahead and enter into that holy place of heaven today, and live our life from that vantage point. You see, that holy place is the victory that Jesus has won for us, so by faith we are to live as victorious people. Can you begin to understand how when we doubt and lose our confidence in this heavenly hope that this is a retreat from the victory that Jesus has already won? And if we do not claim this victory then what other victory do we have?

         So faith is allowing the hope, that we cannot see, to impact our life which we can see, and by doing so, we are stating that even though what we have placed our hope in cannot be seen it nonetheless is very much a certain reality. This is what is meant when faith is said to be the assurance or reality of what is hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now, the writer of Hebrews appears to be sharing with us just how we can have our faith be a faith which is totally convinced of our hope of heaven. As we have already said, the reason that we have confidence to enter the holy places is, first, because of the blood of Jesus. After this statement of faith the writer of Hebrews goes on to tell us that a new and living way has been opened for us through the curtain, that is his flesh. So, here we have the blood of Jesus and the flesh, or the body of Jesus, and it is not a great leap for us, upon hearing of these two elements, to have our thoughts go to the partaking of the Lord’s Supper. There at the Lord’s Table we can also say that there, in the partaking of the cup and the eating of the bread, that our great priest is present with us in the very real presence of Jesus. So, it is there in that moment that we as a church are called to draw near, to enter into the holy house of God. There, we who are the church, share in the life that Jesus has given to us in the shedding of his blood and the breaking of his body, so, as we are gathered around his table, we can assuredly say that we are in the house of heaven. There around the Lord’s Table we have the assurance that what we hope for is indeed a reality. Though we may not see all of what we hope for, nonetheless, what we experience makes us certain that there is more to what we know than meets the eye.

         When people encounter the God who can not be seen, their lives bear evidence of this as they act in faith. The witnesses whose stories are told in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, are those who have encountered God, acted in faith and because of this encounter their lives testified to the God they had met. What we are called to comprehend through all of these stories is that the unseen reality is the most certain, even if to say so sounds a little nonsensical. Yet if we consider the creation story we remember that the universe, which can be seen, was created by the word of God, which cannot be seen. Clearly, what can be seen can be known to have come forth from the unseen. It is the unseen that was here long before the visible world was even spoken into life. The writer of Hebrews gives stories of those who witnessed, people who had encountered the God who is not seen and their lives, which are seen, speak to the faith that they received when they drew close to the one in which they had placed their hope in. So, with Abel we see him offer God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain had offered and we have to wonder why Abel had done so? The answer is that Abel had encountered the unseen God who desires those who are willing to offer themselves just as Abel had symbolically done with his sacrifice. Or consider Enoch who is not recorded as having died but rather was taken into the heavens by God and again we are left wondering why this had happened to Enoch? The answer is that Enoch had an encounter with the God who commended Enoch and told him that he was a person who was pleasing to God. This being pleasing to God means that one knows that the God who we cannot see is a God who sees us and for those that God sees living for him, God rewards them. This is what the life of Enoch witnessed to. 

         As we go through these witnesses who had encounters with the God that cannot be seen, it becomes evident that each encounter reveals something different about God and the people that he loves. Noah’s encounter with the invisible God resulted in a very visible Ark which became a symbol of salvation for Noah and his family and a symbol of judgment for the rest of the world. Thus for Noah he learned that his faith had led him to become an heir of righteousness.

         Over and over again, the writer of Hebrews brings forth those who encountered the God of all hope and this hope became evident in their lives through their faith. Abraham was a man way to old to have a family but that did not matter when he met the God of hope. When God told Abraham to go, Abraham went, even though he did not have a clue where he was to go. Abraham was a man of faith, willing to live constantly on the move because he knew the God who had spoke to him was a God who would one day build for him a more permanent city. It was this God who took Abraham and Sarah, their bodies good as dead, and from them came as many descendants as there are stars in the heavens. Abraham is our father in the faith, a man who was certain that the God of all hope would not fail him. Even when God tested Abraham by asking him to offer up Isaac, Abraham’s faith never wavered because he was certain that God could bring the dead back to life.

         You see, when you trust in the God who cannot be seen and through your obedience the influence of God is seen in your life, this is faith, the visible confirmation of the invisible God of hope. We can see this visible difference in the life of Moses because as the writer of Hebrews tells us, Moses “chose rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin.” Yes, faith is a choice that we make within our hearts but it still is a choice that will be seen, witnessed to by the world. You see, it was that Moses knew so well the God who spoke to him that he refused to be afraid of the king of Egypt. Moses had already watched as God shielded his people from death on the night of the Passover, so did he have to really be afraid of the king of Egypt?

         What the writer of Hebrews is trying to do through these stories of people whose lives witnessed to their faith in God is to encourage his readers. Those who the writer of Hebrews was writing to were those who were considering pulling back, to retreat, because the cost for them was just too high. Instead of living in to the victory that Jesus had won for them they felt that it would be better to just retreat and call it a day. Yes, they had endured a hard struggle with sufferings, even going so far as to being publicly badmouthed and afflicted. Yet despite these struggles and loss they had compassion on those in prison and they accepted the plundering of their property because then they had remembered they had a better possession, an abiding one. Did these who wanted to retreat remember this greater and better possession that remained with them? This possession they had was hope. They had the hope of an eternal home, an inheritance, which was theirs to claim as their own. What had happened is that they had lost their faith, they had lost what was needed to make this hope they possessed a reality for them. What we know through reading the many stories of those who witnessed to an encounter with God is that when people encounter him that is when faith is evident in a person’s life.

         So what these who were ready to retreat and call it a day needed was to have an encounter with God, to experience what it is to be in his close presence and know that there with him is where we belong. You see, what they had forgotten is that there simply is no greater hope than the living hope we have in Jesus, yet even so, faith is necessary to make this great hope a reality for us. The writer of Hebrews understands this and this is why when speaking of faith he uses images heard in the partaking of the communion elements because it is when we come to the Lord’s Table this is when our hope becomes real. Here is the blood of Jesus, do you remember how this blood gives us the confidence to enter the holy places? Here is the body of Christ, do you remember that the broken body has made for us a new and living way into the most holy place? Here residing over the elements is the very real presence of Jesus who is our great priest who is over the house of God. So here we find that it is the blood of Jesus which is given for us to enter the holy places, his body is our way through the curtain and the living Jesus is our great priest who resides over the house of God. All three speak of a place hidden from our eyes that nonetheless will become real to us as we gather round the Lord’s Table. As we partake of communion we are to know that right there we have been drawn into the holy places. Through the partaking of the elements we find an unshakable confidence in what we hope in because our hope is anchored in our living Savior.When we come to the table, this one named Jesus is closer with us there than at any other time. So we draw near, and we do so as the writer describes us, as being those who have a full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. The writer of Hebrews is here echoing a scripture verse from the thirty-sixth chapter of Ezekiel where God tells his people that he would, “…sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be purged from all uncleanness and from your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take away the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” Here, God is speaking to Ezekiel about the new covenant that he is going to make with his people, a promise that he would bring about a spiritual heart transplant, taking their cold, lifeless, unmoving, stony heart and replacing it with a new heart pulsating with life. Gone at last would be all of uncleanness and idol worship for God himself has cleansed his people with clean water. What has brought about such a radical transformation is that at last God has made a way for people to have the fullest assurance of faith. The reason that there is a depth and a richness to our faith response is that now faith is defined as being the reality of what we hope in, our eternal possession. Our hope is  to be able to live for all eternity in the most holy place, the very house of God. When the people of God gather together before the Lord’s Table it is there, by faith, that we our in that most holy place that we have placed our hope in. There as we take the cup we remember that this is the blood which gives us confidence to enter the holy place. When we take into our hands the bread, we remember that this broken body of Christ is the body offered up so that we might be made holy so we can reside in that most holy place. It is this holiness that is ours through the body of Christ offered for us, this is how we are now able  to enter by this new and living way through the curtain. And as the elements are taken, and blessed and given, there our great priest named Jesus is very much present with us. In this moment at the table we find ourselves gathered in the holy place, and we know that here is what we hope for, an eternal hope that becomes real for us if only for a moment. It is in that moment when what we hope for becomes oh, so real for us, this is when we find ourselves filled with a certain faith. It is in this moment when what we hope for becomes for us so very real, this is when the filth of our doubt is cleansed away as faith washes over us. No more will our affections be given to idols for now we have experienced what our hearts long for, the wonder of what we hope in, the joy of being at home in the house that Jesus built through the giving of himself. Here as the blood of Christ is present and his body is broken and shared we too become like the men of old, those who can witness about our faith because we have had an encounter with the one who is our hope. 

So, yes we must hold fast to our confession of our hope because the God who has given us the promise on which our hope is grounded, he as the writer of Hebrews tells us, is faithful. Can you begin to see that it is the faithfulness of our God to make good on his promises that this is the very source of our faith? It is only as we have a hope that we can confess, and only as we know that God will certainly make our hope a reality, and only when this hope becomes real for us, only then can we say that at last we have faith. 

Once we carefully think through all the writer of Hebrews has said here about the way that our confession of hope leads us to have the full assurance of faith, it makes sense that he would further add that we are to, “ consider how we are to stir up one another to love and good works not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some…” Here again we just need to do a little thinking about how faith, hope and love connect with one another. The blood of Jesus has forgiven all of our sins, so we no longer have to be focused on our past. And we have been given access to the most holy place through the victory Christ has won for us. So if we are people who have a full assurance of faith then we must not retreat but instead we need to live as people who know that Christ has really won the victory. So, it is neither are past nor our future which is to be what concerns us any longer. Now we have been set free to live fully in the present. This means that for those of us who have gathered round the Lord’s Table and have experienced by faith what we hope for, we can insist that each of us get out there and go love on somebody, I mean, what else is there for us to do? When our evil conscience has been washed away what else can we do but good works? So, let’s go and get to work. You see, when we have a full assurance of faith then there can be no retreat, no, only going forward in the victory of Jesus, no matter what the cost. Amen!

A God For Us and Us being there for God

 May 21 2023

Hebrews 9

         As many can attest this whole being an adult is tough business. One of the toughest questions that one has to figure out is just who is it that is going to be there for me, if and when I might need someone. We are friends with a young lady who is estranged from her biological family so for her she has few people she can call on when she needs help, like when she has to move into a new apartment. Its at times like that I really wish she had someone else who could be there for her besides Jennifer and I but we know that everybody has to have somebody who is going to be there for them, that is just the way of the world. Even I know, that as much as my introverted self enjoys my alone time, I still have to have people in my life that I can count on to be there when I might need them. Most often men like myself figure out the importance of having someone to be there for them when they tear into a project and soon find out that said project is going to require two people to get it done. This whole understanding that we all need somebody to be there for us is also what marriage is all about. The beauty of marriage is that we have found someone who has pledged themselves to be that person that will be there in those times when we really need somebody to be there for us like when we get sick, or when our finances hit the skids or when we are grieving and hurting. In all of these times, it is wonderful to know that we have married someone who is willing to just be there for us.

         This necessity that all of us have to have someone be there for us, this is what is behind this idea of covenant. A covenant is not a contract where we enter into a relationship based on doing, a relationship that has defined expectations but instead a covenant is about being there for another person. Now, you don’t have to read very far into the Bible story until you find out that the God found in that story is a God who desires to enter into covenants with people. What this tells us is that our God is a God who desires to be a God who is known as a God who is there for people. Likewise, this is also a God who desires that the people he enters into a covenant with will be there for him as well. When we step back and look at this covenant relationship God makes, it begins to be pretty clear that this is a very lopsided arrangement. I mean its great to think that we can enter a covenant so that we can be assured that God is really going to be there for us, but why in the world would God even care that we be there for him? This is the question that we must try and answer as we listen to what the writer of Hebrews is saying to us today.

         In this ninth chapter of Hebrews we discover a new title for our risen Lord, that Jesus is for us the mediator of a new covenant. The word that we translate here as being, “mediator”, comes quite naturally from the Greek word for middle because as the one who is arranging this new agreement between God and humanity, it just makes sense that Jesus would be the man in the middle of it all. So, yes, the living Jesus is there, smack dab in the middle, bringing God and humanity into a new relationship where each promises to be there for each other.

         Now as important as this new covenant is, the strange thing is is that many Christians know very little about it. The clues to understanding this covenant though are hidden in plain sight as when we partake of the elements during the Lord’s Supper we are told that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he took the cup and he blessed it and he gave it to his disciples, telling them, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” These are the words that are spoken over the grape juice that we drink every time we meet at the Lord’s Table yet, I wonder do we really stop to consider just what is being said here? What really is this new covenant besides perhaps a way to divide up our Bibles?

         Perhaps the best way to understand this new covenant is with  what is written in the eleventh verse of this ninth chapter of Hebrews which states, “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, when through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy places, not by the means of the blood of goats and calves but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” The writer of Hebrews has packed an immense amount of information in these few sentences so we have to take our time to consider just what is being said here. First, we are to know Jesus, the Messiah, as being our high priest. Here we need to pause and ask just why should we consider him to be our high priest? The answer is as the writer of Hebrews explains, that it is Jesus  who has entered into the holy places of heaven. Just as it was that the high priest at the Temple of Jerusalem was the only one allowed to enter into the Holy of Holies of the Temple so to only Jesus ascended into the heavens into the holy presence of our Heavenly Father. So this is how we can know Jesus as our high priest. It is important that we understand him as being our high priest because what we know about the high priest is that he represented all of the people of Israel on the Day of Atonement. The high priest wore a vest which had sewn into the front of it, twelve precious stones which represented each of the twelve tribes of Israel. So, the high priest represented all of Israel when he went into the Holy of Holies to make atonement for their sins. Jesus as our high priest also represented Israel being born as one of them and, as one without sin, Jesus was able to offer himself up to death on behalf of all of Israel upon the cross. This is what the writer of Hebrews is writing about when he says in the fifteenth verse of this ninth chapter where we read, “…since a death has occurred that redeems them from transgressions committed under the first covenant.”  The first covenant, then, required a death to pay the penalty for the sins that Israel had committed as a member of that agreement, a death that was fulfilled by Jesus. Even so we are left wondering just what went wrong with this first covenant?

         The first covenant that God made with the people of Israel is recorded for us in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. As you read through this covenant here in Exodus and as it was renewed in Deuteronomy what you find is that it is actually more like a contract than a covenant because it states that if the people of Israel were to do all that God commanded than God would respond with the appropriate blessing of a good, full, rich, life. But, if Israel on the other hand, failed to do what God had commanded then instead of blessings, Israel would find herself accursed no longer to receive life but instead, death. Now, what becomes quite apparent in the entering of this covenant is that Israel did so with the real belief that they could most assuredly do all that God commanded, that they would indeed be living the blessed life, no problems obtaining all that goodness. You see, the people of Israel are just like all the rest of us when upon discovering that God desires to be in a covenant with us then why not see if we can get this all powerful God to give us the good life we want, right here and right now. Maybe we could bargain with him, do all the things he likes and then, just maybe he will give us what we consider to be blessings, all those things that we find necessary for a good life.

         What Israel found out is that it is impossible for any of us to do all that God requires in order that we could somehow manipulate or demand anything from him. The reason for this is that the whole world is under a curse and so right from the beginning it was known that the ending for Israel was not blessing but the finding out that she too was under this universal curse. She alone among the nations understood what she deserved from God because she alone had entered into a covenant with God. So when the people of Israel were sent into exile at the hands of Babylon just as God warned them would happen when they failed to uphold their end of the bargain, the people of Israel knew that the curse of God hung heavy over them.

         Into this cursed life then, came Jesus. Jesus, the very Son of God, came in his flesh and blood existence as one of the people of Israel. Jesus, the one who was and is without sin, came to represent all of Israel, to take upon himself their curse, to have his body hang there accursed upon a tree just as the first covenant spoke of in the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy. Jesus as the high priest, represented all of the people of Israel. Israel in turn was chosen by God to represent all of the race of Adam, all of humanity. So, Jesus, our high priest, did in fact represent all of us there upon the cross. There, as our representative, Jesus died our death, as the writer of Hebrews said in the second chapter, tasting death for all of us. The shedding of the blood of Jesus is a way of stating that the life of Jesus was poured out unto death in order to pay what was due for those who stood accursed before God. This image of Jesus, his life being poured out, this is our image of forgiveness because as this word, “forgiveness”, tells us, this is a gift given before a relationship can be restored. The gift given was a death that all of us owed and because of this gift all of us have been set free from the curse which had once held us captive.

         One more aspect of this act upon the cross which Jesus has done is that his was a holy act. As the high priest who he was and what he did was holy. So, as we see Jesus upon the cross how does this define for us just what does it mean to be holy? In the fourteenth verse of this ninth chapter, we read that Jesus, our Messiah, “through the Spirit of the age to come, offered himself without blemish to God”. Here, most clearly, we see the radical difference between how the people of Israel had thought about their relationship with God and how Jesus, the high priest who represented them upon the cross, thought about his relationship with his Heavenly Father. The people of Israel wanted to know just what would it take to manipulate God and use his power to help them have a blessed life. The whole stance was about what God could give to them or what God could do for them if only they could just be good enough. Then, along comes Jesus, and suddenly upon the cross holiness was seen because there was one who desired only to give his whole self to God as an offering. When Jesus yielded his life he found that the power of the new age was very much present with him for there was the Spirit, the God of self-giving, holy, love. This holy offering of Jesus was given as the writer puts it, “to cleanse our conscience from dead works to present offerings to the living God.” This word here translated as being, “conscience”, is a word that literally means to see together. It is where two people have both comprehended something and now they come to a mutual understanding. So, through this self-offering of Jesus, our Messiah we can see that we need to be rid of this idea that there are certain things that we can do to please God so that he might bless us. These, as the people of Israel knew so well were quite literally dead works for that’s where all their efforts ended up. Now, upon seeing Jesus upon the cross we can see what God sees, a holy act, in the offering of Jesus, an offering given so that at last beyond our judgment we might have life.

         Here at last then are the clues to help us make sense of the new covenant prophesied about by the prophet Jeremiah. The writer of Hebrews quotes this prophecy in the eighth chapter where we read, ‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.” This prophecy of Jeremiah came as God’s plan to send his people into exile was becoming a reality. Into that dark time, a time when the judgment of God was coming down upon the people of Israel, God spoke through Jeremiah to tell his people that beyond their judgment their would indeed be life, a life with the God who is and was forever for them. Their past would be dealt with, their sins forgiven, so that in their present the people of Israel could become people who knew God because it was his way of life that had been placed within their mind and it was his way of life that had been written on their hearts. The heart is where we hold fast to our treasures so what is being said here is that in this new covenant the ways of God will be treasured by God’s people. With the coming of Jesus we are able to see in human form, the God willing to offer himself to take upon himself our judgment all because he treasured us. Through this offering of Jesus at last our understanding has been purified, now we know that what God desires us to be is people who offer ourselves to God, and we know this is to be true because this is the way of God, the God who offered himself for us. God offered himself so that beyond our judgment we might have life and with this new life given to us we are to take and offer it back to God as an act of worship, because in our hearts we treasure the God who treasures us. This is the essence of this new covenant life that Jesus, our Messiah, has mediated between our Heavenly Father and all of humanity.

         So in this new covenant we do see how God is for us, offering himself to us to take upon himself the judgment of death that all of us deserve, all because he treasures us. Knowing this then we have to ask, just what is our part of the covenant? How shall we be there for God? The answer is that we are to follow the lead of God for this is to state that we know God, and we are to offer ourselves as an act of worship of God because we treasure the God who was willing to taste death for all of us. This is what Paul speaks of in the second letter to the Corinthians when he writes, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this : that this one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” This is why Jesus died upon the cross so that the same love which compelled him to offer himself might be the same love which compels us to live for him, and offer ourselves to him as an act of worship. This understanding of life under the new covenant is so important and this becomes so evident when we are called on to suffer for the cause of Christ. You see, when we offer up ourselves to God even if to do so means that we may have to suffer on account of our promise to be there for him, then what we witness to the world is just how much we treasure our God. Only as the world sees people who are willing to suffer as they offer themselves fully to God, to offer God all that they have been given, even the life that God has given to us, this witnesses that our God is truly the treasure worthy to be sought, the pearl of great price who is worthy of all we might give to call him our own. This is what it means for us to be there for God, to be people who through their lives witness that our God is the greatest treasure, the most worthy blessing we could ever desire. In this way our lives become bearers of God’s blessing for this is why we have been blessed through the offering of God for us. So, let us go forth and witness to the treasure who is our God! Amen!

Faithful in Blessing

 May 14 2023

Hebrews 6

         I don’t know about anyone else but I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is the year 2023. This means that the 80’s were forty years ago and the 70’s were fifty years ago and I have to tell you, I struggle with that. I guess what also hit me upside my head this week is that when I thought about it being 2023, I figured out that I have been in pastoral ministry for nineteen years. Sometimes you just go about doing the work that you are called to do and never really stop to think that you have done so for almost twenty years. I am fortunate that I learned early on to never get up here on a Sunday morning and give my opinion. There is no one who wants to wake up and gather here in church to hear what I think about something, not even my wife. No, I learned early on to only preach what the Bible has to say and to especially tell people what Jesus has said because it is Jesus that people really want to hear from. 

         Now, I am a little naïve because I always thought most pastors would eventually figure out that, you know, its all about Jesus. So needless to say, it was a kind of gut punch when following the trouble that happened at the Capitol in January of 2020 the pastors in the East Ohio District of the Church of the Nazarene received an email from the Superintendent and he had to actually tell pastors that we are here to point people to Jesus. I thought to myself, do we as pastors really need to be reminded of such a thing? Let’s just say that this email has etched itself into my conscience. What made this focus on Jesus come to the forefront of my thoughts this week was an excerpt from an article I read which told of a father who took his teenagers down to Wilmore, Kentucky, to visit Asbury University during the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in their chapel that overwhelmed that place for almost a month. This Dad wanted his kids to experience what God was up to in a powerful way. On the way home, this Dad asked his kids what made this service so good. One of them simply said, “It was only about Jesus.” The father pushed for more, telling his kids to,”Wrap more words around that.” His kids responded saying, ‘Well, Dad, it feels like most churches are about Jesus and something else. You know, Jesus and a political thing, or Jesus and a social justice thing.You know, Jesus and something else. It’s like Jesus is sharing the stage in most churches. Today we had church and it was about Jesus.”  I just thought this was so beautifully put, that where the Holy Spirit was poured out in a mighty way was in the place where everything was all about Jesus.

         Now, this making our church life be all about Jesus really should come as no surprise because here in Scriptures we have wonderful works such as the book of Hebrews which tells us exactly this, that it is all about Jesus and nothing else. If we don’t make life all about Jesus, then, as the writer of Hebrews so aptly describes, there will be consequences. It is Jesus who has united his heavenly life with our flesh and blood existence and this has profound consequences for all of us. As Jesus has come and shared fully in our human experience, having been tempted just as we are tempted and having tasted death for all of us, we can say most assuredly that Jesus has shared fully in this life we live. But what is also true is that since Jesus has risen from the grave and has ascended to the right hand of God, in the flesh, we can have the hope that there in the heavens we who share in his flesh and blood existence can have a home with Jesus. The writer of Hebrews, in the second chapter, assures us that now our home is with Jesus and it is this hope that we must hold fast to with the utmost confidence. This home in glory is promised to us, it is a reality that should be the firm foundation under our feet upon which we stand, and it is this eternal home that we are called to believe in all the way to the end of our life here on earth. What we forfeit when we lose faith in this hope that Jesus has given to us is that we will be people who are not at rest, we will be people who will continually to try and discover the faithfulness of God through our circumstances instead of knowing that our God is faithful to deliver upon his promises, and these are two very different ways of going about our world. We get this sense of striving in the first chapter of the letter written by James where he says, “But ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.” Paul says something similar in the fourth chapter of Ephesians where he implores his audience to no longer be “ children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” You see, we don’t have to live in such a restless existence as we hear described here, a life of uncertainty at the mercy of all kinds of false teaching which can lead us astray. No, instead we have been given the assurance in which we can hold fast to with bold confidence, this hope that our eternal home is with the risen and exalted Jesus.

         Well, in our scripture for today, we begin to discover just why we must have a faith that remains ours all the way until we reach our home in glory and the reason in a word, is Jesus. Prior to this sixth chapter, the writer of Hebrews has focused his energy on the fact that in the risen and exalted Jesus we have a faithful and merciful high priest who is there for us, willing to come to our aid when we feel our faith slipping. You see, a faith response to Jesus is not just about us holding fast to him with confidence but also is knowing that Jesus is there, interceding for us, grasping ahold of us. Yet as the writer of Hebrews goes along speaking to his audience about Jesus being our high priest, the one appointed by our Heavenly Father to intercede on our behalf, he suddenly stops and he begins to wonder aloud why those he is writing to just don’t seem to get what is at stake with their situation of them wavering in their faith and confidence in Jesus. Yes, to not take hold with confidence to this hope that Jesus offers to us is most certainly going to mean that one is going to live a life of constant uncertainty especially in knowing the faithfulness of God. Yet there is a greater tragedy that happens if those that the writer of Hebrews addresses decides to just up and walk away from Jesus when life with Jesus gets difficult and they have to suffer on account of being associated with him. This tragedy is that their failure of faith directly implies the failure of the one that all are called to place their faith in, namely, Jesus. The writer of Hebrews wants the people he writes to to understand that their walking away from their faith in Jesus says something very profound about the work that Jesus has done upon the cross which is that his work there has not accomplished what it was supposed to do. You see, what the writer of Hebrews wants to be completely clear about is that to make our life all about Jesus we must remember that how we live has a direct bearing upon the very reputation of Jesus as being the one who can really save us from our sin.

         The writer of Hebrews begins this sixth chapter urging his audience that it is time for them to grow up. I mean do they really need to go over the basic teachings of the church, again? For goodness sake, there comes a time when all babies have to grow up and become mature adults. What it means for these followers of Christ to be mature is that they would have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Stop and think about what the writer of Hebrews has just told us in this description of what it means to be mature, that by constantly working at figuring out just what is good and what is evil, over time we become trained in knowing just what is the good that we are supposed to do and the evil that we must be done with. Now, what we also know is that the writer of Hebrews defines evil in the third chapter as being an unbelieving heart. So, this tells us that he wants us to understand good and evil from a standpoint of faith. To trust in the promises of God obviously is good and if we refuse to trust in these promises then it just makes sense that this is evil. So this is the mindset that the writer of Hebrews says that his audience does not seem to have as of yet and it is important to keep this in mind as we continue on with what he has to say to them. 

         The writer of Hebrews then comes to one of the most difficult passages in all of his address so we must go slow, and listen carefully to figure out just what he is trying to communicate. He begins by stating that “it is impossible..”, and this impossibility is going to be revealed after a series of statements about what the writer’s audience have already experienced. They are people who have been enlightened, they have seen the light of the new reality which has dawned upon our dark world through the life of Jesus. They have also tasted the heavenly gift which could possibly mean that in Jesus, the gift of heaven, they have found the bread of heaven, and have tasted the sweetness of the life that only he can provide. They have become partakers in the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, the divine life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been opened up so that now through the Holy Spirit we too can experience this life, knowing the Father of Jesus as our Father and knowing Jesus as our brother. So, to partake in the Holy Spirit is to have experienced the ocean depths of holy love which have always existed between the Father and the Son. And this audience of the writer of Hebrews also says to those he writes, that they have tasted the beauty and wonder of the word of God. This means that they have experienced the profound faithfulness found only in the promises that God speaks forth. Finally, we also learn that these who are listening to what the writer says have also tasted the powers of the age to come. They have experienced the coming kingdom through the healings that they have experienced, and they have known the love, and the joy and the peace that are beyond all understanding. Now, in this description of what the writer of Hebrews has said his audience has been given, what he is speaking about is a life of Sabbath rest which comes through all of the combined experiences which have been given to them. They can say that this really is a Sabbath rest because their lives have been so united with the life of God that the rest which has been his from the seventh day of creation is now theirs to experience.

         So the writer of Hebrews has established that those he writes to should be at rest, confident in their hope of their home in glory because of all of the experiences that they have been given to them by God. Yet, the writer has said all this to explain that something is impossible and what he is saying is this : for those who have experienced all of these heavenly blessing and then decide that they are going to walk away from their faith in Jesus it is impossible to restore them to this same richness of experience if they decide at some point to repent, to change their minds and turn around and come back. Do you hear how harsh this sounds? This verse has been a great disturbance to a lot of people who has read it but we have to understand just where the writer of Hebrews is coming from. The reason why the writer believes that it is impossible for a person who has experienced the fullness of God’s blessing, the seeing of the light, the tasting of the heavenly gift, the partaking of the Holy Spirit, the tasting of the beauty and wonder of the promise of God, why all of this can not be given a second time is that in failing to follow through when one has been blessed by God says something about Jesus and the cross. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way, that a failure to be a person who bears God’s blessings out into the world once one has experienced the rich blessing of God themselves is to “crucify once again the Son of God and hold him up to contempt.” Wow, such a statement hits like a hammer and we are left wondering just what is meant by it? The answer is found, I believe in understanding the cross of Jesus in terms of curses and blessings which is not normally how we think of the cross yet in the third chapter of Galatians, Paul considers the cross of Jesus in just such terms as curses and blessings. There he says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us-for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”-so that in Christ Jesus the blessings of Abraham might come to the nations.” This verse proves so helpful in figuring out what the writer of Hebrews is getting at when he speaks of crucifying the Son of God again and holding him in contempt. You see, Jesus was willing to take upon himself the curse that was upon the people of Israel, the curse which prevented them from being a blessing, so that through his death the curse might be destroyed and at last the blessings might flow, as Paul said, out to the nations. So, if these people that the writer of Hebrews addresses refuse to allow the blessing they have received to transform them into people who will faithfully bear the blessings of God out into the world, then the message they are communicating is that Jesus has not, through his death, defeated the curse that keeps the blessings of God from flowing out to the nations. If the death of Jesus had not defeated the curse then all that could be said when we look at the cross was here was a cursed man only worth of our contempt. So, what is really impossible is our desire to receive the rich blessing of God and then just let the world remain under the curse as if the cross of Christ had accomplished nothing at all. Do you see how difficult it would be for someone who had such a mindset to be set right through repentance? We might say it would be impossible.

         You see, it is this necessity of being a bearer of blessing, this is the concern of the writer of Hebrews through these harsh words and we know this to be true through his story of two fields. Both of these fields had experienced rain but one field produced thorns and thistles, symbolizing curses, and the other field produced a crop that was useful to those who had planted it so that it was indeed a field of blessing. The rain in both of these stories is the blessings which flow down upon our lives from on high and what is expected is that from those blessings is that our lives might bear a crop of blessing to others.The reason why it is imperative that those of us who have experienced this rich, abundant, full, wondrous, life overflowing with heavenly goodness live in such away that others know that there is a God who desires to bless them in this same way is that the reputation of Jesus is on the line. Has what Jesus endured upon the cross really defeated the curse which kept us from drawing near to the blessing of God? The answer can only be found in the way that we live, if we live as people willing to bear the blessing of God out to all people even those who cause us harm, even those who seek to persecute us, even those who consider themselves to be our enemies, all of these are people God still considers worthy of his blessing and we are called on to live out this truth.

         Even so, the writer of Hebrews understands just how difficult it is to be people who bear the blessing of God out to a world that seeks our suffering this is why he calls us to be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherited what God had promised to them. It comes as no surprise then, that the one whom the writer calls us to imitate is Abraham, the one God swore to, telling Abraham, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you”. We are the ones who have inherited this promise that God made to Abraham, we are the ones who have been blessed through his offspring, Jesus. We are the ones who know of another impossibility, the impossibility of God to lie. The character of God’s purpose is unchanging and it is the promises of God which are always true. What God has promised to do is to bless and it is this purpose of God to bless, this is our strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope of glory which he has set before us. Again, we have certainty of this all because of Jesus, the one we know has been victorious on the cross because he now has gone before us into the holy presence of the Father, a forerunner on our behalf. So, as he has most assuredly defeated the curse let us now go and in his victory bear the blessing of God to everyone. Amen!

The Peace of God’s Promise

 May 7 2023

Hebrews 3:1-6,12-19, 4:1-11

         Well, it has been a month since we have celebrated Easter together with joyful shouts of, “He is Risen; He is Risen indeed!”. Such good news though just cannot be contained to one Sunday, can it? I mean doesn’t it seem right that we have this season of Easter to set our hearts and minds upon the risen Jesus, to consider our living Savior and how because he lives, this changes everything. The writer of this book that we find ourselves in, this book of Hebrews, begins the third chapter of his letter with this same idea that we should focus our thoughts upon Jesus. He writes, ‘Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus…”. The word translated as being, “consider”, is a very intense action meaning to concentrate by fixing ones thinking upon something in order to understand it more fully. In other words, it is the type of thinking that is to come decisively to an understanding. When I read this I really have to ask myself, have I really ever concentrated all of my thinking upon this man named Jesus all so that I might understand him as fully as I can? I mean, have any of us really given Jesus that much thought? The writer of Hebrews gives us some terms to help us focus our thoughts when he tells us that Jesus is the apostle and the high priest of our confession. Now, to call Jesus an apostle seems like a weird title, doesn’t it, but all that the term, “apostle”, means is one who is sent as a representative of someone else. Knowing this then, the title, Apostle, does seem fitting because he came from the Father’s side and as the writer of Hebrews told us in the first chapter, Jesus, the very Son of God was, first, the very radiance of the glory of God which means that he is the glory that radiates out from God. And the writer of Hebrews also tells us that Jesus, the Son of God was the exact imprint of the nature of God. So, yes, Jesus was an apostle who was sent out from heaven so that we might know the glory and nature of God. Yet, Jesus is more for the writer of Hebrews also explains that Jesus is our high priest, which again to us is a rather weird title yet it is a title, nonetheless, that has deep roots in the story of God’s people. In the story of God’s people, the Israelites, it was the High Priest, who on the day of Atonement, would represent the twelve tribes of Israel by wearing a vest which had on it twelve precious stones attached to it, one to represent each tribe. So, as the High Priest entered into the most holy presence of God, all of the people of Israel were right there with him to have their sins cleansed away and to once again have unity with God. Now, when you hear these two terms, apostle and high priest, did you make the connection between the two? Both of these two titles speak of representing someone else. In the case of the term, apostle, Jesus, the very Son of God, was sent from heaven to represent God. And, Jesus as our High Priest, represents us as people. We have certainty that Jesus represents God and humanity in these ways because the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was faithful to his Heavenly Father who appointed him to be his apostle and our high priest. So as we put on our thinking caps and concentrate on who Jesus is we can say that he is very much the one who represents God to all of humanity and, at the very same time, he is the one who represents all of humanity to God. That’s rather mind blowing, don’t you think?

         Now, the reason that Jesus is the one who represents God to all of humanity and the one who represents all of humanity to God is that as the writer of Hebrews says in the second chapter, the one who heals, or makes holy and the ones being healed or being made holy are one. Jesus has made himself one with us by taking upon himself our flesh because this was the only way that we could be healed and made holy. So, it is because a holy Jesus has united himself with us this is why the writer of Hebrews declares us to be his holy brothers and sisters. Now, because Jesus has come from heaven and has united himself with us then this also means that we have become united with the heavenly existence of Jesus. The way that the writer of Hebrews describes what is now ours because of Jesus is that Jesus is the builder of our heavenly home, the very one who has established this place for us to reside forever. And here is what is key for us to understand about this promise that we can be part of the heavenly home that Jesus has established for us: we must hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. If we go back to the original language that this sentence was written in we are told that we must put under our control, our dominion or exerted power, this free, fearless, boldness, in our hope that is our home in glory. Do you begin to understand how vitally important the writer of Hebrews believes that we must make our heavenly home our top priority? We hear his urgency, again, in the fourteenth verse of this third chapter where he writes that, “we have become active partakers in this heavenly life of Christ if we grasp firmly and stand upon this guaranteed reality firmly all the way to the end.” This hanging tight to this heavenly reality which is ours through the grace of Jesus is a central theme of this book of Hebrews because to turn your back on such a great hope puts in jeopardy ones future in heaven but it also tragically affects how we live here in the present. This is what the writer of Hebrews tells us at the beginning of the fourth chapter, that, “while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it…”. This rest that the writer of Hebrews is speaking of here is to put to an end ones work and this gives us an important clue as to just what it is that destroys our confidence in this hope given to us by Jesus.

         We get a better understanding of what is meant by this rest that we will forfeit if we let go of this hope we have of having a heavenly home with Jesus by considering the wilderness wanderings of those who had been set free from their slavery down in Egypt. The writer of Hebrews tells us to listen to the Holy Spirit as he speaks through the ninety-fifth Psalm instructing us in the ways of faith. There in that Psalm we read, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked with that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” Here we have put in a few, short sentences, the tragic tale of those that God had rescued out of slavery in Egypt. These were the people who watched as God brought the plagues against the Egyptian pharaoh and they were there on the fateful night of the Passover as God shielded them from death that came upon all the firstborn of Egypt. They watched in wonder as the waters parted so that there was a way through the sea, the same sea which closed over the Egyptian army which pursued God’s people. Surely it would be these people, of all people, who would be forever in awe of God and his mighty power to save yet as the ninety-fifth Psalm recounts the legacy of these people, they tragically failed to have confidence and faith in the very God who was responsible for rescuing them from slavery. We have to wonder just why did they again and again rebel against God? We are told in the twelfth chapter of the book of Numbers that these former slaves rejected God ten different times as they traveled through the wilderness on their way through to the Promised Land. They finally even refused to have anything to do with the land God had promised to them so God in his wrath decided that they would remain in the wilderness forty more years, long enough for the unfaithful generation to perish and a new generation was able to be raised up to believe in God. And again when we hear this, how can we not wonder, why? The answer perhaps lays in the fact that these people of Israel had lived for four hundred years in the land of Egypt. They most assuredly had picked up the mindset that surrounds the worship of false gods.  The way that one could be certain of where one stood with a false god was determined solely by the circumstances that they had found themselves in. If the harvest was plentiful then, of course, it makes sense that the gods were in your favor. If, on the other hand, the floods washed your harvest away then it just made sense that these same gods had become upset. Now, into this group of people comes a God who is the one, true, living God and the first thing that this God does is that he speaks. You see, the false gods had no voice but in a world of human voices came the voice of one who was and is not human, the voice of the one, true living God. It is because our God speaks, this is why our God is known through his promises and not our circumstances. This is the lesson that God kept going over and over again there in the wilderness with these people whose mindset was that it was their circumstances which determined where they stood with God. So, there they were in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat but God promised them that he would provide enough for them to eat everyday, what did they focus on, the promise of food everyday? No, of course not, they focused on the fact that they were being fed weird bread from heaven not the tasty food that the gods down in Egypt had provided. God then brought them to a place where there was no water and promised to make water came gushing out of a solid piece of rock. What did the people focus their attention on, the promise of God or their circumstances? Again, they focused their attention of their circumstances which told them that this God who had led them out there to the wilderness was not a very great god because he was trying to kill them by bringing them to a drought parched land. So, this same scenario kept playing itself out as they journeyed through the wilderness, God promising and making good on his promises and the people of Israel focusing on their circumstances and judging just who this God was through that lens. When these same people finally arrive at the very land God had promised to give to them, they had failed to learn the lesson that he had tried to teach them over and over again, that he would speak his promise to them and make good on that promise so that they would come to know him as a God of utmost faithfulness regardless of what their circumstances might say to the contrary. Instead of knowing God as being a God who always makes good on his promises these people of Israel kept asking, “Is God with us or not?”, directly calling into question the character of the God who had set them free from slavery. It comes as no surprise then that when these same people went to look over this land that God had promised to them all they could focus on was the circumstances, that there were giants who dwelled in this land who needed to be defeated instead of focusing on the very fact that this was a land which God promised he would give to them. It is not difficult to understand why God would have been provoked with people such as these who continually tried to determine what kind of God he was from the circumstances that they had found themselves in instead of knowing that he is and always would be a God of utter faithfulness. Our God is a God who keeps all of his promises that he tells us will be fulfilled.

         The problem with trying to figure out if God is with us by looking through the lens of our circumstances is that we will come to know God as only being our fair weather friend. When life is good then, of course, God is most assuredly with us. When life hits the skids and everything comes crashing down upon our heads, we are going to be left in a panic, wondering just where is God now, why has God abandoned me just when I needed him the most? With such a mindset, it’s inevitable that we will begin to wonder if there is something we woulda, coulda, shoulda done, to make sure our life is found more and more on the sunny side of the street. Are you beginning to see just what are those works that we need to stop doing? You see, trying to determine the faithfulness of God by our circumstances is a restless business, one where there is never any certainty if God is with you or not, which eventually creates fear and doubt, what the writer of Hebrews rightly calls an unbelieving heart.

         The reason that the writer of Hebrews uses the story of the Israelites in the wilderness as a prime example of those who did not rest in the promise of God is that those that the writer of Hebrews is addressing are those who, like us, are called on to suffer for the sake of Jesus. In the second chapter of this letter, the writer of Hebrews makes it clear that the way for us as humanity to become those who are crowned with glory and honor is for us to follow the path of suffering. As the writer continues in the eighteenth verse of this second chapter, it was that Jesus himself had suffered when he was tested this is why he is able to help those who are being tested. You see, it is when our circumstances involve the necessity of our suffering, this is when we will either know God through his promises and rest that he is indeed faithful to be right there with us in those times of hurt and pain or if we somehow believe we can know that God is with us by the circumstances we are going through then when hardship comes we will begin to wonder just where has God gone and why has he left us there to tough it out on our own.

         Jesus is able to help us when we are being tested by our suffering by being the one who has gone before us, the one who has suffered on the cross and has been resurrected from the dead and now resides in glory. There in glory is a home which Jesus tells us that we can call our home because just as he has come here to earth to experience our existence as a person, we now our given the hope that we can go and experience his existence in his home in heaven. This is our Promised Land, our promised home that we are called to take a firm grasp of, to have a bold resolve in our belief of it, to make the reality of such a hope the firm foundation upon which we stand. When we do so then when we face suffering and hardship on account of Jesus we know that beyond this affliction is the joy that we have always longed for. It is not surprising that this is the same hope expressed by Paul who, in his second letter to the church at Corinth, beginning at the sixteenth verse in the fourth chapter through the first verse in the fifth chapter, writes, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away our inner self is being renewed day by day, For this light, momentary, affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent of our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”. It is this promise of God, that we have a place in the heavens which is our eternal home, this is what we must hold on to no matter what for this is our hope for tomorrow which provides us a rest to live in today. We can stop being restless, concerning ourselves with questions of God’s faithfulness for in the living Jesus, the one who has established our eternal home, we experience the faithfulness of God in one who is just like us, yet without sin. It is that we know this about Jesus this is why the suffering and hardship that we must endure as we follow Jesus can be seen as momentary and light because he has promised us an eternal, and more glorious future to set our sights on. This is why we must not let our circumstances ever determine the faithfulness of our God but instead we must consider, think long and hard about this one we know as Jesus, the one who faithfully brought to us the glory and nature of our God and the one who, as one of us, holds us next to our Father’s heart until at last we arrive safely home. Amen!

A Salvation Storied People

 April 30 2023

Hebrews 2:5-3:1

         As many people know, I am a big sci-fi fan enjoying shows like Star Wars and Star Trek amongst others. This past while, the latest in a Star Trek series has been streaming and just this past week was the final episode which even though it is full of weird alien beings it nonetheless had a very human message. To put it very simply, there was a son who had been captured by an evil alien queen bent on destroying the world. His father, upon finding this out, flew across the galaxy with his loyal friends to rescue his son. Now, the queen had imprisoned the son, forcing him to be her pawn in universal annihilation and the father upon finding his son, of course sets out to get his son out of the prison he is in. The only problem is that the son has come under the illusion that his prison cell was a great place to be because the queen had given him everything he desired and he was fine with staying there. So, in the end even though the son was at last able to leave  his prison, he refused to do so. The father, then, does the unthinkable and he allows himself to be imprisoned with his son. The father entered into his son’s illusion in order to counter this lie with the truth of his love for his son. The father embraced his son and urged his son to leave. The father knows that soon his friends would find a way to destroy the queen and when they did so, the son would also be killed. So, the father tells his son that if he would not leave then the father would stay there with his son and experience death with him. Such an act of love on the part of the father convinces the son that here with the father was a better reality than the one found within his prison walls. So, the father was able to rescue his son, the friends killed the queen and all of the galaxy rejoiced because all was well, the end. 

         You see, this was not just a great sci-fi story, this is a great human story because it is what is called a salvation story, the rescuing and saving of human life. Yet this story seems to be more because there are elements of it that touch on the ways that the very human Jesus has rescued us, entering into the prison into which we found ourselves and refusing to leave us even if the cost of remaining with us in that prison was that he would have to die with us. You see, as I watched this Star Trek final episode unfold I couldn’t help but feel that they had stolen some plot lines from what the writer of Hebrews had written in this second chapter of his letter. What the writer of Hebrews has written here is the answer to something that he had previously had been discussing, that all of us should be paying much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it, and the “it”, in this case is the message that the writer calls our, “great salvation”. The writer goes on to ask the question, just how “shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” So, he has us wondering just what is this story of our great salvation, a story which we are urged to listen to and not neglect.

         The usual salvation story that most of us have heard if we have hung around the church long enough are much like the salvation story that I stumbled upon in an article I read this past week. A man named Bill Bright in the 1990’s laid out what he called four laws of a person’s salvation. The first of these stated that God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our life. The second is that mankind is sinful and separated from God and therefore cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for their life. Third, Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for sin. Through him one can know and experience God’s love and plan for their life. And finally, we must place our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior in order to receive the gift of salvation and know God’s wonderful plan for our life. This is a fairly normal way that most people understand how a person comes into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, through placing our faith in Jesus as our Savior. Yet what such a story does not even remotely explain is just what part does the risen and exalted Son of God now play in our salvation? In this, the season of Easter, as we ponder on just what is Jesus up to now, as he is exalted in the heavens, we have to ask, does he still play a role in our salvation story?

         The writer of Hebrews strongly believes that the exalted Son of God, whose name we know as Jesus, most assuredly is and will continue to forever be, a vital part of all of our salvation stories.This is what makes the salvation story that he tells so very different than most of the salvation stories that we have heard. The writer of Hebrews begins his salvation story with a rather strange statement, telling us that it was “not to angels that God subjected the world to come.” By this he was saying that God never meant that this created world we enjoy should ever be controlled by angels. Heavenly beings have no business being in charge of the created world. No, as the writer continues he  quotes from a scripture that he hopes his audience will be familiar with, “What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while a little lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.” Now, those listening in on what has been written here would most obviously have known that what has been written here is the eighth Psalm, and they most likely would have been familiar with this Psalm because it speaks of a reality that is supposed to be yet is quite obviously not at all what is experienced in our world. As the writer states so painfully, “in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside of his control.” The person that the Psalm is writing about is our collective humanity since we have all sprung from one person, Adam. And our humanity was created with greatness in mind, we were to be crowned with glory and honor with everything under our control. So right here then we have the opening statement of our salvation story, the very hope, a hope not just for us as individuals but a hope that encompasses all of humanity, a hope that one day we will overcome the world. This grand vision is what must be held on to as we continue to listen in on this our salvation story.

         The next step in our salvation story is to state just what went wrong and the writer of Hebrews simply states what everyone already knows, “at present we do not see everything in subjection to him.” This truth, that is so very evident, that our world is clearly not under our control is why, I imagine, that so many people knew this eighth Psalm because it speaks of a reality that is clearly not the reality that they live in. The people who knew of this Psalm were always left wondering just why such a delusional song made it into their hymnal. Yes, all things are supposed to be under our control but it seems as if it is creation itself which is controlling us. So, here lies the tension that we must hold on to for a little while to consider just how the hope that this Psalm presents to us will at last be restored.

         Well, the third movement of our salvation story is simply, “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus…” So far in his letter the writer of Hebrews has only written about the Son of God, never mentioning his name until right now, in a moment of great drama, saying here, in this one named Jesus, here is the one for whom the eighth Psalm at last rings true. It was this Jesus who was crowned with glory and honor just as the Psalmist had stated that we as humanity were supposed to be crowned with right from the first. This is, of course, wonderful news but this great news is tempered with just how it is that this Jesus has been crowned with this glory and honor for we are told that this is so because “of the suffering of death..”. The honor and glory of humanity then lies on the far side of suffering, the very suffering of death. So, to put it as our salvation story, our salvation as humanity is to be restored to our rightful place of honor and glory but what has been revealed to us by Jesus is that this is only possible if we are willing to follow Jesus through suffering, the suffering of death. Now what is interesting is that we are told that it is by the overflowing grace upon grace of God, his wondrous favor towards us, this is why Jesus has come into our world and tasted death for everyone, not just us as individuals but he tasted death for all humanity.

         So, what we know so far is that Jesus is, as the writer of Hebrew makes known to us, the forerunner, the founder of our salvation, because he has come as one of us and he is the first of us to go the way of suffering which leads on through to a life of honor and glory. There is indeed something very right about what God has done in sending his Son to take on our humanity in order that all of humanity might at last come into the glory for which humanity was created for. While most translations state the words of the writer of Hebrews as being, that “he who sanctifies and the those he sanctifies all have one source”, a better way to state it is to say that the one who heals and those who are healed are all one. Here we begin to understand just how it is that Jesus will be the one to save us because it was he alone who was willing to be united fully with us. So, in Jesus the very faithfulness of God was no longer just something we were to know about God but in Jesus the faithfulness of God came to us with a human touch.This faithfulness of God is heard in what the writer of Hebrews quotes from the twenty-second Psalm, the words that we hear from Jesus, “I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of your congregation I will sing your praise.” The faithfulness of God that we see in the life of Jesus who came in our flesh and blood existence uniting himself with all of us, this same faithfulness is what Jesus speaks of to those he calls his brothers and sisters. Jesus spoke of the name, the very characteristic of who God is, that he is a God of loyal, faithful love, to those who desperately needed to hear it. Jesus would sing the praises of his Heavenly Father in the midst of those who would be gathered around him so that through the exaltation of the Father’s loyal, faithful, love, humanity might find healing through the faithfulness of the God who loved them. This is why we also hear Jesus say, “I will put my trust in him.” Not only would Jesus tell of the Father’s unrelenting, loyal, faithful love for all humanity, and exalt such love as worthy of praise but Jesus would live a life trusting in the loyalty and faithfulness of this love alone. And then the writer of Hebrews writes that Jesus once again speaks, saying, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.” Here at last, what Jesus has proclaimed about the loyal, faithful love of God, and the way he has lived trusting in that same loyal, faithful love has caused those who have heard and seen to now trust in the loyal, faithful love of God, becoming born anew so that they can now join Jesus as participants in the very family of God.

         Well, in our salvation story so far we have come to understand that as humanity we were created a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor. All of creation was to be subject under the control of humanity. The problem is that we do not see everything in subjection to our collective humanity. Yet all was not lost because we see Jesus. Jesus is crowned with glory and honor just as all of humanity was created to be yet the way that Jesus ended up being crowned with glory and honor was that he was willing to endure the suffering of death.  The writer of Hebrews then implies that the reason Jesus came as one of us is so that we might know that God in his faithfulness has bound himself forever with us. So, Jesus, the very faithfulness of God, demonstrated this faithfulness through his life becoming one with us as flesh and blood people. But Jesus, also was the faithfulness of God as seen in his death.The writer of Hebrews tells us, “since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, Jesus himself likewise partook of the same things that through his death he might destroy the one who has the power of death that is, the devil…” Jesus in his faithfulness to us tasted death for all of humanity. Just as in his life where Jesus had bound himself to all human life, so too in his death he entered into death on behalf of everyone. Jesus entered into our death in order to destroy the power of death and “deliver all those who through the fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” You see, humanity, far from being crowned with glory and honor with everything in subjection to its control, instead had become nothing more than a very large slave camp where people were unable to be set free from their slavery because of their terrifying fear of death. The Son of God understood that the only way to bring healing to humanity is to bring the faithfulness of God into the tragedy of our situation, to enter into the prison of our own making and through being faithful to us even unto death, he could destroy the very power that enslaved us. The one who wields this power found in the fear of death, the one called the devil, this one takes our fear and our terror, and uses it against us allowing our terror to literally tear us apart. We see this too much on social media where someone knocks on the wrong door, or enters the wrong car, or they show up at the wrong place and the fear of death drives people to get rid of their fear through putting the source of their fear to death. And so, it is not just an individual fear of death that Jesus came to heal but he came to heal this culture that all humanity finds itself in, one that is driven mad by its fear of death. The Son of God knew that he had to become one with the life of us held captive by our fear so that through his faithfulness, the faithfulness of God that is his life and message, we at last might find faith in the overwhelming, loyal, faithful love of God. This love, Jesus, knew, was greater than the power found in the fear of death. Jesus knew that even if one suffered and died at the hands of those whose fear drove them to do such evil, he nonetheless would be safe for he had placed his trust in the loyal, faithful love of his Father which held on to him even beyond the boundaries of death. Yes, beyond the suffering at the hands of those whom the fear of death has driven mad, beyond the death which comes to all, there is yet a glory waiting for those who have founded their life on the undying, faithful love of their Heavenly Father.

         The faithfulness of God, then came to us in the life of Jesus who united himself with us in our flesh and blood existence, and this faithfulness remained with us as Jesus tasted death for all of humanity. So, it just makes sense that now as Jesus has been resurrected from the dead and is exalted to the right hand of the throne of God that Jesus remains faithful with us. This is exactly what the writer of Hebrews wants us to know, because he tells of how the resurrected Jesus helps the offspring of Abraham. The help that is described here is that Jesus will vigorously reach out and grab ahold of the children of Abraham. You see, the children of Abraham are those who like Abraham, are counting on the faithfulness of God. To those who now have decided to live by the faithfulness of God instead of living by their fear of death, Jesus says, I will come and take hold of you so that you never tire of your holding on to God. Yet this is not all, because the writer of Hebrews introduces here a central theme of his letter which is that the resurrected Jesus is our merciful and faithful high priest. Jesus, as our high priest, is for us the very mercy seat of God, the place where we can come and be assured of God’s faithful presence with us. This gives us great comfort when we find our faith tested, when the fear that is so rampant begins to rattle us, because we know that we have a faithful high priest named Jesus who will come to our aid. The help the risen Jesus offers to us is that he is going to run and meet our urgent distress call, faithfully responding to us when we are in need. So, from the very beginning right up to now, Jesus has constantly, actively and continually been for us the very faithfulness of God. The question only we can answer is will his faithfulness to us cause us to respond to him with faith? Will we discover for ourselves the freedom from fear that is promised to us, a promise founded on the loyal, faithful love of God that is ours today in the presence of the resurrected Jesus who is with us always? I pray that today that the faithful one named Jesus will find faith in us! Amen!