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!