The Waking Dreamer: Book of Hebrews

Showing posts with label Book of Hebrews. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Born That Man No More May Die

Hebrews 2:10-18[1]

On Christmas Eve, we talked about how the light of God’s love shines in the darkness. And, as Henri Nouwen reminded us, “a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.” For many of us, there’s no darkness we fear more than death. It’s the ultimate unknown. I realize that when we are young, death may seem remote and almost unreal. Until someone your age passes away. I had that happen to me when I was in college. Or perhaps a close family member whom you loved. Then the stark reality hits you. And when it does, most of us are unprepared for the fear that grips us. In response to that fear, we in this culture seem obsessed with keeping death as far away from us as possible. In days of old, people would die at home, and the family would care for their body. Now all of that is removed from our presence. And perhaps for good reason—there seems to be no logic, no rhyme or reason to the way the “grim reaper” takes its victims. Our inability to make any sense out of death only increases our fear.

But our New Testament lesson for today presents us with the good news that, because we bear this burden of mortality, Jesus also came as one of us, made of flesh and blood. He came not only to God’s unfailing love and continual presence with us, but he also came specifically bearing our mortality so that he could die as one of us. And the purpose of his death was to “free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Heb. 2:15). Though the Scripture text doesn’t spell out precisely how it is that he sets us free from the fear of death, the New Testament elsewhere reminds us that Jesus didn’t just come to die, but also to be raised from the dead, and by doing so to triumph over all the powers of darkness in this world, most importantly death.

Part of the purpose of his coming in the vulnerability of our flesh and blood was to demonstrate that our God is not so high and exalted as to be unconcerned with or unmoved by our burdens. There have been many who have believed that throughout the ages. Some of our “founding fathers” in this country believed God was like a clockmaker who made the clock, wound it up and let it go. It’s a belief system called “Deism.” They believed that God created the world, stood back, and lets it go on its way, but doesn’t get involved. On the contrary, the “gospel of Christmas” is that, by entering our broken and confusing existence as Immanuel, “God-who-is-with-us,” Jesus took all the burdens that we bear on himself. And so he made it clear that God is not the cold and distant deity whom some people have cringed before, and at times even hated. Rather, God is the one who loves us so much that, as we say in one of our confessions of faith, Jesus died to show us God’s love as “a love that is ready to suffer for our sakes.”[2]

That may seem like a strange thing to say about God. It was the conclusion Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to as he sat in his cell in a Nazi prison camp. He said, “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. … only the suffering God can help.” I think Bonhoeffer knew whereof he spoke. It would not be long before he would lose his life at the hands of the Nazis. Our lesson for today puts it this way: “Because Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb. 2:18).

But that really is the question, isn’t it? Can a God who is vulnerable enough to enter our brokenness really be powerful enough to do something about it? Wouldn’t it seem that a God who is able to suffer with us is a God who is just as impotent as we are in the face of our suffering and ultimately our experience of death? In fact, that has been what some have concluded: God loves us, and God suffers with us, but at the end of the day, that’s about all God can do for us. If that’s the case, I’m not sure many would conclude that a “suffering God” is “able to help” us at all.

Others are unwilling to relegate God (and us) to such a helpless state in which our experience with death leaves us with a mystery of suffering that we cannot solve by any means. So they insist that though our experience of suffering and death may be burdensome to us now, God will ultimately bring good from it. The same confession I cited earlier says, “nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.”[3] And there is some comfort to that. But “finally” or “ultimately” can seem like a very long time. It can seem like a very long time. So what are we to do in the meantime? How does the suffering love of our vulnerable God help us here and now?

Well, for one thing, I think we must not underestimate the power of that love that was poured out at the cross. It may look like the Jesus who dies on the cross was just as weak as any other human being. It may look like God is unable to do anything except suffer the pain of watching his son die. And yet, if we were to conclude that, we would be vastly underestimating the power of God’s love. One of my schoolmates offered a clarification of Bonhoeffer’s famous phrase by saying, “Only the suffering God can help, but it is only the suffering of the God who has greater power than we do over suffering that is able to help.”[4] And God does have greater power than we do over suffering, and so he is able to help.

Yes, love can be vulnerable. It does not retaliate, it does not lash out at those who may in fact take the life of the one who is loved or even the one who offers love. But love always breaks the power of evil. As we say in that same confession of faith, “An abyss of suffering” has been “swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.”[5] All the death, all the pain, all the fear that we can experience in this life, God has swallowed up into the suffering of his own love for us. Love always wins the day, no matter how long it takes to get to “ultimately.” And that is all the more certain with God’s love! God’s love most certainly wins the day.

But there is more to it than that. Although our lesson doesn’t mention it, surely the implication is there: Jesus did not remain in the grave. Death was not powerful enough to hold him. God raised him from the dead, and by so doing he not only vindicated the power of suffering love, but also demonstrated that God does more than “just” suffer with us when we suffer. Rather, as Henri Nouwen reminds us, the resurrection is the demonstration that “God’s light is more real than all the darkness, that God’s truth is more powerful than all human lies, that God’s love is stronger than death.”[6] And so in the vulnerability of Jesus taking on flesh and blood and dying for us all, and in the astonishing power of God raising him to life, we see God’s light overcoming all the darkness, even the darkness of death. And, as the Scripture says, “The light keeps shining in the dark, and darkness has never put it out” (Jn. 1:5, CEV)!

[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 12/28/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. The title, "Born that Man No More May Die" is taken from a verse of the Hymn/Christmas Carol "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," by Charles Wesley.

[2] The Study Catechism (1998), question 8.

[3] The Study Catechism (1998), question 22.

[4] Steven R. Harmon, “Hebrews 2:10-18,”Interpretation 59 (Oct 2005): 406.

[5] The Study Catechism (1998) question 45.

[6] Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 32

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Assurance

Hebrews 10:11-25[1]

Lately I’ve been sharing with you stories about my journey with the Bible. I think it’s appropriate for us to talk about this in connection with the book of Hebrews. The first “serious” study of the Bible I engaged in was a study of Hebrews. I was in my Junior year of High School, and I had found a booklet that walked me through Hebrews with background information and questions to answer, much like the ones that are still available today online. In fact, the splash screen for my sermon on the PowerPoint this morning is a picture of the lesson from Hebrews in the Bible I used in those days. It’s a King James Version that I keep because it was one of the Bibles I used when I started my journey of following Jesus. At least when I became more intentional about that journey in High School.

One of the things that drew me to Hebrews was that it was obvious that there is a connection between the New Testament and the Old Testament. That has been an interest of mine for decades. In fact, one of the aspects of the Reformed Tradition that attracted me to the Presbyterian church is the fact that we focus on what has been known since the days of the Protestant Reformation as the “whole counsel of God,” meaning the full biblical witness. Many of the churches in those days identified primarily with the New Testament. Some of them even called themselves a “New Testament Church.” While I understand that, I was always curious about how a follower of Jesus could and should make use of the Hebrew Bible.

Another aspect of the book of Hebrews that attracted me is the fact that there are some confusing passages in the book. For example, “it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who … have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come—and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance” (Heb 6:4-6 NLT). That didn’t make sense to me in light of the affirmation of Scripture in general and the Gospel in particular that God’s love for us never fails. What I learned was that there are several of these “warning” passages in Hebrews. But each time, the warnings are followed up with an assurance. In this case, “Dear friends, even though we are talking this way, we really don’t believe it applies to you. We are confident that you are meant for better things, things that come with salvation” (Heb 6:9 NLT).

That brings to us to our lesson from Hebrews for today. Our lesson for today speaks of the assurance we have as we seek to keep following Jesus, even through the most difficult times of our lives. It assures us that “we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place” because “by his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way.” (Heb. 10:19-20, NLT). Therefore we can “go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him” (Heb. 10:22, NLT). I think the point is that God hasn’t left us to try to find our way to him on our own. We have an open door to God’s grace and mercy and love any time we need it. In fact, whether we realize it or not, that open door has flooded our world and our lives with God’s grace, mercy, and love. There’s no challenge we will ever have to face alone. There’s no hardship or injustice or pain that we can undergo without the presence of the living God who created all the heavens and the earth right there with us, supporting us every step of the way.

That’s what it means to “go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him” (Heb. 10:22). A more literal translation of that verse speaks of our being able to go into God’s very presence with the “full assurance of faith.” For example, the NIV says that because of what Jesus has done for us, we can go into God’s presence “with the full assurance that faith brings.” The letter to the Hebrews has already presented the message that Jesus died to break the power of everything that keeps us from the life God intends for us. And it has affirmed that Jesus became a human being in order to demonstrate that God loves us enough to enter our struggles, and his love is powerful enough to transform them into new life.

In our lesson for today, the Scripture defines that new life by taking it one step further. It tells us that Jesus also died to open the way to a relationship with God that is meaningful and fulfilling. An important part of the biblical idea of sin is that we have broken our relationship with God by our willfulness, our resistance, our pride, and our selfishness. But the good news is that God takes the initiative to heal that breach.[2] God holds no grudges against us; God does not need to be softened up toward us. God already loves us unconditionally and irrevocably. And so it is that, through Jesus, God seeks us out like a shepherd searching for lost sheep. And once we are found, he never lets us go! I think that’s what our Scripture lesson means when it speaks of a “new and living way” opened to us by Jesus. It’s new in that it is completely different from other ways people have taken to reach God. In this new way, we can “go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him” and have the assurance that he will always be there to welcome us and to support us on our journey.

One contemporary preacher calls this experience of Jesus as presented in the letter to the Hebrews as the “parabola of salvation.” By that, he means that after Jesus “moves down into human history, experienced testing and suffering of every kind,” he is “then swept back up into the heavenly places.” But “this parabolic arc was not only the pathway that Christ traveled, it is also a pilgrim way of grace that we travel, a highway leading into the very presence of God” opened up for us by Jesus.[3] In a very real sense, just as Jesus came to experience our human existence fully, so also we are in a sense, “swept up” into his experience of suffering followed by new life in God’s presence. We all have the assurance that based on what Jesus has done, both at the cross and in the resurrection, we’re on the same path into the very presence of God that he took. And the good news is that this way is open for anyone and everyone. There is no gate-keeper who keeps out those who don’t belong. There is no special password. Jesus has already opened the way for anyone and everyone to have the kind of relationship God has always intended for us to have—a life of lasting peace, and heart-felt joy, and love that sustains us even in our darkest moments. That is the full assurance of our faith!

[2] Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1:36-38, where he says this is a fulfillment of the covenant promise, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” which means that from the start “God willed to be God for [us].”

[3] Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, 104.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Making a Difference

Hebrews 4:14-5:10[1]

I believe most of us want to make a difference in this world. As we’re growing up, we try to figure out a way to do that with our lives. We choose a career based on our interests. Whether our job takes us in a direction that we feel like we’re actually making a difference in others’ lives, I would say that we do so just by the way we show up and treat people. Even if our job isn’t one that seems to “make a real difference,” most of us get involved in other activities like sports leagues or community clubs so that we can give back to the people around us. I think one of the challenges we face is that we have a hard time recognizing all the ways we contribute to the lives of other people. It seems to be wired into who we are as human beings to want to make a difference.

The most fulfilling experiences of my life have come from the opportunities I’ve had to make a difference in someone’s life. That’s why I started down the path of ministry at the ripe old age of 17. That’s why I’ve worked all my life to learn all I can about the Bible, Theology, History, Philosophy, and life in general. And that’s what still keeps me going over 45 years later. What energizes me is making a difference in someone’s life. It may sound strange, but that’s why I find it fulfilling to be with those who are hurting. Especially at the end of a loved one’s life. Yes, those times can be challenging and hard, but those are the times when I feel like I’m truly making a difference.

Of course, not everyone is called to be a pastor. We need all kinds of people doing all kinds of things for the world to work. But I think we all want to make a difference. One problem with trying to make a difference, however, is that when we put ourselves out there to help others, we’re putting ourselves in a position to wind up getting hurt. We’re opening ourselves to criticism, some of which may not be so fair or kind or respectful. Those who have been in a position where you’ve put yourself out there to help other people know what I’m talking about. Any time we try to make a difference in the lives of people around us, we’re at risk of our motives or our actions (or both!) being misinterpreted or perhaps even misrepresented. The bottom line is that whenever we try to make a contribution to others, we are likely going to have to endure some kind of unfair or hurtful treatment.

I think this aspect of our lives relates to our scripture lesson from Hebrews for today. It talks about how Jesus made a difference for all of us by what he did. In giving his life for us on the cross, he shows us who God is: the one who’s willing to take all the suffering of the world into himself. More than that, what Jesus did shows us what God is doing in the world: God is in the process of restoring everyone and everything. By dying on the cross, Jesus was fulfilling God’s desire for the whole human family to be restored to him. And in so doing, our lesson says that he has become the source of “eternal salvation” for all who turn to him in “trusting-obedience” (Heb 5:8-9 MSG). All that sounds good to us. But the lesson also says something that may sound strange to our ears. It says, “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered” (Heb 5:8, NLT) That sounds more than strange. It’s shocking: why would Jesus need to “learn obedience”? Wasn’t his whole life, in fact his whole existence, one of obedience to God? So why did he have to “learn obedience”?

I think the answer has to do with what happened when the Son of God became a human being. It’s not like he was inherently willful and disobedient and had to be taught by the consequences of his actions how to obey God. The very act of becoming a human being was an expression of his obedience to God. But I think what Jesus learned was a first-hand experience of what it means to live as a fully human person.[2] And part of what that means is that anyone who wants to make a difference in the lives of others is probably going to suffer criticism, or undergo attack, or perhaps even in his case give up his life. There have been many who sought to make a difference in this world who have given up their lives because of it. In his obedience to God, Jesus had to learn what human suffering is like. And the ultimate expression of his trust in God as well as his obedience to God was to give his life for us all on the cross.

While it’s not necessary to restrict what our Scripture lesson says about Jesus to this one event, it’s natural to think of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. I find it wonderfully reassuring that, when faced with one of the cruelest methods of executing a person ever devised, Jesus asked God to deliver him from it! It’s hard to imagine Jesus being truly human and not facing the cross with feelings of anguish and praying “with loud cries and tears” (Heb. 5:7). And yet, the end result of his prayer struggle in that garden was that he decided to go through all of it in order to fulfill God’s desire to make a real difference in all of our lives.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the lessons for us to take away here is that the process of God becoming flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is not just about showing us who God is, it’s also about showing us that God is working to restore us all. Throughout the ages many have wondered why God went to all that trouble. Why not just “say the word” and make everything right again? I think one answer to that question is that the only way to truly make a difference in human life is to take the risk of getting involved that person’s life. The only way to truly help anyone is to enter fully into their experience and pour into it the love that can change them. That’s what Jesus was doing on the cross. As one of our confessions of faith puts it, he went into the abyss of human suffering in order to redeem all of us who have been trapped there.[3] There’s no depth of suffering in human experience that Jesus did not reach. And the profound love he poured out for us all at the cross changes everything! By entering fully into our experience, Jesus truly made the difference for us all.

I think it’s part of our identity as human beings that we all want to make a difference. But making a difference will very likely cost us something, just as it cost Jesus. When we doubt whether Jesus makes a difference in our lives, I think we should remember the friends and loved ones who have made such a difference in our lives. While we may not be able to relate to Jesus as directly as we can to them, we can remember what he went through, and that he did it precisely to make a difference for us. It’s a bit like the way the friends and loved ones we’ve lost still make a difference in our lives today. And when we doubt whether we’re making a difference in anyone’s life, we should also remember the friends and loved ones we’ve lost and how much we miss them. No less than they did when they were with us, we all make a difference in the lives of others just by being who we are.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.2:158: “the New Testament has treated the vere homo [truly human] so seriously that it has portrayed the obedience of Jesus throughout as a genuine struggle to obey, as a seeking and finding.”

[3] The Study Catechism, 1998, q. 45.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

High and Humble

Isaiah 57:15, Hebrew 4:12-16[1]

I’ve told you recently about some of my favorite Bible verses. Another one is Isaiah 57:15: “Our holy God lives forever in the highest heavens, and this is what he says: Though I live high above in the holy place, I am here to help those who are humble and depend only on me” (Isa 57:15, CEV). I love the way that verse combines two important aspects of who God is: God is both far beyond our ability to comprehend, and also as close to us as the very air we’re breathing right this minute. I like this verse because I’m not so sure we do a very good job holding those two essential concepts together. We’re comfortable with a God who “lives away up there,” but I’m not so sure we’re comfortable with a God who “walks beside me day by day.” At least I would suggest the way we live our lives indicates we’re happy to keep God at arm’s length, or perhaps more!

Think about it: we want a God who’s bigger than our problems. And we want a God who’s bigger than our problems to help when we ask. But we really prefer to live our own lives, thank you very much, when it comes to all the other aspects of life we think we can “handle.” I’m not sure we really want a God who gets involved with every aspect of our lives. If he does, it means we have to surrender every aspect of our lives to God. As much as we may say we want to do that, I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us prefer to stay in control. For some of us, I would say we might prefer that God would simply mind his own business and stay out of ours!

But that’s not the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God who brought the children of Isael out of slavery in Egypt and then again brought them home from exile in Babylon. It’s not the God who came to live among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and who fed the hungry, embraced the outcasts, and got down and played with little children. Yes, God is the one who “lives forever in the highest heavens.” Yes, God is the one whose love for us and whose work on our behalf is infinitely beyond anything we can even dare to imagine (Eph 3:20). That also means that God is the one who is living and working in all our lives all the time. We may not even be able to dare to imagine what God is doing in and through us right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Bible insists God is indeed working in us, giving us “the desire and the power to do what pleases him” (Phil 2:13, NLT).[2]

That brings us to our Scripture lesson from Hebrews for today. We see a reflection of this belief that God is always at work in our lives in the statement that “the word of God is alive and powerful.” We may not always be aware of God’s living and powerful work in our lives because we’ve come up with so many ways to pay attention to anything but that. Again, I would say part of the reason why we prefer to distract ourselves from what God is be doing in our lives is because we’re really not all that comfortable having God that closely involved in our lives. If God’s word truly “exposes our innermost thoughts and desires” as our lesson says, we may want God to keep his distance. We may prefer a God who “lives away up there” because we really don’t want to get that close to the God who is more powerful than we can imagine and who works in our lives to accomplish his will, not ours!

But our scripture reading from Hebrews emphasizes that God’s powerful work in and through us right here and right now is not something we should fear. And that’s another lesson we learn from Jesus. Just as we believe that Jesus came in person to show us what God is truly like, so also we can trust in the image of God that Jesus shows us. Last week we saw that image reflected by playing with children. This week our lesson from Hebrews reminds us that, because he was willing to become like us and suffer for us, Jesus shows us the depth of God’s compassion and mercy. As our lesson puts it, Jesus “understands our weaknesses” because he “faced all of the same temptations as we do” (Heb 4:15, NLT).

While that statement is truly comforting, it’s also one that can be confusing. We have a hard time understanding how God can be both bigger than we can imagine and also intimately involved in every aspect of our lives. Our Scripture lesson today holds those two seemingly irreconcilable affirmations together by referring to God in terms of approaching “the throne of grace.” On the one hand, clearly God is depicted as one who exercises authority and power from a “throne.” The Bible consistently portrays God as the one who reigns over the entire created order. Not just what we can see, but all the galaxies that exist throughout the universe. God is the one who reigns over all the nations, and over each of our lives. God sits on a “throne” with authority and power.

And yet on the other hand, the Scripture lesson speaks of God’s throne as a “throne of grace.” The Bible reveals to us a God who empathizes with our struggles and sympathizes with our plight, a God who shares our pain and our suffering. The image of God revealed by Jesus Christ, the crucified savior, is one of compassion, and mercy. One aspect of our understanding that God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is that his experience of our full humanity reveals to us that God really and truly understands what we’re going through. It’s easy to think that God is so far “up there” that he really can’t identify with or understand what we have to go through in this life. But the lesson reminds us that Jesus “faced all of the same temptations as we do.” That means God cares deeply about us and empathizes with us so that God is intimately involved in every facet of our lives. For this reason, our Scripture lesson today invites us to turn in our time of need to the “throne of grace,” confident that when we do so we will find compassion and mercy.

That brings me back to the verse from Isaiah 57:15. In the version we heard earlier, the translation implies the fact that God is both exalted and compassionate are in tension with one another: “Though I live high above in the holy place, I am here to help those who are humble and depend only on me” (Isa 57:15, CEV). But I find it interesting that in the New Living Translation, those two aspects of God’s character aren’t in tension at all: “The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: ‘I live in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the humble and revive the courage of those with repentant heart’” (Isa 57:15, NLT). The “high and holy place” where God lives is precisely with “those whose spirits are contrite and humble,” precisely with us. God’s exalted power is displayed precisely in his willingness to humble himself in order to get involved in our lives, in every aspect of our lives.[3] And, of course, the ultimate purpose of God’s willingness to get involved in our lives to that extent is to transform us into the joyful and free people he created us to be, so that we might share his love with others and finally enjoy that love in his presence forever.

[2] Cf. Philippians 2:12-13 in The Message: “Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.”

[3] Cf. William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, 19: “God’s power is the power of love. … in freely loving, God is most of all who God is, most exemplifying the kind of power God has.” Cf. similarly Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:159: “In His high majesty He is humble. It is in this high humility that He speaks and acts as the God who reconciles the world to himself.

Tuesday, October 08, 2024

Stamped

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-10; Mark 10:13-16[1]

When it comes to parenting, the debate about nature versus nurture is an old one. The question is whether children are “stamped” with their personality from birth or whether their personality is shaped by the nurture they receive from their families. I think it’s always been a combination, myself. I think children have their own identities from the start, and that parents can either enhance or short-circuit that identity. Of course, at the end of the day, everyone makes their own choices, including our children, and those choices also have a way of defining our life path as well as who we are and who our family is.

One of the aspects of “nature” in this discussion has to be family resemblances. It’s not hard to see the likeness between my oldest son Derek and me. My daughter Carolyn likes to say that he’s a “clone” of me. I like to say, not that he’s a “mini-me,” but rather he’s a bigger and better “me.” He is 6’2”! You can see that family resemblance, not just is appearance, but also in mannerisms, in my son, myself, my father, my grandfather, even going back to my great-great-grandfather! About 15 years ago I stumbled upon a genealogy site run by a guy in Omaha who had some ties to the Brehm family. He had a picture of my great-great grandparents that I’d never seen. But when I took a good look at my great-great grandfather’s eyes, I saw my own, and my son’s as well.

We also take on the image of those who are influential in our lives. Those who are our mentors, whether family or teachers or supervisors, tend to influence how conduct ourselves. Sometimes those mentors can be more influential than our families. One of my professors in Seminary asked me to work with him as a graduate assistant, and I did that for three years. I graded his papers, and I taught his classes when he was away. It should come as no surprise to you that the way I taught my classes as a professor looked a lot like the way he taught his classes.

Our Scripture reading from Hebrews for today talks about a “resemblance” that’s even stronger than that. It talks about the way in which Jesus shows us what God is like. The Scripture describes Jesus as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3, NLT). The language used in the Greek text calls to mind the idea that Jesus is a ray of light from the very being of God. He’s the “radiance of the glory of God.” It also suggests that, like a coin is stamped in the image of the one who issues it, Jesus is “stamped” in the image of God. He’s the “exact imprint of God’s nature.”

What the author of the letter to the Hebrews is talking about is Jesus’ nature as the “Son” of God. And we cannot help but think about the notion of the “incarnation” of Jesus when we hear this language. In these days there are some who think themselves too sophisticated to buy into antiquated concepts like God being incarnate in a human being. But the doctrine of incarnation is not about the biology of where children come from. It’s an affirmation that Jesus really and truly does show us what God is like.[2] We can look at Jesus, his life, his teaching, his mercy, his justice, and we can be confident that we’re seeing a true likeness of God. Or as the author of the letter to the Hebrews puts it, Jesus is “the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

What kind of “image” of God do we see in Jesus? In the Gospels we see him embracing the ones nobody else would embrace. We see him confronting the religious people with the falseness of their self-righteousness. We see him forgiving sinners and restoring people to themselves and to their communities. We see him teaching people to follow the commandments by loving God whole-heartedly and loving others sincerely. And in today’s Gospel lesson we see Jesus welcoming little children.

Most of us are familiar with this story. We cherish it, but I think we also sterilize it a bit. Think about the children in your lives. They are energy personified. They have the capacity to laugh, cry, dance, and shout—all without any inhibitions whatsoever! As much as we love our children, however, we may have trouble fully seeing them as human beings. After all, what do children do? When they’re not sleeping or eating, they play. Many adults think that they’re too busy to waste precious time playing with children.

That’s why I think we sterilize this story. The typical “Sunday School” image is of calm, smiling, obedient children gathered around Jesus, admiring his presence, listening attentively and soaking in all that he has to say. But we know that most children aren’t like that. At least my grandchildren certainly aren’t! They’re fidgety, they’re impulsive; they can actually speak out of turn and interrupt what’s going on! I think if we’re going to do justice to this Gospel lesson, we should imagine Jesus interacting with real group of children—active, exuberant, noisy! What do you do with a group of children like that? You don’t try to make them “be still” so you can teach them a lesson. You jump right into the middle of the fray and play with them!

Does Jesus really show us what God is like by playing with children? Is something so seemingly mundane really an aspect of what it means that Jesus is “the exact imprint of God’s very being”? Surely it must be incidental, simply a part of the narrative “coloring” that keeps us interested in the really “important” stuff. But in our lesson for today Jesus says that children define the character of what it means to be a part of God’s kingdom, God’s saving reign, God’s new creation. I think he most definitely showed us who God is when he played with those children!

The author of the letter to the Hebrews insists over and over that Jesus shows us what God is like. He’s like a ray of light from God’s very being. He’s “stamped” with God’s image like a coin is stamped with the image of the one who made it. But because we’re also made in the image of God, as our lesson from the Psalms for today reminds us, then there’s a sense in which Jesus also shows us what we’re created to be. We’re not only “stamped” with certain character traits, habits, and quirks that we inherited from our families or learned from our mentors. We’re also “stamped” with the image of God. And as we follow Jesus more and more faithfully, we are more and more transformed into his image (2 Cor 3:18). As we learn to practice the ways of God’s kingdom, the ways of faith, hope, and love, the ways of peace, justice, and freedom, we become “stamped” with Jesus’ image ourselves. And the more we become like him, the more we reflect the image of our loving God to those around us.

[2] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 114-118, says that the incarnation is part of the “eternally self-communicating love of God” that constitutes the “foundation of the new creation,” or the “perfecting of creation.”

Tuesday, October 09, 2018

Pioneer of Salvation

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12[1]

When you think about what the original pioneers who settled this land went through, it is amazing what they accomplished. I’ve made several cross-country moves in my life. That kind of move is challenging for most of us to consider. But we have the benefit of knowing that we can make the trip in the relative comfort and safety of a car, never too far from fuel and food and a motel to spend the night. The original pioneers had none of that. Those who first blazed the trail westward didn’t even know if they were on the right track. Those who followed the trails after they were reasonably well marked were risking everything when they took the journey. It is truly amazing to think about what they accomplished.

When you consider what motivated the pioneers to make such a journey, I’m sure you would find a variety of answers. Some were looking for the promise of prosperity. Others were just looking for a place to settle and raise a family. Whatever motivated them, I have to wonder whether they knew what they were in for. The stories of the pioneers make it clear that some did not. They were not prepared for the hardships and sacrifices required to carve a livelihood out of the wilderness. It’s hard to imagine that any of them were fully prepared for what lay ahead. But some of them persevered, and they made it possible for others to follow, and to settle this land.

Our scripture lesson from Hebrews for today speaks of Jesus as the “pioneer of our salvation.” It’s a unique way of understanding Jesus. In fact, this theme is only found in the Letter to the Hebrews. I think it likely that has something to do with the context in which the letter was written. Christians faced increasing opposition to their faith. Many were becoming discouraged and losing heart due to the hardships they faced on a constant basis. The Letter to the Hebrews was written to encourage them to persevere in their faith despite the obstacles they lived with.

In that setting, the Scripture speaks of Jesus as the “pioneer of our salvation” (Heb. 2:10). The idea is that Jesus has “blazed the trail” for us to experience salvation. He has opened the way for us to know God in a life-changing way. But Hebrews not only calls Jesus the “pioneer of our salvation.” The Scripture also speaks of him as “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). The idea is that he not only blazed the trail for us, but he has also completed the journey, and stands as a living example of how we can complete our journey—by following him in single-minded devotion to God’s will and ways.

I find it remarkable that in both settings where the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of Jesus as the pioneer of our faith, suffering plays a significant role. In our lesson for today, the Scripture speaks of Jesus being “perfected” for that task through what he suffered. Specifically, he tasted death for us all in order to open the way for us to God. Again, in the other setting where this theme occurs, those to whom the letter was addressed were encouraged to look to Jesus and what he endured on the cross as encouragement to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1). And so, as the pioneer of our salvation, Jesus continues to encourage us to finish our pilgrimage of faith—a journey that will last our whole lives.

I’m not sure we realize it, but I would say that we all are like the pioneers in some ways. We, too, are “on the way,” taking the journey of faith. And while we have many examples to follow, each of us has a unique path to take. For most of us, we really have no idea where that path is going to lead us. And none of us can know what hardships or sacrifices we will encounter on the way. I think it’s safe to say, however, that all of us will come to a time in our journey of faith where what we have to endure on the way will leave us discouraged. It’s common to find ourselves, after having worked so hard for so long, to simply grow weary of the journey.

In a very real sense, this not only applies to us as individuals. It also applies to us as a church family. Like most churches these days, we find ourselves trekking into a wilderness of sorts. The landscape in which the church finds itself situated in this culture is one that has changed dramatically, and those who are open enough to be aware of this change find themselves blazing a trail into the future of what the church will become in this strange new world. At this point, I would say that none of us can say where this journey will lead or what the church will look like as we adapt to a new environment along the way.

It’s not easy to be a pioneer. It takes constant commitment to persevere along a difficult path. It’s easy to get discouraged and lose heart along the way. Fortunately, none of us has to make this pilgrimage of faith on our own. Most of us have the encouragement of friends and family as we face the hardships of the journey. We also have the encouragement of the family of faith to help us along. But perhaps more importantly, we can look to Jesus when we lose heart. As the “pioneer of our salvation,” Jesus has marked out the path. As the “perfecter of our faith” he has shown us how to complete the journey, and he continually encourages us as we seek to finish the path. We are not left to make this journey alone. As the “pioneer of salvation,” Jesus leads us to our final destination.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Full Assurance of Faith

Hebrews 10:14-25[1]

In a recent sermon I quoted one who observed that if we cannot trust that Jesus is presently working on our behalf, the church is left with a faith that “consists of believing in an extraordinary past and an extraordinary future.”[2] In fact, that has been one of the main criticisms of the Christian faith: that we’re either stuck in a fabled past or we’re dreaming of an incredible future. It’s not too hard to look around and find various religious groups who look like they are still living in some past era. Their clothing, their culture, even their hairstyles look out of place. And on the other hand, Karl Marx was famous for saying that the Christian faith only encourages people to avoid the harsh realities of life by promising them pie in the sky by and by.[3] Either way, the claim is that Christians avoid real life in the here and the now with all its struggles and injustices and pain.

While there are some Christian teachers and preachers who could be guilty of sugar-coating our faith, I would insist that the Bible’s message does no such thing. In the first place, we follow a Savior whose life and teachings resulted in his being executed in a most appalling manner.[4] But, more than that, the Apostles and Prophets of Scripture teach us consistently that those who seek to follow God’s ways in this world will suffer for it. The reason for that is the values of “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God” run so directly contrary to the values of our world. And yet, suffering is never God’s last word for us. Ever!

In our lesson from Hebrews for today, I think the Scripture addresses the question of what our faith does for us in the challenges we face in our everyday lives. It assures us that “we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place” because “by his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way.” (Heb. 10:19-20, NLT). Therefore we can go “right into the presence of God” (Heb. 10:22, NLT). I think the point is that God has not left us to try to find our way through the maze on our own. We have an open door to God’s grace and mercy and love any time we need it. In fact, whether we realize it or not, that open door has flooded our world and our lives with God’s grace, mercy, and love. There is no challenge we will ever have to face alone. There is no hardship or injustice or pain that we can undergo without the presence of the living God who created all the heavens and the earth right there with us, supporting us every step of the way.[5]

The letter to the Hebrews has already presented the message that Jesus died to break the power of everything that keeps us from the life God intends for us. And the Preacher of Hebrews has reminded us that Jesus became a human being in order to demonstrate that God loves us enough to enter our struggles, and his love is powerful enough to transform them into new life. And we have seen that the point of all that Jesus did is that God is working to make this new life a reality for us all: a life of freedom, peace, and beauty.

I think that’s what our Scripture lesson means when it speaks of a “new and living way” opened to us by Jesus the Christ. It is new in that it is completely different from other ways people have taken to reach God. In this new way, there are no rituals you have to follow in order to enter God’s loving presence.[7] And this way is a “living” one in that it truly leads to a life that is new and different from the same old routine. As our Psalm for today puts it, “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11). That’s the kind of new life we can have in the presence of God—right here and right now.

And the good news is that this way is open for anyone and everyone. There is no gate-keeper who has the authority to keep out those who don’t belong. There is no special password you have to learn. Jesus has already opened the way so that anyone and everyone can have the kind of relationship God has always intended for us to have—a life of lasting peace, and heart-felt joy, and love that sustains us even in our darkest moments.[8]

When we look at the sometimes harsh realities of life, we may wonder what good it does to spend our time coming to church.[9] We may wonder what real benefit there is from holding onto our faith despite the challenges we may face. I think the answer is found in our lesson for today. We have the “full assurance of faith” that God has opened the way for us to experience peace in the midst of turmoil, and joy in the midst of heartbreak, and love in the midst of hardship. We have the “full assurance of faith” that we can come right into God’s presence any time we need to, and when we do we will find God’s welcome embrace and his powerful helping hand.[10] We have the “full assurance of faith” that in everything we encounter in this life—both for better and for worse—we are surrounded and filled and sustained by the real presence of the God who will never fail us or forsake us.

[2] Fred B. Craddock, “The Letter to the Hebrews,” New Interpreters Bible XII:95.

[3] Karl Marx, Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Collected Works, v. 3, accessed at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm . He says it this way, “Religion is the general theory of this world, …. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.”

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 7: “In Christianity the cross is the test of everything which deserves to be called Christian.”

[5] Cf. Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, 104: “The undergirding structure of the Preacher’s Christology is what we have called ‘the parabola of salvation’… . Jesus the Son moves down into human history, experienced testing and suffering of every kind, and then swept back up into the heavenly places. Now the Preacher proclaims that this parabolic arc was not only the pathway that Christ traveled, it is also a pilgrim way of grace that we travel, a highway leading into the very presence of God opened up by the ministry of Jesus the great high priest.”

[6] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1:88-89: in the act of reconciliation, God “has actually taken us, embraced us, as it were surrounded us, seized us from behind and turned us back again to Himself. We are dealing with the fulfillment of the covenant. God has always kept it but man broke it. It is this breach which is healed in the sovereign act of reconciliation. God was not ready to acquiesce to the fact that while He was for us we were against him. That had to be altered, and in Jesus Christ it has in fact been altered once and for all.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 87: “Jesus, as the suffering Son of man, demonstrated the power of God as prevenient love to the powerless and the outcasts.”

[7] Cf. Craddock, “Letter to the Hebrews,” NIB XII: 120: “The high priestly act of Christ's self-giving does not leave us outside, as the ancient worshipers stood anxiously awaiting the exit of the high priest, but removes all obstacles to our own access to God.”

[8] Cf. Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1:14, where he says that the message of “God with us” includes in it a “We with God,” which means that “we ourselves are directly summoned, that we are lifted up, that we are awakened to our own truest being….” Cf. similarly, ibid., 36-38, where Barth speaks of this in that it is a fulfillment of the covenant promise, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” which means that from the start “God willed to be God for [us].”

[9] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 108: “The disincentives to corporate worship are many. It seems somehow purer to worship God all alone on a deserted beach or in the still beauty of the night under a canopy of stars than in the midst of the rag-tag assembly that shows up for church. Also, we just get tired, tired in worship and tired of worship. … the weariness of worship is a deeper fatigue, a jaded sense than nothing of real significance happens here.” He says that the answer the Preacher offers is that “Things are not what they seem. What looks like leisure turns out in the end to be exhausting, and what appears to be the labor of prayer leads to ‘a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.’”

[10] Cf. Craddock, “Letter to the Hebrews,” NIB XII:121, where he says that our confidence, which is a major theme in the letter, “is grounded, finally, not in the strength of our grasp but in the trustworthiness, the faithfulness of the one who keeps promises.”

Monday, November 09, 2015

Better Hope

Hebrews 7:18-28[1]

Throughout the ages, the human family has been aware of a gap between themselves and their “gods.” Almost all religious rituals from the beginning of time involved some kind of sacrifice. The sacrifices had many meanings across the centuries.[2] Sometimes they were meant to appease the anger of the gods. Sometimes they were meant to purify the people, or to otherwise prepare them to meet their gods. But at the heart of the human understanding of the gods was that one could only approach them with the proper sacrifice. To do otherwise would be to court disaster. And so, from the very beginning, religious rites of all kinds reinforced a fearful approach to the divine—we humans who are flawed and weak must continually make an effort to please our gods. The only hope for a life that could be happy and prosperous was to ensure that one offered the right sacrifice at the right time and in the right way.

Into this age-long tradition, the Christian faith introduced a radically different understanding about God. Our relationship with God, and the blessings that come from it, are not dependent on us. Rather, God himself takes the initiative and acts on our behalf through Jesus Christ. And the outcome of this revolutionary understanding of God was that salvation is a gift that we could never earn no matter how hard we tried. Fortunately, we don’t have to. All that goes along with the promise of salvation—peace with God, peace with ourselves, peace with others—is ours not because we’ve obtained it through the right rituals, but rather because God has chosen to give it to us through Jesus Christ.

This is the main point of our lesson from the Letter to the Hebrews for today. The language of the Scripture reading may be confusing to us, because the author uses an analogy for salvation that may not be familiar to us: the sacrificial system of the Hebrew Bible. [3] However, he contrasts the sacrifices of the Jewish system with the sacrifice of Jesus in terms of their effectiveness. He makes two main points: the sacrifices were not permanent, and the priests were just as flawed as anyone else.[4] By contrast, Jesus’ death on the cross is presented as a sacrifice that is both perfect and complete. It is perfect in that it effects permanently what the other sacrifices could not—free and full access to God. And it is complete in that it never needs to be repeated; because he lives forever “he is able, now and always, to save those who come to God through him” (Heb. 7:25, TEV).[5]

This analogy and the finely tuned logic that supports it in the Letter to the Hebrews may not make much sense to us in our day and time. In fact, it is interesting to note that since the beginning of our faith Christian theologians have used a variety of analogies to explain what Jesus’ death on the cross means for us. The “official” view that most people live by today was developed by Anselm in the 11th Century.[6] Anselm used the analogy of the medieval feudal system to explain the meaning of salvation. In this system, common people swore allegiance to a lord in order to have the opportunity to work his land and live under his protection. Anselm said that human sin was like breaking that oath and therefore offending God’s honor, and that the only way for God’s offended honor to be satisfied was for a penalty to be paid. Anselm went on to say that Jesus paid the penalty for us so that we would not have to.

I don’t know about you, but this analogy doesn’t do much for me. Talk about the offended honor of a feudal lord that is satisfied by a penalty being paid may have worked a thousand years ago, but today it carries some implications that don’t fit the Gospel.[7] It suggests an image of God as strict, exacting, and punitive; a God who keeps track of every little mistake we make and refuses to forgive even the slightest failing without extracting a “pound of flesh” from us. For me it doesn’t communicate the meaning of the Gospel any more effectively than the intricacies of the Jewish sacrificial system.

In all fairness to the author of Hebrews, however, there are some interesting clues that there is more to “salvation” than just some kind of heavenly balance sheet. He speaks of true freedom (Heb. 2:15) and lasting rest (Heb. 4:9-10). He says (Heb. 8:8-12) that Jesus brings the better covenant of Jeremiah 31, where the prophet promises that God will change the people’s hearts and forgive their sins. And in our lesson for today, he speaks of the ability to “come near to God” that is granted to us through Jesus’ death on the cross. And so it is that through Jesus we are promised a “better hope” (Heb. 7:19).

Those analogies speak more to me than talk about penalties and punishments. The good news is that God is out to make right all that is wrong with humanity. Whether you call it alienation, fragmentation, or selfishness; violence, greed, or falsehood; there is something about our lives that just doesn’t seem to be right.[8] It keeps us from being our true selves, it keeps us from relating to others in a healthy way, and it keeps us from the life we were intended to live. But the good news is not that we have to somehow find a way to heal ourselves. Rather the good news is that God is working to set us free from all that binds us now. God is working to heal the wounds, to right the wrongs, and to restore the beauty of life.[9] God is working to overcome violence with peace, to end all forms of oppression with true justice, and to expose all the lies with the truth that sets us free. To me, that’s what salvation is about—freedom, peace, beauty, and life. It’s about having a relationship with God because of what God has done, not what we do. It’s about having a better hope through our Savior Jesus Christ.

[2] Cf. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas 1:258-59, where he summarizes the various meanings of sacrifice among the Greeks, the Hebrews, and Christians, as well as in India.

[3] Cf. Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews, 126, where he says that this understanding of Jesus’ death on the cross as the work of a great High Priest who not only effects salvation but also is able to empathize with humanity because he shared their weakness is the unique contribution of Hebrews toward a New Testament understanding of Jesus.

[4] These points are emphasized in earlier in the chapter. Cf. Fred B. Craddock, “The Letter to the Hebrews,” New Interpreters Bible XII:89, where summarizes the argument: “the entire system under which Israel lived would change with the arrival of the ‘different’ priest, the priest after the order of Melchizedek. The inability to perfect the people was the flaw of the entire system and not of the priests themselves. The levitical (Aaronic) priests were called and appointed of God (5:1-4), but they functioned, says the author, in a system that was incomplete, unable to fulfill its adherents.” However, Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, 87, makes an important correction to a common misunderstanding of this argument. He says that when the Preacher says that “the law” “made nothing perfect,” he is “not thinking so much about the law given at Sinai, the Ten Commandments, or the heart of the law, in short, the ‘law’ that Jesus said he came to fulfill (see Matt. 5:17); he is speaking more of the cultic law regarding sacrifices, the law that rests on the Levitical foundation and that ‘the people received … under this priesthood.’”

[5] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 88, “We do not have a priest who gets sick and dies, or who goes on vacation, or falls down on the job, or grows tired of our need, or compromises his office, or takes advantage of us for his own gain; we have a faithful and steadfast great high priest who can be trusted, who ‘always lives to make intercession’ for us (7:25).” Along these lines, see also Craddock, “Letter to the Hebrews,” NIB XII:95: “Without this vital doctrine, the church lives in a barren desert between ‘Christ was here’ and ‘Christ will be here again.’ Meanwhile, back at the church, Christian faith consists of believing in an extraordinary past and an extraordinary future. Christ as intercessor transcends the constraints of time and place and restores ‘today’ to the relationship between God and the believer.”

[6] Cf. Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (Why God [became] Human). On this, see Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics 2:207-214. Anselm was primarily concerned to show that the incarnation was made necessary by human sin. As Weber notes (p. 211), it was Anselm’s contribution to recognize that sin affects our relationship with God.

[7] Cf. Weber, Foundations 2.213-14. He points out that Anselm’s doctrine is based on a theoretical (“a priori”) necessity related to his own theological presuppositions (p. 213): “God must realize ‘satisfaction’ in the Son. Otherwise he must either cease to be God or he must destroy mankind.” Weber also points out (p. 214) that Anselm’s theory make faith a matter of cognitive knowledge and “in the process loses its personal character” (i.e., as a matter of a relationship) because salvation is turned into an “objective” transaction.

[8] See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 47-55, where he speaks of sin as “estrangement” under three headings: estrangement from God, estrangement from self and estrangement from others.

[9] Cf. Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge, 120: “God’s cause will prevail in the world. This is the hope that sustains the message of the God’s kingom.” He defines that kingdom by saying that it will be a kingdom “of absolute righteousness, of unsurpassable freedom, of dauntless love, of universal reconciliation, of everlasting peace.”

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Suffering Savior

Hebrews 5:1-10[1]

When we’re looking for someone to be a leader, I would say that we want that person to have qualities like strength, integrity, and compassion. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if our leaders are good-looking. But primarily, I think, we look for someone we believe has the ability to get the job done. We want leaders who are capable, confident, and courageous. And I think we really like for our leaders to possess strength—or at least to give off the appearance of strength. Of course, there are a lot of things that masquerade as strength these days. Being blunt in one’s speech can be a sign of strength, or it can be an indication that someone is just rude. Proposing bold ideas may be a mark of courage, or it may just mean that someone is a fanatic. It’s always difficult to identify a true leader on the surface of things.

The people of Jesus’ day were looking for a leader who had strength and courage. They expected their chosen one, their Savior, their Messiah, to have the strength and courage to lead them in a battle to defeat the powers of evil in this world and to throw off the yoke of their oppressors.[2] The idea of a Savior who was vulnerable, who was humble, who was gentle, just didn’t make any sense to them. A Savior who couldn’t actually deliver them from their enemies in combat was no Savior at all. A leader who didn’t bring them victories was worse than incompetent. A Messiah who failed to live up to their expectations that he be a powerful and successful warrior was worse than a contradiction in terms. He would be viewed as outright blasphemy.[3]

And yet, the idea of a Savior that lies at the heart of the Christian faith presents us with precisely such a mystery: a Savior who is not a warrior but a servant, a Savior who is not only vulnerable but actually gives up his life for those he came to save! We catch a glimpse of Jesus’ vulnerability in our lesson from the book Hebrews for today: “while Jesus was on earth, he begged God with loud crying and tears to save him” (Heb. 5:7, CEV). It sounds like Jesus’ experience in the garden of Gethsemane. There, the Gospels tell us that Jesus prayed fervently, asking God to take away the suffering he about to face. I would say he knew what lay ahead and was experiencing intense anguish about it!

Our Scripture lesson presents this experience as something that was necessary in order for him to truly become our Savior. It says, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). I don’t know about you, but to me that is astonishing. If Jesus truly was God’s Son, why would he have to “learn obedience.” It’s hard to imagine Jesus ever not being obedient to God. And yet, I think there may be something else behind this, something that the scene of Jesus praying in the garden may point to. I don’t think Jesus’ anguish and death on the cross were some kind of punishment, as if Jesus had been disobedient and had to be corrected. But I think, as a fully human being, he did have to learn by experience just how hard it would be to follow through with his mission of giving up his life for us all. And through the process of feeling that terror and anguish, the Scripture says that he was “perfected” as our Savior (Heb. 5:9).[4] It was necessary for him to experience the ultimate vulnerability and suffering in order to truly become our Savior.[5]

As much as that makes sense, still the question arises as to why Jesus ever had to suffer and die in the first place. If God wanted to save us, couldn’t he just wave his arm and accomplish it? I think part of the answer has to do with whom Jesus came to save. He came to save those who were beyond all hope. He came to save those on whom everyone else had given up. He came to save those who were the least and the lost and the left out. He came to bring freedom to captives, acceptance to outcasts, and to show God’s love to those who were considered “godless.” In other words, Jesus came to save those who are vulnerable in this world. And part of that means giving hope and comfort to those who continue to struggle in this world. I don’t think a “wave of the arm” could ever inspire as much hope and faith as Jesus’ example does for countless people like you and me every day.

Perhaps the other question we should address is why anybody would follow a Savior who was vulnerable enough to be executed.[6] We spend our lives running after things like comfort, stability, happiness, and status. How can a crucified Savior possibly help with that? For my part, I would say that I follow a vulnerable Savior because he reveals to us a vulnerable God.[7] Many of us have learned to fear a God who is so exalted as to be remote, so supreme as to be incapable of personal relationships, so all-powerful as to be untouched by our heartaches and struggles. But in Jesus, the suffering Savior, we see the God loves us enough to enter into our suffering and whose love is powerful enough to transform that suffering into new life.[8]

Talk of a suffering Savior and a vulnerable God seems contrary to what we expect. We expect our Savior to be victorious—maybe not in battle, but victorious nevertheless. And I doubt we’re any more comfortable with the notion of a God who becomes vulnerable enough to love—and to really love someone is to make oneself vulnerable. Despite our challenges, this is the heart of the gospel. Jesus said it himself, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). As a result, he has transformed despair into hope and fear into faith.[9] In order to truly become our Savior, Jesus entered fully and completely into our suffering.

[2] Cf. M. Eugene Boring, Introduction to the New Testament, 113: “in the Targum of Isaiah 53 the servant of God is a powerful figure who makes the enemies of God’s people suffer for their sins against Israel. Rather than interpreting the Messiah as one who suffers for the sins of others, the Targum reads the features of the royal national Messiah into the figure of the servant, so that he becomes a triumphant, conquering figure.”

[3] Cf. F. F. Bruce, Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 70-71.

[4] Cf. Fred B. Craddock, “The Letter to the Hebrews,” New Interpreters Bible XII:63, where he says, “being God’s Son did not exempt Jesus from learning, from obedience, from suffering, so complete was his identification with all who share flesh and blood.” Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.2:158: the New Testament has so strongly emphasized that Jesus was truly human that it “has portrayed the obedience of Jesus throughout as a genuine struggle to obey, as a seeking and finding.”

[5] Cf. Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, 68: “Suffering is not sin, suffering is built into the human condition. Limitation and weakness are not sin; they, too, are part of what it means to be human. Jesus, as a human being, suffered and was limited and was weak, but his pain taught him obedience, not faithless despair (5:8); his frailty deepened his reverence for God rather than stiffening his rebellion (5:7).”

[6] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 65, where he says that this was the “crucial theological and pastoral” problem the “Hebrews” were facing: “They know without a doubt that Jesus was weak—anyone with eyes to see could know that—but is Jesus also genuinely strong enough to help? They are well aware that Jesus was a fellow sufferer—every passerby who looked up at the cross could see that—but the question was whether this weak and suffering Jesus is also truly the divine Son who, in ways that eyes cannot see, stands in graceful glory at the beginning and end of time, and in the middle of time is even now redeeming the creation and bringing the children of God home.”

[7] William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, 18: “God suffers because God is vulnerable, and God is vulnerable because God loves—and it is love, not suffering or even vulnerability, that is finally the point. God can help because God acts out of love, and love risks suffering.” Cf. also Clark Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness, 90: “God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering, sinful world is to suffer. God so suffered for the world that he gave up his only Son to suffer. The one who does not see God’s suffering does not see God’s love. God is suffering love” (quoting Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 90).

[8] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 60: “Creative love is ultimately suffering love because it is only through suffering that it acts creatively and redemptively for the freedom of the beloved.” Cf. also Pinnock, Most Moved Mover, 54, where he says that the Scriptures speak of a Lord who “loves his enemies and takes the form of a servant, allowing himself to be pushed out of the world so that he can redeem it. According to the Gospel, God exercises his power in distinctive ways. It is a power of love, not compulsion, and he triumphs through weakness.”

[9] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 68: because of what Jesus experienced through his suffering, “not only is he compassionate toward those who have lost sight of the truth that they are God's very own children, Jesus can also take them by the hand and lead them home.”

The Waking Dreamer