Better Hope

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.

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[1] © 2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/25/2015 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[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.”

Suffering Savior

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.

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[1] © 2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/18/25 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[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.”

Throne of Grace

Throne of Grace

Hebrews 4:12-16[1]

We listen to a lot of voices these days. In this “information age” of ours, I think we can often feel overwhelmed by the different messages put out there 24/7. It’s hard to know what to listen to and what to believe. I think that all the voices at odds with each other these days makes it hard for us to listen very carefully to any one voice. That includes the voice of God speaking through Scripture. With so many other voices out there demanding our attention, it becomes easy to let the voice of God slip into the background, and eventually to lose any ability to influence our lives. I realize I may be in danger of preaching to the choir here, but please notice that I’m speaking of “us” and not “you.”

I think one reason why the Scriptures are losing their influence on us is because of what we expect to hear when we try to listen for God’s voice speaking to us. I think many of us avoid the Scriptures because we assume that the message we’re going to receive is one of condemnation. It’s as if we think of the voice of God as the voice of a critical parent, always telling us that what we’re doing is not good enough. That is the way the message of the Scriptures has been presented in some circles, and I’m afraid its effect on us is as strong as ever. But I would say that our Scripture lesson from the Letter to the Hebrews for today points us in a different direction.

Make no mistake: our lesson for today presents the voice of God in Scripture as powerful.[2] And that can create a fear of allowing our lives to be exposed to its influence. Not many of us feel comfortable with something that can reveal the face we prefer not to present to the people around us. It can be disturbing to hear that “the word that God speaks … strikes through to the place where soul and spirit meet, … it exposes the very thoughts and motives of a man’s heart” (Heb. 4:12, Phillips). Most of us don’t like feeling so exposed; we’d much rather keep our inner secrets hidden and keep up our appearances than be “laid bare” by the voice of God speaking in Scripture.

But I think part of our problem here is with our image of this God who exposes our hearts and minds and souls with his powerful voice. One who has that much power over us can tend to make us afraid. And, unfortunately I would say that for centuries we have viewed God as someone to stay away from, someone who is dangerous so you don’t want to get too close. We may speak of God as a God of grace and love and compassion, but when it comes right down to it, we’re not sure about a God who seemingly favors some and rejects others.  Or a God who supposedly sends earthquakes and tsunamis and floods and tornadoes to punish people! That’s a God we’d rather avoid!

I think part of our problem is that we have a hard time understanding how God can be both exalted and powerful on the one hand, and on the other hand also be caring and compassionate. We struggle with a God who is both majestic and merciful. I find it interesting that our Scripture lesson deals with this problem by referring to God in terms of approaching “the throne of grace.” There are many ways that the writers of Scripture refer to God indirectly like this, but I find this to be one of the more fascinating examples.

On the one hand, clearly God is depicted as one who exercises authority and power from a “throne.” This points to what we call the sovereignty of God. It is the language of a King who rules, which is language I’m not sure we relate to very well. But the Bible consistently portrays God as the one who reigns over the entire created order, over all the nations, and over our lives. Despite the claims of human leaders, the Bible reminds us that power ultimately resides with God. Even though it may seem that his rule is hidden in the midst of those who wield such obvious influence over our lives, the Bible insists nevertheless that God reigns.[3]

And yet on the other hand, the Scripture lesson speaks of God’s throne as a “throne of grace.” We assume that those who reign over us do so with an iron fist. But the Scriptures tells us about a very different God: a God who empathizes with our struggles and sympathizes with our plight, a God who shares our pain and our suffering.[4] And we see that image of God reflected most clearly in Jesus, who in his capacity as our redeemer “understands our weaknesses” because he “faced all of the same temptations as we do” (Heb 4:15, NLT).[5] The image of God revealed by Jesus Christ, the crucified savior, is one of sympathy, caring, and understanding. It is a God who is intimately involved with us and who cares deeply about us.[6]  And 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 to help us.[7]

This combination of a God of exalted power and a God who knows intimately all of our struggles and cares deeply about every one of us is the view of God that permeates the Scriptures. One of my favorite verses puts it this way: “I live on high, in holiness, and also with the crushed and the lowly, reviving the spirit of the lowly, reviving the heart of those who have been crushed” (Isa. 57:15, CEB).[8] Yes, God is powerful beyond our imagination. But God is also more kind and loving than we can comprehend.[9] And because this is the God who speaks to us in Scripture, he invites us to bring all that we are—our triumphs and our tragedies—to him as we approach the “throne of grace,” confident that when we do, he will welcome us with open arms.

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[1] © 2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/11/2015 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. An audio version of this sermon is available at http://www.hickmanpresbyterian.org/sermons.

[2] Cf. Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, 61: “The word of God takes an ordinary day and makes it ‘today,’ takes an ordinary moment and makes it the time of crisis and decision, takes a routine event and makes it the theater of the glory of God, takes an ordinary life and calls it to holiness. … The living and active word of God refreshes hope and restores confidence. The word of God turns wandering human beings into principal actors in the magnificent story of divine redemption, … .”

[3] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 59 reminds us of the setting of the letter to the Hebrews in connection with this theme: “Even now, as Christians struggle to be faithful in the midst of ambiguity and turmoil, the promise is that all of this counts, that their faithful actions are being gathered into God’s everlasting purposes. In ways that are mysterious and beyond our full knowing, God uses the prayers and deeds of ordinary people of faith to redeem the whole creation.”

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 38: “A God who cannot suffer cannot love either. A God who cannot love is a dead God. … The living God is the loving God. The loving God shows that he is a living God through his suffering.”

[5] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 64, where he says that the Preacher affirms “that Jesus experienced the full ambiguity and uncertainty, the weakness and the vulnerability, the temptations and the sufferings of life without compromising his humanity, ….”

[6] Cf. William C. Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, 14-21, where he points out that the story of Jesus most clearly reveals the true nature of God. He says, (p. 15), “in this story God is most God, for in coming vulnerably into creation God is not giving up the characteristics of divinity but most fully manifesting them.” He continues (p. 16) by suggesting that in the Gospel narratives “we encounter a God defined by perfect love and perfect freedom. Love means a willingness to take risks, to care for the other in a way that causes the other’s fate to affect one’s own, to give to the other at real cost to oneself, to chance rejection.”  He says further (p. 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.” He concludes, “Only a God ‘weak in power but strong in love’ can be strong enough to take on all the world’s pain and die on the cross.” He borrows the phrase “weak in power but strong in love” from Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator, 27. Cf. similarly Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1:159: “God shows himself to be the great and true God in the fact that He can and will let His grace bear this cost, that He is capable and willing and ready for this condescension, this act of extravagance, this far journey. What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this. … the gods are a reflection of human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. 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.”

[7] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 63, where he points out that, in one respect, the “Preacher” of Hebrews is seeking to revitalize the disheartened Christians’ prayer. He says, “The Preacher wants them to move past fearful prayers, tidy prayers, formal and distant prayers toward a way of praying that storms the gates of heaven with honest and heartfelt cries of human need. He does not want them to pray like bureaucrats seeking a permit but like children who cry out in the night with their fears, trusting that they will be heard and comforted.”

[8] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.1:477, where he says that “the lesson of Isaiah 57:15” is that “Ultimately and decisively” God’s presence among his people “is not fearful. On the contrary, it is comforting, because God in His love and for His love’s sake is present to everything and everywhere.”

[9] Long, Hebrews, 64, points out why it is important to try to grasp the biblical view of God: “confident prayer is not merely a matter of technique. Ultimately, bold prayer is an expression of theological trust: the practice of prayer rests on what we believe about God and God’s relationship to us.”

Not Losing Hope

Not Losing Heart

Hebrews 2:1-10, 14-15[1]

We are taught from an early age to finish what we start. Some of us may do better than others, but perseverance is a virtue that is impressed upon us in many ways. We have all kinds of slogans to reinforce it, slogans that may haunt us. But for all that, the fact of the matter is that at some point in life, all of us will feel like giving up. As Ernest Hemingway puts it so pointedly, “the world breaks everyone.”[2] Of course, Hemingway was not known for his optimistic outlook on life, but it would seem that in this he has captured a bit of truth. Our lives unfold in ways we never imagined, and sometimes the circumstances are so burdensome as to break our will to persevere. We all at some time in our lives find ourselves losing heart.

The situation behind our Scripture lesson from Hebrews for today is one that applies very well to this theme. The Letter to the Hebrews was written to encourage a group of Christians to hold onto their faith, and not lose heart.[3] We don’t really know who they were, but we can detect some of what they were facing. First, for those who may have been Jewish, it would seem that they had converted to faith in Jesus the Christ in a time when the leaders of many Jewish communities had decided to shun anyone who took such a step. So they were very likely cut off from their friends and perhaps even their families by their decision to follow Christ. In some cases perhaps they were forced to leave a community of faith that had been the center of their lives.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t all they had to endure. These were Christians who lived in Greek and Roman cities. Again, it was a time when their Greek and Roman neighbors began to shun them and even at times attack them for their faith. Whether they were Jewish or Greek or Roman, they were ridiculed for believing that a man who had been executed as a criminal could possibly be the Savior of the world.[4] They were thrown out of their trade guilds and stripped of their livelihoods because they refused to offer sacrifices to their patron gods. They were seen as the enemies of society and branded atheists because they wouldn’t worship the pagan deities.

Needless to say, their lot in life was not an easy one. And in the midst of that kind of pressure, it is evident from the Letter to the Hebrews that they were losing heart. How could they not have grown weary from the constant barrage of opposition? I’m not sure we would do much better. In fact I might not hold up as well as they did. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine some of the questions that haunted them. Where was God in the midst of their suffering? Had they done the right thing by embracing Jesus Christ as their Savior? If they had, why were they suffering so?[5]

The one who wrote to these struggling people tried to encourage them to hold firmly to their faith and not to lose heart. It was his conviction that their faith could see them through, and that there were some very good reasons not to give up. In our lesson for today, I think the main point is that no matter what their sufferings might be, they had a friend and even a brother in Jesus who would stand beside them no matter what. In the first place, Jesus was not only willing to be “made lower than the angels,” but he also took on “the suffering of death” for them (Heb. 2:9). There was no suffering they could experience that he did not know. And he took on that suffering to show them that he was not ashamed to take his place among them as their brother (Heb. 2:11).[6]

More than that, the lesson says that he not only humbled himself by sharing “flesh and blood.” Rather, he took it on so that he could set them free from what may have been the greatest fear they had—the fear that they would lose their very lives because of their faith in Jesus. And because they faced that fear, Jesus passed through death to the victory of the resurrection in order to show them that he had destroyed the power death held over them.[7] There was no suffering he was not willing to bear as their brother and friend, not even death itself. And so the Scripture says, “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb. 2:18).[8]

I think one of the hardest challenges we face when we’re tempted to lose heart is the feeling that we’re all alone. That’s the sentiment of Hemingway’s outlook on the world. His famous quote continues, “The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places.” And I know that’s true, as many of you do. But that wasn’t all he said. Like many before and after him, his was a view that ultimately life is tragic, senseless, and ruthless. And when you look at some of what happens to people in this world, it can be hard not to lose heart and lose faith and embrace that kind of despair.

But our Scripture for today gives us at least one reason not to lose heart and faith: no matter what this life may throw at us, no matter how much we may be disappointed, no matter how much the world may break us, we have someone who knows what it’s like. We have someone who is always willing to stand by us in our hardships as our friend, and even more, as our brother. Because his is a spiritual friendship and a spiritual presence, it’s not always obvious to us. But the Scriptures reassure us time and time again, that Jesus is here among us, as a community and individually. In your darkest moments, he is only a prayer away. That prayer may not bring much relief at the time. But the promise is clear: when we feel like we are losing heart we have a friend and a brother who is always with us to encourage us and support us and strengthen us.

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[1] ©2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 10/4/2015 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE. An audio version is available at http://hickmanpresbyterian.org/sermons .

[2] Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 267. The full quote is, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” Unfortunately, many who quote the first part of this passage use it as a statement of hope, while Hemingway clearly did not intend it in that way.

[3] Cf. Anchor Bible Dictionary, s. v. “Hebrews, Epistle to the,” by Harold W. Attridge, p. 100. Cf. also Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, 3, where he says that “the threat here is that, worn down and worn out, they will drop their end of the rope and drift away. Tired of walking the walk, many of them are considering taking a walk, leaving the community and falling away from the faith.”

[4] One of the most (in)famous examples is the “Alexamenos Graffito,” an image that depicts a Christian named Alexamenos worshiping a man with the head of a donkey hanging on a cross, with an inscription, “Alexamenos worships his god.” Cf. http://gospelsmuseum.div.ed.ac.uk/exhibits/show/10/the-alexamenos-graffito .

[5] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 28, where he argues that part of their problem is a theological one: “Everyone can see the shame of Jesus’ death; what we cannot see is how Jesus’ death brings life.” He adds (p. 33), “If we do not have a ny coherent conviction about how God is restoring the broken creation and how our prayers and our efforts are incorporated into this divine action, … then we eventually lose heart, lose energy, and lose faith.”

[6] Cf. Barnabas Lindars, Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews, 39–40, where he discusses the author’s emphasis on Jesus’ humanity. He says that one of the reasons for this is to stress Jesus’ solidarity with humanity.

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 182, where he says that the fellowship of Christians is on the way to “the annihilation of death in the new creation of all things. Only then will ‘all tears be wiped away’ and perfect joy unite all created beings with God and with one another.” And yet, at the same time he can also say that we already have a taste of this new creation by virtue of the resurrection of Jesus (ibid., 254): “the day of Christ’s resurrection is the first day of the new creation.” As Long observes wisely (Hebrews, 37), this is the “truth about Jesus that must be heard,” that is, through the gospel, but cannot yet be seen.

[8] Cf. Long, Hebrews, 42: “Jesus is made perfect in that suffering joins him completely and empathetically to the human condition. Through his pain Jesus becomes a ‘brother’ to every other human being, and this is a radical theological point. The Preacher is saying that when the gaze of the eternal Son of God encompasses a criminal on death row, when the glorified Son sees a homeless woman crawling into a cardboard box to keep from freezing in the night, when the Lord of all sees a man robbed of dignity and purpose by schizophrenia, when the divine heir of all things sees a mother weeping over the death of her child or a man battling the last savage assault of cancer or the swollen body of a child slowly starving to death, he does not see a charity case, a pitiful victim, or a hopeless cause. He sees a brother, he sees a sister … .”