The Hook in the Story

Seventeeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22) - October 5, 2003

By The Very Rev. James Hubbard, Dean Interim

- Genesis 2:18-24
- Psalm 8 or 128
- Hebrews 2:1-18
- Mark 10:2-9

(From The Lectionary Page)

The author of the letter to the Hebrews begins by telling a fascinating story and that story has to do with an ancient Jewish tale about the place of angels and God and human creatures. Essentially, he claims that God and God’s son are superior to the angels, but that the Son became temporarily inferior to them in order to identify with the human race. From Psalm 8 where the psalmist was singing the same story, the author of the letter to the Hebrews suggests that God intends that all things should be in subjection to human beings and in order to make that possible he comes. Now the Jews always expected God to come and put all things in subjection under them. That was the divine promise. The prophets had foretold it, the poets had celebrated it and the Jews in exile had longed for it to be so.

This peculiar letter writer begins by making the bold claim that God not only was still intending to do that, but that it had in their lifetime become a reality. And it had become a reality through the man Jesus. For this God had sent this one, who was known as his son, and this Jesus was for a little while made lower than the angels, then through suffering and death reclaimed his position at the right hand of God, having completed God’s work in the world. Jesus had no qualms about being lower than the angels for awhile, because God wished him to sanctify all of his sons and daughters and bring them into the same glory and honor with which he held himself. Jesus identified with these creatures unashamedly because he knew that he shared the same Father with these creatures, these sons and daughters of Abraham.

Now the Jews were a little taken aback by this identification with Jesus and God. They expected God to do all that the letter writer was suggesting. But there was this hook in the story, this matter of Jesus. This suggestion that he had become high priest by what he suffered was not so easy to swallow. Oh, that he was here to fight the devil and even overcome death, many of them found to be part of their story. They knew the stories and legends of the devil, even Lucifer, the angel of light. They knew the power of evil for they had suffered, for generations they had suffered unspeakable atrocities against them as a people. No one who sees evil cannot believe in the devil. Oh, well, in our sophistication we might insist on the impersonal nature of evil; we might balk at seeing evil personified, but few thoughtful people cavil at the notion of evil. We read of it daily in our newspapers, we hear of it over our radios and televisions. We see it on the internet. And the Hebrew people were not strangers to evil, to the threat of death if they did not capitulate, to the threat of slavery, to the threat of economic oppression, to the threat of the press gangs raising conscriptions for the emperor’s legions. The evil they understood. Even the high priest was a peculiarly Jewish bit of the story except that they had specific entrance exams for their high priest beginning with his family history. Its not that they loved the high priest they had, but they had never considered that a commoner, someone from another family could be high priest.

Says the author to the Hebrews, “it was fitting that God for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory….” Oh, how their hearts beat fast as they recognized the familiar promise of God’s vindication. God would come and deliver them. Their hope was not in vain. “Glory” was to be at the top of the heap. “Glory” was to know complete victory. “Glory” was to see God. They could recall the words of Psalm 8.

You have made him but little lower than the angels;
You adorn him with glory and honor;
You give him mastery over the works of your hands;
You put all things under his feet:

“It was fitting that God… should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Well, perhaps, Isaiah had spoken of the suffering servant, but they thought of the nation of Israel as the sufferer. Surely Israel had suffered. How was it that this Jesus was a pioneer? Why weren’t their national sufferings sufficient? But author goes on, “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” But how do suffering and glory mix? For them to receive glory was to leave suffering behind.

Here’s the crux of it. This man Jesus, somehow uniquely related to God, showed the way. The way required his life. His identity was so wrapped up in God that he did not have a life of his own apart from God. But he was human and he, says this author, was here to show other human beings the way to God. Oh the way would also involve suffering, but the suffering itself would be redeemed in that same identification with God.

I am reminded of Francis of Assisi. Yesterday was his feast day and we celebrated with the blessing of animals. Francis had a call from God to rebuild his church and he took it literally. So he sold a bale of silk from his father’s warehouse to buy the materials to rebuild St. Damian’s Church. You know the story. His father was not pleased. You don’t become a wealthy merchant by giving your resources away. He publicly forbade Francis access to his money and disinherited him in the row that followed. In a moment Francis learned poverty. Reputedly, he gave his father his wallet and took off even his clothes, which had been purchased with his fathers money, and left the house stark naked to go work on the church. He begged to live to build. He begged to buy stones which were worth nothing in farmers fields. He kept at it until the church was rebuilt and in the process he found such peace, such joy that others began to follow him. From playboy to religious leader through poverty. The upshot of his experience was that he rebuilt the church one soul at a time. He was the Mother Teresa of his day. More to the point, he was Jesus in the 12th century.

By following Jesus, the Jews, and anybody else willing to completely identify with God, could move into the presence of God. Human beings could become part of those under whose feet all else was subject. These sons and daughters of the Father would become greater than the angels, not in some future time, but in the present. It was a kind of Sabbath, a place of rest and fulfillment.

In our own day we have done what people in every time and place do, we have placed the Christian faith in a kind of box. I might characterize it as a Sunday box. Oh, we know that we cannot have everything God might have for us and live it out only on Sunday, but somehow we have come to the erroneous conclusion that we can have everything at the same time. We have been seduced into believing that we can have the good life, identities as brokers of power, or political prowess, or careerists or social fixers or priests….without recognizing that there is in God’s economy only one identity worth holding on to and that is submission to God in every facet of our lives. Popular? No. Sexy? No. Lucrative? No. Happy? Not necessarily. But legend has it that there is in this submission a joy and fulfillment that is simply unavailable in any other way. There is only one identity worth giving our life to have. And that is the hook, we must give our lives to follow Jesus.

“Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it…” [Hebrews 2:1]