October 6, 2024
When we’re younger, other people see it in us—they see our parents in the way we look or the way we act or the things we say. I never paid much attention to this as a kid, or even as a younger adult. But now that I’m on the edge of Medicare, I see it myself. I look in the mirror and I see my grandfather’s neck and my father’s nose—not their neck and nose when they were in their prime, but their neck and nose when they were what I considered to be old men. And I wish I’d paid more attention back when people were comparing me to the younger men they were at the time.
This idea of being the spitting image of one’s father comes up at the very beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews. We actually don’t know who wrote this letter (even though some translations call it Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews). But whoever it was, they start out by saying that in the olden days, God spoke through the prophets. But now, God has spoken more directly—through a Son. And this Son is a perfect reflection of God’s glory, the exact imprint of God’s Being.
In the age this was written in, these words would have communicated a precise idea—one that involved the emperor. Back then, almost nobody had ever seen the emperor. He lived in Rome, and almost never traveled to the provinces. Plus there were no newspapers or TV’s or social media. Most people didn’t even have access to paintings or statues of the emperor. But coins were something that passed through most people’s hands at one point or another. And on those coins would have been an imprint of the emperor’s image. Even though it probably wasn’t all that perfect, it’s the only notion most people had of what the ruler even looked like.
But the Ruler of the universe had shown us a much more exact image—not in a painting or statue or coin, but in the presence of God’s Son. This Son showed us not so much what God looked like, but what God’s Being was like. As our translation puts it, The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God. In Jesus’ words and actions and attitude, we can recognize God.
It was this perfect representation of God, then, who is higher than the angels, and who—because of his station and his faithfulness to who he was—was able to make us holy.
So that’s how the Letter to the Hebrews opens. This introduction is intended to pique the interest of its audience—an audience that, as the name implies consisted of Hebrew believers (or at least Hebrews who were interested in what followers of Jesus believed).
In order for me to grasp what this writer was doing, I need to think about my cats. I order a lot of stuff online, so that, at least once a week most weeks, I get a box or two delivered to my house. It’s usually something pretty mundane—something I’m too lazy to look for at the store, or something I’ve found at a lower price online. But sometimes it’s something exciting, something truly materialistic that I could probably do without.
But no matter what it is, my cats are interested not in the product or contraption I ordered, but in the box it came in. While I am engaging in my new product, my cats are settling in its container. My cats are so excited by the packaging that they ignore what was inside. It’s often the same with little kids on Christmas morning. Their parents spend a fortune on their Christmas presents, but children are often so taken by the beautiful wrapping paper and decorations, that they ignore the presents.
The writer of Hebrews is anxious for his (or her) readers not to make a similar mistake. The covenant that they’re familiar with is meaningful and even beautiful. But it was wrapping for an even more meaningful, more beautiful gift, and that was Jesus—the fulfillment of all the promises they had embraced for thousands of years, the One who would enable them to move on from a significant past into a magnificent future.*
This is actually a pretty good description of what we’re going to find in the chapters ahead. But first, in Hebrews 2, we read about how the Son of God, who was greater than any creature, became like us—a little lower than the angels.
Now Hebrews is jam-packed with quotations from the Old Testament, and here in chapter two, we hear a few verses from “someone somewhere,” as the writer of Hebrews puts it. They’re actually quoting the 8th Psalm, though: What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet. So Jesus has come to our level, to somehow raise us up to God, to somehow make each of us—like Jesus—a child of God.
How Jesus does this is what most of the rest of the book is about. But today, let’s return to an issue I mentioned earlier—the question of packaging. Hebrews invites the people of the old covenant to look within the old stories and promises and find Messiah. And we’re invited to do the same.
There are more than a few Christians who can’t see Jesus for the rules and regulations they think they see in the Old Testament. Unfortunately, in their love of judgment, they seldom see the love of God and the liberation of Exodus that are central to the Hebrew Bible. They may not be Jewish Christians, but they can get more out of Hebrews than just about anybody else.
There are many of us who say we believe in Jesus, but the wrappings of the church or its leadership keep us from seeing who he really is. We may find Jesus in the church, or a pastor might help lead us to Jesus. But this building isn’t our home—God is. And no person in the church can take the place of Christ.vv I think one of our biggest problems these days is that we wrap Jesus up in a flag. We confuse faith and patriotism, and Jesus all too often gets lost in the mix. Politicians can be Christians—and it’s nice when they are—but don’t let your Jesus get wrapped up in politics. He doesn’t belong there and Jesus is the only true source of the Gospel.
Confusing the cross with the flag is a common problem in today’s Christianity. But I think the packaging that distracts us from Jesus more than any other is the idea of accepting Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. This is something many of us are taught from childhood on. But those words are never used in the Bible.
The scriptures tell us to believe in Jesus and to trust in Jesus or put our faith in Jesus. But the Bible doesn’t tell us to accept Jesus as though he’s a wallflower at homecoming waiting us to ask him to dance. Jesus accepts us. It’s not up to us to accept him. The problem with this belief is what happens when we forget about Jesus. Does he go back to waiting for us to accept him, over and over again?
Jesus can’t be Lord if his grace depends on whether or not we “accept” him. So as we gather round the table today, remember that we can receive him in the bread and the wine because he accepted us on the cross. Regardless of what you’ve covered him up with, unwrap the gift and partake of Christ.
—©2024 Sam Greening
*See N.T. Wright, Hebrews: 13 Studies for Individuals and Groups (IVP Connect, 2010)
