The Messiah and His Brothers and Sisters

The Messiah and His Brothers and Sisters
Hebrews 2:10-18

Lord God, take my words and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you, you who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A River Runs Through It
Back in 1992, a film was released called, “A River Runs Through It”, directed by Robert Redford. It’s a true story, based on the book by Norman MacLean. The book and film tell the story of two brothers growing up in the beautiful Montana countryside of the 1920′s.

Norman, the older brother was quiet, studious, and hard-working. He got a good job, and became a respected member of the community. His tearaway younger brother, Paul, was great fun, but always getting into scrapes of one sort or another. He lived life to the full, and liked to push the boundaries of what was acceptable.

Paul ended up running with a bad crowd; and Norman had to bail him out of jail many times because of fights in bars. Until, finally, Paul was killed in a drunken brawl. At the end, Norman was no longer able to help his brother; they’d grown too far apart.

It was a moving and tragic story. But perhaps the most tragic thing was that Norman could see what was happening to Paul, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t reach him. He couldn’t come to where Paul was and rescue him.

Jesus as our older brother
In the second half of the reading we’ve just heard from The Letter to the Hebrews, the writer makes the point that Jesus is the brother of a much larger family. And he, unlike Norman in The River Runs Through It, could and did come to where his siblings were, wallowing in the land of sin and death. Jesus identified with his brothers and sisters; he shared their fate, and was therefore able to rescue them.

This passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, more than any other passage in early Christian writings, speaks most fully about Jesus as the oldest brother, the firstborn, of a large family.

We’re not to see Jesus as the kind of older brother who we resent because he’s always getting things right and being successful, while we’re always getting things wrong and failing. But we’re encouraged to see him as the kind of older brother who, without a trace of patronizing or looking down his nose at us, comes to find us where we are, out of sheer love and goodness of heart, and to help us out of the mess.

Three further elements
There are three further elements the writer adds to this passage in the Letter to the Hebrews, which give it its special colour.

Jesus as the pioneer
First, he sees Jesus as the pioneer: he’s ‘the one who leads the way’. Imagine an explorer cutting his way deep into unexplored jungle. He’s the first human to go this way, and to make way he has to continually swing his machete to cut through the thick foliage. There are no paths, no trails, and no signs that it’s even possible to go this way. Yet on he goes, swinging his machete and forging his way through impossible terrain, until he reaches the goal. Once he has opened the way, others can follow in his wake.

There are various reasons why explorers do that sort of thing: fame, fortune, sheer curiosity. Jesus did it out of love. The jungle was the whole world of suffering, pain, sin and death. Nobody had ever gone through there before and come out the other side.

When Jesus did it, he opened the way into God’s new world; like our explorer coming through the jungle and out into the sunlit uplands of the country beyond. And in leaving the jungle behind, and doing so on behalf of all those who will follow him, Jesus gets rid of the world of sin and pollution that otherwise clings to the fallen human race.

Jesus makes his people holy, ‘sanctifies’ them, that is, separated from sin and pollution, ready to enter the presence of the holy God.

Jesus has done this through his death
The second element is that Jesus has done all this specifically through his death. The writer to the Hebrews quotes from Psalm 22 verse 22: “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters”.

You might think that was simply a quotation to back up the point about Jesus bringing his siblings to a knowledge of God. But if you re-read the first 21 verses of Psalm 22, you’ll find that they describe, in horrendous detail, the suffering and death of the one who truly trusts in God and yet finds that he himself seems to be God-forsaken.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” asks the Psalmist. On he goes describing his torments and tortures. Finally, with our verse quoted, the Psalm turns the corner. As a result of this suffering, salvation is accomplished, God’s kingdom is coming, and a great multitude will give praise to God.

Jesus’s own vocation was made up, in part, of his deep understanding, and application to himself, of various Old Testament passages. The writer to the Hebrews goes to those same passages to explain the meaning of his death. And in doing so, picks up on the theme of the Exodus from Egypt.

Israel had been enslaved to Pharaoh, and God went and rescued them. Now, declares this Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus has set the slaves free — those who were enslaved under the fear of death.

Even with all our modern thinking, technology and civilisation, we’re still no nearer to getting rid of this fear than our ancestors were. The greatest philosophers of the last few hundred years have turned the question this way and that, but death remains the great mystery, the dark denial of the goodness and beauty that we know in our lives and in the world. And for many people, this fact enslaves them in fear.

But God promised Abraham that he would have a great and worldwide family. And it’s this family that Jesus is concerned with, rescuing them from their slavery and pioneering the way to God’s future world.

Jesus as high priest
This leads to the third element in our passage, which introduces a major theme in the letter to the Hebrews. In suffering and dying on behalf of his people, Jesus has become the true high priest who makes atonement for their sins.

You may hear more about this over the coming weeks as we have more readings from this letter on Sunday evenings. But, note for the moment the assumption that the writer to the Hebrews makes: that a true high priest, as set out in the Old Testament, should be, on the one hand someone who is able to act as God’s representative to his people, embodying God’s mercy and reliability, and on the other hand one who can fully sympathize with those to whom he ministers.

A true high priest is no distant older brother, who is unable to cross the gulf to rescue his siblings — as Norman was unable to cross the gulf that had grown between him and Paul, to rescue him.

A true high priest, the true high priest, Jesus, shared in flesh and blood, and even death itself. And because of Jesus’s death on the cross, the death he willingly died for each and every one of us, there is nothing we face — today, or tomorrow, or the next day — in which he can’t sympathize, help and rescue us.

There is nothing we face — today, or tomorrow, or the next day — through which Jesus, the pioneer, can’t forge a way to God’s new world.

There is no gulf so wide that Jesus, our older brother, is unable, or unwilling, to cross, to rescue us. There is no gulf so wide that Jesus, our brother, is unable, or unwilling, to cross, to love us.

Amen.