We have been going through the book of Hebrews for the past few weeks and will continue to do so till the start of Advent. The book of Hebrews was a controversial book and found acceptance into the New Testament canon quite late compared to the others. One reason is that it is anonymous. Another reason is that it focuses heavily on the ritual of the Old Testament. This second reason is why many scholars think the book was written to a predominantly Jewish audience. Hence, the name of the book.
But humans are quite adept at learning new languages and immersing themselves in new cultures. We ourselves have a bible that was written to ancient Hebrews and residents of the Roman Empire. But we would be wrong to think the bible is written to us. It is my view that Hebrews was written to a mixed audience and that the author expected his audience to be extremely knowledgeable about the Old Testament including the various ritual practices of the Israelites and the covenants God made with them.
Our passage for today is a continuation from the passage dealt with last week. Chapter 4 concluded with the words, “Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help.” And chapter 5 begins with the words, “For every high priest is taken from among the people and appointed to represent them before God, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” The reason we can approach the throne of grace is linked to the fact that the high priest is taken from among the people.
The key idea here is that of humility. The high priest, even though given such a high position, was one of the people. Hebrews goes to great length to insist that the high priest was exactly like the other people, subject to the same weaknesses. But precisely because he was subject to the same weaknesses, his offerings were inevitably also made for himself and not only for the people. Because of this the role of high priest was a calling from God rather than a dream job that anyone aspired to.
Hebrews wants the listener to view Jesus as a high priest who is superior to the high priests from Aaron’s line. However, the author of Hebrews recognizes that there is a problem. According to the Old Testament the priesthood of the covenant was received only by Aaron’s descendants. Jesus, however, is from the tribe of Judah and, therefore, could not be a priest in the line of Aaron. What kind of priest could he be? In answering this question we see the great insight that the author of Hebrews was inspired to receive.
It is true that Jesus is not a descendant of Aaron. But the Aaronic priesthood was not the only kind of priesthood in the Old Testament. There is another – the one represented in and through the enigmatic character Melchizedek. Melchizedek is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament, once in Genesis 14 when Abraham met him and once in Psalm 110 where his priesthood is referred to as something that is ascribed to David’s lord. And the author of Hebrews concludes that Jesus must belong to the same priesthood as Melchizedek.
The author of Hebrews expects the listeners to gain comfort from this claim that Jesus’ priesthood is the same as that of Melchizedek. But it is not the kind of comfort we might expect. He says, “During his earthly life Christ offered both requests and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his devotion.” This would make the listener think, “God will hear the tear-filled cries of those who are devoted to him.” And the author of Hebrews would concur.
But the author of Hebrews would also want to correct any erroneous ideas we may have of being heard by God. Think about it. When was it that Jesus most clearly cried out loud and with tears? We could think of Gethsemane, where the Gospels tell us that Jesus cried out to the Father to save him, if possible, from the ordeal that he was going to face. Or we could think of his cry of dereliction, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” Both of these are the classic instances where Jesus cried out loud to the Father.
At Gethsemane, God chose to tell him that his request had been denied and that he had to go to the cross. At the cross he received no response to his heart wrenching question. Yet, the author of Hebrews would have us view both these episodes as occasions when Jesus was heard. This is important. What Hebrews wants us to realize is that being heard by God does not mean that God will grant our request. Being heard does not imply a concurrence of God’s will and ours. And conversely, not being granted our petitions does not mean they fell on deaf ears.
Jesus was heard when he asked God to spare him from the cross. Jesus was heard when he declared his forsakenness. But in the first case, his request was rejected while in the second he received no response. The result is that Jesus went to the cross and died there while straining against the nails and ropes that cruelly pinned and bound him to the tree. We know that he was denied at Gethsemane and that he died at Calvary. How then could these two events from Jesus’ life, so close to each other and with such grave consequences, ever comfort the listener?
If we are thinking in this way, the author of Hebrews tells us, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered. And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” It is easy for us to just refer to the resurrection and say, along with the song, “Because he lives I can face tomorrow.” This is a common approach within Christian circles. We think of the resurrection as the occasion when we achieve the victory over death. But that is not how Hebrews presents the matter.
According to Hebrews, we are not victorious in our resurrection. Let me repeat that. We are not victorious in our resurrection. Note what Hebrews says. There is no mention of the resurrection. We read about Jesus crying out loud. Then we read that he was heard. And then we are told that he learned obedience through his sufferings. Next, we are told that this is how he was perfected – in and through his sufferings. And it is in and through his sufferings that he became a source of eternal salvation.
I have said this many times before. And it bears saying again. Jesus’ victory was not achieved on Easter but on Good Friday. It is his death that is the victory over sin, Satan, and death. Hebrews wants us to be very clear about what lies in store for those who are faithful. God is not going to spare his people from suffering. Rather, if Jesus’ case is instructive, it is precisely through suffering that this God brings his people to a victorious life. This is a counterintuitive message and one that has been rejected by the Church quite often.
The idea that God is perfecting his people through their sufferings and is granting them a victorious life in their sufferings is something that, even after twenty centuries, the Church has not accepted. When we face difficult times and go through periods of suffering and distress we begin to think that God has deserted us or that God is not in control or that we have done something sinful. We think of what is happening to us as evil. Rarely, if ever, do we ever go down the path of saying that this suffering is from God and for some kingdom advancing purpose.
Mind you, I am not advocating some sort of Christian masochism by which we seek out ways to bring suffering on ourselves. And I do not, for one minute, wish to communicate the idea that God is inflicting us with the sufferings we are going through. You see, it was not God who sentenced Jesus to death and it was not God who drove the nails through his bruised, battered, and beaten body. It was the Jewish leaders who muscled Pilate to sentence Jesus. And it was the Roman soldiers who pierced his body with the nails.
So do not entertain the idea that I’m proposing that Christians are to be those who somehow get pleasure in pain or who believe that God is the one who causes our sufferings. Rather, God allows us to suffer because it is only when we suffer that we experience the same conditions under which Jesus was perfected and gained his victory. Please note carefully what I am saying. Jesus was perfected through his sufferings and it is only when we suffer that we experience the same conditions that Jesus faced.
In other words, to think that God should not allow us to suffer is to reject our calling to be like Jesus and to be perfected as he was. Jesus did not invite his sufferings. All he did was remain faithful to God. And that was what caused the world to lash out at him. But when it did, he did not stop being faithful to God. Contrary to the common belief that faithfulness to God results in a more comfortable life, the Christian faith insists that faithfulness to God often results in discomfort and, in some cases, suffering.
Hebrews presents Jesus as one who did not shy away from the sufferings that came to him as a consequence of his faithfulness to God. And the book declares that this is precisely why he is able to be a high priest for those who trust him. The Aaronic high priests were sinful like us. They were weak like us. They were unfaithful like us. But because Jesus was utterly faithful, the forces against him were greater. In other words, Jesus has experienced opposition and suffering to a level that no one else could even imagine precisely because he was faithful.
And because he has faced such a level of opposition and suffering, he knows how difficult it is to remain faithful. And it is because he knows from first hand experience that he is able to understand our struggles, empathize with us, and represent us as our high priest without condemning us. We are told that we can boldly approach the throne of grace because we know that the one who preceded us there is one who has faced it all. He allowed evil to do its worst on him, and he emerged victorious by remaining faithful through his sufferings.
Hebrews then says, “On this topic we have much to say and it is difficult to explain, since you have become sluggish in hearing.” Let us be very clear what the book is saying. What preceded this statement was just scratching the surface. The idea that Jesus’ victory and perfection came through his sufferings is the shallow things that the author of Hebrews was able to tell his listeners. The idea that our sufferings give us the occasions in which we can learn from Jesus and approach our own perfection, is just the tip of the iceberg.
And the reason why he could not go deeper was that the listeners had grown sluggish in hearing. Unfortunately, this is the case today too. How many of us are content with just being saved, treating Jesus’ work as a get out of hell ticket? How many of us just want a comfortable life where we live and let live? How many of us want our faith to have the seal of respectability that society grants those who do not upset the applecart? How many of us still think that suffering is something aberrant in a Christian’s life?
This wondering why we suffer is a recent phenomenon. It is only after the Church accepted the insidious, Epicurean message of the Enlightenment, namely that the purpose of life is to live it up and avoid suffering, that we began to wonder why most of us go through periods of intense pain and suffering. But it wasn’t much better before that. The Constantinian synthesis, which saw the Christian faith become the state religion, removed the threat of persecution from the Church. Now it was the Church that had political power to wield over others.
The Church had gone through centuries of sporadic, but often widespread and devastating persecution under various Roman emperors, the worst being under Decius and Diocletian. The Christians were certainly worn out from such opposition. So it is no wonder that we accepted the compromise Constantine offered in the early fourth century. But little did we realize that we had traded, as the Pink Floyd song Wish You Were Here declares, “A walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage.”
You see, as soon as the Church gained power, it lost its purpose. Instead of being the salt of the earth, a light to the world, Christians began to think of ways in which to convert nations to the Christian faith. We began to think in terms of the abominable and detestable idea that there can be such a thing as a Christian nation, a lie perpetuated today by many Christians who, having grown accustomed to the privileges their power has given them, are afraid of losing ground to other visions of human purpose and destiny.
Even after the Roman Empire collapsed, the states that formed after it in Europe and Asia followed suit by retaining Christianity as the official, state-sponsored religion. Nation after nation adopted the insidious idea that they were nations under God by virtue of being supposedly Christian nations. And since Christianity was now the official religion, Christians were no longer under threat from any political entity. Christians began to see the world as a mosaic of nations that all needed to be Christianized.
But when we did that we did not know what to do with passages such as the one we are dealing with today. So many passages in the New Testament declare that suffering is not something we should crave. But it is neither something from which we should flee. And so Christians began adopting ridiculous practices like isolating themselves or living on top of a pillar or even inflicting harm on themselves. They recognized that something was missing from the Christian faith in a world in which it had morphed into Christendom.
The New Testament is clear that the followers of Jesus will face sufferings in the world. But these are not sufferings we invite on ourselves by refusing to engage with the world or by inflicting harm on our bodies. Our bodies are the temple of the living God and we violate his holy sanctuary if we harm ourselves. Our bodies are the means by which God has chosen to be present in this world and so we must not harm ourselves or place ourselves in situations in which we will be harmed for no reason.
So if suffering is a part of the Christian life and if we are neither to seek it nor flee from it, what purpose does it serve in our lives? It is clear that God allows his people to suffer. But why would God allow his people to suffer? What purpose does it serve? And can the purpose of suffering ever be positive? Am I just perpetuating what Nietzsche called a ‘slave religion’, one in which we glorify suffering and begin to think of it as being good in its own right, as many Christians did once they had to artificially create situations of suffering for themselves?
These are pertinent questions. We will not be able to answer them. But we will be able to begin formulating answers. It will not be easy sailing from now on out in this message. Remember we are trying to unravel what the author of Hebrews meant when he wrote, “On this topic we have much to say and it is difficult to explain, since you have become sluggish in hearing.” What was it that he wanted to tell his listeners but had to hold back from because they, like we, had reached a stage where they were unable and unwilling to learn more about suffering?
Perhaps, before I continue, a short anecdote to give us a brief respite?
A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell. He painted a sign advertising the 4 pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of
his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.
“Mister,” he said, “I want to buy one of your puppies.”
“Well,” said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, “These puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.”
The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer.
“I’ve got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?”
“Sure,” said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle. “Here, Dolly!” he called.
Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur. The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight.
As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse. Slowly another little ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up.
“I want that one,” the little boy said, pointing to the runt. The farmer knelt down at the boy’s side and said, “Son, you don’t want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs.”
With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers. In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe. Looking back at the farmer, he said, “You see sir, I don’t run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands.”
And what Hebrews tells us is that we needed and still need someone who truly understands. We needed and still need someone who has stepped into our shoes and who knows how to win in them.
In his book Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen wrote, “When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
And the deeper knowledge that Hebrews wanted to tell his listeners but couldn’t because they were dull of hearing is what we are going to explore now. Our passage claims that Jesus was perfected through his sufferings. It also claims that it is because he was perfected through his sufferings that he is able to empathize with weak humans like us who are prone to giving in to our weaknesses. It also claims that Jesus’ prayers, which did not spare him from death, nonetheless entailed God hearing his prayers. So what does that mean for us?
Unfortunately, we are kept like children by some of our well meaning preachers and songwriters. How many of us have heard something to the effect of, “Jesus paid a debt he did not owe because I owed a debt I could not pay”? Or as the Newsboys song goes, “Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.” Even the old hymns are the same. Can you even think of a single hymn in which, apart from a passing line, we welcome sufferings as a part of the Christian life? I cannot. Please prove me wrong!
And what about our preachers? Just listen to any of our big time preachers today. John Piper, John MacArthur, Francis Chan, Chuck Swindoll, Paul Washer, Alistair Begg, and Rick Warren come to mind. But these are those I do not follow. What about the ones I do follow, like John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, John Walton, Paula Gooder, Sandra Richter, and NT Wright? Listen to them and they will wrestle with suffering in a manner that we would be hard pressed to find anywhere in the New Testament.
Listen to what these giants of Christianity say about why we suffer and you will see that something is grossly missing. And this is precisely why the author of Hebrews could not go further and had to stop his discussion on the sufferings of Jesus with the words, “On this topic we have much to say and it is difficult to explain, since you have become sluggish in hearing.” The sad thing is that our leaders proclaim half the gospel as the full gospel. And because the other half is not proclaimed, many of us are unprepared to face what life throws at us.
Hebrews has devoted quite a bit of space to telling us that Jesus learnt obedience through his sufferings, that Jesus achieved perfection through his sufferings, and that he is able to empathize with we who are weak because of his sufferings. And then Hebrews tells us that we are not in a position to hear any more because we are quite happy with whatever we heard in the first instance. Our ears have become dull and unreceptive to any further understanding because we think we have heard the full message.
What the half gospel answers is the question, “How are sinful humans saved?” But the half gospel does not answer the question, “To what end are sinful humans saved?” You see, all the presentations of the gospel stop at what God has done for me to be saved. But why has God saved me? What did Jesus hope in me after I began to trust him? This is missing in the gospel message today. And because it is missing, the crucial element that Hebrews wants us to understand is lost. And as a result, we do not know how to make sense of what happens to us.
You see Jesus is able to empathize with sinful humans because he suffered. There was no ivory tower thought experiment that Jesus did in order to reach a position where he could understand our frailty and empathize with us in our struggles. But today he is not physically present on earth. But he is present in and through his Church throughout the world. And if his Church fails to demonstrate his ability to empathize with humans in their weakness then the witness of the Church is weakened.
But if Jesus learned to empathize only through his sufferings and if Jesus can demonstrate his empathy to weak humans only through his empathetic messengers in the Church, then it follows that Jesus can only demonstrate his empathy to weak humans if his Church learns to empathize through its sufferings. In other words, we have been proclaiming half the gospel because the other half involves our recognizing that it is only by our sufferings that we can truly empathize with other weak humans around us.
So shame on us when we have tried to make life easier for ourselves either through protests – peaceful or violent – or through litigation. Every move that the Church makes to spare itself from difficulties that come from following Jesus is a move to silence the second half of the gospel. You see the good news is not just that God has saved me. It is also that he has a purpose for me – that of becoming more like Jesus. And I cannot become like Jesus without also embracing the aspects of this life that resulted in his being perfected.
Let us think about this clearly. Since the Olympics are going on, let us consider an example from the realm of sports. On the 1st of this month, Lamont Marcell Jacobs from Italy shocked the world by winning the men’s 100 meter sprint. He trains for about 6 hours daily. If an athlete like him needs to train so much in order to stay at the top of his game, what would you say about someone who is happy training an hour a day? You would surely say there is no way this person would ever qualify for an international 100 meter sprint event. No way at all!
If Jesus himself needed to suffer in order to become perfect, what would you say about a Christian who says, “Since Jesus paid it all, I don’t need to go through any suffering”? Or what would you say about a Christian who complains to other people when he or she is going through a difficult time? Who do we think we are if we think we can become mature Christians without going through the same kinds of ordeals that made Jesus into the person he was and is? What kind of entrenched pride is this that thinks we can do something that even Jesus could not?
But you see, our big time preachers do not want us to hear this. No one will hang around a morose preacher who tells them that they need to suffer in order to become like Jesus. Please no! I’ll do my daily devotions and attend church on Sunday. I’ll even attend a mid week Wednesday service. And I’ll really torture myself by attending Deepak’s bible study. But actual suffering? No! That’s certainly not what my sugar daddy Jesus would want for me. No! He has wonderful plans for me – a safe comfortable life, if not a beachfront in southern France!
We fool ourselves by saying we want to be like Jesus when we do not want to have anything to do with the things that made him who he was and is. And our big time preachers allow this by comforting us with vain platitudes that, if we would only spare a moment to think, would disintegrate in shambles. If the only way to become a world class athlete is to train like a world class athlete then the only way to become like Jesus is to have a similar training regimen as Jesus did. And according to Hebrews, “He learned obedience through the things he suffered.”
Jesus has not called us to bask in the glory of our salvation. He has called us to become like him. He has called us to call others. And we can effectively call others only if we are able to perceptively empathize with others. The more we suffer, the more we are able to empathize with others. The more we suffer, the more nuanced our understanding of human frailty will become and the more perceptive we will become to the varieties of sufferings that our neighbors experience. This is the only way to become like Jesus.
Some of you may be thinking that this is an addition to the gospel. It is indeed an addition to the truncated gospel we often hear and that is most often proclaimed by our big time preachers. But this is the gospel. I am saved to become like Jesus. And I cannot become like Jesus unless I train like Jesus. But if you still think I have added something, you are free to think it. But don’t deceive yourself into thinking you will ever become like Jesus if you reject the means by which he became who he was and is.
You see, Jesus wants his Church to be filled with people who, like him, are able to empathize with others in their pain and grief and to lift them to the dignity that is theirs by virtue of being created as God’s image bearers. The forgiveness that we have received because Jesus empathized with us is to be the fuel for our being willing to empathize with others. But there is only one way of doing that. If Jesus was perfected through his sufferings, so must we. That is the only way of following Jesus, the only way of becoming perceptive empathizers.