Interpreting Jesus Differently

Text: Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12

God speaks.

God speaks to us. Long ago God spoke through the prophets. In many ways and various ways, says the writer of the book of Hebrews. Now God speaks to us in an additional way. God’s words are more than just information. The power of the words of God created the universe: God said … and it was. Hebrews reminds us of the power of God’s word in the opening sentence. Three things—God’s words at creation of the universe, God’s words as the creator, guide, and comforter of Israel, and God’s words conveyed to us by God’s son—are all part of one thing. The thing is the story of the world.

Jesus is more than the conveyer of God’s message, more than a conduit through which we hear God’s words. Jesus himself is one of God’s words. Like a word, something delivered to us that we should attend to. Jesus is not just an entity or event, a person who existed in time and space. This book, Hebrews, is not about human history, but salvation history. It is the history of God’s grace, from creation to the end of time.

Like words, as a word, Jesus is open to interpretation. We know that because we see in scripture, and in tradition, and in theology, different ways of seeing and understanding Jesus. And we know it because we each tend to see our own Jesus.

Hebrews presents an interpretation that is unfamiliar to most of us. The book of Hebrews is unlike any other. It is not a letter, though it is sometimes called a letter. It has no greeting, no salutation, no letter-like overture of what is to come.

The Jesus of this book is not like the Jesus of the Gospels. In Hebrews, Jesus is not the healer of the sick and tormented. Jesus is not the rabbi, speaking in sermons and parables. He is not the political radical confronting the existing powerful and corrupt oppressors. Jesus is not the spokesperson for the poor, not the one who, as in the magnificat, casts down the mighty from their thrones and exalts the humble. That is Jesus interpreted by the Gospels.

The Jesus of this book is not like the Jesus of Paul’s letters, either. In Hebrews, Jesus is not the second Adam. Jesus is not the way for gentiles to reconcile with the God of Abraham. Jesus does not eradicate the boundaries between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. We are not baptized into his death. Jesus in Hebrews is not Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah. That is Jesus interpreted by Paul in his letters.

In one sense—in a simplified sense—Jesus of the Gospels is a man of the earth. Though preaching the kingdom of heaven, he spends most of his time in the mundane matters of health and eating and money and worship. He teaches about how to deal with the people in the neighborhood and across the borders. He knows what weighs men and women down, how we suffer in the day to day.

In the same simplified sense—oversimplified, no doubt—Paul’s Jesus is a man of the heavens. It is Christ crucified and raised that interests Paul. Jesus conquers death in his own death and resurrection. His ministry on earth is of little consequence in the scheme of things.

But in Hebrews, the incarnation of God—God as human Jesus—and the glorious Jesus who existed from the beginning and sits with God for all time, are more balanced. The earthy humanity of Jesus is as essential to what he is to us as is his glorious divinity, and the two are connected through his suffering. For a while, it says in Hebrews, he was a little lower than the angels but now he is crowned with glory and honor.

What we name things is important. What we call Jesus tells us what we think his essence is, his substance, what we think his mission is, and what he has accomplished. We might call him rabbi, or healer, or preacher—jobs of care and guidance. We might call him Christ, Messiah, redeemer—jobs of rescue and salvation. Or we might call him, as we do on Christmas—king of kings, lord of lords, mighty God—jobs of power and victory.

But in Hebrews, Jesus is called neither rabbi nor messiah nor king. Here, in these first verses, Jesus is called creator, reflection of God, sustainer, sanctifier, pioneer, and heir. But his most excellent name—better than those of the angels, it says—his best name is Son. In Hebrews, Jesus’ most important name tells us not what he does but who he is. He is God’s son. And it is only because he is God’s son that his work and death have such cosmic implications.

This is not exactly a statement about Jesus as God. God speaks to us, it says, by a son. Not The Son in capital letters. This is not about the Trinity. What is important is that a son—any son, but the one we happen to be talking about right now here in Hebrews is Jesus—a son is special. God speaks through prophets. God works through angels. Prophets and angels are wise and good. But they are not family, so to speak. They are assistants and workers.

Jesus is family. You can see the resemblance, Hebrews says. He is the exact imprint of God’s very being. He has the same character as God. He is of the same substance as God. From the same stock, you might say.

The word of God that comes via Jesus carries extra weight because of his position. Prophets spoke. What they said was true; it has not been invalidated. God speaks by the prophets. But when God speaks by Jesus, it is a different thing altogether. We cannot—or Hebrews does not—make Jesus just another prophet, or just another good person doing God’s work.

For a little while, but not forever, Jesus was a little lower than angels. Just like all humans. But his suffering made him perfect, it says, a word that does not mean flawless or really excellent, but rather means complete. It was fitting; part of the job. Now he is once again superior to the angels. Jesus did something and now he is done.

Hebrews is a strange and a hard book in many ways, and a lot about what Hebrews thinks Jesus did has to do with sacrifice and priests, but that is later in the book, not here in these first few verses.

What is in these verses is that Jesus is the heir to all that God has—heir of all things, it says. And because Jesus claims us as brothers and sisters—humans together—we are heirs as well. We are all in the same family. The one who makes us holy—Jesus—and the ones who are made holy—us—all have the one same father. We will never be cut off, cannot be cut off, from God. We will all be God’s children by Jesus’ embrace of us.

Hebrews quotes Psalm 8, the one we just sang together. When we look at the universe that we can see, we think: who are we? We know that there are many more stars and galaxies now than the ancients could have imagined. What is a one man that God should care for him? What is one woman that God is mindful of her? The God of the creation of the universe cares for individual humans—minuscule, nearly irrelevant in the vastness, almost invisible. Yet God favors us. We have each been welcomed—not just as loved by God and not just as a worker in God’s kingdom, but as a daughter or a son of God.

God speaks. It is a blessing and a strength of Christianity that we have heard and do hear God in so many ways. And that there are many interpreters of Jesus, the one whom we follow.

There are times when we need to hear Jesus call us to action, to help others, to love our neighbors and enemies, to work for justice. There are times when we need to remember that Jesus enables for us eternal life through faith.

But there are times what we need most is to recall that Jesus is our brother, and that each of us, with him, is a child of God.