In Our Place

Text: Hebrews 2:10-18

The Bible puts us humans in our place. But you might ask: which place is that?

In Genesis, the order of creation is from large and vague to small and specific. From light and dark, sky and earth, to plants and seeds, creatures that swim, and creatures that creep along the ground. And it was all good. And finally, on the sixth day, God created humans. Is it last but not least—or least and therefore last—in the scheme of things?

In Psalm 104, a creation story that parallels Genesis, the order is similar, but humans are not even included. In the book of Job, God berates Job, asking him where was he at the creation of the world. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks. And in the praise psalm we sang today, the action moves from heavens, through the cosmos, waters and hills, beasts and creatures, and finally to humans, young and old, young men and maids.

How shall we interpret this? Are humans the culmination of all creation, the end of eons of progress and the point of it all? Or are we instead nearly an afterthought, left to the end, relatively insignificant?

It is not a new question. The author of Hebrews, in the verses just before today’s reading, quotes Psalm 8, which asks: What are humans that God should be mindful of us? Made from dirt, God has made us just a little lower than the angels.

The author of Hebrews is amazed that God is so mindful of humans that God even became one. He interprets the psalm to be less about humankind and more about Jesus, whom, he says, God has made not only a little lower than angels (as the psalm says), but lower than angels for only a little while.

For Hebrews, Jesus is timeless, the creator of all: “the heir of all things,” the book starts out, “through whom also he created the world. He is the ... exact imprint of [God’s] nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Yet even so, in Jesus God was human—for a little while. Hebrews wants to make it clear: Jesus is the creator God. And also, Jesus was a human just like us. In every respect, it says. Jesus crossed some imaginary line in theological space, calibrated by the status of angels. Going from higher than they are—much superior to angels, it says—to lower. To us.

Hebrews is adamant. We are the brothers and sisters of Jesus. We all have the same father. We share flesh and blood—we have bodies, we are creatures made of stuff—and so does Jesus. Even though we are corruptible and weak—morally and physically—Jesus is not ashamed to call us sister and brother.

The season of Christmas is a 12-day celebration of the incarnation. Yet the concept is not easy, the notion of all God and all person all at once. In the first few centuries after Jesus, the heresies were mostly a result of people trying to think this through.

On one hand, it would be easier in some way if we worshipped a powerful and distant God. Someone who set the stars in their courses, perhaps, and then vanished. Or maybe one who capriciously tinkers with events and physics for God’s own amusement. One who does not care about us one way or the other. Divine but inhuman.

On the other hand, it would be easier in some other way if we followed and admired a good man, a wise prophet who inspired and moved us, who preached about a new and spiritual way to live. Who was perhaps guided by God without being God. Or one who was a charismatic political leader who roused the rabble to see justice done. Who was human but not divine.

Or maybe it would be easier if Jesus were a person who was human sometimes—doing corrupt human things—and God other times—doing perfect divine things.

But that is not how it worked out. We claim that Jesus combines God and human simultaneously. That there is nothing that people do that Jesus does not. That there is nothing Jesus does that people cannot. Because if there were even one thing, in that one thing Jesus would be only human or only divine.

Jesus suffers as a person would suffer. This does not mean that suffering is good, just that it is the way of the world. When Hebrews says that suffering perfects Jesus, it does not mean that suffering is necessary to somehow make Jesus whole and complete. It means that people suffer, and that since Jesus is a person, Jesus will suffer. An incarnate God who does not suffer is not human and therefore not incarnated, not of flesh and blood.

It is compassion for his human brothers and sisters that drives God to intervene as a person. He did not come to help angels, Hebrews says. He did not come to make things balance out. He did not come to demonstrate power. He came to help the descendants of Abraham, to help us, to help people. God was tested by suffering, as we all are. In his suffering, it seems, God through Jesus learned what it is to suffer and die. Something creatures know first hand.

We are brothers and sisters of Jesus. We are first of all brothers and sisters of each other. We have the same father, Hebrews says. The logic goes both ways: being connected with Jesus strengthens our connections with each other.

The complicated and intimate relationship between God and humans makes it seem reasonable, and not crazy, to model our relationship with other people on our relationship with God.

The psalm today is a hymn of praise to God who created us and all things in the universe. It recognizes God’s power and God’s love for the world, and it also gives us a chance to rejoice that we are beneficiaries of that. As we praise God together, we are bound together ourselves. Just as we are bound together by being claimed as brother or sister of Jesus.

The Bible puts us in our place. And our place is side by side. With Jesus also. Loving one another as we love ourselves, and also called to praise one another as we praise God.