The Book of Jude "The Brother" Scott Hoezee

Recently the news was abuzz with the discovery of an ancient ossuary or burial box that bears, in Aramaic, the intriguing inscription, "James, Son of Joseph, Brother of Jesus." The stone ossuary is less than two-feet long and, like all ossuaries, had presumably once contained the bones of this man named James. Although it appears to have ceased after 70 A.D. when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, prior to that the Jews had followed the custom of allowing a corpse to decay in a burial cave for a period of about a year. They would then collect the desiccated bones and place them in a stone box or ossuary.

This much has been known for a long time. What intrigued archaeologists about this ossuary is the inscription. Apparently, it would have been highly unusual to identify anyone by way of a brother. The only reason such an identification would have been made would be if the brother in question had himself been a person of note. Since the New Testament tells us that Jesus of Nazareth had a brother named James and a father named Joseph, many have seized on this discovery as dramatic evidence not only that Jesus existed in first-century Palestine but that already by mid-century he had become quite quickly very famous.

We'll leave to one side the ins and outs of all that and ponder instead a related matter: what must it have been like to have been a brother of Jesus? From the gospels it appears that none of Jesus' siblings was a follower of Jesus during the years of his ministry. There are only a handful of times that Jesus' family showed up and when they did, the encounters were unhappy. Sometimes the family would invite Jesus to spend a little time with them, but Jesus would politely refuse, claiming that the disciples were his real family now. One other time, having listened to Jesus teach for a while, some of his brothers publicly concluded that Jesus had gone off his rocker. "He is out of his ever-loving mind!" they exclaimed for all to hear.

You can't blame them. Despite the apocryphal stories about Jesus the wonder-working child who used his supernatural powers to play tricks on his classmates, there is actually no evidence that Jesus' upbringing had been very remarkable. To his brothers, Jesus had seemed like just one of the family. And so although it was not a cinch for anyone in the first century to believe that this undeniably human person was also the eternal Son of God, it was the people who had known Jesus the most intimately who wrestled with this the most.

But by grace, it appears that at least some of Jesus' family, including Mary and brother James, became disciples. But how strange it must have been for James to pray to and through and in the name of the brother with whom he used to play catch in the backyard! How odd for Mary to proclaim as the Lord of Life the same one to whom she had given birth, the one she had nursed at her breasts, and the one she had even diapered!

Most modern scholars believe that the author of the Book of Jude was also one of Jesus' brothers (or half-brothers, to be orthodox about it!). Jude does not make a very big deal about that, but he does identify himself as a brother of James, and hence some have concluded that "Jude" is short for "Judas," who is a known brother of Jesus. Now when your brother turns out to be the King of kings and the Lord of lords, it goes without saying that you will forever dwell in his shadow! But this matter of dwelling in the shadow of a sibling may have been doubly striking for Jude. Not only was his oldest brother the Son of God, yet another of his brothers, James, also became quite famous as the bishop of the very first Christian church in Jerusalem. That's maybe why Jude identified himself as "the brother of James." It had become second-nature. For years, no matter where he went, whenever he introduced himself to someone for the first time, this other person would sooner or later say, "Hey, aren't you . . .?" and then Jude would say, "Yes, I'm James' little brother."

So when composing this epistle, he beats everyone to the punch by saying right up front, "Hi, I'm Jude, and yes, James is my older brother!" Jude had long since given up on trying to put himself forward. Whether or not Jude ever knew this, things got worse even after he composed what is the only known piece of writing from him. Because some while after this letter had been circulated, the apostle Peter seems to have picked up on it and reproduced nearly this entire book in the second chapter of what we now call II Peter (although Peter does not credit Jude with even a footnote or anything).

Thus, some scholars have concluded that since we already have II Peter in the New Testament, we really could just as well delete Jude. Not only is the upshot of Jude contained in Peter's second epistle, Peter has the advantage of having steered clear of the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical allusions which Jude includes. Peter preserved the essence of Jude yet without including that other distracting material about the archangel Michael contending for the body of Moses as well as a quote from the apocryphal book of Enoch.

Jude has been, in short, a problem book. In some ways it almost looks like a seminarian sermon, loaded with quotations from other people, a little heavy on metaphor and simile, and a little strange in that it includes those references just mentioned to two stories that are not from the Bible as we know it. So although Jude is included in the canon of Scripture, the church has tended to shy away from this book. I am certain that everyone here tonight has heard far more sermons from II Peter than from Jude.

Poor Jude! He seems destined to play second fiddle to somebody else. That's too bad because if we can manage to get past some of this little book's stranger elements, we may find a message we need to hear today every bit as much as Jude's original readers. Curiously, when I checked his commentary on Jude, I found that John Calvin said the exact same thing over 400 years ago. Considering what had happened to the Christian faith in the sixteenth century, Calvin claimed that "what was a useful warning in the time of Jude is more necessary in our age."

So let's take a look at what Jesus' and James' little brother has to say. The first thing to note is that apparently Jude had to change his plans. Originally he was going to compose some lyric summary about salvation but in the end felt he could not do that in that he had gotten wind of some charismatic false teachers who had infiltrated the church. In verses 3 and 4 Jude points these heretics out and then immediately launches into the shank of this short letter. From verses 5-19 we Christians are treated to a kind of writing that may well be unfamiliar to us: midrash. Midrash is a literary form that was long a staple of Jewish rabbis. Among the hallmarks of midrash are numerous references to other Scripture passages as well a liberal dose of imagery and symbolism, all penned with a fairly free interpretive hand. Sometimes when reading midrash, you wonder just how certain connections got made as the writer flits from one image to another.

And so in the span of only a few verses Jude manages to throw in allusions to the exodus from Egypt, the fall of the angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain and his murder of brother Abel, Balaam's attempt to prophesy against the Israelites, Korah's rebellion against the leadership of Moses, and most strikingly of all for us is the reference to an apocryphal story about the archangel Michael's's role in the death of Moses as well as a quote from the non-biblical book of Enoch. Sandwiched in between that are verses 12-13 in which Jude wastes no time mixing his metaphors by swiftly decrying the false teachers as bad shepherds, rainless clouds, fruitless trees, wild waves, and wandering stars.

Jude may well be among the briefest of all biblical books, but you do have to give Jude credit for packing a lot in! The sheer scope of his biblical and extra-biblical references, not to mention his piling up of metaphors, gives you the impression that Jude was on something of a tear when he wrote this. He is unremittingly hostile toward these somewhat shadowy false teachers who were apparently wrecking havoc at the time. It may not be quite the way we would have written this letter, but there is no mistaking Jude's love affair with the gospel (and hence his panic at the thought of that beloved gospel getting contaminated).

But what precisely was the nature of this particular heresy? As is often the case in the New Testament, we need to read between the lines to figure things out, but apparently this group of teachers was part and parcel of the same type of people against whom the apostle Paul sometimes ranted: namely, people who took the free gift of grace as an excuse to live however they pleased. There has been a perennial temptation in the church to draw the same conclusion that was once famously articulated by the German writer Heinrich Heine: "God likes to forgive. I like to sin. Really, the world is admirably arranged!"

If grace means that we are not saved by what we do, nor conversely condemned by what we do, well then, it looks like what we do is a wash. Since God doesn't care, let's do whatever we feel like, let the chips fall where they may, and assume that grace will clean us up again in the morning. "The law of God, and all rules and regulations generally, are for fogies! Let us seek our own truth. Let's not accept any rule or guideline that is simply handed down to us but let's test everything to see if it works for us. If it does, then we'll follow it, but if we just can't relate to this or that idea, we'll dump it."

Sound familiar? If Jude could come back today and survey our contemporary situation, he would quickly sense how little had changed since his own time. Some while back I noted with you the observation by one cultural critic that the word "comfortable" seems to have become a kind of moral high point in terms of how people speak. We hesitate to say that lying is simply wrong and so will say instead, "Well, I'm not comfortable with lying." Someone catches wind of a couple with a so-called "open marriage" in which each spouse is free to have affairs with other people, but instead of decrying this as the moral antithesis of marriage, some manage to say no more than, "Well, that's fine for them, but my wife and I would not be comfortable with that."

It's always about us, our situation, our own feelings. Although it is probably on one level an innocent attempt to classify different groups of people, I sometimes think that even sociological labels contribute to moral fragmentation. In the last half-century alone, instead of just talking about people generally, we've heard about Baby Boomers, Baby Busters, Generation X, and now I am starting to hear about Generation Y. And when you talk that way long enough, it starts to appear as if each of these groups is hermetically sealed off from every other group. Baby Boomers and Generation Y are worlds apart (well, OK, they are only about fifty years apart, but that's almost like forever, isn't it?!). You shouldn't even expect them to be the same, to march to the beat of the same drummer, or even to have the same moral conceptions and ideas.

Jude knows our situation. And so odd a book though he wrote, and ancient though his words undeniably are, probably Jude's brief section of advice is something we can follow very profitably. In verse 20 he encourages his readers to build themselves up. Far from a call for some spiritual equivalent of a body-building and fitness program, the Greek word Jude employs at that point means literally to build on a foundation that is already there. We don't have to start from scratch. In fact, starting from scratch was precisely the problem with the false teachers: they lived as though the world came into existence five minutes ago and so proceeded to live with no reference points beyond their own desires.

Christians know better, Jude says. The foundation has been laid in Christ and by his holy apostles. We know that we are not our own. We know that Jesus has much to say about most everything we face in life. We know the Beatitudes, the law of love, Jesus' own example of humility and sacrifice, the role played by self-control and obedience to God's law. The foundation has been laid. All we can do is build on it. But as any engineer or architect will tell you, knowing the exact nature of your foundation is vital before building anything on it. Some foundations will support a skyscraper and some will not. Some foundations are designed for a certain type of building and will serve that size of structure very well but it is at best precarious to over-extend beyond what the foundation can bear.

We have a place to stand, and we should be thankful for that. These days, however, even people in the church keep trying to add on new rooms that step right off the gospel foundation of our Lord in order to build new church additions out on thin air. For too many people today, the Bible is a reference point, a conversation partner, just one voice among many when we are discussing moral matters. As one writer put it recently, the Bible is quite useful but not decisive. The Bible is like a friend with whom you may sometimes agree, sometimes disagree, but if the friendship is strong, then you can maintain your relationship with the Bible even when totally ignoring much of what it has to say to you.

A few years ago a mainline denomination in this country issued a report on human sexuality. Without going into the details, it will suffice to note that the role Scripture played in how the report's conclusions were drawn was rather marginal. The Bible had been a conversation partner indeed, but it had apparently been shouted down by other, louder, more insistent voices on the study committee. The report was in fact so far out that even as liberal a person as Camille Paglia (herself no friend of the Christian faith) could not resist railing against what the church said. Paglia found the report devastatingly dishonest and asked in response, "Why remain Christian at all?" Paglia challenged the church to be tough-minded, true to itself, its history, and its moorings. Either admit who you are and then hold your ground or give it up and become pagan, she ranted! Heed your faith's own limits or find new ones, but don't explain them away! As Paglia and others recognized, when the church tries to make everyone feel included, what ends up happening is that the people who work the hardest to stick with the foundation of the faith are themselves the ones left out.

Build yourselves up, Jude urges. Pray to the same Holy Spirit who laid out the foundation of the faith in the first place. Be gentle with and merciful to the doubters, Jude advises, but don't give in to their doubts. In other words, let us be who God in Christ called us to be. Let's be happy that we have a place to stand in life and not insist on running to some new spot. Let us be who we were made to be when we were baptized.

It was good advice then. It is good advice now. It is simply the good news. In verse 1 when Jude opened his brief epistle, he talked about how those whom God has called are also kept safe by Jesus Christ. We are kept. When he concludes the letter in verses 24 and 25, he again throws in this image of holy safe-keeping. Jude sings a gorgeous doxology to the One who can keep us from falling if only we allow ourselves to be so preserved and kept. It is a most moving and lovely message.

When he opened this letter, Jude humbly called himself no more than a servant of Jesus and a brother of James. But given how important this little book is, you have the feeling that when it is all said and done, the Lord Jesus will not merely tell Jude "Well done, good and faithful servant," but will perhaps commend Jude for being such a wonderful little brother. Writing the kind of things Jude did was very much in keeping with the family way. Thanks be to God that by the grace of our adoption in Christ, Jude, James, and even Jesus himself are our brothers, too. What remains is for us, also, to stay in the family way. Amen.