Hebrews 2:5-18 "The Jesus We See" Scott Hoezee

This Thursday our nation will somberly mark the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Probably there will not be as many memorial observances as a year ago, except for those held at especially Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan. But even though we may go through the day Thursday attending to our routines, likely all of us will pause at some point to remember that terrible day. We remember the ash-covered people who escaped. We recall the firefighters whose faces were smudged and whose bodies were powdered with the pulverized remains of those massive towers. Now reports are coming in that those who worked in the recovery efforts at Ground Zero are showing signs of serious health problems. They breathed in polluted air for a long time as they worked first on the pile and then in the pit. Sadly, even more people may one day die as a direct result of Al Qaeda's 9/11 evil.

Those who were close to the cataclysm in New York bore the marks of it all over themselves. Inwardly and outwardly they displayed evidence that they had "been there." You could tell just by looking at them. The author of Hebrews says something similar about the Son of God. If you look closely at Jesus, then you can see that at some point, he got very close to the tragic situation of this world. The marks of our suffering are all over him. Like a firefighter covered in soot, so also Jesus is a flesh-and-blood person who looks for all the world like he has been through the fire--the fire of death and hell.

Hebrews 2 lifts up several Old Testament passages and connects them to Jesus. So in verses 6-8 the author quotes from Psalm 8. Usually when we read that psalm and its words about staring up into a starry sky and feeling puny as a result, we interpret that as applying directly to us. We are the ones who are dwarfed by the majesty of God's handiwork. We are the ones made a little lower than the angels. But, as Psalm 8 declares, we are also the ones who have been made in the image of God such that God has charged us with managing this creation on his behalf.

But as you no doubt noticed when we read this passage, Hebrews 2 says that Psalm 8 refers to Jesus, too. Jesus has also now been made a little lower than the angels. This is an obvious reference to the incarnation, to the Christmas story that the Son of God was born of a woman and given the human name of Jesus. Jesus is the one who became small in the grand scheme of things, who was dwarfed by becoming just another face in the crowd. But somehow this very human person who was outwardly no more impressive than any one of us, went on to win a great victory. At Easter Jesus was crowned with glory and honor and now all things are subject to him. Jesus is now the Lord of all creation.

But as the passage makes clear, the reason that Jesus' grand victory does us any good lies precisely in the fact that he took on flesh and blood. These verses are shot through with the idea that when it comes to incarnation and atonement, it's a two-way street. First, the Son of God looked at us and said, "I will become what they are." Second, we now look at Jesus and, by faith, we become what he is. Jesus assumed our situation of suffering and death. Now we can assume his situation of victory over suffering and death.

Usually when a doctor treats a disease, he does so by operating from a position of strength and health. If my doctor is treating me for a highly infectious illness, it won't do me much good if the doctor becomes sick, too. If my doctor catches what I have and so winds up in the hospital bed next to mine, it's time for a new doctor. But in the case of the Great Physician, the Son of God infected himself with the same difficulties that plague us. But somehow, in the great mystery of God's redemption, once Jesus was cured of these afflictions within his own body, it became possible for everyone else to get better, too! By catching the sickness we had, Jesus has now made it possible for us to catch the cure!

Or at least that is what we believe by faith. But Hebrews 2 is honest enough to admit that short of having faith, this is not easy to see. In verse 8 the author confesses that for now, we do not see everything subject to Jesus. Pick up any day's newspaper, watch Tom Brokaw most any evening, and you will recognize in a heartbeat that this world does not obviously belong to Jesus. Looking back over the last two years since 9/11, we have seen so much suffering, so much carnage, so much warfare that, if anything, the world looks less permeated with the presence of Jesus now than it did even a few years ago.

For now, the author of Hebrews 2 says, we cannot easily see a world subject to Jesus. No sooner does he admit that, however, and he goes on to say in verse 9, "But we see Jesus." And not only that, we see a Jesus who, as we said a moment ago, bears on his own body the marks of everything that afflicts us. Somehow it helps to see that Jesus is not a distant and detached observer of things like 9/11, cancer, violence, suffering.

Precisely because he looks like he's been through the fire, those of us who are still in the fire can know that Jesus can help us. It is not a stretch to picture Jesus' body as the one covered with the pulverized dust of the twin towers. It is not a stretch to see Jesus' face drawn gaunt and thin because of chemotherapy. It is not a stretch to see Jesus' body seared and burned from a suicide bomber's detonation in a marketplace. This is the Jesus Hebrews 2 wants us to see. Jesus said as much himself when he told the disciples that whenever they saw someone in prison, someone sick, someone hungry, they were seeing him.

Here is one of the gospel's more profound pieces of comfort. In life we find that the people who can most help us when we're down are the same people who have been down themselves at some point. If you come and tell me about a situation in your life that has ripped your heart out, you will take my advice more seriously if you have the sense that my heart has been trampled on now and again, too. More than that, I will take you more seriously if I know that you are not exaggerating the pain you are narrating to me. I will listen more intently if I have suffered myself.

Hebrews 2 says the same thing applies to Jesus. Look at these verses and notice four results of Jesus' having suffered like us. First, verse 9 says he has tasted death for us. When it comes to the human race, Jesus is not the odd man out in being alone in never having to die. He knows what even that is like. Second, verse 10 asserts the highly curious idea that Jesus was "made perfect" on account of his sufferings. We usually think that Jesus was already perfect the moment he was born, and in a moral sense he was. Jesus was born without sin. But he was not perfect, in the sense of being complete, until his sufferings put him on a par with the rest of us. We're all in the same family now, verse 11 says.

Third, verse 17 says that by being made like us, Jesus is the perfect high priest. The priest stands between God and humanity and is the conduit through which the forgiving power of God flows. Since Jesus was himself both human and divine, he was not just a logical candidate to stand at the intersection of God and people, he was that intersection! He brings God to us and us to God. Fourth and finally, verse 18 tells us still another result of Jesus' being one of us: he has become the ultimate realist.

As C.S. Lewis once said, only the person who never yielded to temptation knows the full strength of temptation. If a hurricane roars ashore somewhere, which person will be in the best position to talk about the strength of the wind: the one who was blown over immediately, the one who managed to stay on his feet until the wind hit 75 MPH, or the one who never was blown over, not even when the wind topped out at 130 MPH? Obviously the one who was able to resist the storm's fullest fury is the one who knows better than anyone what all it took to stay on his feet. So also with temptation: Jesus never wavered. The devil threw everything he had at Jesus, took all his best shots, but Jesus never fell. Jesus is the only realist, Lewis said, because he alone knows the full fury of temptation. Because of that Jesus knows better than anybody how much strength we need. And so he gives it.

This is the Jesus we need to see in a world where so much else looks grim. This morning we see this truth displayed in the bread and wine. And how we need to see Jesus here! Neither Pastor Bob nor I can see into your hearts. But I am certain that some of you are experiencing brokenness. You feel sad about something. You worry that your life isn't adding up to much. Try though you may to shut it out, you keep hearing echoes in your mind of that cruel thing someone said or wrote to you. Or maybe you are fearful of death. You know there are more days behind you than are yet to come. You've watched your contemporaries grow ill and you've attended more funerals of late than you'd care to count.

Sometimes we look at someone we know and with a sense of wonder we may say, "Wow, she's really got it all together. She is such a together person." And we say that maybe a little enviously because too often we feel like we are rattling apart, our lives are in disarray, we are at loose ends. So this morning, I invite you to see Jesus. See the Jesus who knows everything you are going through. See the Jesus who knows personally what it is like to feel like your life is going to pieces. Because in a minute we will see Jesus in pieces through chopped up bread and spilled wine. Jesus let himself go to pieces so that when he was brought back together again in the wholeness of Easter life, he could tell the rest of us that by faith we possess a wholeness in Him that can never rattle apart.

Taking the bread and the cup to yourself this morning is not going to iron out every wrinkle on the fabric of your soul. You won't go back home after this service only to discover that all your overdue bills have been magically paid, that your estranged daughter has a message of reconciliation waiting for you on the telephone answering machine, or that your seemingly dead-end job has suddenly changed into the most exciting occupation anyone has ever imagined. "At present we do not see everything subject to him," verse 8 reminds us. Life still does not look or feel the way it is supposed to be.

But by faith and through this communion meal, I pray you will see Jesus--a Jesus whose scars reveal his acquaintance with the rough and tumble world we inhabit but whose vibrant resurrection life reveals a victory and a hope that are now properly also our victory and hope since we, by grace, have been infected with the good contagion of the gospel through the Jesus we see, the Jesus we know, the Jesus we love. Thanks be to God. Amen.