Today’s Scripture Reading (April 1, 2018): Hebrews 2
What does God look like? I have to admit that the question is one I like to ask people
in the midst of a theological discussion. The answer can be quite revealing,
and often the ones to whom I ask the question miss the point of the query. Does
God have hands, arms, and legs? Is there a color to his skin? Is he old, or young: male or female? Sooner or later
the absurdity of the question becomes clear, yet that never seems to stop us
from making our observations based on our imagined appearance of God that
severely influence our theology. The male/female question is an interesting
one. We react in our culture to God as a man. There are the fringes, some might argue the lunatic fringe, that
declares that God must be a mother and
that only the love of a mother God could ever save the world. But for the rest
of us, God is male; he is Father. But the
appropriate question is not whether God is male or female, but rather whether
the apparent maleness of God in the Bible is a result of the actual maleness of
God or a result of the male-dominated society in which the Bible is written. The reality is that the God of
Bible is both, and probably neither. God is
described as possessing male and female qualities. We call him he, or in
some belief systems she because we want
to stress the personhood of God. We do the same thing with the Holy Spirit. The
Holy Spirit is called “he” because the
Holy Spirit is a person more than because the Holy Spirit is male. The reality
is that God is totally other. He,
denoting person rather than gender, is separate from us, and different when
compared to us. Once we understand this description of God, it is another interesting discussion to ask how we are made in God’s image. (I think the answer to
that question is that we are created to exist in community, just as the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit have forever existed in eternal community together.)
Why is this important? Because how we view
God influences how we view Jesus. If God is an older male, with two hands and
feet and looks somewhat like us, then the life of Jesus is nothing more than
that he stepped out of heaven, lived on earth, was executed and then rose
again. The sacrifice of Jesus is constrained to Good Friday and Black Saturday.
But the Bible tells a subtly different story. It is not that he stepped out of
heaven to live for a time on earth, but rather that he clothed himself with our
flesh. A being that did not have two hands and two feet through the miracle of
the incarnation changed to look like us, to breathe and eat like us, and to
live with all of the needs and temptations, on this planet just like us. He
wasn’t before. He, like God, may not have been even a “he” before, but he was
after the incarnation. Of the three persons of the Trinity, only Jesus is he
when it comes to gender, and that is only true because he clothed himself with
our flesh.
And through his sacrifice, he makes us holy.
Through his life and death, we are invited
into community with the Father. And this
is the point that the author of Hebrews is trying to make. Jesus became like
us. He wasn’t before. The sacrifice of Jesus is so much more than that he died
on a cross. The sacrifice means that he took on our flesh, became a being with
two hands and two legs. Jesus became a
member of our family. As we celebrate Easter, we recognize the miracle that
even after death, he retained this connection with us – only now his hand and
feet are nail-scarred, and his side has a gash where the spear pierced
his flesh. Now, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we are one family. And as
family members, Jesus is not ashamed to call us brother or sister.
And that is the real feat. There is no reason
for us to be ashamed to call Jesus our brother, to recognize him as a member of
our family. He who is perfect has never done anything to cause us shame, but that Jesus is not ashamed to recognize us, as weak
and frail and needy as we are, as his brothers and sisters is amazing. Sometimes
we are afraid to call each other brother and sister, but Jesus feels no shame
over his relationship with us. He is proud to be numbered as one of us and part
of our family.
This is one of the real miracles of Easter. And one that we need to remember as
we attempt to live our Easter derived lives.
Have a great Easter celebration!
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hebrews 3
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