Freedom through Christ's sharing (Dec 28)

Readings, Isaiah 63:7-9 and Hebrews 2:10-18
Image, Laura Lasworth, Lily Among the Thistles, 2001.

Let's take a moment first up to reflect: What did Christmas mean to you this year? How did the story of the nativity speak to you? What does it feel like to hear God with us right now… where is that with for you?
 
The Hebrews reading leads us into something of a part two to the sermon on Christmas Day. The writer seeks to stress the very humanness of Jesus. Christ, they insist (against those who found the idea of God taking on flesh absurd or abhorrent) shared the same flesh and blood as all of us. The Word of God really did take on flesh, really did unite humanity and divinity, creaturely life with the Creator. But, as we noted at Christmas, it is also emphasised that such things were done for us: so that he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.
 
There is a theological tradition which holds that the fear of death is the root of all sin. We sin, in this account, because gripped by the fear of death we cannot find true peace or experience pure love, and this leads us into vice. We covet our neighbour’s property because we feel that one extra product, or one more room would fix the hole in our heart and keep thoughts of death at bay. We become greedy thinking we might live on through our wealth and influence. We hate our mother or father because gripped by our own mortality we wish to strike out beyond them seeking to taste a fuller life. We refuse justice and mercy to the poor and refugee because the fear of death makes life an economy of scarcity where what is provided to another must have been denied to us. We worship false idols because in the murky waters of fear we do not pay proper attention to what we are grabbing for relief. The fear of death wraps around us like chains, warping our experience of life, leading ourselves and others into suffering.
 
Therefore Christ had to become like his siblings in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.
 
On Christmas I said the confession that The Word became flesh and lived among us, means that Christ not only experienced life’s hilltops and valleys, but the plains and plateaus of everyday life. This living among us makes the mundane and ordinary sites in which we might see the glory of God, and experience the truth and grace of Christ. Today, the emphasis shifts to the valleys, the reading from Hebrews stresses that not only did Christ take on flesh and become fully human, but that within that taking on, as part of that becoming, Christ was tested, Christ suffered, Christ experienced the valleys of death that fill us with fear. It is only on this foundation that we might cling to the promise that this was done so that he is able to help those who are being tested, so that he is able to destroy the power of death and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.  
 
That Christ was born among us, that Christ lived among us on hilltop, plain, and valley is the foundation of our hope that in Christ we do indeed have a High Priest who is familiar with our struggles, acquainted with our fears, fluent in our griefs, and is thus able to help those who are being tested, is able to intercede in mercy for those who falter, is able to meet out grace upon grace for all of us weighed down by fear, jumpy in the valley of death.
 
This is why the writer of Hebrews so emphatically argues against the idea that Jesus could have merely been an angel (even one of unparalleled significance) or that Jesus could have somehow been God with us, without actually taking on flesh. It is the same reason why the lectionary links up that little passage from Isaiah with today’s reading, when the promised saviour sent by God is proclaimed to be:
no messenger or angel
   but his presence that saved them;
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
   he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
 
The incarnation of Christ, the uniting of divinity and humanity, is thus not only about our salvation as we are united with God through Christ’s perfection. It is also a matter of our sanctification; it inspires our trust in God. Professing Christ’s full humanity expands our capacity to live free from the fear of death by reminding us that the one who calls us into such freedom, who leads us into such a life, is not ignorant of the fears, trials, and suffering that mark the human condition. No, Christ beckons as one who suffered but triumphed, who was tested but overcame, who does not abhor the affliction of the afflicted but went down to the depths of the valley of death only to destroy the one who had the power of death.
 
Christmas is thus not only the time we celebrate that the Word taking on flesh is the power to make us children of God. It is not only the time we celebrate that by living among us the ordinary moments of our common days become infused with potential to see God’s glory and feel Christ’s grace and truth. It is also the time when we give thanks that because the pioneer of our salvation was himself tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested. Because the eternal Word of God did indeed share our flesh and blood he might destroy that which is the root of all sin, and in so doing free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. Christmas is the time that we give thanks that the one whose perfect life we seek to emulate, understood intimately and compassionately all the many things that make us imperfect, and calls us his siblings anyway.