In recent weeks, we’ve begun working through the Book of Hebrews in the evening services. I’ve preached through Hebrews in the past more than once, but in preparing from the text this time I’m using commentaries less than before. Possibly for this reason, I have been startled by what the text confronts me with. Here are some of the observations:
1. The writer quotes from the Psalms so much because both he and his first readers would have known these references by heart: the ‘top 10’ religious songs they learnt from their youth. Helps explain the complicated quotes in first couple of chapters.
2. The writer is really more interested in affirming the real, ordinary humanity of Jesus rather than anything else. He’s not into metaphysics, really. He knows that Jesus said, ‘Come, follow me’. As God called His people Israel to obey and follow, so He continues to call to Israel and the world through Jesus.
3. People sometimes think that Jesus was always perfect: nonsense. Jesus didn’t start out as ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’. That category of thinking is not Jewish, but Platonic. Jesus becomes ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’ through suffering.
4. As it is with Jesus, so with us. In the first 4 chapters, the clear assumption is that a Christian is one who participates with Jesus. And when we realise this, it liberates us into a new view of suffering. Not as something that suggests that God is far away. On the contrary, we realise that it is the midst of suffering that God is close.
Thank God for that. It would be hard to deal with the real suffering I have to deal with with in people’s lives with a ‘candy floss’ understanding of blessing or a ‘Santa Claus’ picture of God. Here, in the Bible, is the real thing.
