Gracious Descent

Hebrews 1:1-4

November 28, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Maxie Dunnam tells of being in China about two years after the death of Mao Tse-Tung, the architect of China’s conversion to communism. Chairman Mao led China for over three decades and was the symbol for millions of people for a system of thought and the communist revolution. Shortly after Mao’s death, an admirer wrote these words: he “conceived of the Chinese Revolution, and then helped cause it to happen, and in the process, the thought of Chairman Mao became the primary thought of every Chinese. The word almost literally became flesh.” The word almost became flesh. Dr. Dunnam says when he visited, Mao’s likeness and statues were still everywhere, but the mausoleum that had been built to keep his body was closed to visitors. The official word was that they were doing repair work, but the guide whispered to Dr. Dunnam that in reality the government was trying to play down the influence of Mao in the thought and culture of China. The word almost became flesh (cf. Dunnam, With Jesus in the Upper Room, pgs. 176-177). But during this time of the year, we celebrate not the word almost becoming flesh. We celebrate the word actually becoming flesh.

That’s the way John, in the beginning of his Gospel, describes Jesus’ arrival: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Or, in the words of The Message: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” (The Message Bible, pg. 1916). I always look forward to reading that passage on Christmas Eve because there’s excitement wrapped up in those words. Somehow in just a short sentence, John wraps up all the hopes and the joy and the anticipation of the Advent season. The word became flesh, and he came to live with us. Something miraculous has happened, something new!

The fancy theological word is “incarnation,” but sometimes we use that word and don’t realize the implications in the the Word, the ever-existent word who was with God in the beginning (cf. John 1:1), becoming flesh. He makes a gracious descent; he comes down to us, to be one of us among us (cf. Willimon, Incarnation, pg. 3). And over the next four weeks, both in worship and in small groups, we’re going to try to unravel what that means for us in the here and now. What difference does a birth some 2,000 years ago make today? (And by the way, there’s still time to sign up for an Advent small group if you haven’t already.) My hope and prayer is that when we get to Christmas, “the word became flesh” will mean more to us than just a slogan we put on a Christmas card.

And so, it’s Advent, and I’m so glad we’re able to do Advent in person this year! It’s hard to talk about the the word becoming flesh when you’re just pixels on a screen. To really grab onto the idea of incarnation you need to do something physical, something you can taste and smell and feel and touch. I think about that when I imagine the early churches receiving these letters from Paul and other writers. You know, people like Paul couldn’t be with every church all the time. And so they would write letters and send them with representatives and co-workers back to the churches to encourage and challenge and sometimes even chastise them. This letter that we read from this morning, the letter to the Hebrews, is a strange one. Some think it’s not a letter at all, that it might be mostly the text of an early sermon. For one, it doesn't begin like a letter. Other letters in the New Testament sort of ease into their topic by introducing who wrote the letter and saying some nice things about the congregation to whom it’s addressed. But Hebrews doesn’t do that. The writer (who is anonymous) jumps right into his topic, and his overall topic is this: Jesus is greater than everything and everyone else because he’s the word made flesh.

In these first four verses of this—well, let’s call it a letter for now—so in the first four verses of this letter, the writer is contrasting two ways of seeing and knowing God. “In the past,” he says, God spoke through prophets using a lot of different means and messengers. For centuries, prophets, preachers, poets and priests (see what I did there?) spoke the word of God to the people. Their job was, as I’ve said before, not to predict the future or even to recount the past. Their job was to speak what the people needed to hear right then and right there. Sometimes they told the people, “If things don’t change, this will happen to you in the near future.” And far too often, things didn’t change, and what they predicted would come true. But a prophet’s main job was not predicting the future; it was speaking the often hard word to people who didn’t want to hear it. In fact, Isaiah was told his job would include speaking to people who refuse to hear what he’s saying and who refuse to see what is right in front of them (cf. Isaiah 6:9-10). How would you like to get a job description like that? “Candidate will work hard and do exactly what he or she is told, but it will make no difference. It will be fruitless work.” Sure, sign me up! I think that’s part of why Jeremiah got so angry and accused God of tricking him. He says, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived…The word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long” (Jeremiah 20:7-8). So why would anyone agree to be a prophet? Because they knew the truth and couldn’t help but speak about it. Jeremiah describes it as a “fire shut up in my bones” and he says he cannot hold it in (Jeremiah 20:9). In the past, Hebrews says, God spoke through prophets.

“But,” verse 2 begins. I love that word. It means something different is going to happen next. In this context, it means God is about to do something new as the prophets once promised (cf. Isaiah 43:19). “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” (1:2). Okay, let’s stop there for a moment and deal with that phrase, “in these last days,” because we’ve got to wonder what this writer was thinking. I mean, this was 2,000 years ago and we’re still waiting on “the last days.” Well, actually we’re not. In Jewish thinking, there were two ages: now and then. There was the present age and the age to come and the dividing line was what they called the Day of the Lord. You find that language all throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, especially in the prophets. But with the coming of Jesus, Christians began to understand that the Day of the Lord wasn’t so much a single day, a single event, as it is apparently a period of time. When Jesus came, the end began, and when he returns, the end will have fully come. In other words, the “last days” began in Bethlehem with the arrival of the savior because “eternity has invaded time, and things can never be the same again” (Barclay, The Letter to the Hebrews, pg. 12; Stedman, Hebrews [IVPNTC], pg. 21).

“In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (1:2). He began speaking to us at Bethlehem, and he continues to speak to us through the Son until the literal end of time. Our celebration of Advent is not just about Jesus’ first coming, though that celebration certainly takes center stage. But Advent is also about our anticipation of when Jesus will come again, when he will come to claim his own and set things to rights. Do I know when that will be? No, I don’t because even Jesus said he didn’t know (cf. Mark 13:32). All of our speculation is useless and a waste of time better spent elsewhere; how are we going to figure out something even Jesus doesn’t know? Do we honestly think we are more in tune with the Father than Jesus is? But I do know this: we are closer every day. And I also know this: in these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son.

And here is what God has said: he has told us what he is like. Verse 3: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…” Jesus, when he became flesh, was still representing who God is. He radiates God’s glory. Do you remember the story of Moses, who asked to see God’s glory? The same Moses, whom we’re told spoke to the Lord “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11), was not allowed to see the full glory of God. I don’t know exactly how you can be face to face with someone and yet not see all of them, but that’s apparently how it was because when Moses asks to see God’s glory, God tells him, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). So God puts Moses in the cleft of a rock and only allows him to see God’s back (Exodus 33:23). It’s a strange story, but here’s how it applies to Jesus: in Jesus, we see God’s glory. In Jesus, we have the radiance of God’s glory. And that’s an important word choice. It’s not a reflection; it’s a radiance. A reflection would be like the light the moon puts off. The moon has no light of its own; it only reflects what it picks up from the sun. That’s why it’s not as bright as the sun; it only has the sun’s leftovers to display. The prophets were kind of that way; they only reflected God to the world. (So do pastors, by the way.) One scholar put it this way: “The prophets were the friends of God; but Jesus was the Son. The prophets grasped part of the mind of God; but Jesus was that mind” (Barclay 14). And Jesus became flesh so that we could see the glory of God and live. He is radiance of God’s glory somehow all wrapped up in human flesh.

And he is the exact representation of the Father. The word there is “character,” from which we get our English word—well, “character.” In Greek, the word means “an exact copy” or “impression,” and usually refers to the imprint that a seal leaves on wax when it is pressed down. It was also used to describe the way the emperor would make coins that had his image on them. A sketch was made that represented the emperor and then it was engraved into hot metal and stamped on the coin. Only a perfect coin was useable; only an exact copy was acceptable. The point of this process was that the exact image of the emperor would be sent out into the world (cf. Barclay 14; Wright, Hebrews for Everyone, pgs. 2-3). That’s what Jesus is: the exact image, no blemish, no mistakes, no fake copy. What you see in Jesus is what God is like exactly. That’s why Jesus can say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is the exact representation, the exact imprint, of the one the prophets had pointed toward all these centuries.

That God made a gracious descent and came down to be among us (cf. Willimon 14). For centuries, the church has affirmed that Jesus was fully God and fully human. He wasn’t 50% God and 50% human. He wasn’t a 60/40 split, and he didn’t (as some in the early church tried to say) just “appear to be human.” He is 100% God and 100% human, and you say—how can that be? That’s 200%. That doesn’t make sense! And maybe it doesn’t to our limited understanding, but it is what it is. He is the surprising overlap of heaven and earth, fully God and fully human. If he weren’t fully human, he couldn’t identify with us. And if he weren’t fully God, he couldn’t save us. He is “God With Us in order to be God For Us” (Willimon 19). He came to offer himself as a gift, and here we are, still thinking we can earn what he came to bring.

For quite some time, much of what passes for Christian faith in our culture—or, honestly, for any faith at all—is really better labeled as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” Yes, I know that’s a mouthful; let me explain what it is and see if it sounds familiar. It’s moralistic—in other words, it’s all centered around whether we behave correctly or not. See if this sounds familiar: “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town.” He knows what? Who’s naughty and who’s nice. Moralistic. Do the right thing and you won’t get coal in your stocking. Or…do the right thing and you’ll go to heaven. Moralistic.

Therapeutic. We no longer believe in what is true. We believe in what makes us feel good. Does any of this sound familiar? “Live your truth.” “You do you.” “I gotta be me.” Rather than asking if something is true, we ask, “What’s in it for me?” “How does it make me feel?” And so we have had a string of pastors, Christian celebrities and others who have publicly “deconstructed” their faith, proclaimed that they no longer “identify” as a Christian because, by and large, “Christianity no longer works for me.” Bishop Will Willimon tells about a conversation between two students about their faith. One said to the other, “Well, whatever works for you.” To which the other replied, “It’s not working for me; it’s working on me. But it is not working for me.” That student is more honest than most. In our desperate attempts to make everyone feel good over the last couple of decades in particular, we’ve failed to help them see the exact representation of the Father. We’ve become therapeutic and not good for anyone. The pandemic has served, in some ways, to sort out people who want therapy from those who want Jesus. Moralistic and therapeutic.

Deism. That’s the belief that God wound up the world and walked away, that God is no longer involved in the day-to-day activity of we poor little humans down here on planet Earth. Deism was big when Methodism was begun and John Wesley had no patience for people who wanted a God like that, a God who isn’t much of a God. The God of Deism is far off, away, maybe on a vacation, and if we don’t believe this idea surrounds our culture today, watch how politicians and celebrities give lip service to God, say things like, “God bless America” at the end of their speeches, but give very little attention to the way Jesus—the exact representation of God—calls us to live and be. It’s as if we want God around for when we need him but not so close that he might spoil our fun or interfere in our lives. We decide how much “god” we can handle (cf. Willimon 27-29).

And then Christmas comes along and reminds us that the God who created the universe, who spoke it into being, who could wipe it out with the snap of his fingers, who is more powerful than we could ever imagine—that God came down to be with us. He became God With Us so he could be God For Us. He is closer than you can imagine, not watching us like some sort of boogeyman, but wanting to love us as our Father and Friend.

He is the God of the pandemic. He is with us in the midst of these years that have been so trying. He is with us in the wake of over three quarters of a million deaths due to this virus. Do we think any of this has surprised God? Do we believe that he’s in heaven saying, “Oh my goodness, I don’t know what to do about all that”? Moralistic Therapeutic Deism says God should put an end to all this immediately because it doesn’t feel good. Christian faith trusts that God can use even this, that he knows how we feel because he became one of us. Christian faith, incarnation faith, says he will walk with us even though the valley of the shadow of death (cf. Psalm 23:4), and that he can turn anything we do to one another into something good (cf. Romans 8:28). No virus can defeat him, no economic downtown can challenge him, and no political upheaval can throw him off his throne. He is God With Us so that he can be God For Us.

He is the God of the broken heart. These last two years have been incredibly hard. We’ve lost loved ones, we’ve seen jobs lost and maybe we’ve had to reinvent ourselves. Money has been tight, and tensions have been high. Maybe you’ve experienced divorce or separation, angry words or lost friends. The chaos of the world seems to be too much at times, and the lockdowns have brought about an epidemic of loneliness and a new category called “deaths from despair” to the point where most counselors have no openings for months. And we are all sick of Zoom meetings. But do you know who is right in the middle of it all? Do you know who stands beside you at midnight while you cry instead of sleep? Do you know who wants to give you what you need, not necessarily what you want? Do you know who knows what will make you stronger, even if it doesn’t make you feel good? Jesus said that the truth would set us free (cf. John 8:32), and someone added that it will probably make us miserable first. But God is interested not in making you or me feel better. He’s interested in making us more like Jesus, the exact representation of the Father.

J. D. Walt tells about his son Sam, who was cast as one of the leads in this year’s school play. For the past three months, Sam has carried a book around everywhere he goes, and it’s always the same book. It’s the script for the play. J. D. says the book is “bent out of shape—cover permanently peeled back, pages tattered, underlined, highlighted, dog-eared, otherwise trashed.” It’s “everywhere—at the foot of his bed in the morning before he wakes, in the car on the way to basketball practice, in the waiting room at the orthodontist, on the couch next to the television remote control.” But the point of it all isn’t to memorize lines. Sam is trying to become a character. He’s trying to learn to represent the person the playwright envisioned. He’s living with the script so that he can become the exact representation of the person the writer dreamed of (cf. “Daily Text,” November 11, 2021). And the Word became flesh so that we could see what the Father is like, so we could become like him. 

He is the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (1:3). He made a gracious descent to be God With Us. And he is God With Us so that he can be God For Us. Let’s pray.