Sermon Title: "But We Do See Jesus"
Date: October 4, 2009
Minister: Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

It has always seemed to me that on World Communion Sunday, after we have symbolically broken bread with our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world, that the sermon ought to relate in some way.  If I were to use today’s lectionary passage from Mark where Jesus says that a couple who divorces and marries another commits adultery, that would take a lot of explaining to make it a palatable text for World Communion Sunday, or for any of our faithful members who have gone through the pain of divorce—some of whom are happily remarried.  Same with the passage from Job, in which Satan sets out to prove that Job, when afflicted enough, will curse God.

I have preached on those passages in my career, but I am not sure I have ever used today’s text from the opening of the letter to the Hebrews.  It was written to bolster a community of Jewish Christians who had become followers of Christ, but now need encouragement to continue being steadfast.  So first, the anonymous author goes back to the original Jewish Christian community’s identity within God’s salvation history.  “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets…” (1:1)  It’s always good to get a little connection to our ancestry, much as I will later this month when my sister and I travel back to central Pennsylvania where generations of our relatives have lived since the mid 1700s.  So the author here appeals first to familial and faith connections.

Then he focuses on the identify of Jesus himself:  “but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things…He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being…” (1:2-3)  He quotes the Psalmist, who wrote that God made “human beings…for a little while lower than the angels.”  And so too with Jesus, claiming for Jesus both divinity and co-existence with God, but also humanity as he came to earth for a while.  Finally, he argues that Jesus is the pioneer of our human salvation.  The One who saves us also has firsthand experience being one of us, from birth to death.  Jesus’ solidarity with humankind is highlighted through the unambiguous claim that Jesus is “not ashamed to call [human beings] brothers and sisters.” (2:11) 

In a commentary seeking to explain this, one section heading is entitled, “He Became As We Are.”  And that’s what it’s all about, and likely the reason this same Hebrews text is also a lectionary reading for Christmas Day.  No babe laid in a manger, no shepherds, no singing angels.  But here is an affirmation reflected in both the gospels and the epistles that God indeed came to us in human form.  And this human Jesus “is not ashamed to call them [whom he saves] brothers and sisters.”  This is a powerful message for those wavering Christians in the first century, and an equally powerful one for a very diverse Christian population in the 21st century.  We may not see God, we many never see any angels, “but we do see Jesus.”  He was a real, live historical figure who walked on earth and interacted with humans in every sort of condition—some of them his own kinspeople, others who were shunned by society because of sickness or nationality.  But “Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

This is what we should be proclaiming from the pulpit of Bay Shore Church this day.  That is what somebody speaking in some tribal tongue in Africa should say at worship.  Preachers in Europe and Australia and Korea and Japan should say the same.  Jesus is not ashamed to consider any of us who believe in him his brothers and sisters, in spite of our differences.

In a weekly Bible study I conducted two dozen years ago, a participant asked me—apropos to nothing we were discussing—when I thought all the denominations would unite.  Not any time I could imagine, I replied.  Even within denominations there are differences on interpretation of scripture, ordination standards, opinions on whatever the hot political, social and moral issues are at any given point in time.  And if folks within any one denomination cannot come to agreement, how could we expect them to all come together as one church?

Just think of your friends who are Christians.  Some of them go to churches where you wouldn’t care for the music.  Some of them attend worship where the preacher tells them exactly what they are to believe.  Some of their worship services are longer than ours, more formal liturgically than ours, or more contemporary.  Some care less about worship and more about mission work.  Some prefer to go door-to-door seeking converts.

“But we do see Jesus…[who] is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”  Is this what the originators of World Communion Sunday some 73 years ago had in mind?  No one church, no one denomination has the corner on the Jesus market.  Who’s to say God isn’t just as delighted to have teens singing repeated verses of some praise song to an electric guitar at the same time we’re singing “The Church’s One Foundation” to a pipe organ?  Who cares whether churches today used wine or grape juice for communion, wafers or a common loaf of bread?  We all have our own fenced-in little yard of familiarity we prefer to stay inside, but that’s not to say folks inside other little yards don’t have just as much right to worship as they wish.

Nor is it probable that we see eye-to-eye, agree with everything everyone in our own little yard, or church, says.  You may disagree over one or many things.  But you know what I’ve found to be the most effective way of accepting them and loving them anyway?  Pray for them.  Yes, I pray for those with whom I don’t agree.  I don’t pray to convert them to my way of thinking or acting.  I simply pray they be blessed, for they are surely as much children of God as I am.

“But we do see Jesus…”  That’s the message for this World Communion Sunday.  Thank God for this final answer!  It is our hope in very moment of despair.  It is God’s sufficient answer for human failure.  It is the guiding light out of our own aimlessness and sin.  It is the sole common factor that every local church, every denomination, should look to in the midst of whatever inept and awkward fumbling they might find themselves in.  Jesus is the world’s universal figure to whom all Christians can look, no matter whether they see him as an olive-skinned Mediterranean, an ebony-colored African, or a fair-skinned Caucasian.  We do see Jesus, and know who is our Savior.