Consider Jesus

As he drew to the conclusion of his gospel the aged apostle John reflected, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” It was a common characteristic of those early Christians that they could not say enough about Jesus. At a much earlier stage in his life John had been arrested, along with his fellow fisherman-turned-apostle Peter, for publicly proclaiming the name of Jesus. When confronted with a court order not to do so any longer, they replied, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

In a similar vein a number of years ago, when I was a curate in Montreal, we had a visit from Erica Sabiti, the Archbishop of Uganda. During his time there, he was hosted by a family in their home in the suburbs. After he had left, I remember the wife commenting (with some consternation) that all the time he was with them he never stopped talking about Jesus. Apparently that was something quite uncustomary for her as an Anglican!

It seems that our author to the Hebrews is a member of the same camp. He cannot say enough about Jesus. He began by extolling him as the exact representation of God’s being, shining with all the radiance of the divine glory, whose majesty is such that even angels are barely worthy of comparison with him. He is the eternal Son of God, to be worshipped and adored. He is the King of kings, to whom we owe our fullest allegiance. He is the unchanging Creator of the universe, who holds all that is in the palm of his hand. Yet we also know that that hand is a nail-scarred hand. This same Jesus, whose glory is beyond our power to conceive of it, has entered the sphere of our human existence. He has suffered and died in order to be the captain of our salvation. He stands alongside us in our weakness and need as our faithful brother. He is our merciful and faithful high priest.

You might think that after all of this the author might have run out of things to say. In fact, he has only begun. What we have been reading thus far is hardly more than an introduction to what he yearns to tell us about Jesus, who means everything to him. And so, as though we had not been doing so already, he calls upon us to “fix your thoughts on Jesus”. The word means to consider, to contemplate, to observe carefully, to focus our minds and hearts, for we have still more to hear about Jesus.

Jesus the Builder

Who is this Jesus? We have already l earned in chapter one that he is beyond comparison with the angels. Now the author compares Jesus with the towering figure of Jewish history. Although the Hebrew nation traced its origins to Abraham, it owed its identity to Moses. It was Moses who h ad led them out of their generations-long slavery in Egypt and in their trek to freedom in the land that God had promised them. It was Moses who communed with God atop Mount Sinai and brought down with him the laws and decrees which form the heart of the Old Testament. It could easily be said that Moses was the builder of the Jewish nation.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews begs to differ, however. Moses is not the builder of God’s house; he is just a part of it. He is a brick, a board or perhaps a piece of the foundation. That is not to deny the important place that Moses occupies in history. (Jesus himself said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets [that is, Moses’ contribution]; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.") Nor is it in any way to diminish Moses’ role within God’s purposes for his people. Yet it is to say that, as great as Moses was, there is one that is yet greater than he; and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you remember what Jesus said to Peter? “On this rock I will build my church” Jesus is the builder of God’s house. The word employed here is one that was commonly used for shipwrights. It was used to describe what Noah did as he sawed the wood and hammered the nails into the ark. But of course, what the author is speaking of is not a physical structure such as the ark. He is speaking of a spiritual reality. And what we find is that this picture of Jesus as the builder of God’s house points not only to who he is, but also to what we, his followers, are called to be.