What Do We Do with Jesus?
Commentary
A friend once explained it like this: in a dream, he saw a marvelous apparatus of yellow silk billowing in the breezes next to a cliff. It was a transportation device of some kind, though he couldn’t see either engines or supports. Like a magical tent, it floated in space.
Inside was a man whose face seemed so familiar and friendly that my friend knew immediately this was an intimate acquaintance. However, he could not seem to remember how they were associated, nor the man’s name. The man, with a smile of warmth, invited him to step off the cliff into the contrivance and be carried on a delightful journey in the yellow tent.
But my friend was so intrigued by the device itself that he wanted to try it on his own. He wanted to pilot the magical airship. So, when he entered the craft he fought the man for control and pushed him out onto the cliff. Unfortunately, just as my friend felt the power of flight swell in his commanding grasp, the entire yellow tent began to collapse in on itself, and plummet to disaster below. No matter what he did, my friend could not make the “machine” fly. He cried out for help, and suddenly the man he had pushed out reappeared at his side. In that exact moment, the airship began to billow and slow its freefall. Soon they were soaring together.
Without a further thought my friend knew that the strangely familiar man was Jesus. He also knew why Jesus said to him, “Don’t you know that the power to fly is not found in the ‘machine’ nor in your skills as a pilot but in me?”
None of us begins to soar in life until we meet Jesus. Yet we are not always certain what to do with him, as Herod proved. Still, like the writer of Hebrews makes clear, and as the whole Bible echoes, life itself is all about Jesus.
Isaiah 63:7-9
George MacDonald wrote a love story about “The Day Boy and the Night Girl.” The girl had been raised in a dark cave by a witch and never was allowed to see the light of day. The boy, on the other hand, was raised to live and breathe and romp during the daylight. Never was he allowed to sleep during the day. Never was he put in dark spaces. He went to bed before the sun went down, and his room was brightly lit by candles and torches.
So, says MacDonald, these two roamed their separate worlds. The Night Girl managed to find her way out of the cave, but only during nocturnal darkness. And the Day Boy spread his flights of fancy further abroad, always making sure to be home before sunset.
Of course, destiny draws this pair together. On one day’s hunt, the Day Boy strays too far and too late to avoid the onset of twilight. Falling asleep in bewilderment at the growing gloom, he is later awakened by the Night Girl, who is searching for friends.
“You are a creature of the darkness and love the night,” he told her reproachfully.
“I may be a creature of the darkness,” she replied. “But I do not love the night. I love the day—with all my heart. . . . ”
But she has never had a guide to the light, nor he a teacher of the night. So, they become fast friends, playing out the same youthful delight on either side of dawn and dusk. And when they come to marry, this is the Day Boy’s prayer: “She has got to teach me to be a brave man in the dark, and I have got to look after her until she can bear the heat of the sun and he helps her to see, instead of blinding her.”
Perhaps the marriage of heaven and earth is something like that. Certainly, as Isaiah powerfully sings, the God of glory has always entered our dark world to bring divine light and love. Jesus, of course, is the culmination of heaven’s marriage that brings us children born in darkness into the shining light of grace.
Hebrews 2:10-18
The story of God’s love in the Bible focuses on Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews constantly reminds us. But Jesus did not appear in a vacuum. Throughout the Old Testament, God made it clear that God would send a specially commissioned person to bring healing and forgiveness to the citizens of earth. As priests and kings and prophets were anointed with oil at the start of their careers, so this person, too, would be anointed. In fact, this special delivery would be called “The Anointed,” a term which comes across in Hebrew as “Messiah” and in Greek as “Christ.” This is the idea behind the quotations and reference allusions in the first several chapters of Hebrews.
While God’s people remained confident that God was about to do another tremendous redemptive work on planet earth, the details remained shrouded and misty. It was not at all clear how the looming “Day of the Lord” would emerge from heaven’s occluded hiddenness into earth’s everyday existence. So, when Jesus appeared on the scene, various interpretations about his identity and its relationship to the prophetic “Day of the Lord” quickly developed.
One perspective emphasized Jesus’ humanity, but in a divinely asserted and uniquely empowered role. Seeking continuity with God’s saving initiatives in their people’s past, Ebionite Christians declared that Jesus was “Savior” and “Messiah” in a similar manner to Moses and Joshua and Samuel at the great points of crisis and change in Israel’s history. Jesus was the Messiah foretold by Israel’s prophets, but he was truly and fully human, not divine, empowered by God to bring about deliverance for God’s people. In the face of declining Jewish commitments to the ceremonial and legal codes of the Torah, according to the Ebionites, Jesus demanded a stronger fidelity that included heart devotion in addition to external practices. Jesus was killed, said the Ebionites, because the religious leaders of his day found him threatening and unsettling, particularly when he called them hypocrites and invited the general Jewish population to question their authority. These Ebionites believed God raised Jesus from the dead to vindicate Jesus’ faithful service. Christians, they said, should respond to Jesus’ calls for deep devotion to God, and serve as his witnesses in the Jewish community, emphasizing the need for Jews to more fully and faithfully keep the ceremonial practices and holiness codes. Gentiles might also become Christians, Ebionites admitted, but only if they first became Jews, and fully invested themselves into Jewish identity and religious practices.
In effect, Ebionite Christians understood Jesus to be somewhat like a man wearing a heroic avatar persona. Jesus remained fully human, but due to God’s special dispensation of divine empowerment, he was able to speak more clearly about the things of heaven, perform miracles, and call God’s people to truer faithfulness. Out of step with most Christians, the Ebionites would only read Matthew’s Gospel as scripture alongside the Hebrew Bible. They believed Paul to be a monstrous blasphemer for having adapted so fully into the non-Jewish Hellenist world of his Gentile converts, and for violating true monotheism in his declarations that Jesus is God.
We recognize this Ebionite perspective as it lingers in our current society. Jesus was a good man, some say, perhaps one of the greatest who has ever lived. Jesus was an incredible teacher, or a superb moral prophet, according to others. We have so much to learn from him.
True, but if our appreciation of Jesus stops there, we miss the biblical point. God’s work among us is not limited to injecting larger-than-life leaders into our irredeemable situation now and again, either to wake us up or get us to cope and survive. God enters our world to address the realities of sin and evil that threaten and destroy us. And that kind of job requires someone more than merely human, no matter how good or insightful he or she might be.
A competing view regarding Jesus in the early church was held by the Gnostics. Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics—nonrelational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism, according to Gnostics. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew scriptures) was certainly less than perfect and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all), have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, He needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to “seem” or “appear”), believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram), who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of Jesus’ intrinsic difference from us that he was able to speak to our condition, and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, similarly to the Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a very good human being, who was then adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” This, of course, was the release, or separation, of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionist Gnostics believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit, and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate, and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word, γνωσις, meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by Gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’s congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification, through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest …” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to …” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence …”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for instance, Jesus tells Judas that Judas’s planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance, and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for Judas alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies. Only this will release the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance that diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of Gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For Gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that the Apostle John addresses in his first letter. Some Gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion, and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning? We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened; they are not.
Like Ebionite views regarding Jesus, these Gnostic perceptions continue to whisper. Jesus is the on-going manifestation of God’s presence, appearing now and again to people in need, righting wrongs like Superman, or performing miracles in the unlikeliest of settings.
But neither Ebionite Adoptionism nor Gnostic Docetism fit the message of the writer of Hebrews. Jesus is truly God, and that means there is no higher or better or stronger advocate for us (including the angels, esteemed and powerful as they are) who are God’s favored creatures. At the same time, Jesus is fully and truly human, sharing with us all of the realities of material and physical life. Because we are struggling in a sin-compromised world, Jesus shared our journey completely with us. But because we need a powerful Savior who is able to take us out of and beyond the fears and failings and pains of this existence, Jesus is also fully and completely divine.
Matthew 2:13-23
While built upon Mark’s earlier gospel manuscript, Matthew’s expansion includes the birth narratives of chapters 1–2, extensive inserts of Jesus’ teaching material (“the Sermon on the Mount” in chapters 5–7, missionary teachings in 10, kingdom parables in 13, instructions about the church community in 18, and the eschatological discourses of chapters 24–25), and a more fully developed conclusion (chapter 28). Our first glimpse of Jesus through this gospel’s lens clearly connects Jesus with the Jewish community (Matthew 1:1–17). Jesus is identified as a son of David and a son of Abraham. The link with Abraham ties Jesus to the unique covenantal community of Old Testament Israel, and all of the religious and missional implications that it carries. The filial relationship with David identifies Jesus as royal stock and forms the basis for the many references in the gospel to consider Jesus as the true king of Israel or the Jews, based upon the eternal promise of Yaweh in 2 Samuel 7. Both of these themes are more fully developed throughout the gospel as a whole.
Matthew does a quick-step through a variety of incidents in Jesus’ early life to reveal even more about the essential character of this unique lad. Jesus, Matthew makes clear, is actually destined to replay or relive the life of Israel in a host of dimensions:
Later, as Matthew brings his preaching about Jesus to a close, he emphasizes Jesus’ kingship one more time. The last words of Jesus in the gospel are a royal declaration and commission. Jesus the risen king addresses his key leaders, the ones who will take the mission of Yahweh to the world (Matthew 28:18–20) and says to them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
History itself predicted that Yahweh, the God of Israel, was about to so something really big, said Matthew (1:1-17). As Yahweh had done in the past, now again he raised up a miraculously-born and commissioned Savior (1:18-25). This time the deliverer was announced as King of God’s people with global impact (2:1-23), and his own life circumstances paralleled and replayed Israel’s own existence. When he rose up as leader (4), the old covenant was confirmed and updated (5-7). Then, embarking on a deliberate campaign to reclaim his throne (7-21), this Son of David was challenged on all fronts (22-27). By overcoming death itself, Jesus claimed “all authority,” and reinvigorated the divine mission begun with Abraham. “Go and make disciples of all nations…”
The king has come! Long live the king!
Application
C. Knight Aldrich, a medical doctor and the first chairperson of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago (1955-1964), was a keen analyst of the motivations for our behaviors. He worked with the social services agencies of Chicago for a time, particularly spending hours with teenagers who had been arrested for shoplifting or other theft. Aldrich interviewed them to find out how they had come to this. He also talked with the parents, attempting to discover how they had handled the problem from the first time they knew about it.
Over the years he kept records of his interviews, noting that they seemed to separate into two types. One group of teens became repeat offenders and showed up in the criminal justice system again and again. The other was a collection of those who were with him one time and then stayed straight.
Dr. Aldrich concluded that there were basically two different ways that parents responded to initial shoplifting incidents. Some confronted their children with words like this: “Now we know what you’re like! You’re a thief! We’re going to be watching you now, buddy! Don’t think you can get away with this again!”
The others usually said something like this: “Tom, that wasn’t like you at all! We’ll have to go back to the store and clear this thing up, but then it’s done with, okay? What you did was wrong. You know that it was wrong. But we’re sure you won’t do it again.”
Aldrich said that the parents who assumed the worst usually got the worst, and the parents who assumed the best most often got the best. The scripture writers of today’s lectionary passages might well be reading Aldrich’s notes as they explain God’s urgent love for us.
Alternative Application (Hebrews 2:8-18)
Much that pretends to be Christian religion seems to have a rather negative view of the human spirit. Although the Bible speaks prophetically in judgment against blatant sinfulness, there are also many passages in scripture that tell of God’s delight in his children. More than that, the fruit of the Spirit, which the apostle Paul says becomes the way of life for someone who is loved by God, is itself “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). As God looks with tender eyes at us, so we are encouraged to view others with grace.
That can be a powerful influence in a person’s life. Alan Loy McGinnis tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company’s top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3000 people. Yet in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems, and, for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan’s desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, “Let’s just wait a little bit longer.” And Joan said, “Give it one more try.” And Joan said, “I never would have hired you if I didn’t think you could handle it!”
The woman’s voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, “Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!”
Isn’t that the message of the Gospel? Isn’t that the story of the Bible? That God believed in us while we were still sinners, while we were still failures, while we were at the point in our lives that we couldn’t seem to make it on our own?
Sometimes we need the straightedge of God’s righteousness in order to see how bent we are. But sometimes, as we find in the words of Hebrews’ author in this passage, it helps us learn to smile at others like God has at us. Carry on! God’s got your back! Remember how you made it through, by God’s grace and good help, during the last crisis? You can do it again! And don’t forget the divine promises and expectations that sustain you.
Inside was a man whose face seemed so familiar and friendly that my friend knew immediately this was an intimate acquaintance. However, he could not seem to remember how they were associated, nor the man’s name. The man, with a smile of warmth, invited him to step off the cliff into the contrivance and be carried on a delightful journey in the yellow tent.
But my friend was so intrigued by the device itself that he wanted to try it on his own. He wanted to pilot the magical airship. So, when he entered the craft he fought the man for control and pushed him out onto the cliff. Unfortunately, just as my friend felt the power of flight swell in his commanding grasp, the entire yellow tent began to collapse in on itself, and plummet to disaster below. No matter what he did, my friend could not make the “machine” fly. He cried out for help, and suddenly the man he had pushed out reappeared at his side. In that exact moment, the airship began to billow and slow its freefall. Soon they were soaring together.
Without a further thought my friend knew that the strangely familiar man was Jesus. He also knew why Jesus said to him, “Don’t you know that the power to fly is not found in the ‘machine’ nor in your skills as a pilot but in me?”
None of us begins to soar in life until we meet Jesus. Yet we are not always certain what to do with him, as Herod proved. Still, like the writer of Hebrews makes clear, and as the whole Bible echoes, life itself is all about Jesus.
Isaiah 63:7-9
George MacDonald wrote a love story about “The Day Boy and the Night Girl.” The girl had been raised in a dark cave by a witch and never was allowed to see the light of day. The boy, on the other hand, was raised to live and breathe and romp during the daylight. Never was he allowed to sleep during the day. Never was he put in dark spaces. He went to bed before the sun went down, and his room was brightly lit by candles and torches.
So, says MacDonald, these two roamed their separate worlds. The Night Girl managed to find her way out of the cave, but only during nocturnal darkness. And the Day Boy spread his flights of fancy further abroad, always making sure to be home before sunset.
Of course, destiny draws this pair together. On one day’s hunt, the Day Boy strays too far and too late to avoid the onset of twilight. Falling asleep in bewilderment at the growing gloom, he is later awakened by the Night Girl, who is searching for friends.
“You are a creature of the darkness and love the night,” he told her reproachfully.
“I may be a creature of the darkness,” she replied. “But I do not love the night. I love the day—with all my heart. . . . ”
But she has never had a guide to the light, nor he a teacher of the night. So, they become fast friends, playing out the same youthful delight on either side of dawn and dusk. And when they come to marry, this is the Day Boy’s prayer: “She has got to teach me to be a brave man in the dark, and I have got to look after her until she can bear the heat of the sun and he helps her to see, instead of blinding her.”
Perhaps the marriage of heaven and earth is something like that. Certainly, as Isaiah powerfully sings, the God of glory has always entered our dark world to bring divine light and love. Jesus, of course, is the culmination of heaven’s marriage that brings us children born in darkness into the shining light of grace.
Hebrews 2:10-18
The story of God’s love in the Bible focuses on Jesus, as the writer of Hebrews constantly reminds us. But Jesus did not appear in a vacuum. Throughout the Old Testament, God made it clear that God would send a specially commissioned person to bring healing and forgiveness to the citizens of earth. As priests and kings and prophets were anointed with oil at the start of their careers, so this person, too, would be anointed. In fact, this special delivery would be called “The Anointed,” a term which comes across in Hebrew as “Messiah” and in Greek as “Christ.” This is the idea behind the quotations and reference allusions in the first several chapters of Hebrews.
While God’s people remained confident that God was about to do another tremendous redemptive work on planet earth, the details remained shrouded and misty. It was not at all clear how the looming “Day of the Lord” would emerge from heaven’s occluded hiddenness into earth’s everyday existence. So, when Jesus appeared on the scene, various interpretations about his identity and its relationship to the prophetic “Day of the Lord” quickly developed.
One perspective emphasized Jesus’ humanity, but in a divinely asserted and uniquely empowered role. Seeking continuity with God’s saving initiatives in their people’s past, Ebionite Christians declared that Jesus was “Savior” and “Messiah” in a similar manner to Moses and Joshua and Samuel at the great points of crisis and change in Israel’s history. Jesus was the Messiah foretold by Israel’s prophets, but he was truly and fully human, not divine, empowered by God to bring about deliverance for God’s people. In the face of declining Jewish commitments to the ceremonial and legal codes of the Torah, according to the Ebionites, Jesus demanded a stronger fidelity that included heart devotion in addition to external practices. Jesus was killed, said the Ebionites, because the religious leaders of his day found him threatening and unsettling, particularly when he called them hypocrites and invited the general Jewish population to question their authority. These Ebionites believed God raised Jesus from the dead to vindicate Jesus’ faithful service. Christians, they said, should respond to Jesus’ calls for deep devotion to God, and serve as his witnesses in the Jewish community, emphasizing the need for Jews to more fully and faithfully keep the ceremonial practices and holiness codes. Gentiles might also become Christians, Ebionites admitted, but only if they first became Jews, and fully invested themselves into Jewish identity and religious practices.
In effect, Ebionite Christians understood Jesus to be somewhat like a man wearing a heroic avatar persona. Jesus remained fully human, but due to God’s special dispensation of divine empowerment, he was able to speak more clearly about the things of heaven, perform miracles, and call God’s people to truer faithfulness. Out of step with most Christians, the Ebionites would only read Matthew’s Gospel as scripture alongside the Hebrew Bible. They believed Paul to be a monstrous blasphemer for having adapted so fully into the non-Jewish Hellenist world of his Gentile converts, and for violating true monotheism in his declarations that Jesus is God.
We recognize this Ebionite perspective as it lingers in our current society. Jesus was a good man, some say, perhaps one of the greatest who has ever lived. Jesus was an incredible teacher, or a superb moral prophet, according to others. We have so much to learn from him.
True, but if our appreciation of Jesus stops there, we miss the biblical point. God’s work among us is not limited to injecting larger-than-life leaders into our irredeemable situation now and again, either to wake us up or get us to cope and survive. God enters our world to address the realities of sin and evil that threaten and destroy us. And that kind of job requires someone more than merely human, no matter how good or insightful he or she might be.
A competing view regarding Jesus in the early church was held by the Gnostics. Gnosticism saw the world as cosmologically dualistic. All of physical reality was bad and degraded, while spiritual dimensions of life were good and empowering. The ultimate deity was like that of the Greek Stoics—nonrelational, dispassionate, impassive, unchanging, and transcendent. But since the material world actually existed, an emanation (called the Demiurge) from the transcendent god must have served as a secondary or subordinate creator. Of course, any god which would bring into being material things was already compromised. So, clearly, the deity of the Jews, the Creator God of the Old Testament, had to be a bad god. This distinguished Christianity from Judaism, according to Gnostics. Like the Demiurge (or identified with the Demiurge), the god of Genesis (and therefore all of the Hebrew scriptures) was certainly less than perfect and may well have been an ogre with a sadistic mean streak. Human beings, after all, are at best an evil joke. Many of us (but not all), have a divine spark trapped within our material shells, imprisoned almost to extinction by the loathsome attachments we have to passion and appetites.
Christianity, however, is the religion of Jesus, the liberator. Obviously, if Jesus is to bring salvation, He needs to transcend the material world, which is inherently bad. So Gnostic forms of Christianity took one of two approaches when theologizing about Jesus. The Docetists (from the Greek word meaning to “seem” or “appear”), believed that Jesus was only a divine projection into our world (like a hologram), who was not actually human and did not really interact directly with material substance. It was precisely because of Jesus’ intrinsic difference from us that he was able to speak to our condition, and provide a means of spiritual escape.
The Adoptionists, on the other hand, similarly to the Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a very good human being, who was then adopted by God to be used as a temporary transmitter of divine teachings. When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit came upon him, granting to the man Jesus the ability to see, know, and understand transcendent, spiritual things. Later, when Jesus was being crucified, he himself acknowledged what had happened, for he raised his face toward heaven and cried out, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!” This, of course, was the release, or separation, of the divine spirit from the human Jesus. Many of the Adoptionist Gnostics believed that God was deeply grateful to Jesus (the man) for his faithful service and partnership for a time with the divine spirit, and that after Jesus (the man) died, God raised him up as a new kind of creature. This resurrected Jesus was the prototype that true Christians should emulate, and toward which they should aspire.
If we as humans are to gain release from our material prisons and become truly liberated spirits, we need several things. First, we must gain the appropriate knowledge. This is the origin of the term Gnosticism, which is simply taken from the Greek word, γνωσις, meaning “knowing” or “knowledge.” Since we are all trapped in the same material muddle, only a transcendent, divine spirit can communicate this necessary knowledge to us. Jesus’ life was all about this, whether as a projection into our experiences who was not himself fully, materially human, or by way of the unique divine insights and abilities granted the man who was adopted by God, and endowed with a special spiritual connection. So we need to learn the teachings of Jesus, because these will help us shed the claws of materialism that dig into the divine sparks many of us are beginning to realize that we have. Of course, the sayings and parables of Jesus would be interpreted differently by Gnostic teachers than they would by John and those who followed in his steps. That was the reason for the controversy which erupted in Gaius’s congregation in the first place.
Second, we must engage in rituals of purification, through which we learn to transcend our own evil flesh, and purify the growing power of our spirits. These may be negations of bodily functions, or solitary mystical reveries. In any case, they are very myopic and self-focused: “I am on a spiritual quest …” “I am seeking truth, which you might not be privy to …” “I cannot be bothered by your needs or concerns, since I have moved into transcendence …”
Third, we must release the divine spark within us, ultimately through the death of our physical bodies. This is why, in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, for instance, Jesus tells Judas that Judas’s planned betrayal of Jesus is of supreme importance, and constitutes the most necessary task that any of the disciples could accomplish. Judas is the hero of the story, for Judas alone understands that Jesus cannot be a fully blessed immaterial spirit until his physical flesh and blood dies. Only this will release the divine spark within him. So Judas is praised by Jesus as the one who does the very best thing in having Jesus killed. Physical death is the only guaranteed way to get rid of the material substance that diminishes true human life. Thus, Jesus’ death and resurrection are at the center of Gnostic theology, but their purposes are strikingly different than expressed in the rest of Christian hope and understanding. For Paul and John and the rest of the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death was a scandal and a tragedy, even if it was part of the divine purpose and will. Jesus’ resurrection was an affirmation of the goodness of human life restored, precisely in its material state. For Gnostics, however, things were exactly the opposite. Jesus’ death was the great release, and the resurrected Jesus was fully spiritual, completely separated from physical influence or limitation.
These opposing perspectives about the intended or best expression of human life produced the ethical concerns that the Apostle John addresses in his first letter. Some Gnostics evidently believed that since we are powerless to transform our bodies or material substance into anything good, we might as well allow our flesh to enjoy its pitiable quest for passion, and indulge ourselves in any gross sensuality that our bodies might lead us into. After all, our truest beings are not really engaged in these things; it is only our weak and self-destructive bodies that are so inclined. Meanwhile, our spirits are set on higher goals and purposes.
A second element of Gnostic behavior, apparently, was that of ignoring the plight of others. Why should we try to alleviate the suffering which others experience in their flesh, since comfort only buttresses the pretense that their bodies have some meaning? We ought not to care for others, because such investments mess us up with material reality. These actions, in turn, only pull us away from our truest spiritual goals, strengthen the capacities and resolve of the material prisons of our bodies which hold our spirits in check, and prevent others, whose flesh is weakening, from gaining more quickly the blessed release that will happen to their spirits when their bodies actually die.
All of this seems to have fostered a kind of Gnostic elitism. If some of us know these things, and others do not, we who know are better than those who do not know. We who have true knowledge from Jesus are on the track toward illumination and release, while those others are dumb dodos. Too bad they aren’t like us, but there is not a thing we can do about it. We are enlightened; they are not.
Like Ebionite views regarding Jesus, these Gnostic perceptions continue to whisper. Jesus is the on-going manifestation of God’s presence, appearing now and again to people in need, righting wrongs like Superman, or performing miracles in the unlikeliest of settings.
But neither Ebionite Adoptionism nor Gnostic Docetism fit the message of the writer of Hebrews. Jesus is truly God, and that means there is no higher or better or stronger advocate for us (including the angels, esteemed and powerful as they are) who are God’s favored creatures. At the same time, Jesus is fully and truly human, sharing with us all of the realities of material and physical life. Because we are struggling in a sin-compromised world, Jesus shared our journey completely with us. But because we need a powerful Savior who is able to take us out of and beyond the fears and failings and pains of this existence, Jesus is also fully and completely divine.
Matthew 2:13-23
While built upon Mark’s earlier gospel manuscript, Matthew’s expansion includes the birth narratives of chapters 1–2, extensive inserts of Jesus’ teaching material (“the Sermon on the Mount” in chapters 5–7, missionary teachings in 10, kingdom parables in 13, instructions about the church community in 18, and the eschatological discourses of chapters 24–25), and a more fully developed conclusion (chapter 28). Our first glimpse of Jesus through this gospel’s lens clearly connects Jesus with the Jewish community (Matthew 1:1–17). Jesus is identified as a son of David and a son of Abraham. The link with Abraham ties Jesus to the unique covenantal community of Old Testament Israel, and all of the religious and missional implications that it carries. The filial relationship with David identifies Jesus as royal stock and forms the basis for the many references in the gospel to consider Jesus as the true king of Israel or the Jews, based upon the eternal promise of Yaweh in 2 Samuel 7. Both of these themes are more fully developed throughout the gospel as a whole.
Matthew does a quick-step through a variety of incidents in Jesus’ early life to reveal even more about the essential character of this unique lad. Jesus, Matthew makes clear, is actually destined to replay or relive the life of Israel in a host of dimensions:
- Jesus copies Israel’s miraculous existence and purpose, born through divine intervention as Savior of nations (1:18–25).
- He is spared from the murderous intents of a scheming king (2:3-8) who goes on to slaughter the innocents (2:16-18), just as Moses was delivered in Exodus 2 while many Israelite boys were slaughtered (this is the point of our lectionary reading for today).
- Like the nation as a whole, Jesus is gathered out of Egypt (2:15).
- From his earliest days, he is dedicated to a divine mission (so the play on the words “Nazirite” and “Nazarene” in 2:23).
- His ministry is set in motion by passing through waters (3), right at the same spot where Israel crossed the Jordan River in order to begin its witness to the nations from the Promised Land.
- Jesus also wanders in the wilderness for forty days (4:1-11) before he can fully assume his adult responsibilities, mirroring Israel’s traumatic forty years described in the book of Numbers.
Later, as Matthew brings his preaching about Jesus to a close, he emphasizes Jesus’ kingship one more time. The last words of Jesus in the gospel are a royal declaration and commission. Jesus the risen king addresses his key leaders, the ones who will take the mission of Yahweh to the world (Matthew 28:18–20) and says to them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
History itself predicted that Yahweh, the God of Israel, was about to so something really big, said Matthew (1:1-17). As Yahweh had done in the past, now again he raised up a miraculously-born and commissioned Savior (1:18-25). This time the deliverer was announced as King of God’s people with global impact (2:1-23), and his own life circumstances paralleled and replayed Israel’s own existence. When he rose up as leader (4), the old covenant was confirmed and updated (5-7). Then, embarking on a deliberate campaign to reclaim his throne (7-21), this Son of David was challenged on all fronts (22-27). By overcoming death itself, Jesus claimed “all authority,” and reinvigorated the divine mission begun with Abraham. “Go and make disciples of all nations…”
The king has come! Long live the king!
Application
C. Knight Aldrich, a medical doctor and the first chairperson of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago (1955-1964), was a keen analyst of the motivations for our behaviors. He worked with the social services agencies of Chicago for a time, particularly spending hours with teenagers who had been arrested for shoplifting or other theft. Aldrich interviewed them to find out how they had come to this. He also talked with the parents, attempting to discover how they had handled the problem from the first time they knew about it.
Over the years he kept records of his interviews, noting that they seemed to separate into two types. One group of teens became repeat offenders and showed up in the criminal justice system again and again. The other was a collection of those who were with him one time and then stayed straight.
Dr. Aldrich concluded that there were basically two different ways that parents responded to initial shoplifting incidents. Some confronted their children with words like this: “Now we know what you’re like! You’re a thief! We’re going to be watching you now, buddy! Don’t think you can get away with this again!”
The others usually said something like this: “Tom, that wasn’t like you at all! We’ll have to go back to the store and clear this thing up, but then it’s done with, okay? What you did was wrong. You know that it was wrong. But we’re sure you won’t do it again.”
Aldrich said that the parents who assumed the worst usually got the worst, and the parents who assumed the best most often got the best. The scripture writers of today’s lectionary passages might well be reading Aldrich’s notes as they explain God’s urgent love for us.
Alternative Application (Hebrews 2:8-18)
Much that pretends to be Christian religion seems to have a rather negative view of the human spirit. Although the Bible speaks prophetically in judgment against blatant sinfulness, there are also many passages in scripture that tell of God’s delight in his children. More than that, the fruit of the Spirit, which the apostle Paul says becomes the way of life for someone who is loved by God, is itself “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). As God looks with tender eyes at us, so we are encouraged to view others with grace.
That can be a powerful influence in a person’s life. Alan Loy McGinnis tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company’s top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3000 people. Yet in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems, and, for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan’s desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, “Let’s just wait a little bit longer.” And Joan said, “Give it one more try.” And Joan said, “I never would have hired you if I didn’t think you could handle it!”
The woman’s voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, “Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!”
Isn’t that the message of the Gospel? Isn’t that the story of the Bible? That God believed in us while we were still sinners, while we were still failures, while we were at the point in our lives that we couldn’t seem to make it on our own?
Sometimes we need the straightedge of God’s righteousness in order to see how bent we are. But sometimes, as we find in the words of Hebrews’ author in this passage, it helps us learn to smile at others like God has at us. Carry on! God’s got your back! Remember how you made it through, by God’s grace and good help, during the last crisis? You can do it again! And don’t forget the divine promises and expectations that sustain you.
