Falling asleep in church
Hebrews 2
Many years ago an S-4 submarine was rammed by a ship off the coast of Massachusetts. It sank immediately with the entire crew trapped inside. Rescuers tried for days to save the crew, but they couldn’t. Near the end of the attempted rescue, a deep-sea diver – who was doing everything he could to find a way to release the crew – thought he heard a tapping on the steel wall of the submarine. Placing his helmet against the side of the sub, he realized it was Morse Code. So he connected himself to the side of the sub, and spelled out the message in his mind as he listened. It was repeating the same question over and over. The question was: “Is … there … any … hope?” It has been said, “We can live 40 days without food, 8 days without water, 4 minutes without air, but only a few seconds without hope.”
Hope is not just positive thinking or wishful thinking. Sometimes we hear people talking about hope, saying things like, “I hope the Lions draft pick works out.” “I hope the weather is nice on Saturday.” “I hope the food at this restaurant is good.” “I hope the Tigers win the pennant this year.” “I hope my flight is on-time.” But that isn’t really hope at all. It’s a wish. It would be better to say “I wonder if …” or “I wish …” Hope is more than that.
Over the past decade, tons of people have asked me, “How can you keep doing what you’re doing after all you’ve been through?” “How can you keep helping people?” The longer form of the question is, “How can you keep pointing people to God after the loss of not one but two sons?” I’ve been asked that questions so many times I’ve lost count. Sometimes I wonder myself. But the answer is, because I have hope.
In the Bible, hope is more than wishful thinking. In both the Hebrew and Greek, the words we translate as hope carry with them a sense of certainty. Today the word has lost that sense, but in the Bible, “hope” is trust and a confident expectation that God will come through, that the events of this world do not get the final say. That evil, pain, and despair, though very real, very tangible, do not win in the end. That I will one day see Corin and Zeke again. Now, don’t get me wrong. Hope doesn’t make it hurt any less today. Hope doesn’t take away the pain. There are still days when I’m angry, hurting deeply, wondering where God is, and wondering why. But hope does give me the strength to take one more step on the days when one more step is all I can take.
In northern New York, between the United States and Canada, the Niagara River plummets roughly 180 feet at the American and Horseshoe Falls. Before the falls, there are violent, turbulent rapids. Farther upstream, though, where the river’s current flows more gently, boats are able to navigate. Just before the Welland River empties into the Niagara, a pedestrian walkway spans the river. Posted on this bridge’s pylons is a warning sign for all boaters: “Do you have an anchor?” followed by, “Do you know how to use it?”
Hope can be an anchor, a means of safety and security in the storms of this life. We’re all grasping for that sense of security. We’re all anchored to something. Some anchor themselves to financial security. Some anchor themselves to physical strength. Others anchor themselves to happiness, or fun and enjoyment, or their job, or power and influence, or control, or to this preacher or that teacher or that church. Friends, Becky and I have held two sons in our arms as they died. No job, no emotion, no preacher or teacher, no amount of financial security, none of it could have possibly held during a storm like that. So my question to you today is not “Do you have an anchor?” but “To whom is your life anchored?”
The writer of Hebrews points to the risen Christ as the only one we can safely anchor to. The only one who will hold us fast when the storms rage, when the waves begin to pour over the sides of the boat, when life threatens to take us down in a deluge. And in Hebrews 2, he gives us three characteristics of Christ that make him the only suitable anchor. Three characteristics … and a warning.
Turn with me to Hebrews 2:6-8. Christ is the perfect anchor for our souls first of all because he is the Lord of Life. The writer is quoting from Psalm 8 here. It’s a beautiful Psalm. In it, David describes the wonder of the fact that the creator God of the universe even knows that humanity exists. He’s looking at the heavens, at the wonder of the stars in the sky, the incomprehensibly vast nature of creation, and he begins to feel so … small. But it isn’t a bad kind of small. It’s a good kind of small. It’s a recognition that yes, in the grand scheme of things, I’m very small; I seem insignificant. And yet the God who spoke all of this into existence – a cosmos so massive that it would take millions upon millions of years to travel from one end to the other even at the speed of light – that God sees and knows me.
And in this Psalm, David reminds us of the way God intended things to be from the beginning. Going all the way back to Genesis 1, in which God calls us to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). That call, that command, is given to humanity three times in Genesis. It’s God’s original intention for us. This world, this universe, the cosmos our eternal playground, and our role was to rule and reign over it as God’s people. But the writer of Hebrews says there’s a problem. “We do not see everything in subjection …” (V. 8). Why? Sin. We insist on doing things our way, taking care of things apart from God. Living by our own rules, rules that run contrary to the person and attributes of God. And Adam’s sin has been passed down through the generations and pervaded humanity as an innate bent to go our own way, to seek our own path. To trust our own strength rather than rely on God’s strength. To bow my knee to no one but me.
But this Psalm isn’t just about us. It’s also a messianic psalm. David says, “What is … the son of man, that you care for him?” In the Old Testament, the phrase “son of man” initially meant any human being; any person. But in the Old Testament book of Daniel, it takes on a very different meaning. It refers to a coming Messiah who would rescue the people of God and who would identify perfectly with humanity as a representative of the entire human race.. And it is a title Jesus took upon himself. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus, when he appeared before the high priest during his trial, said “But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (26:64). And it is because Jesus identified with us in becoming human, the Son of God stooping down to attain the greatest height of humanity, emptying himself of his rightful place at the right hand of the Father to become like us, that he is now “crowned with glory and honor,” (V. 7) as the writer of Hebrews says in V. 7, and he has everything in subjection under his feet for us as the Lord of all. He is the Lord of Life, the secure one to whom we may anchor our very selves with confidence.
Now look at Vv. 9-10. Christ is the perfect anchor for our souls secondly because he is the suffering savior.
Jesus, the Christ, is crowned with glory and honor specifically because he suffered death! Jesus passed through death, experiencing the terror of death fully, and came out the other side. He is the suffering savior. If he hadn’t come out the other side victorious over death, leaving the grave behind in resurrection glory, he would simply be another suffering martyr. Just another in a long line of people willing to die for their beliefs, but still dead nonetheless. Not so with Jesus. Yes, he experienced death, and the gospel writers paint very dramatic pictures of his emotional pain and agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as he considered what he was being asked to do.
Hebrews uses the phrase “taste death for everyone.” What does that mean? That he took a nip, a bite, a taste test, but didn’t really experience the whole meal? No, the word translated as taste here means “to partake fully.” He ate the whole thing. Jesus experienced death fully – the whole grisly feast, with all of its terror, all of its sting, all of its misery. He tasted death fully as us, for us. But he passed through death and came out the other side scarred, but victorious. And it is specifically because of his obedience to the will of the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, that he is now crowned with glory and honor.
Jesus knows what it means to suffer. He knows what it means to be afraid, to feel abandoned by God. Think about that for a minute, in Jesus, God knows what it feels like to feel abandoned by God. To feel truly alone in this world, suffering unseen and unheard, like your prayers are hitting the ceiling and crashing back down to earth rather than traveling into the presence of a loving God. Jesus didn’t just suffer for us. He suffered with us. He gets it. He understands. He knows. Over in Hebrews 4:15 we read, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” He knows the power of temptation, and he knows what it feels like to suffer. He gets it. He gets us.
Hebrews goes on to say that he was “made perfect through suffering” (V. 10). Does that mean that prior to his death, Christ wasn’t perfect? That he did not manage to live under the law fully for you and for me? No, not at all. The word for perfect here isn’t referring to moral perfection. That’s assumed. It’s referring to being perfectly qualified. When an employer is looking to hire someone new, they usually have a “perfect candidate” in mind, and then try to find the person who comes the closest to that mental picture. But there’s never a real “perfect candidate.”
But as our savior Christ, through his suffering, is perfectly qualified. In stooping down and becoming one of us in Christ, God has identified with us, experienced life fully with us, and suffered and died for us.
And because of that, he is also the “founder of our salvation.” Actually the best translation of the word translated as “founder” here is “pathfinder or pioneer.” Jesus blazed a trail of salvation that we can now follow. Picture a rock climber going ahead of the others. She chips away to find secure footholds, she inserts the pitons, connects the ropes, and passes them down to those who follow her.
Christ, the Lord of Life, has become the suffering savior, and therefore is our perfect high priest. Look down at Vv. 14-15. And then skip down to V. 17.
So to understand what it means for Jesus to be our perfect high priest, we have to understand what the high priest did. The high priest was a mediator of sorts, a “go-between” a holy God and a sinful people. In the case of the Jewish high priests, it was understood that they were sinful as well, thus they had to purify themselves and atone for their own sins before making atonement for the sins of the people. But the high priest was understood to embody the mercy and faithfulness of God on the one hand, but he also had to be able to fully sympathize the people.
Because Jesus has tasted life as a human being, has faced temptation and in fact lived perfectly under the true meaning of the law, his offering of himself as both fully God, the Son of God, and also as fully human, the representative Son of man, he is able to fulfill both of those roles perfectly in a way that no mere human could ever hope to fulfill them. And we can know with confidence that nothing we can possibly face in which he cannot sympathize with us, help us, rescue us, and going ahead of us as the pioneer of our faith blaze a trail into the kingdom of God, even as we continue to live here in this world.
But this reminder that Christ, the Lord of Life, the Suffering Savior, and the Perfect high Priest, can be our anchor throughout this life comes with a warning, just like that warning on the Niagara River as it leads up to the falls: “Do you have an anchor, and do you know how to use it?” Look at Vv. 1-3.
What good is a great anchor if you don’t use it? The Old Testament, which was given by God to Moses and the Hebrew people through angelic intermediaries, was authoritative and their rule for life for centuries. How much more so the good news of Jesus, the Lord of Life, God himself? You wouldn’t ignore the law, says the writer. How much greater risk to ignore God himself in the person of Jesus. But notice the word used here. “Drift away.” Sometimes its translated “slip away,” like a ring that has, unbeknownst to you, slipped off your finger. The point is, this isn’t a dramatic rejection of Christ. It is a slow-moving, subtle, careless drifting away. So what are the ways we can slowly drift away?
I think the first is time and familiarity. Many of us have heard the good news of Christ so many times, and have become so familiar with it, that we take it for granted, even ignore it. It’s the challenge of overfamiliarity. This past week I’ve seen a ton of Facebook and Instagram photos from friends at Disney World in Florida over spring break. We took our kids a few years back and had a great time. And the people down there are having a blast, visiting each of the parks, really enjoying themselves. But then there are people who have been so many times that it no longer holds its luster. It’s no longer a great place to go. It’s at best boring, at worst an annoyance. The same thing can happen to us in our faith.
Second, we get lazy. We decide we’ll let someone else do the praying, do the serving, life the Christ-life for a while and we’ll just kind of lay back and drift down the river for a while. And third, we are simply too busy. We have too many things going on, even within the church. Most churches keep people so busy doing things for the church, keeping the organization running, that we no longer have time to actually BE out there with people, or to just sit and BE with Jesus in prayer and meditation. We’ve succumbed to the lie that busy equals effective and we try to keep ourselves and everyone else around us as busy as we can.
And so God through the writer of Hebrews shouts a loving and heartfelt but also earnest, dire warning to us: “Pay much closer attention!” Don’t become so comfortable with Christ, so lazy in your faith, or so busy in church that you are no longer paying attention, because if you don’t pay attention, you’re going to unknowingly drift away. Spiritually asleep even as we gather together for worship. Like the Ephesian Church, will it be said of us, “You’re doing everything right, but …” “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. You are enduring patiently and bearing up (under persecution) for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.
BUT, I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love (for me) you had at first” (Rev. 2:1-4). You’re doing all the right things, and I see that, but you’ve lost the intimacy of your relationship with me. And the sad thing is, they didn’t even know it. Falling asleep in church. Drifting away from God totally unaware. Friends, the good news of Jesus is soothing and comforting, but it’s also bracing, challenging, and life-changing. May we not become so familiar with Jesus, and so comfortable in church, that we lose our awe at the greatest of miracles, the greatest of gifts: God stooping down, becoming like us, and dying in our stead to satisfy the demands of his own holiness so that we may once again be united with him. And may we anchor our lives to him, for he is the Lord of Life, the Suffering Savior, and the Perfect High Priest, and our solid anchor in every storm. He is my king. Is he yours?
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