The Cosmic Christ
Hebrews 1:1-14
On a drizzly afternoon in early 2015 seven people gathered for Washington D.C.’s newest group – The Quitters Club. Their tagline is “Let’s Give Up on Our Dreams … Together!” One attendee was ready to cast aside her long-held ambition to become an actress. Same deal for a would-be writer. Another was ready to quit Washington D.C. The hodgepodge group of strangers were drawn together by the same invite that read: “Most of us have something special we’d like to do with our lives. At the Quitters Club we can help each other stomp out the brush fires set in our hearts, and get on with our lives.”
Founder Justin Cannon has quit all sorts of things – filmmaking, music, graphic design. He is tortured by the dueling forces of grand ambition and intense self-doubt. Most often, the battle leaves him frozen. And despondent. At one point Cannon expressed his growing exasperation. “I was like, ‘We should have a group where people want to give up on their dreams.’ I was making a joke, but somebody said, ‘You know, that’s a really good idea.’”
A few days later he took action. He posted a note on Meetup for his new group. He thought he might be forming a club of one, but within 48 hours, 35 people signed up. And for the next two hours, one after another the attendees expressed their dreams and their inability to make progress. But surprisingly they end up encouraging each other to persevere. The actress, they decide, should give it a hard push for a year before tossing out her ambitions of making it on the stage. The unhappy Washingtonian should look for a new job before giving up on the city. The writer whose day job is getting in the way of her artistic pursuits should carve out time each day for her passion.
“Here we are at the Quitters Club and we’re all encouraging each other to keep going,” one attendee mused. “I knew that was gonna happen,” Cannon says. They will meet again the following month to continue in their quest to help people quit. Or, as it turns out, to keep on trying.
If I could sum up the central message of the book of Hebrews, it would be these two words – Don’t quit. He isn’t talking about quitting on a dream, or a job, or even a relationship. He’s talking about quitting on Jesus. Going back to your pre-Jesus life. Deciding that it isn’t worth the hassle to follow Jesus. That it isn’t worth it to go against the flow of this world because we keep getting beat up when we do that.
Don’t quit. That’s what the writer of Hebrews wants us to walk away with. Why? Because Jesus is superior in every way to anything this world has to offer. And he illustrates that point by pointing out just how superior he is … to the angels. To the magnificent spiritual beings created by God. Turn with me to Hebrews 1:1-14.
So what does the Bible have to say about these angels Jesus is being compared to anyway? Angels do appear in Scripture, and sometimes they have a very human form, as the angel Gabriel did when he appeared to Mary and again to Joseph. But there are other passages of Scripture that paint angels in a very different light. There are two that I want to look at this morning. The first is Isaiah 6:1-4.
“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.”
Isaiah doesn’t tell us how many of these fiery, mighty, winged creatures he saw. But when St. John, in the New Testament, had a similar experience, he said that he saw thousands of thousands, literally millions of these magnificent creatures, hovering in constant motion, ready to do the will of their master. Their voices alone, lifted in praise to the one they worship and serve, cause an earthquake.
The second passage I want to look at briefly is the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of these angels. Ezekiel 10:9-14 says, “And I looked, and behold, there were four wheels beside the cherubim, one beside each cherub, and the appearance of the wheels was like sparkling beryl. And as for their appearance, the four [the cherubim] had the same likeness, as if a wheel were within a wheel … And their whole body, their rims, and their spokes, their wings, and the wheels were full of eyes all around – the wheels that the four of them had. As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing “the whirling wheels.” And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was a human face, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.”
Do you get the feeling that both Isaiah and Ezekiel are doing their very best to describe the indescribable? Magnificent, mighty creatures that shine like the sun, that have multiple wings, multiple faces, surrounded by smoke and fire, whose voices cause the earth to shake. These aren’t the tame little bare-bottomed cherubs of popular art and superstition. These are magnificent, dragon-like, fire-breathing, earthquake-causing creatures of magnificent strength. They would have to be, to carry out the commands of almighty God. There is nothing tame or ordinary about them. They are fierce. And according to the book of Revelation, there are thousands of thousands, millions, of them. Can these angels take different forms? Or are there different kinds? Who knows? It doesn’t matter. The point is, the angels in the presence of God are magnificent, fearsome creatures.
And yet, according to the writer of Hebrews, Jesus – the one who was born in a livestock shelter, who grew up in a backwater town, who was betrayed by one of his closest friends, who was nailed to a cross and then laid in a tomb that is now empty – surpasses them all.
Look at Vv. 4-6. The writer asks a rhetorical question here. “To which of the angels … to which of these magnificent creatures – did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Like I said, that’s a rhetorical question. The answer is, “None.” God didn’t say that to any of them. But he said it to the Son. He’s emphasizing the special relationship between the Father and the Son, between Jesus and the heavenly Father. Jesus isn’t just God-like. Jesus is God. He is just as much God as the Father is God. In fact, it was Jesus who said, “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30).
He also calls Jesus the “firstborn.” Now, he isn’t saying that there was a time when the Father was and the Son wasn’t yet. He’s using royal language, talking about preeminence. It has always been the eldest son of a king who is to assume the throne when his father dies or steps down. He is the preeminent son. Prince Harry, the second son of now King Charles and his first wife, princess Diana, wrote a book about his life simply titled, Spare. That’s how he sees himself. What’s he saying? “I’m here in case something happens to my older brother.”
As the “firstborn,” Jesus, the eternal Son, has a special relationship to the Father that no angel can fathom, and is the heir of all that belongs to the Father. What belongs to the Father? Everything! He is the heir of this cosmos and all that is in it. Jesus IS in fact Jesus of Nazareth, itinerant teacher and miracle worker. But he is ALSO the eternal Son, who existed before the cosmos began and will continue to exist after it ends. And all that is belongs to him.
Now, look at Vv. 7-12. Not only is Jesus “the Son,” one with God and heir to all that is, the preeminent one, he is also the creator of all that is. The writer mentioned it briefly back up in his introduction to this sermon, in V. 2. Now he fleshes it out as he quotes the Psalms. Look at V. 10. The angels are created beings. They find their source in another. Jesus is not a created being. He is the creator. And as the creator, pre-existent from all eternity, he has no source. He has no source because he IS the source. The source of what? The source of everything!
Physicists and astronomers have been studying the cosmos for a long time. And there’s actually often more overlap between science and faith than the popular media would like for you to believe. And there are actually several legitimate positions on creation within orthodox Christian belief. There is, of course, what we call “young earth creationism,” which holds that the six days of creation are literal 24 hour days and views the earth as just a few thousand years old.
There is also what we call “old earth creationism,” which holds that the six days of creation are “periods of time” rather than literal 24 hour days. That position is just as legitimate as the other because the Hebrew word for day, “Yom,” can mean either. It can mean a 24 hour day, or it can mean a set period of time. In fact, in the Old Testament, the uses of the word are evenly divided between those two meanings. The Bible itself doesn’t weight one meaning over the other. So if you assume old earth creationism for just a second, even if you’re a young earth creationist, listen to this …
Among the facts about the universe agreed upon by virtually all astronomers are these:
The universe is only billions of years old, not quadrillions or a near infinite number of years
The universe can be traced back to a single, ultimate origin of matter, energy, time, and space as we know them, and therefore, the Cause of the event must have an existence independent of the universe
The universe, our galaxy, and our solar system demonstrate more than sixty characteristics that require exquisite fine-tuning for their existence and for the existence of any kind of physical life. Three of those characteristics must be fine-tuned to a precision of one part in 1032 or better.
George Smoot, project leader for the satellite called “Cosmic Background Explorer,” proclaimed that the ripples in the radiation left over from what science calls the Big Bang and what theologians call “And God said, let there be light, and there was light,” had been observed. He then commented, “What we found is evidence for the birth of the universe … It’s like looking at God.”
Another astronomer, the agnostic Robert Jastrow, speaking of the recent findings in astronomy, wrote that scientists have been “scaling the mountains of ignorance … conquering the highest peak, pulling themselves over the final rock … to be greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”[i] Matter, energy, space, time itself can all be traced back, like a giant funnel, to a single beginning point.
If there’s a single beginning point, something had to exist prior to that point. An uncaused cause. God. Jesus isn’t a caused cause. Jesus isn’t secondary to the Father. Jesus and the Father are one. God is three distinct persons, personalities, but one substance. We call that the mystery of the trinity. What the writer of this sermon we call the book of Hebrews wants us to understand is that Jesus didn’t just suddenly poof onto the scene at the beginning of the New Testament. All things were created by him, for him, and they belong to him.
Now look at this. This is incredible. God actually calls Jesus God. Look at V. 8. “Of the Son, God says, Your throne, O God, is forever and ever …” Not only is the Son the creator, the source, he is also the sovereign over all of creation. He has been anointed as a king and carries a scepter, symbolic of the rule of a king.
And while this world is constantly changing and will one day come to an end, to be wrapped up like an old garment, Jesus is constant. Unchanging. Through the Old Testament prophet Malachi, God says, “For I the Lord do not change” (Mal. 3:6). Later in Hebrews the writer says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8).
The eternal Son is the creator and heir of all that is. He is also the sovereign ruler. Look at V. 13. Those who serve in the presence of a king are typically required to remain standing, ready to move at the whim of the king, while they are on duty. The Son isn’t standing in the presence of the Father. He sits at his right hand. And kicks up his feet, using the enemies of God like a footstool.
And where are the angels. Those millions of magnificent, fearsome creatures? They’re standing in God’s presence, moving in and out of the throne room of God to carry out his commands. Those magnificent creatures … are his servants. But they don’t just serve begrudgingly. They worship him. They serve gladly. Look at Vv. 6-7.
Those magnificent creatures worship him and serve him. He is above and beyond even the most incredible of all created beings. And yet … they don’t know what it’s like to have the one they serve become like them, and then die for them, and then rise in victory over death for them. Oh, they saw it all happen. The armies of heaven were ready if he called. But no call came. Because he loves us so much that he gave himself willingly, allowed the cross and all that it represents to happen to him.
So when life gets hard because you follow Jesus. When you lose a friendship or a relationship or you struggle because you follow Jesus. When life gets hard and you feel like giving up, going back to your old way of life. When the church gets messy because it’s full of forgiven but still imperfect people. Are you going to quit? Are you going to give up? Turn your back on Jesus? Or are you going to keep holding on? Keep trusting him even when trusting him costs you something real? Because even the steepest price you might pay in this world pales in comparison to his glory and majesty and the life he offers to all who trust him. Keep trusting. Keep hanging on to him. He will not fail you. Let’s pray.
[i] As quoted in Ross, Creation and Time, 128.
