The pioneer of salvation

Hebrews 2:10-18

            “It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

            One of the illustrations that the book of Hebrews uses for Jesus is the pioneer of salvation. If you stop to think about it, a pioneer is a pretty great description for Jesus. Pioneers leave behind their home and comfort, eschewing the ordinary in the hope of something extraordinary. Pioneers take big risks and make sacrifices so that we might be called brothers and sisters (as it says in the 2^nd chapter of Hebrews).

            Throughout history, many people have been called pioneers: Da Vinci. Galileo. Curie. Einstein. In America, we have built a mythos around Daniel Boone, though it must be said that Boone’s quote about having to move on whenever he saw smoke from another man’s chimney because the country was getting too crowded might be the whiniest comment in human history. All of those folks (and many more) were and are pioneers of their fields. Since Jesus’ field is the human race, he is the ultimate pioneer.

            But it’s not all good. Part of being a pioneer is being despised in life (and not just Daniel Boone, who kind of deserved it). To defy what people expect of you is the quickest way to lose friends. To chance a better world will instill fear amongst those whose world is built upon things of the past. Many pioneers die for their cause. Jesus is certainly a big ol’ example of this. Pioneers are hated because they are a threat to the status quo. One of the reasons Jesus was hated was because he had the capacity to save. This is a strange part of the human condition; we tend to hate the thing we need most desperately. Our pride gets in the way and we forget an essential part of our humanity—we need a Savior.

            Instead, we too often sell ourselves on a narrative: We say that so-and-so is the enemy, and so often that so-and-so who we portray as the enemy is precisely the one who can make our lives easier. Our hate of the other paralyzes us from the kind of life we could be leading. It is not others who are keeping you from being who you were created to be; it is your own stinking self. Pioneers are the rare breed who don’t blame their failings on others but pursue something better. Jesus did. He pioneered a way of life free from fear, making us no longer slaves to death. I think that particular point is underplayed in the Christian church: We have absolutely nothing to fear from death any longer. We are slaves to it no longer.

God's three words

Hebrews 1:1-4

How does God speak to us?

            That is the essential question that the book of Hebrews addresses in its opening verses. Once, by the prophets written down in the ancient scriptures, then by God’s Son—by an embodied word that we know in Jesus Christ.

            But how does God continue to speak to us today?

            There are three words of God alluded specifically mentioned in the Bible. The first is scripture itself—the Bible. God speaks to us as we read scripture and let it sit with us. It might be the words themselves that are speaking to you; it might be in, with, and under the words, between the words, or apart from the words altogether, but scripture is certainly one of God’s words for us.

Unfortunately, many people stop there. In fact, many Lutherans stop there. After all, wasn’t one of Luther’s big selling points the idea of sola scriptura—scripture alone? This is most certainly true, and, yet, the very scripture that stands alone also proclaims that God’s word is considerably more multi-faceted than words on a page. The Bible itself gives us two other examples of God’s word beyond scripture. If you think about it, it makes sense that scripture cannot be the one way that God speaks for a variety of reasons, not least because each of these books of the Bible existed in its own place in history. Think about it: When the author/s of Genesis wrote Genesis, how could s/he have any idea of how God might speak in the books that followed? Or that there would be any books that followed in the first place. Same with the prophets. Same, even, with the Gospels.

Jesus came and that feels like it should be the end of the story, but God hasn’t stopped speaking. In fact, in the book of Acts, God sends a further person of God’s own self into the world—the one we call the Holy Spirit—with a promise to continue speaking to us today.

            So, that leaves us with three distinct words of God: The Bible, Jesus himself who John called the word of God incarnate, and the Holy Spirit who continues to blow where it pleases amongst us today. Of course, it is awfully difficult to pin down what the Holy Spirit is doing. I imagine this is one reason why we like to focus on the Bible, because the Bible is simple, clear, and allows us to live without contradictions and debate, right? RIGHT?!

The Psalms and the real "me" underneath it all

Do you ever look back on work you did in the past? Maybe you still have that cardboard box full of old schoolwork from when you were eight or eighteen. Maybe your mom saved all of it in folders and delivered it to you at 30 years old—not that I can relate. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s schoolwork, or handiwork, or work-work—whatever—most people look back on occasion at their work and marvel at how they’ve improved or not.

When you’ve looked back, perhaps you’ve had this experience—where you’ve read something you wrote—or looked over something you made—and thought, “Huh, that was PRETTY TERRIBLE.”

            I suggest you do this every once in a while. I have this wonderful pleasure of preaching on the same scripture every four or so years, so I can always look back, and when I do what I mostly see is not very pretty. I mean, I used to use Garamond font. What. A. Child. I. Was. You’ll be happy to know I’ve progressed to Georgia sometime in the last four years. When I look back, I notice that there are some metaphors that are universal: the perpetual suffering of Vikings fandom, Lutherans’ particular allergy to change, and children pretty much universally being better at this Jesus-following thing than we are. But the particulars change.

            Looking back isn’t really about marveling at how much smarter you are now. We should get older wiser. Rather, we should be looking back to remain humble, to realize that because we were not so smart then, probably we are not so smart now, and so that we might gain some valuable clues about where we are going.

The Psalms are forever moving from the past to the present and the future. “I waited patiently for the Lord” begins Psalm 40, and “he drew me out of the desolate bog.” “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to God.”

The Psalm begins in the past tense for a moment before abruptly changing, saying, “Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.” And then from the past, to the future, it returns abruptly to the present, saying, “Happy are those who make the Lord their trust.”

And so it continues—past, present, future—all folding in on one another. You can’t know the present if you don’t understand the past, and you can’t see the future if you don’t know where you stand. How can you hear the promise of the Gospel—a promise that supersedes time and space, a promise of a future with hope, like it says in that oft-quoted verse from Jeremiah—when you have no clue where you are standing right now? If you don’t understand your own self, you will have no clue what a promise of future hope even means.

We have no idea who we are most of the time.