Remembering the Past...
        Planning the Future

    Park Christian Church
                                                                    (Disciples of Christ)

October 11, 2009

Scripture:         Hebrews 4:12-16

Sermon:           “A Mile in Your Shoes”

            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the book of Hebrews, chapter 4, verses 12 through 16.  You can find that easily on page   of the New Testament in the pew Bible.

            The writer of Hebrews here proposes something unique in the writings about Jesus Christ.  He says that Jesus serves as our high priest, living and existing eternally in the presence of God following his resurrection.  Jesus is a high priest.  And he makes the point of saying that Jesus is the supreme high priest, better than all of the other priests that ever served God at the Temple in Jerusalem.

            It’s a unique claim.  Other writings about Jesus don’t build our understanding of Christ in this way.  In fact, usually Jesus is said to be the sacrifice.  But, here, the writer of this book says that he is the priest who offers himself as a sacrifice.  So, he is therefore a new sort of high priest, making all others irrelevant for us.

            Now, priests used to make sacrifices on behalf of the people for a wide variety of reasons.  They made sacrifices as a way of pardoning sins, which is most familiar to us.  But, they made sacrifices of thanksgiving, too.  And there were sacrifices made whenever folks entered into covenants and contracts with each other.  Sacrifices were made for big, important, national events.  And priests were responsible for these things.

            Now, a priest was just a man.  A priest, yes.  But, just a man.  And as such, a priest had to offer a sacrifice first to cleanse his own sins before offering sacrifices on behalf of others.  That is why it is important in these words to follow that the writer points out that Jesus was without sin.

            The whole passage, and others like it in Hebrews, to me points to a very radical understanding of how God relates to us through Jesus Christ.  I’ll explain in a moment.  First, let us hear the word of the Lord…

            Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render and account.

            Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

            I think that every Christian should know this.  So, I’m going to do a little bit of teaching here.  I think that you should be able to say this to someone else should you ever be asked.  If you happen to be talking about faith or religion and someone should ask, “Just who and what is Jesus Christ?  Was he human?  Is he still living?  Is he divine?  You know, is this a human being or is this God?”

            I think that every Christian should know what the church has been saying and teaching.  So, if you don’t get anything else from today’s sermon, I want you to take this away.  Are you ready?

            It turns out that many of the first people to follow Jesus Christ argued a great deal about how to answer such a question.  You see, to be a divine being, you have to have existed throughout all eternity.  There was no point at which you did not exist and you were not created by something else.  That is what it means to be divine.  So, is the man we know from history as Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean Jew living in the first century a divine being?  Is he, somehow, God?

            There was a man named Arius who said that Jesus did not exist in any way before his birth to the woman named Mary.  So, he wasn’t exactly divine according to this view.  He was created.  He had a definite starting point.  Birth.  But, Arius said that God adopted Jesus as God’s Son when John baptized him in the Jordan River.

            There were others who said that Jesus was completely divine.  He existed from before the beginning of time, you see.  No one created him.  He was with God, and he was God, as you might recognize from the Gospel of John.  But, these folks argued that Jesus was not actually a human being at all.  That was just an illusion created so that we could relate to what God was doing.

            So, you’ve got the Arians, the created human being people.  And then you’ve got the Docetists, the illusion of a human being people.

            Here is what the church eventually said.  And, remember, it took a few hundred years to work all of this out.  And the statement that I’m about to read to you came from a gathering of very brilliant minds, not all of whom were entirely sure of what they believed until arguing it out for themselves.  And this is what I want you to be sure to know as a Christian.  Every Christian should know this.

            In October of the year 451, about 370 bishops gathered for the Council of Chalcedon decided that the correct way to understand the human and divine question of Jesus is this:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood.  In all things like unto us, without sin.  Begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means takes away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.

            Okay, these were some lofty thinkers.  They were academics, you might say.  What does that mean?  The position that the church took was this:

            Jesus is the joining together of the divine Christ, who existed from before the beginning of time with the Father, and a human man that was born to the Virgin Mary.  He is then, fully human and fully divine.  And the divine nature of Jesus is indistinguishable from God the Creator.  They are, if you will, of the same divine substance, or stuff as I like to say.  But, that divine substance was subject to exist in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth.

            Two natures, divine and human, fully present in one person, Jesus Christ.  That’s what you have to know.  Write it down.  Council of Chalcedon.  Two natures, divine and human, fully present together and inseparable in the life of Jesus.

            I say that you should know that.  And you should.  The degree to which you get it, understand it, or fully agree with it?  Well, we are Disciples.  So, that is up to you.  But, you should know it.

            Now, if God was fully present in the person of Jesus Christ, what does that say?

            The writer of Hebrews says that we do NOT have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.  Did you read that?  This isn’t some guy, human or divine, that can’t get his head around our lives, our stuff, our trials and temptations.  That’s not what we’re dealing with.  He said we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are.  He didn’t give into those temptations.  But, he knew them.  He experienced them.  He knows what our lives are like, what they are all about.

            Did you hear that?

            I mean, we’re making a claim that God has somehow experienced the stuff of human life by existing fully in some way during the life of a man named Jesus of Nazareth.  God experienced human life.  Right?  Isn’t that what this is saying?  We don’t have somebody that can’t identify with us.  We’ve got somebody’s who’s been there.  We’ve got somebody’s who’s walked a mile in our shoes.  So, of course there is grace flowing from the throne of God.  God gets it.

            I think it looks something like this…

            I used to coach some teenagers.  Soccer.  And I loved it.  These kids challenged me.  And to see them put it together sometimes with the things I was trying to teach them, it’s one of the most life-giving things I’ve ever done.

            I had a kid that was gifted.  I mean he could do things with that little round ball that would just leave you breathless.  And it was so effortless to him.  Natural.  It was like the ball itself was just an extension of his body.  And on the field there were times when nobody could stop him.

            Quiet as the day is long, though.  He was quiet.  And in practice he would stare off into nowhere so that I’d have to call out his name two or three times before he snapped his head around.  And then he’d do whatever the rest of the team was doing with accuracy, speed, and precision.

            I asked him once to be a team captain.  He just said, “Naw, man.  I’m not the one.”  And that was that.  He was a confusing kid.  He wasn’t shy.  He was just disconnected.  Do you know what I mean?  Like is mind was in space somewhere.  But, boy could he play that game.

            Now, there was one game that our team was playing.  I remember that this kid couldn’t do a whole lot of anything that day.  He couldn’t dribble the ball without losing it.  He couldn’t shoot without sending it off into the woods.  He wouldn’t pass the ball to his teammates.  He was pushing and shoving players on the other team.  And finally he just exploded into this incredible tantrum of words that I can’t repeat.  Every single one of them was directed at the head referee.  I mean he said things that you don’t imagine a fifteen year-old should have even heard about yet.  And that referee kicked him out right out of the game, which left us one player short.

            When the game was over I found this kid sitting off by himself on top of a picnic table.  No one had come to pick him up.  So we waited there for a while.  No one answered the phone at his house.  Finally, I told him to get in my car and I’d take him home.  Plus, that might give me a chance to find out just what in the world he was thinking pulling a stunt like that.  But, he just stared out the window the whole way there.

            We pulled up to his house to the flashing lights of a police car.  The boy’s father was being put in the back in handcuffs.  His mother was in tears at the front door and I could see the bruises and cuts on her face.  I could tell from the kids’ reaction that this was not the first time anything like this ever happened.  He got out of the car and looked back at me to say this:  Walk a mile in my shoes, coach.  Walk a mile in my shoes.

            You know, none of that stuff going on at this kid’s house was an excuse for what he’d done.  It didn’t make it okay.  But, I got a glimpse into his world for just a moment.  And I learned why he was the way he was.

            What does it mean to say that God experienced our human life?  What does that mean?  That God walked a mile in my shoes?  A mile in your shoes?  I don’t know.  Maybe when we have to render an account, you know, explain ourselves, the response we receive will be more like the response from somebody’s who’s been where we’ve been before.  It’s not an excuse.  But, it is understanding.

            Maybe the life of Jesus allows God to say back to us things like this:  I know what it’s like to hurt.  I know what it’s like to have my heart broken.  I know what it’s like to be betrayed.  I’ve been hungry, too.  I’ve been lonely.  God, I’ve been lonely.  And I’ve been scared.  I get it.  I understand.  And…I’m so sorry you’ve been through what you’ve been through.

            After all, we’ve got a high priest who is not unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.  You can believe, therefore, that God’s grace is true.  Leave this place to live your life in response to that.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)