The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Psalm 8, Ecclesiasticus 18.1-14, Hebrews 2.5-end.

The story of my Uncle Handley’s short life – he died in the blitz at the age of 24 – came to me from an old friend of the family, an honorary aunt, who, in happier circumstances, might so easily have become a real aunt.  Some 60 years later she told me that on their last Easter Sunday together, on their way home from church, they had discussed what might be the size of an ideal family – perhaps four children they mused.  It took her several years to come to terms with the snuffing out of the tender hopes, which she never revealed even to the sister with whom she lived all her life, but she became a teacher, ultimately the Head Teacher of a big Primary School in South London, and eventually she made sense of her life in the conviction that the Lord whom she loved had heard the prayer in her aching heart, and blessed her with the gift of more than 400 children at a time.  Here am I and the children whom God has given me.  But that’s her story.  If you want to hear some more about what’s in a name – my name – come to the Living Book Club on Sunday 6 September.
On an altogether higher plane, the writer of Hebrews is writing about Christ’s identification in love with all his children, with you and me.  In this second chapter he introduces those insights about the central role of Christ in God’s plan for the salvation of the world that he will develop at greater length in the rest of his letter.  He begins with the proposition in verses 6-8 that God intended human beings, the crowning glory of his creation, to assume on his behalf full responsibility for all the rest of his creation.  He cites the psalm we read.  What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?  Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of thy hands, and thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet (Psalm 8. 4-6).   That vision failed, because man could not live up to the high calling entrusted to him. We know the vision failed because we do not in fact see all things in subjection under our feet.  Frustrated by weakness, and unable to resist temptation, we cannot even control ourselves, much less exercise a godly control over everything else.  Just consider our record – so far at least – on responding to climate change.
What the writer of Hebrews invites us to see instead is Jesus, Jesus crowned with glory and honour.  If this is God’s Plan B, it is even more wonderful than Plan A.  In order to restore us to the glorious destiny which God had planned for us from the beginning, God’s own son becomes the pioneer of our salvation.  Immersing himself totally in our humanity, he identifies so closely with us that we are embraced as his children, and so laid open to the love which recreates us as the people God meant us to be.  The word used here for pioneer, arX-egos, means founder or originator, but it carries with it the special implication that the pioneer has begun something – it might be a family or a city – so that others may enter into it.  Moreover, this pioneer of our salvation is to be made perfect through sufferings (v 10).  Telei-osai is another difficult word to translate, made perfect in the sense of being made completely fit for its ‘telos’, its destiny or purpose.  What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that Jesus, the pioneer of our salvation, was utterly fit for that purpose because, in his total identification with humanity, he was able to enter fully into our experience of suffering and even death in order to restore us as God’s people.  He goes on to refer to Jesus as the faithful high priest in the service of God, making atonement for the sins of his people.  The priestly function is another metaphor for total identification with the people for whom the offering is made.
The language of the letter to the Hebrews is at times difficult, but the sense is truly wonderful.  Here is the Son of God identifying in his love so closely with humanity that he can be the pioneer of our salvation, the one who recreates us as the people God always wants us to be.  The high vision of humanity that we encountered in our Psalm is now brought once more within our reach – not by anything we might do, but by the grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.