The Pastoral Jesus

A sermon given at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

11 June 2018

Hebrews 2.14-18; 4.14-15

Hebrews 6.19-20; 13.20-21

You can listen to the audio of this sermon here
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/the-pastoral-jesus

In the first of our new sermon series from Hebrews, a couple of weeks ago,

            we began to explore together how the preacher of this ancient sermon

                        was trying to help those in his congregation in Rome

            deal with the fact that, from their perspective,

                        Jesus seemed impossibly distant from them.

There they were, trying to keep faith in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour,

            in difficult and potentially dangerous circumstances;

and yet despite all their faith, all their prayers, and all their careful obedience,

            Jesus still seemed a long way away from the reality of their daily lives.

They kept telling each other the stories of his life,

            how he had dramatically healed people of physical and mental distress,

but all that seemed an increasingly long time ago,

            and with each year that passed it receded further into the past,

            seeming less and less to match their own experience

                        of what it meant to follow Jesus.

And their practice of worshipping Jesus as Lord wasn’t helping, either.

            The conviction that Jesus was divine

                        meant that the one who had once seemed so real,

                                    so immediate, so approachable,

            was now equated with God up in heaven somewhere,

                        to be worshipped and adored, certainly,

            but not really present with them in any way that seemed relevant

                        to their personal day-by-day existences.

And if all this sounds a bit familiar, I’m not surprised.

            Christians ever since have struggled with the problem of the absent Jesus.

As decades gave way to centuries, and then to millennia,

            the historical Jesus became not just history, but ancient history.

And, as historical-critical biblical scholarship tells us,

            even the Jesus of the Gospels

                        was already several steps of oral tradition

                        away from the wandering preacher and miracle-worker of Galilee.

And so, for most Christians throughout history,

            Jesus has been experienced as absent:

                        worshipped on-high, seated at the right hand of the Father;

                        and studied from afar, through the gospel texts

                                    that record the stories of his life.

But, just as was the case with the recipients of Hebrews,

            not all Christians are satisfied with an absent Jesus.

Many of the great renewal or revival movements down the centuries

            have come from a desire to discover a more immediate, a more present, Jesus.

From Julian of Norwich’s 14^th century Revelations of Divine Love,

            to the Welsh Revival, to the charismatic movement of more recent times,

            the desire to encounter Jesus in the here-and-now can be very compelling.

Many of the mystical, ecstatic, or miraculous movements in Christianity

            have been born from this desire.

And it is this desire to know Jesus, to encounter Jesus,

            that the preacher of Hebrews is trying to address

            in his language of the Pastoral Jesus.

We saw a couple of weeks ago how he encouraged his congregation

            to discover Jesus in and through all things,

                        as the one who sustains the whole of creation;

            the one who is as close to them as the air they breathe

                        and the ground they walk on.

Well, the aspect of Jesus’ presence that we’re looking at today shifts the focus,

            from the cosmic to the personal.

The Sustaining Jesus is also seen to be the Pastoral Jesus.

            The one who created all things

                        is also the one who cares for each thing that has been made.

            The impersonal pantocrator

                        is also the personal friend and confidante.

And here, for a moment, I’d like to invite you, today,

            to consider how you encounter Jesus?

Is he your Lord and Saviour, or your friend and brother?

            Is Jesus, for you, distant or close?

Can you think of a time when Jesus has been closer to you than he is today?

            And what did that feel like?

What, I wonder, was the context

            that enabled you to sense the immediate presence of Jesus?

For me, I think that over the years it has come down to my openness, or not,

            to emotional engagement with the disciplines of spirituality,

            and particularly in saying prayers for others.

It may sound counterintuitive,

            but the times I’ve most sensed the presence of Christ

            have been when I’ve been praying for others to know his presence.

And this, I think, points us towards the way in which the preacher of Hebrews

            presents his congregation with the Pastoral Jesus:

                        the one who is with people in their suffering,

                        sympathising with them in their weakness.

One of the ways in which they, and we, can know Jesus,

            is by our experience of his steadfast presence

            with us in the difficult times of life.

One of the lessons which I’ve had to learn over the years, as a pastor,

            has been that most of the time, I can’t fix other people’s problems.

Given the fact that, most of the time, I can’t even fix my own problems,

            you might be surprised that this has been such a hard lesson to learn, but it has.

Deep down, you see, I’m a problem solver and a fixer,

            and my default when faced with the difficulty and pain of someone’s life,

                        is to click into ‘logical problem-solving mode’

                        and start offering them solutions.

And what I’ve had to learn, the hard way,

            is that this doesn’t help people as much as I think it’s going to.

Rather, the pastor in me has had to discover the immense value

            of just patiently sitting with someone through their pain,

            journeying with them the long and hard path.

And the reason this is so valuable, the preacher of Hebrews tells us,

            is because this is the Christ-like way;

            this the Pastoral Jesus that Hebrews presents us with.

This is not Jesus the fixer,

            who clicks his fingers to make the pain stop,

but Jesus the pastor

            who goes through the highs and lows of life with us,

            always alongside us, faithfully suffering with us.

And this stands in stark contrast to the many presentations of Jesus around

            who would make him the answer to all of life’s problems.

From the get-rich quick schemes of the prosperity gospel,

            to the false hope of signs and wonders preaching,

there are many churches, and many theologies,

            that offer quick fix spirituality.

And of course these are attractive,

            because who doesn’t want an easy answer to their problems?

But they are not the way of the Pastoral Jesus.

We know this because the preacher of Hebrews

            grounds his presentation of the Pastoral Jesus

            in the Christ of the cross.

It is through suffering and death

            that the path to new life is opened wide.

There is no bypass to the cross that leads straight to resurrection.

            There is no cheap grace here.

Jesus the great high priest

            can only make the offering of atonement for our sins

            because the sacrifice he offers, is the sacrifice of himself.

As the preacher puts in in 2.18,

            ‘Because he himself was tested by what he suffered,

            he is able to help those who are being tested.’

This is the Pastoral Jesus, who enters wholeheartedly

            into the brokenness of our fractured lives and world

            to bring healing and comfort to those in need.

This is the Pastoral Jesus who takes on the mantle of death

            so that he can destroy the one who has the power of death.

The contrast here is with the Greek heroes,

            who repeatedly took on the forces of evil within the world of Greek mythology.

They typically and dramatically cheated certain death against all the odds,

            escaping its clutches at the last moment, to return victoriously still alive,

            having killed the minotaur, the hydra, the Nemean lion, or whatever;

before going on the next saga

            to defeat some further personification of evil.

Their efforts to rid the world of evil were, at best, only ever temporarily successful,

            as one monster gave way to another,

            and one hero eventually passed their mantle onto the next.

Whereas, the Pastoral Jesus goes through death,

            as of course must all whom he cares for.

What changes, however, through the death of Jesus,

            is that his death is for the sins of the world.

It is, the preacher says,

            the perfect and once-for-all sacrifice of self-giving love,

bringing forgiveness to all,

            and robbing the forces of evil of their hold

            over the lives of those they seek to intimidate.

You see, once sin has been forgiven, evil’s power is broken.

There is a unique perspective here on life and death,

            that the Pastoral Jesus offers to those for whom he cares.

Within the ancient world, as indeed in our own,

            death was regarded as a great enemy,

            to be avoided for a long as possible.

Because death is terrifying.

It is the moment of ultimate reckoning,

            beyond which the possibility for further justification in life becomes impossible.

Whatever a person’s view about the life hereafter,

            the brute fact of death marks the completion of life

            and invites judgment on the eternal value of that life.

So the Greek heroes of old often sought to cheat death,

            journeying over the Styx to Hades

            to steal loved ones back to life for a second chance.

And we still have this language today,

            with the person who narrowly escapes death, or who is cured of their disease,

            often speaking of having been given a second chance at life,

and they might say how their priorities have changed

            and that they now want to live less selfishly and more meaningfully.

Well, this kind of second chance at life is certainly a rare gift,

            and for those who receive it, it is one to be treasured and not wasted.

But this is not the gift of the Pastoral Jesus.

He doesn’t rescue us from the jaws of death

            to buy us more time to live a good life.

Rather, he defeats the very power of death itself

            to dominate, control and enslave our lives.

The perspective on death which the Pastoral Jesus offers to those who are dying,

            and that is, of course, to all of us,

is that death is not to be feared,

            because its hold over our lives is broken,

            because we have already been forgiven.

We don’t need some second chance to put things right,

            because Jesus has already made us right with God.

So as we, like the first century recipients of Hebrews in Rome,

            face daily pressures to compromise our faith;

                        as we are tested and tempted;

                        as we face difficulty and sorrow and suffering;

                        as we are inexorably brought to a realisation of our own mortality.

And in all of this, we have in Jesus a pastor and a friend

            who journeys with us, sits alongside us,

            weeps with us, suffers with us,

            and ultimately faces death itself with us;

We have in Jesus one who, in all of this,

            brings the gift of hope to our otherwise hopeless lives.

The preacher describes hope as the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul;

            it is hope which steadies our lives in the chaos of the world;

            it is hope which sustains us through toil, trial, and testing.

And the hope that the Pastoral Jesus offers us

            is the hope of life renewed in the here and now.

The good news of Jesus’ care for us

            is not so much that we get to go somewhere nice when we die,

            as a kind of reward for being faithful when this life was difficult.

Rather, it is that this life is itself redeemed,

            that our lives, feeble and frail though they may be,

            acquire an eternal value in Christ which transcends even the power of death.

And this gift is ours because the death of Jesus breaks the hold of sin and death.

            Our days are no longer enslaved to guilt,

            and our lives are no longer a quest for justification and redemption.

We are justified, and we are redeemed,

            so we can live differently, free from the fear of our mortality.

This is not to say that death is to be actively sought, though;

            martyrdom in a Christian context never involves seeking death.

But it does mean that we can be faithful unto death,

            and do with certainty that the Pastoral Jesus has already given us the gift of life

                        that transcends the actual lived days and moment of our lives.

And, as a thought to close, it seems to me

            that that this can affect the way Christians approach

            the controversial topic of end of life care – both medically and pastorally.

As those who work in hospices can tell us,

            not all death is defeat, and not all death is bad news.

Sometimes, death is a blessing and a gift to be taken and treasured,

            rather than an enemy to be avoided at all costs.

Sometimes, the cost of not dying is too high.

And I wonder if those of us who have encountered Jesus

            in such a way as to come to a realisation

            that our own deaths are not the final word on our lives;

can offer a constructive and hopeful perspective

            on those who are living with the imminence of their own death.

I know that there are strongly held views amongst Christians,

            on both sides of the argument,

            relating to the topic of assisted dying,

and I’m not going to argue a particular side this morning.

But, did you know that in the state of Oregon, in the USA,

            it has been legal for terminally ill, mentally competent adults

            to have an assisted death since 1997.

And the stories from there that have struck me as especially pastorally significant

            have been those of people who went through the process

                        of requesting the option of assisted death after their terminal diagnosis,

            but who chose never to use it;

                        because knowing that it was an option

                        was enough to help them cope with their final weeks.

The analogy here, it seems to me, is that a changed perspective on death,

            can profoundly affect the way we live our lives.

For those fearing an horrific end to life,

            the option of knowing that they can bring it to an end is a source of great hope.

And according to Hebrews, the gift of the Pastoral Jesus is itself a gift of hope,

            that life need not be dominated by the fear of death,

            because death is not the end of life.

Those of us who have identified with Christ in his death,

            have also been identified in his resurrection.

Just as Tommaso will go down into the waters of the grave at his baptism later,

            so he will be raised to life again

            having been symbolically cleansed of all sin.

For Hebrews, it all comes back to the cross of Christ,

            that moment in history where the power of death and sin over humanity was broken,

            and where the possibility for life eternal broke into the here-and-now.

This is the Pastoral Jesus,

            who goes to his death to redeem our deaths,

and who draws alongside us in our lives,

            to redeem each moment of each day.

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