HOLY TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH

 

An Episcopal Church in the Worldwide Anglican Communion

 

Home

About Us

History

Get Involved

News/Resources

Ministries/Programs

Fellowship

Contact Us

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following homily, based upon Hebrews 2:1-18, was delivered by Father Johnson on Sunday, October 4, 2009:

 

He was not sure how it had happened, but he had been implicated along with a group of students who had been caught cheating on a test. He nervously picked up the phone to call the Academic Dean who was handling the investigation. The Dean, who knew this young man, was fairly certain that he had no part in it, but told the student to give him a phone number where he could reach him and promised to get back to him before the end of the day. Five hours later, the phone rang, and the young student jumped up to answer it. It was the Academic Dean, who said he had been able to clear him of any involvement. There would be no further investigation of him.

It was a few days later that the Academic Dean was told the rest of the story. The young man had called him from a pay phone. He had waited on a bench at a bus stop by the phone for five hours as the temperature climbed to more than one hundred degrees. So the Dean called the student to his office to find out why he had not just called from his room. “My roommate knows my family back in Korea,” the student explained, “Just being accused of cheating was more shame than I could bear. If my family found out that I had been accused, it would shame them.” Even though he had been cleared, he broke into a sweat just talking about it.

When I first heard this story it was related to me with the statement, “We really need more of that in our culture.” The moral the man intended to convey was that our society would be a better place if people expected to feel more shame and rejection if they did something wrong. My immediate reaction was to nod in agreement, thinking that we’ve gone too soft on wrong doing. We need to tighten things up a bit; however, that does not really fit very well with the gospel of Christ.

“Jesus,” the author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, “is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters.” Unlike the young man in the story, we were guilty of the sins of which we have been accused. We don’t like to face that fact. Our fallen nature prompts us to minimize our own sins. When we are willing to confess our sins, we tend to paint ourselves in the most positive light possible. We craft excuses. We explain that our motives were pure, or at least that our motives did not carry any malice. When that does not work, we fall back on the old reliable excuse, “Well, no one is perfect.” If we listen to the way we describe our own sins, you might easily be convinced that we are all victims of some larger plot, that we really weren’t culpable, and that we have nothing to feel guilty about. Perhaps we have more in common with the student than we ever realized. We may not be afraid that our families will reject us, but are we afraid that Jesus will reject us? If we are really honest about our sins, our disordered affections and desires, if we come to the Lord honestly confessing that sometimes our motives have been filled with malice, will Jesus be ashamed to call us His own?

Our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews gives us the answer to that question. Jesus was made perfect through suffering. The word, perfect, as it is used in this reading implies the fulfillment of purpose and completion. Jesus did not ultimately fulfill His purpose through miraculous healings. Nor did He fulfill His ultimate purpose through moral teachings. Certainly these are important, and will have a profound impact to those whom Jesus saves; however, Jesus was made perfect, He completed the work He had come to accomplish, through suffering for our sins.

When Jesus went to the cross, He identified himself with us. The cross was the punishment for those who were in open rebellion. If we examine our hearts, don’t we find that we have been in open rebellion against God? When He went to the cross, Jesus took upon himself all of the guilt, all of the shame, and all of the rejection that was rightfully ours. When He did that, He fully accomplished what He had come to do.

If He has already suffered the shame that was rightfully ours, if He already suffered the guilt that we had incurred, and if He already bore the rejection that was due us, we have the assurance that He will not now be ashamed to call us His own. There is nothing more that can separate us from His love. He has already taken it upon himself by identifying with us through His suffering on the cross.

Because Christ Jesus was made perfect through suffering, because He has fully identified with us, we no longer have to be afraid. We no longer have to pretend that we are something that we are not. We no longer have to tremble at the thought that Jesus knows exactly who we are. He knows the secrets of our hearts. He knows those things of which our conscience is afraid. And He is not ashamed of us. Instead He calls us His brothers and sisters.

What we need in our lives is not more shame. What we need in our lives is not more fear that we will be rejected, rejected by family, rejected by the church, rejected by God. We already have plenty of those, and they haven’t made us any better. What we need is to pay greater attention to the gospel proclaimed to us by those who knew Jesus. It is that gospel that tells us that we do not have to hide from God, because Jesus, through His suffering, made atonement for our sins. It is that gospel that tells us that Jesus is not ashamed of us. It is that gospel that tells us that, though the law shows us that every transgression, every sin, every act of rebellion against God carries a just penalty, that penalty has already been paid by Christ Jesus. It is that gospel that tells us that Jesus knows us perfectly, He has identified himself with us fully, and He loves us. If we live lives that are motivated by that knowledge we can come to God openly, and He will transform us. If we live motivated by the knowledge of God’s love for us, we can tell others that they do not have to be ashamed to come to God because Christ Jesus is not ashamed of us, Christ Jesus is not ashamed of them.

 

A selection of Father RJ's homilies are archived on this site.  To read them, click here.