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.
