Stephen
Terry, Director
Jesus,
Our Faithful Brother
Commentary
for the January 22, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
"Since
the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by
his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is,
the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear
of death." Hebrews 2:14-15, NIV
Few things are more precious
than a baby. They are living expressions of the belief that life will go on and
there is hope for the future. They are helpless to care for themselves, but
they awaken compassion and love in others to care for them and make that future
a reality. When we look at them, we often see the echo of the features of Mom
and Dad. In many ways the little one is a mirror of their parents as genes
carry their message to the child with traits that carry generations of family
history in their makeup. But some traits not only go back for generations, they
may also transcend the entire history of humanity. Even science is on board
with this as their genetic research has confirmed that many
of us carry as much as two percent Neanderthal DNA in our genetic code.[i]
While this demonstrates mankind's proclivity for extracurricular mating, the
Bible takes us a step further, proclaiming that humanity, from the beginning, is
a creation in the image of God.[ii]
While we look for vestiges of a
baby's parents in their visage, we can also find hints of that divine imagery,
however remote it might be. Life has worked to efface those traits from
humanity. But every so often the genetic dice favor the revelation of that
image. Some may suppress it to fit in with their peers, but others see the
value and grow to become the saints, prophets, and compassionate heroes that we
find in the Bible and throughout history. It can be difficult to find because of
what happened after Creation and the active efforts to suppress such individuals
since. Far too many lost their lives violently as others chose to silence the
image of God in their lives. Sadly, others, forced to fear for their own lives,
chose to betray or kill the righteous to save themselves or their families from
death. In one example, Anne Frank and her family were
betrayed by those who feared that otherwise they and their families
would be subjected to the extermination camps of Nazi Germany. Succinctly, it
was the fear of death that proved justification for them to take the lives of
others. This fear is the essence of the enslavement that we willingly submitted
to long ago.
Originally, there was no death.
It was only through subterfuge by a beguiling serpent that death entered the
picture. Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Innocence was traded for knowledge, and knowledge brought anxiety over all the
things that might happen. We see this still today, for the more connected we
are to the rest of the world, the more aware we are of everything going on
globally, and the greater our anxiety. If people die from a catastrophe ten
thousand miles from us, we know about it in a matter of hours, sometimes
minutes. In ancient times, if someone in our village was killed by a tiger, we
had anxiety about all tigers, and this served us well when we went out into the
field or grazed our livestock as we watched for the telltale orange with black stipes
of a tiger. However, now we see threats that will never touch us but
nonetheless trigger our anxieties as calamity after calamity plays across our media
screens, often playing to our fear of death.
As I have taken communion to
elderly, home-bound parishioners, I have seen this anxiety as they felt the
nearness of the end of their lives. If one has felt this fear for their entire
lives, it is hard not to do so at the end. But a few are not anxious or afraid.
They can look beyond the portal of death and view things as they were before
death began its rule. For them, death is not an end, but a transition. They see
the point of God's incarnation, death, and resurrection and accept its validity
for their lives. For far too long, the fear of death has caused people to do
horribly brutal things to one another, even killing not only belligerents but
innocents, too. They do this to prevent their own deaths or to obtain revenge
for the deaths of others. But despite popular movies entertaining people around
the globe, becoming a super-soldier with superlative skills will not prevent
death. History teaches us otherwise. General Stonewall Jackson, who enjoyed
heroic stature with his men died by three bullets from friendly fire inflicting
wounds he never recovered from. There are no invincible Rambos. Military
cemeteries are proof. When a soldier finally comes to realize that they could
die, fear of death can be a greater trauma than the battle itself. It can be a
hard fear to overcome, that is why deserters who flee because of this fear are
often shot to instill an equal if not greater fear of the certainty of death if
they flee. When we allow fear to goad us into taking up arms for self-preservation,
we will find it difficult to ever escape the trap of manipulation by fear.
It is this fear that effaces
Gods image from us. Compassion and empathy for others becomes buried under the
fear of what might happen if we let our guard down. "God is love,"[iii]
and love and fear are incompatible roommates in the human heart. "There is no
fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear."[iv]
This is why the Bible admonishes us, both in the Old Testament and in the words
of Jesus quoting from that source, to love the Lord our God with all our heart,
soul, and strength[v]
and to love our neighbor as ourselves.[vi]
If we love all with all, there is no room for fear. The Devil, who initially introduced
humanity to death in the Garden of Eden, has sought to use it to manipulate us
ever since. He would have us believe otherwise. He wants a planet of thralls to
spite the one who cast him from heaven when he sought to take power from God
himself.[vii]
He has waged a war of rebellion ever since, using fear to recruit those who
would submit to fear. He knows his end will come, and there is nothing beyond.
He wants everyone on the planet to believe the same fate awaits them. If they believe
there is nothing beyond and this life is all there is, then accumulate all you
can at the expense of others. He teaches that the idea of responsibility to
others beyond ensuring your own safety is a myth. As a result, if we accept his
sophistries, we exchange the image of God for the image of the Devil as we
become billions of individual manipulators, coercing others through fear for
our own benefit.
It does not have to be like
that. We can do better. A small child watches their older sibling and learns
from their example things that work or do not. But whether we have a biological
sibling or not, we do have a spiritual sibling who provides that example for
us. Jesus is our brother,[viii]
and we can look to him to model how to conduct our lives without fear and anxiety.
His Sermon on the Mount[ix]
is a treatise on how to live without anxiety. This does not mean we will not
suffer trials. The Devil is ever ready to convince us of our frailty, but
despite his best efforts we come off more than conquerors[x] in
the end if we will abandon fear and live in the peace of a relationship with
Christ.[xi]
When the rich young man came to
Jesus,[xii]
he claimed to love God and his neighbor, but he revealed that love was not what
motivated him. Instead, fear was the motivator, and his fear of what he would
lose drove him from the Savior's presence. That same fear has held us in thralldom
for thousands of years and so many are in denial of that fear that they
excoriate those who call it out, and they reject their
witness. They see it as a threat to their values, a judgment that exposes their
fear for what it is, a denial of God's providence. They will point to examples
of people who suffered and died as proof there is no God, for if he were truly compassionate,
he would have saved them. They deny the reality that he did do everything
possible to save them, not from death, but from fear of death being all there is.
Each of us faces a choice. We
can see the resurrection of Jesus for what it is, the evidence that death is
not the end, or we can deny that open tomb and live our lives in fear of the
death that runs on our heels, threatening to consume us and all we own. Only
one path is the way of peace and hope.[xiii]
Who will seek it out?