Welcome to the Family

 

Text: Hebrews 1:1-4; 2 :5-12

Focus: Jesus’ sacrifice

Function: to prepare for communion.

1:¹Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. ³He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ⁴having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

2:⁵Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. ⁶But someone has testified somewhere,

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
    or mortals, that you care for them?
⁷You have made them for a little while lower than the angels;
    you have crowned them with glory and honor,
    ⁸subjecting all things under their feet.”

Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, ⁹but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

¹⁰It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. ¹¹For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, ¹²saying,

“I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters,
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”

Good morning! Today’s lessons starts with the nature of angels in relationship to humans in the Kingdom of God and then it looks more intently at the sacrifice of Christ.

Since we are joining the rest of the Christian world today in this celebration of the Lord’s supper, we will focus mainly on the sacrifice of Christ.

But what about angels? We read the scriptures and we read the stories where a few times in the history of humanity, we see encounters with angels and humans. Perhaps the most famous encounter was between Mary and Gabriel when he told her that she was going to be the mother of the hope for all of the world.

At times people living today speak of encounter’s with angels. I believe that I had one way back almost 30 years ago as I was getting ready to preach a sermon.

Angels appear as human or supernatural beings in the scripture. And in this passage, the emphasis is on their supernatural nature. He says that for a while angels are superior beings, but later on the scriptures, First Corinthians 6:3, tells tell us that we will judge angels someday.

The reference in this passage is to Jesus Christ being much more than what we commonly refer to as angels. He speaks of their status and how Jesus was subjected to angelic powers while He was incarnated here on earth, but at the end has glory and honor far superior to any angel or human for that matter. Simply put, God showed us how to love in Jesus Christ and that obedience of Christ to demonstrate to us how to LOVE is what gives Jesus the special place in all of history.

He showed us how to love by the way that He died for us. They killed Him for trying to change the narrative that the poor were deserving of their poverty because they are lazy, while ignoring the systems that have kept them down. Jesus confronted that to the point that they had to kill Him to shut Him up. But, He Himself gave Himself for us with a far deeper purpose. His sacrifice on the cross paved the way for reconciliation between God and humanity.

The passage that we didn’t read goes on the explain just a little bit more that God has ordained angels to be ministering spirits to people. Apparently, God sends them to help us when God sees that it is necessary. I wish I knew the divine formula, but as James said, our prayers are to be focused on Kingdom issues rather than our own personal desires (I think he means the selfish ones.)

And I think that leads us to the sort of conclusion to this message as we prepare to celebrate communion, and today we focus on our place in the family of God.

As I mentioned, James is a book about the human condition and the ease in which we can stray away from good intentions. The good news is that God loves us and knows our hearts and leads us in paths of justice and righteousness. God leads us away from our selfish desires and fills them with love for others through the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

In this passage, we read that Jesus Christ paid the price for our sins. And for everyone who places their trust in Jesus, we are privileged to be called the sons and daughters of God, with Jesus Christ, the Son of God being our big brother.

Welcome to the family.

And God sets us in the family through the power of His Holy Spirit. In Romans 8 we read that God has given us His Spirit and because of the love relationship born between us and God through the Spirit of God inside of us, we can have a relationship with God that as is close as a little child and his or her daddy. We cry out to God, he says, “Daddy.” It means that we are also part of the family of God just like Jesus is.

So again, welcome to the family. Communion is the name we give for this ordinance. It is a symbolic reenactment of Jesus death and more significantly, since we eat the bread which symbolizes the flesh and drink the wine which symbolizes the blood of Christ, this reenactment means that we participate, by faith, in the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf. Jesus loved us to the point of death and He showed us how to live for others, to love others, by allowing Himself to be killed.

Even though it symbolizes a bloody image, we call it communion, because in it, we commune by faith with God and each other, testifying to the death of Christ for our salvation.