13^th January 2012

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Christmas Day 2011

Lessons -- Psalm 96; Hebrews 1:1-4; John 1:1-5,10-14

The Son reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his
nature. (Hebrews 1:3 RSV)

In Hebrews there are no shepherds, wise men, parents, crib or 'baby son'.
Angels get a mention but not as singers (v4). Yet this letter, probably written by a colleague of Paul during AD 52-54 to a Jewish-Greek parish at Corinth, gets it right. Christmas highlights the 'radiance of God' in the adult 'Son'.

Now 'radiance' is not the first word that we associate with God. That may be due to the long time when Christmas has been trivialised and our senses numbed by monotonous and sentimental repetition of carols.

Hebrews can help us reclaim a language to fit the magnificence of what happened at Christmas. The opening verses draw us to the radiance of God and illuminate God's glorious purpose revealed in his son for our flawed, strife-torn world and the defeat of the dark forces that threaten life.

* The gist of his testimony is that the splendour of God was (partially) revealed when God spoke through the prophets and has been (fully) revealed through his Son (vv 1-3). What was promised to and glimpsed by 'our forebears' has been fulfilled in and illuminated by 'the Son' in whom the radiance of the Creator is uniquely reflected.

In these few verses a momentous claim is made! Jesus is not a prophet, wise teacher or angelic figure but the reflection of the majesty of God (v3c). In him the creative power that brought into being and upholds the universe is embodied (v3b). In him ancient hopes for redemption are realised (vv1,3b).

This is expressed very exuberantly. The 'Son of God . . . bears the very stamp or imprint of God's nature' (RSV/NRSV). He is the 'flawless expression of the nature of God' (JB Phillips), 'the exact representation of the divine power' (HW Montefiore, The Epistle to the Hebrews, p33ff).
In him God's very Being as Creator, Redeemer and Lord of all is enfleshed.
What a stupendous claim!

How momentous it is can be seen by comparing what he says to a thinker like Philo (20 BC--AD 50), who used similar phrases to speak of the Word of God in the world. For him the Word or Wisdom is the 'image of God', 'God's agent', 'the exact representation of the divine power' and 'an angel of God'. He even described the universe as the 'first born Son of the Word'. (Montefiore, p36)

These expressions were in the air and Hebrews deliberately takes them and uses them in a way that Philo and other philosophers of Wisdom found scandalous! The 'image of God' is enfleshed in the Son who is 'the exact representation of the divine power' behind and within the universe. The radiance of the Creator is reflected in the only Son of God. That is, Christ represents the Very Being of God or, as the Nicene Creed later put it, the Son is 'God from God . . . true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made'.

The Good News of Christmas is that Jesus is not a wise teacher or an angelic figure, but God in the flesh. What we see in the Son is the very character of God as Creator, Redeemer and Lord of all.

* The redemptive character of God's radiant grace is briefly described in these verses in language that is unfamiliar to us and may cause offence.
He says that 'the Son had made purification for sins' (3b).

To many people, the idea that we need to be 'cleansed from sin' is negative and not conducive to a good, positive self-image. Undue focus on sin can be destructive but what is often forgotten is that sin and evil actually soil our lives! Try as we might, we cannot rid ourselves of guilt for the wrongs that we have done to God and others, or resentment at what they have done to us. All of us, deep down, long for a time when the light of grace shall ultimately triumph over evil. Besides, 'purification of sins' is not meant to be a drab, humourless affair. In Handel's Messiah the word of hope is sounded in the refrain 'and he shall purify'. The tone is uplifting, joyous and liberating. The choir virtually skips and dances its way through the repetitions of the line. Cleansing of sins means freedom!

This is the attitude that we should bring to Hebrew's bold announcement that, in the Son, evil has met its match. Drawing on the ritual enacted by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, he points to the radiance of grace reflected in the sacrificial life, death and resurrection of the Son. (This is developed more fully in Chapters 4 & 5.)

The essential point is that the 'Son' is the 'High Priest' who gave his own life for the sins of the people. He reflects the sacrificial love of God who did for us what we cannot do for ourselves: cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Such is the power of God's costly grace! The stain of sin has been removed by an incomparable act of divine love.

The message of Christmas is that 'the Son' has come into our flawed and strife-torn world to restore us to communion with God. Jesus is not the 'baby son' of Mary and Joseph, about whom so much twaddle is written, but the 'Son of God' who brought healing, forgiveness and wholeness on earth.

Hebrews gets it right at Christmas! The crucial thing is not that Jesus is to be worshipped as the 'baby son' but as the 'crucified and risen Son'
who, with the Father, creates and sustains the world (vv 2c,3c) and continues to 'reign at the right hand of the Majesty on high' (v3c).

In fact, this is consistent with the infancy stories in Luke and Matthew.
Because they saw God's radiance reflected in the adult ministry of the Son of God, they also saw the 'glory of God' in the Christ-child.

As the writer to the Hebrews reflected on the momentous events centred on Jesus, he concluded that 'the Son' was unlike any other figure -- human or angelic. He uniquely reflected the radiance of God -- Creator and Redeemer of all. That is why he is described as being 'superior' both to 'angels'
(v4) and to human teachers of wisdom.

This does not mean that the 'Son' is half-God-and-half-man -- caught midway between Deity and humanity -- but the fullness of God in his humanity. This doesn't come out directly in these few verses, but it is emphasised later where it is made clear that the 'superiority' of the Son does not mean being a remote heavenly figure detached from the real world and real people.

The true 'Son' is God identifying with us in the flesh. As Hebrews puts it, 'We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who is every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (4:15)' The radiance of God's mercy is reflected in Christ, the only Son of the Father, whose power is exercised through his incomparable, self-giving humanity.

We do not need shepherds, wise men, parents, crib or baby son to celebrate Christmas properly. In fact, the repetition of what is so familiar and repetitive can and does distract us from seeing what is so remarkable about the coming of Jesus into our broken world.

The truly remarkable thing is that, in his humanity, the Son of God reflects the radiance of God's grace for sinful humanity and breaks the power of sin and evil that despoil our lives. At Christmas, therefore, we celebrate the coming of hope for humanity and can confidently pray that the radiance we have glimpsed in Jesus, the true Son of God, shall at last shine with the radiance of God in all the dark places of our world.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of Confessing Congregations within the UCA.