Perfect Trust

Hebrews 5:5-10, Psalm 51, Jeremiah 31:31-34

Submission, obedience, suffering. These are the prominent traits of Jesus in this scripture. He was submissive to God the father, he learned obedience through suffering and became a complete person. As such, he is the source of our salvation if we are obedient to God the Christ, to our everlasting high priest.

This is our difficult task: to believe in the goodness of God, when nothing else seems good. To love God fully when we do not fully love ourselves. To live a life that God is proud of, when we do not feel proud of ourselves, when we struggle with who the world requires us to be with little room for grace and compassion, reconciling who we are deeply as people of faith and as people of the world .

In Psalms, the speaker cries out for God to restore him, to cleanse him from his iniquity, and to put a new spirit within him. In other words, forgiveness and transformation of the heart.

We have almost a response to this request In Jeremiah, it is the language of broken covenant and the need for a new one: written on their hearts: I will be their God, they will be my people. Like the previous covenants, it’s a binding contract between God and the people, each with a promise to uphold. The major lesson: the people almost always fail, but God remains committed, even to the extent of creating new arrangements, new ways for the people to be faithful.

According to Irenaeus: “the glory of God is humanity full alive.” Knowing we couldn’t quite achieve this on our own, as evidence by the slew of broken covenants in the Hebrew Bible, God sent us someone to walk the same paths, endure suffering, and never compromise himself, to show us what it is to be fully alive. Because Jesus remains submissive and obedient, he lives a perfect life: one that is wholly faithful to his identity as a child of God.

Circumstances in our lives sometimes make it impossible to behave as true children of God and to treat other human beings the same way. My stint in the coffee shop business required me to try to sell pieces of cheesecake to customers who might already be struggling with their weight and their wallet, who may have already ordered their days worth of calories in a frappuccino. I didn’t feel good about myself in times like that. It’s hard to be completely at ease with your life when the dollar, the sale is more important than the human being.

I recently spoke with a colleague in another denomination who had just found out that her pension is, in part, funding genocide. She’s now racked with guilt and trying to figure out how to change the investment system. Though innocent and unintentional, she’s not proud of her life before God.

Our sinfulness keeps us from living complete lives: keeps us from our true selves, keeps us from God. Because when we really find God, we really find ourselves, as the people we were meant to be.

We all end up falling short, unable to keep up our end of the deal with God, but God will remember our sins no more.

We have a generous, relentless God, always seeking new ways to connect to us

Jesus offered his obedience even until death, the extent that he is willing to give up his own life to show us how to grow through suffering, how to be saved through our obedience to God.

And as someone who is so complete, is our example to follow: salvation in becoming obedient to God, in becoming exactly who we were designed to be, in discerning out true identity.

To trust God perfectly—to remember that God has our best interests at heart, and we have the responsibility and privilege to live as complete human beings; not plagued by sin and self-doubt

We don’t get to live a selfish life, greed, self-centered. But authentic, meaningful. Not easy, will cause hardship, pain, even death. But to live a life with few regrets, knowing you did your absolute best to live as a faithful child of God, listening to God’s still small voice within your own heart, reading that promise written their, crying out for your loved ones and for the world, praying for a better world, working towards that better world and life for all people, Our lives are worth saving. We are worth saving. That’s what Jesus is for: not a blood offering to appease an angry God, but an offering of love, perfect through suffering and obedience.

Suffering is a given: it’s what you do, how you handle it that makes the difference: Jesus remains steadfast, he doesn’t turn on God, he doesn’t run, he stays to the very end, and becomes complete.

Jesus suffered, not just in his physical torture and death. He offered prayers and supplications, with cries and tears, not on his behalf, but for the people. Jesus suffered every time he saw someone who was sick, hungry, bleeding, dying. He suffered every time he was needed to heal, cast out demons, or raise someone from the dead. He suffered when he saw the amount of sadness, loneliness in the world, and could do so very little to help when he was refused, when he was misunderstood, when he was hated, when he was arrested.

He wasn’t submissive to an abusing Creator God. He wasn’t obedient to a suicidal order. He looked into the face of suffering and never wavered his course, even when that path led to his own death.

It’s true that Jesus suffered and died. It’s true that God didn’t step in and intervene and prevent that death. It’s true that it’s because of a sinful humanity that Jesus was tortured and killed. But it’s not true that this is what God needed or wanted.

Perhaps he knew that his death would demonstrate quit clearly the depths of human depravity, in killing off the one person who could save them all.

And that in rising again, in returning to heaven, he’d be able to continue that healing work, for all peoples and all times, not just Hebrews living 2000 years ago.

Over and over, a God of love, who shows us different ways to live, the better way: as people of God, the simple promise that if we obey God, God will hear us. Thanks be to God.