December 11, 2011 | 4:00 p.m.

He Had to Become Like Us in Every Respect

Part of the Advent Sermon Series
“Who Is Jesus?”

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Hebrews 2:17–18
John 1:6–9, 19–28

When I was a seminary student, one of the professors on the faculty was Rosemary Radford Ruether, a famed theologian, a feminist theologian, but also a respected Christian historian and a prolific writer. Everyone at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary referred to her as simply Rosemary, though usually not to her face. At an evening study group or around the lunch table, when a fellow student started a sentence with something like “Rosemary said . . . ,” we all knew who was being quoted.

Rosemary’s been on my mind regarding today’s passage from Hebrews because of a chapter she wrote in one of her books. The chapter was titled “Can a Male Savior Save Women?” If you are a male, you may or may not readily wrap your mind around this title, “Can a Male Savior Save Women?”—especially in this day, when significant, if not complete, strides have been made in the level of equality and respect afforded to women. You may never have thought of grappling with the idea of Jesus, as male, being God. In other words, you haven’t had to figure out how you fit into that picture because you and Jesus are the same gender. Jesus is male. Jesus is God. We are made in God’s image. You are male. It’s a no-brainer that you, too, are made in God’s image.

And maybe many of the women here will wonder about Ruether’s title, too: “Can a Male Savior Save Women?” Perhaps you never have thought of yourself as less than because of your gender. You might be easily able to call Jesus your savior simply because he is male and perhaps because, for you, he’s like a good and kind brother. Jesus is male. Jesus is God. We are made in God’s image. You are female. Hmmm.

In this chapter, Dr. Ruether outlined the history of thought about Jesus put forth by the church fathers over the centuries. She outlined the history of proclamation about the superiority of Jesus as male and, in those proofs, the necessary classification of women as second class. She cited the Vatican Declaration of 1976, which declared “that there must be a physical resemblance between the priest and Christ.”

That’s why women, said the Vatican, can’t be priests. Ruether marveled at the fact that this rationale declaring that there must be a physical resemblance between the priest and Christ did not exclude an African American, a Chinese, or a Dutchman from representing a first-century Jew. She wrote,

that the Vatican would have unleashed such a document as an authoritative statement seems to me very significant. It reveals the extent of the contradiction between the message of Jesus as redeemer of all humanity “in which there is neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), and the construction of Christology through symbols that make it the instrument of patriarchal domination. The question I wish to ask in this chapter is: can Christology [our constructions about who Jesus is] be liberated from structures of patriarchy and really become an expression of liberation for women? Or is it so linked with symbols of male-dominance that it is unredeemable as good news for women? (To Change the World, pp. 45–46)

In other words, “Can a Male Savior Save Women?”

I’ve had to think a lot about who Jesus is in my faith, about what Jesus means to my faith. I have had to think a lot about this not just because of my being a woman and the issues lifted up by Rosemary Ruether, but for other reasons too. My prayer life just naturally tends to address God as God. I think of God as Creator or as a being beyond my imagination. If I were forced to pray another way, I would choose to address God as Holy Spirit. Praying to Jesus wouldn’t be my first choice of how I address God in my private prayer life.

Our sermon series is meant to help us engage in this question about Jesus again. Who is Jesus? Not “Who is Jesus generally?” but “Who is Jesus for you?”

Another pastor with whom I once served another church asked me what it would mean for me if Jesus weren’t a part of my faith. That question forced me to take special care when I read the Gospels about Jesus. It was a question that haunted me and sometimes still does. And at one time in my life, not necessarily now, there was this question of Jesus’ maleness. If Jesus was male and if Jesus, the male, was God, and if I am supposed to have been made in God’s image, then where did I fit into that equation?

That I can’t answer the question completely, that I can’t answer the question and lay it to rest forever, that it’s not an easy proposition to write a sermon focused on “Who Is Jesus?”, that there is mystery that can’t be explained—those are the things that keep drawing me to Jesus as a crucial part of my faith. The baby born in the manger is the same Christ who died on the cross. The baby born in the manger is fully human and fully divine. The Christ who died on the cross is fully human and fully divine. The very human infant in the manger is God. And the saving redeeming Christ on the cross is human. I can’t hold the concept of Jesus being fully human and fully divine together for very long, and I’ll bet you can’t either.

So let me try something and ask you. When you think about Jesus or when you pray to Jesus, do you think about him or pray to him as more human, your friend, your sibling, or do you think about him or pray to him as divine in the heavens, God? You might try an exercise: Draw a line on your bulletin, a horizontal line, straight across, and on the left write “fully human,” and on the right, write “fully God,” and in the middle write “fully human/fully God.” Where would you put your mark? I don’t think any of us can hold this concept together for long: Jesus all at one time being fully human—not half human and half God—but fully human and fully God—not half God and half human—but fully human and fully God. It is the mystery of it all that keeps me coming back to Jesus.

What speaks to me about the Hebrews passage is the claim that Jesus shared our flesh and blood. That he had to become like us in every respect. For me, that means that God, creator of the entire universe; God, a power beyond our imaginings; God, transcendent and sovereign, gave up all the privileges of that position, all the privileges of divinity, to become like us in every respect. And he did this in Jesus of Nazareth. And so we stare at that manger image and lying there is God, but in diapers, crying for food, dependent on the care of his mother, his father. God, creator of the universe, gave up all privilege of being in that position and became human and vulnerable and suffered every suffering a human being can suffer. This concept—God in Jesus Christ becoming like us in every respect, along with the concept of Jesus as fully human and fully God—is why I don’t think about what happened on the cross as an appeasement of God, a perfect sacrifice of God’s Son and death that had to happen to appease an angry God. Because God in Jesus, who was fully human and fully God, was enduring that suffering and was living that act of humiliation. Jesus was human, shared our flesh and blood, was like us in every respect. And yet Jesus was also God. And for me, a woman, I finally have come to the belief that Jesus’ sharing in my humanity, becoming like me in every respect, means that Jesus shares the sufferings of all women persecuted unfairly because of their gender. And Jesus shares the sufferings of all men, too.

Earlier on in the Hebrews passage, verse 10, the word pioneer is used to describe Jesus. The word used in Greek is a hard one to translate adequately into English. It could be chief or first leader. It is a word closely connected with what the verse says Jesus does, which is to bring “many children to glory.” Jesus is not a pioneer striking out on his own, for his own sake, but Jesus is one whose action grasps others. In his suffering, the scripture says, he is made perfect, but it’s not a perfect that means moral perfection. In his suffering, he is made fit for office, fit for his role as savior, fit to be higher than the angels. His becoming human and enduring suffering makes him fit to be high priest. Jesus’ suffering not only provides deliverance from death, in whatever way we can grasp that concept, but is a model of hope and endurance to Christians who likewise experience suffering and temptation.

When I did some chaplaincy training at Rush Hospital, one of the people in my on-call group of chaplains was a priest. He was on call one night, and in the morning when we shared the events of the night before, he told the story of having attended a death of an older man. The man’s son spent time with the priest after his father had died. They sat outside in the hallway of the hospital, and the son poured his heart out to the priest. And the son cried. And the son buried his head in the priest’s shoulder. The priest barely spoke a word during all of this. Finally, after the son had poured out all of his emotions, he sat up straight and he looked at the priest, and he said, “Oh, thank you, Father, you’ve been such a help to me. Thank you for helping me figure out what to do.” And yet the priest had said almost nothing. The priest was present, to the best of his ability, became like this one whose father had died, sat, listened, lent a shoulder, and in so doing, without words, he became the guide for this man.

I think of the firemen who entered the buildings of the World Trade Center—gave up their privilege of safety and security and entered into the horror their brothers and sisters were experiencing on that day in 2001. In so doing, they became saviors, heroes, guides, pioneers. They became like their brothers and sisters in every respect and therefore became high priests.

Now this priest and the firemen aren’t God. But those stories help me understand what God did, even if only for a moment. God became just like me, so that God could know everything I suffer, and for that reason, God in Jesus is one I can call Savior. I don’t think I could do that if God had remained high up in the heavens, safe and secure.

N. T. Wright, another theologian, says,

From the first, Jesus embodied the living, saving God, personally present with his people. Like us in every respect, suffering and being tempted, he is able to help. That’s another contrast between the true God and the idols: idols are able to thrill, but they can’t help. They can excite, but they can’t rescue. There is only one God who can. To believe in the incarnation is not to perform a mental conjuring trick, but to swear allegiance to the God who had always acted like that, whose action was presence with us. (Twelve Months of Sundays: Year A, p. 13)

That action was and always has been humble, saving action, love come down, the light of the world for everyone, the light and the love that lifts us up.