December 27, 1998 - LESSON(S): Hebrews 2:10-18, NRSV

SERMON TITLE: A Common Savior

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Words are the wonderful means that we use to communicate, but the meanings are sometimes unclear.
    1. Take the word "common."
      1. I have used it in a funeral sermon.
        1. Referred to the person as common.
        2. I realize that it is a word which may be misunderstood.
      2. I meant it in a positive sense.
    2. Common can have several meanings.
      1. It can mean "Vulgar."
        1. To say that we have a "common" savior can mean vulgar savior.
        2. In the minds of some people in this world that is a meaning that they would apply not only to Jesus but to other people..
        3. There is a biblical illustration which applies.
          1. Peter showed a great reluctance to communicate the good news to people who were not part of his community.
            1. God came to him in a dream and showed him a sheet filled with all kinds of things to eat.
            2. There was on the sheet items that were forbidden by Jewish law.
            3. Peter was told to take and eat.
            4. He responded, I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.
            5. God responded, What I have made clean you should not call common.
            6. God was not referring to food but to Cornelius and his family.

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      2. It can also mean familiar or natural, or equally shared.
        1. There is another biblical application.
        2. The early Christians held everything in "common."
        3. They lived and worked together for the common purpose.
        4. It was not only to help one another develop their common spirituality.
        5. It was also to spread the news of the savior.
  2. Jesus is a common savior.
    1. He was not of the ruling class.
    2. He was not of the scholarly class
    3. He was not a person of wealth.
    4. He is one of the great working class.
    5. His step-father was a carpenter.
    6. He was a carpenter for the first 30 years of his life.
  3. Jesus is a common savior.
    1. The common people heard him gladly.
    2. He spoke and acted in ways that they could understand.
    3. His message is one that they could see how to apply.
  4. Jesus is a common savior.
    1. He was in all points tempted as we are.
    2. He experienced what we experience.
    3. He knows how to sympathize with us.
    4. He experienced all the emotions that we share.

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      1. The Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, senior rector at Trinity Church in the City of Boston, reminds us of the event that turned a good writer into a great one.
        1. Just before dawn on a cold winter morning in 1849, a group of Russian criminals were led out to face a firing squad.
        2. One of them was a young man named Feodor Dostoyevsky.
        3. All of them were revolutionaries against the brutalities of Czar Nicholas I; several were professed atheists, all were radicals.
        4. A priest carrying a cross and a Bible accompanied them.
      2. Lloyd continues:
        1. The first three were handed white gowns and shapeless caps and ordered to put them on, and then they were tied to posts.
        2. The firing squad raised their guns and took aim. Drums rolled.
        3. And at just that moment a signal came, the rifles were lowered, and a horseman came galloping on the scene announcing a reprieve.
        4. Although the condemned men didn't know it, the whole thing had been staged to demonstrate the mercy of the czar, who then had them shipped off to Siberia.
        5. One of the men who faced the squad went mad.
        6. Another went on to become one of the world's greatest writers.
      3. That moment changed Dostoevsky's life for good.
        1. Facing the absolute certainty of death shattered all of the assumptions he had built his life on, and sent him on a whole new course of reclaiming the Russian Orthodox faith of his childhood.
        2. He came to see in the lives of the peasant convicts around him a divine light; the hardened, poor, largely illiterate peasants were people of enormous dignity and great heart.
        3. He began to see in them, all of them, the image of Christ.
  5. Jesus saw every person in the divine light.
    1. It was because of this vision that he comes into the world.
    2. It is because of this vision that he shares life with us.
    3. It is because of this vision that he offers us the opportunity to accept the gifts that can transform life.

CONCLUSION:

  1. Some of you may remember that over 30 years ago, Pete Seeger wrote the lyrics to one of the most enduring folk songs ever written, popularized by the folk trio who got their start singing at a Greenwich Village coffee house, the Bitter End: Peter, Paul and Mary.
    1. Seeger wrote:

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

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    1. He went on to write about what he'd do with a bell, what he'd do with a song, and concluded by saying:

Well I got a hammer,
And I got a bell,
And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It's the hammer of Justice,
It's the bell of Freedom,
It's the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.

    1. Jesus has a hammer
    2. Jesus has a bell
    3. Jesus has a song
    4. He is using them for all people to sing about love and grace, faith and justice, mercy and work.
  1. If we are willing Jesus will help us in the new year to visualize opportunities and experience growth.
    1. He can help us to overcome resentment opening up the possibilities for achievement.
    2. He can help us overcome materialism opening up opportunities for contentment.
    3. He can help us overcome destructive habits opening up pathways of freedom.
    4. He can help us overcome a sterile spirituality opening up vistas for growth and maternity.
    5. He can help us overcome loneliness opening circles of intimacy.
    6. He can help us overcome entrenched attitudes and belief structures opening up areas of openness and flexibility.

      7.  

CONCLUSION

  1. But to achieve what Jesus offers a decision needs to be made.
    1. In the movie "City of Joy," Patrick Swayze plays a medical student confronted with the overwhelming poverty of Calcutta.
      1. A woman confronts him with one of three choices.
        1. You can run.
        2. You can watch.
        3. You can commit to getting involved with compassionate response.
      2. In the film, he chooses a compassionate response and life is transformed.
    2. The same three options face us this morning as we contemplate a common savior and his desires for us.
  2. Thank God for a common savior, Jesus Christ.

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