“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”
Hebrews 2:14-15

My friend Wendy said she has really enjoyed studying in Hebrews this last few months, and so for a change, I thought I’d give it another spin.  I’ve always struggled with Hebrews, because in some ways it is a pretty theologically technical book- and the older I get, the less agile my mind is with “deeper” topics.    Sadly, I find myself wanting to stay wading around in the kiddie pool of basic Christian truths, simply swimming in the broader concepts of grace and mercy and truth and forgiveness and love.  But like the nature of creation and all of existence, behind the simple things in life we accept easily and take for granted are complex structures, mechanisms, and interactions which make the universe hum along.  God and His nature are both simple and complex.

While theological debates can accordingly spiral into thunderous argumentation over the most obtuse (and practically irrelevant) topics, believers are still left to face and to grapple with big picture points about the nature of existence, and how God meets us in our lives, and the Bible is pretty clear about how things really are on a range of subjects.

On two points related to Jesus’ mission and ministry, Hebrews is pretty clear about why Jesus came into our world garbed in flesh and feelings, in limitations and and longings.  Jesus came with the express aim to destroy Satan- the Lord of Death- and his domain, and also to set free everyone who wanted to be free from a fear of death.

Psychologists recognize that people go to great lengths to hide themselves from the reality that they will face death in all of its potent forms: the death of relationships, the death of possibilities, the death of dreams and abilities and options and, eventually, of our own bodies.  Death, with its suggestion of finality and the silencing of being, is the goblin that gives fear its power.  We fear because we anticipate the darkness of death in every stinging loss, in every failure and faux pas that foreshadows our future denigration and desistance.

It’s those dark suggestions, anticipations and denigrations propounded by death that wrap us up in webs of fear, sending us running from life.

Jesus came, however, to pull back the great curtain shrouding Satan to show us what he really is, and to turn off the great fireworks machinery behind death’s fear-fostering furies, declaring with a definitive single act on a cross, “I’ll have none of that.”

The future, in life and death, lie in the hands of the Resurrected One- in the hands of the One who died and then undied- to let us know death is not the end, and that fear is a boisterous bugaboo with no true power of its own, unless it is empowered by us.

“Lose the chains.  I made you to live.”

Remember, it is Love who wins the day.  He owns death and fear.  And so do you, if He owns you.