“God—has in these last days spoken to us by His Son—who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person—having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they” (Hebrews 1:1,3)
The writer of the book of Hebrews was a Jew himself. He wrote to convince his people that they were wrong to dismiss Jesus Christ as Messiah, because He fulfilled and completed all that they had been prepared to understand about God’s will through them ever since the time of Abraham. And he uses a key word, better. Everything their ancestors had received from the Lord God—revelation, covenant, sacrifice, priesthood, status over other nations, authority over them—is better understood and advanced through Jesus Christ. He insists that our Lord Jesus is superior to all the angels, much the same way that the evangelist Matthew demonstrates that He is superior to Moses.
The writer of Hebrews uses the word “better” thirteen times, most notably at the conclusion of the epistle read on the Sunday of Orthodoxy each year. It mentions all the heroes of faith before the coming of Jesus Christ, examples of endurance and confidence in the heavenly Father, yet: “all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us” (11:39,40). Nothing better could be designed than to receive Jesus Christ into our hearts and know the meaning of salvation. He wants us to realize what a price was paid by those who bore the message of God’s plan for humanity through the Hebrew people, concluding with the Messiah, Jesus. Their faith made it possible for us to enjoy Him. You and I are part of that glorious heritage. God saved the best for us and our salvation—what can you do in order to respond to that love? Yes, appreciate the gift, give God glory, and share Him with others.
What He wants from His own people is not to revert to the old ways of worship and faith in Judaism, but to advance to a new and greater life in Christ. The old way will get them nothing but deterioration and monotony in life and prayer. The letter to Hebrews is filled with the theme of salvation. To read it carefully is to grow in understanding the relationship between the heavenly Father and His Son. It encourages us to build upon what had been done for humanity in the past history of Israel. It calls us to be better engaged in the working out of our own salvation.
To meditate on the word better, consider the advances in all aspects of life in the world, and in America specifically. It would seem that our nation is the epitome of Robert Browning’s claim that “every day in every way everything gets better and better” (Pippa Passes). The theme is everywhere, from the political campaigns to Disney World. And it’s true. In all the Olympic Games the athletes not only strive to beat their opponents, they race against the records. In all phases of science, enormous advances are the marks of progress. This is, of course, a cliché—except in areas of spirituality.
Our Orthodox theologians are still not done with the fathers of the early centuries. We yet have to plumb the depths of the fourth century writers, the desert fathers, and the profound writings of saints such as the Cappadocians, Maximos Confessor, and Gregory Palamas. Later is not always better. We build upon the foundation of those intellectuals who understood deep mysteries because they prepared themselves by prayer, fasting and spiritual effort to open themselves to the Holy Spirit in their souls. Our challenge in this new millennium is to follow them in applying the truths they uncovered to the times we live in without on the one hand measuring current life styles by past traditions, or on the other hand succumbing to the allurements of a culture awash in humanist values, having re-paganized itself and which feels itself beyond the values and virtues of the past.