Massey’s voice became known throughout the world—and this is how he first influenced me—as the speaker on the “Christian Brotherhood Hour,” the international radio broadcast of his denomination, the Church of God (Anderson). His work as a missionary educator in Jamaica shaped his perspective on life outside of the country where he was born. His labors as dean of the chapel of Tuskegee University (1984–1989) and dean of Anderson School of Theology (1989–1995) have left an enduring legacy for good at both institutions.
The listing of these assignments reveals much about the pilgrimage of James Earl Massey, but not everything. While deeply anchored in the Wesleyan theology and the Holiness traditions of his own denomination, Massey’s ministry has reached across the universal Body of Christ. In 1966, he participated in the World Congress on Evangelism held in Berlin and co-chaired by Billy Graham and Carl F. H. Henry. This conference was a forerunner of the Lausanne Movement for World Evangelization, which was launched in 1974 with Massey again taking a leading role.
Over the years, Massey has served the church well as a scholar and writer of distinction. His more than twenty books have covered a wide range of pastoral theology (especially homiletics), biblical scholarship, and spiritual uplift. He has also written for numerous magazines and periodicals and has served as a senior editor at Christianity Today. His work continues strong today with new publications and numerous invitations to preach and present lectures in churches and schools, large and small, across the breadth of this country and beyond.
And now we have from the pen of James Earl Massey another book of theological depth and biblical wisdom, Preaching from Hebrews: Hermeneutical Insights and Homiletical Helps. In some ways, this study is the culmination of a lifelong interest in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Of all the books in the New Testament, Hebrews is the one that best illuminates the Old Testament in light of the New. At the same time, it is also the one most shrouded in mystery, for there is much about it that we do not know: Who wrote it? When was it written? For which community of believers was it intended? Why was there so much debate about its canonicity in the early church?
Massey reviews these historical and critical issues, but his primary focus is on the epistle’s central theme: the supremacy of Jesus Christ. In Hebrews, temptation is real, sin is serious, atonement is necessary, salvation is abundant, and all of this flows from one of the highest Christologies in all of early Christian literature. In Hebrews, Jesus brings a superior covenant, a better sanctuary, and a new life of discipleship shaped by faith and holiness.
Massey delves deeply into the rich theology of this important letter, but his real aim is to offer practical help to the preaching pastor by showing how one moves from text to sermon. In his Homiletics, Karl Barth wrote that authentic preaching should not only be about the Bible but also from the Bible. Massey demonstrates here exactly how that works.
In this closely textured study of the epistle to the Hebrews, Massey has brought together several genres of writing: literary analysis, historical overview, theological exposition, biblical commentary, and a manual for preaching. The many books James Earl Massey has written across the years fill one of the most often-turned-to shelves in my own library, and I am eager to add this one to it. Preaching from Hebrews, I predict, will become an enduring masterpiece.
Several years ago I offered the following tribute to Dr. Massey. The words still ring right today:
While many people seek greatness but only attain mediocrity, James Earl Massey has been lifted to greatness while seeking simply to be faithful to his calling. Beyond his many accomplishments, at the core of Dr. Massey’s being there is an essential decency, humility, and spirituality that is compelling. Never one to give himself to minor absolutes, he has modeled, with courage and compassion, the burdensome joy of a herald whose life reflects the message he proclaims. In the words of the great Howard Thurman, his life is “a great rejoicing!”
Timothy George
Timothy George is founding dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University and general editor of the Reformation Commentary of Scripture.
Preface
The Letter to the Hebrews is one of the most intriguing books within the New Testament and an important bridge book between the two Testaments. In a way that is unparalleled by any other New Testament writing, this letter captures strategic accents of the Christian gospel and applies them with aptness to highlight how the exalted Christ ministers to believers struggling with the demanding details of life. When this message is rightly understood and aptly treated in teaching and preaching, there can result a deepened appreciation for the ongoing ministry of Jesus, a quickened faith in God, and a settled commitment for faithful living as a Christian pilgrim.
This book is for those who seek help toward understanding the letter to the Hebrews and who desire to use it in teaching and preaching. Thus, there is extended treatment of historical matters and the central theological perspectives found in the letter before guidance is offered about how to preach from it. Commentary on the message of the Letter is given as Unit Reflections in Chapter 2; the intent has been to sharpen the focus of the text and expose the theological flavor and force its Auctor supplied. The sermons supplied in this book are all based on the New Revised Standard Version (1989) or its immediate predecessor, the Revised Standard Version.
This book is an expanded treatment of the Newell Lectures in Biblical Studies given in 1986 at Anderson School of Theology. The lectures were afterward expanded for a course on Hebrews that I taught as a Visiting Professor of Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1987. Some of these materials were used again in 1992 during the Annual Conference on Preaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; in 1994 at Princeton University during sessions there of the American Academy of Ministry; during the 13th Annual Samford University Pastor’s School at Beeson Divinity School in July 2000; and in a January 2003 course on Hebrews at Beeson Divinity School. The welcome given the presentations by so many working pastors and graduate students confirmed anew in me the importance of sharing these hermeneutical and homiletical helps on a wider scale. Thus this book.
It only remains for me to report that the unit reflections that appear as chapter 2 were first published in an earlier form as serial pieces in Vital Christianity magazine (May–July issues, 1986) under the heading “Jesus and the Believer: Studies in the Letter to the Hebrews.” They were later published as the commentary section on Hebrews in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary (ed. Brian K. Blount et al. [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007], pp 444–60). I am grateful both to Warner Press, Inc., and to Fortress Press for granting permission to re-use the reflections in expanded form as part of this book.
James Earl Massey
Part I: Hebrews in Focus
1. The History and Influence of Hebrews in Early Church Life
I. Hebrews in Early Church Life
Who the first recipients of the Letter to Hebrews were cannot be answered with unquestioned certainty, but the presence of so many sentences and phrases from it in First Clement, another church document usually dated around ad 96, argues well that believers living in Rome might have been the letter’s original target audience. Written by one Clement of Rome, a major leader in the church there ca. ad 90–100, First Clement is a letter sent by the church at Rome to the church at Corinth after learning about some troubles there that needed correcting. The salutation begins, “The Church of God which sojourns in Rome to the Church of God which sojourns in Corinth,” but the writing person, tradition maintains, was one Clement, who was either the pastor or the leading elder in the church at Rome.1
Clement was profoundly influenced by the thoughts and expressions in the Letter to Hebrews, and his letter to Corinth uses actual quotations from the writing and makes distinct allusions to its message, all of which evidences that the Letter to Hebrews was one of his resources.2 The following list of references provides a ready set of these correspondences.