Hebrews 3:1-2 “Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.”

The Jewish Christians to whom this letter to the Hebrews was written faced many challenges to their faith. Their friends and neighbors were constantly lobbying them to give it up. They questioned Jesus’ identity. Was he really who he claimed to be? They denied Jesus’ distinctive mission. It seemed to some that you had all you ever needed in Moses and the Old Testament prophets. These Jewish Christians grew tired of the cross and burden that came along with following Jesus. Ridicule and persecution were no fun.

I think this context makes the book of Hebrews hugely relevant for us today. Some of my own friends have left the Christian faith. They were worn down by the constant messaging that Jesus doesn’t really matter, there’s nothing in Christianity you can’t find in other religions, nothing you couldn’t do with no religion at all. They grew tired of being considered odd, out-of-step with the norms and values of the world around them. Some have run into this spiritual buzz saw on American college campuses. Others experienced it working in the amoral climate of corporate America.

The problem is not with Jesus and the faith he founded. The problem is that we stop paying attention. Or, as the writer of Hebrews says, “…fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” All the good reasons to fix our thoughts on Jesus can’t be condensed into six or seven sentences of one chapter of one Bible book. But here we have a start. One good reason to fix your thoughts on Jesus goes like this: “He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.”

Jesus was faithful to his mission. “Okay. That’s nice. But other people have been faithful, too.” If we aren’t impressed, it’s because we haven’t been paying attention. God appointed Jesus to seek and save sinners. He had explicit orders to find the kind of people who seemed least likely to listen to him. I have heard people describe outstanding salesmen as the kind of people who could sell snow to Eskimos or sand to Arabs. Humanly speaking, the challenge before Jesus was greater still. He had to convince people who had taken a lifetime of abuse at the hands of religious people that his brand was going to be any different. And they wouldn’t be respected more by their critics. They just wouldn’t have their vices to comfort them.

On the other end of the spectrum, he had to convince people who were smug and content in their own version of holiness that he could give them a better holiness–if only they would throw their own holiness away and plead guilty to complete spiritual fraud and incompetence.

Who signs up for a project like that? Other founders of other world religions didn’t start out like this. But Jesus didn’t come to win a following. He came to change the world, including you and me. He deserves our attention, his life begs us to fix our thoughts on him, because he was faithful to his mission.