Jesus: Yesterday Today and Forever

This week I watched an old sermon from Sam Wells when he was at Duke on one of this week's lectionary Bible passages: Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." I wanted to share a great quote, but then I heard another and another. This sermon is just full of brilliantly phrased affirmations of deep truth. So check it out! Below is one of the quotations, and the video of the full service at the majestic Chapel at Methodist-related Duke University.

"We long for unchanging, rooted, things we can trust eternally, forever; but we also need things that change in time, accompanying us at every point. What Hebrews is saying is, Jesus is both of these things. Jesus is eternally trustworthy forever. But Jesus is also a being in time, who meets us in our laughter and joy, because in his resurrection he knew laughter and joy, and meets us in our grief and fear, because in Gethsemane he knew grief and fear. There’s nowhere we can go that Jesus can’t meet us, and nothing we can feel in which Jesus can’t come close to us. To say, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,” is to say the Jesus of Galilee, the Jesus to whom I say my prayers, and the Jesus I shall see face to face on the last day, are all the same person, and are a person I can trust like no other being."