Jude 1-25

Hey Jude!

Hey Jude!  Okay – a little quiz … what the heck is JUDE?  Jude is one of only five books in the Bible that consist of only one chapter. Can anyone name the other four?

They are II John, III John, Philemon, and Obadiah.

Most scholars think that Jude was written by the Jude or Judas who was the brother of Jesus.  Can you just imagine what it must have been like to have been a brother of Jesus?

From the gospels it appears that none of Jesus’ siblings was a follower of Jesus during the years of his ministry. There are only a handful of times that Jesus’ family showed up and when they did, the encounters were unhappy.

Sometimes the family would invite Jesus to spend a little time with them, but Jesus would politely refuse, claiming that the disciples were his real family now.

One other time, having listened to Jesus teach for a while, some of his brothers publicly concluded that Jesus had gone off his rocker. “He is out of his ever-loving mind!” they exclaimed for all to hear.

You can’t blame them. Despite the apocryphal stories about Jesus the wonder-working child who used his supernatural powers to play tricks on his classmates there is actually no evidence that Jesus’ upbringing had been very remarkable. To his brothers, Jesus had seemed like just one of the family.

And so although it was not a cinch for anyone in the first century to believe that this undeniably human person was also the eternal Son of God, it was the people who had known Jesus the most intimately who wrestled with this the most.

But by grace, it appears that at least some of Jesus’ family, including Mary and his brother James, at some point, became disciples.

But still how strange it must have been for James to pray to and through and in the name of the brother with whom he used to play catch in the backyard!

How odd for Mary to proclaim as the Lord of Life the same one to whom she had given birth, the one she had nursed at her breasts, and the one she had even diapered!

Jude, to his credit, doesn’t make a very big deal about being Jesus’ half-brother, but he does identify himself as a brother of James, and hence some have concluded that “Jude” is short for “Judas,” who is a known brother of Jesus.

Now when your brother turns out to be the King of kings and the Lord of lords, it goes without saying that you will forever dwell in his shadow!

But this matter of dwelling in the shadow of a sibling may have been doubly striking for Jude. Not only was his oldest brother the Son of God, yet another of his brothers, James, also became quite famous as the bishop of the very first Christian church in Jerusalem.

That’s maybe why Jude identified himself as “the brother of James.” It had become second-nature.

For years, no matter where he went, whenever he introduced himself to someone for the first time, this other person would sooner or later say, “Hey, aren’t you . . .?” and then Jude would say, “Yes, I’m James’ little brother.”

So when composing this epistle, he beats everyone to the punch by saying right up front, “Hi, I’m Jude, and yes, James is my older brother!”

So let’s take a look at what Jesus’ and James’ little brother has to say. Jude starts like many of the epistles in the New Testament – Positive, affirming, hopeful. 

He says, “Relax, everything’s going to be all right; rest, everything’s coming together; open your hearts, love is on the way.”  Nice right?

Well, hold on to your hats - because its then that Jude really gets on a role:  He begins with allusions to the exodus from Egypt, the fall of the angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain and his murder of brother Abel, Balaam’s attempt to prophesy against the Israelites, Korah’s rebellion against the leadership of Moses, and a reference to an apocryphal story about the archangel Michael’s role in the death of Moses as well as a quote from the non-biblical book of Enoch.

Sandwiched in between that are verses in which Jude wastes no time mixing his metaphors by swiftly decrying the false teachers as bad shepherds, rainless clouds, fruitless trees, wild waves, and wandering stars.

He is unremittingly hostile toward these somewhat shadowy false teachers who were apparently wrecking havoc at the time.

But what precisely was the nature of this particular heresy? As is often the case in the New Testament, we need to read between the lines to figure things out, apparently this group of teachers taught that the free gift of grace was nothing more than an excuse to live however they pleased.

There has been a perennial temptation in the church to draw the same conclusion that was once famously articulated by the German writer Heinrich Heine: “God likes to forgive. I like to sin. Really, the world is admirably arranged!”

If grace means that we are not saved by what we do, nor conversely condemned by what we do, well then, it looks like what we do is a wash.

Since God doesn’t care, let’s do whatever we feel like, let the chips fall where they may, and assume that grace will clean us up again in the morning.

I think Jude knew that things wouldn’t be so different today. And as odd a book as he wrote, and ancient though his words undeniably are probably Jude’s brief section of advice are as important to us today as they were to the Christians of his day.

In verse 20, he encourages his readers to build themselves up. Far from a call for some spiritual equivalent of a body-building and fitness program, the Greek word Jude employs at that point means literally to build on a foundation that is already there.

That’s Good News! We don’t have to start from scratch. Jude points out that the foundation has already been laid in Christ and by his apostles.

We know that Jesus has much to say about most everything we face in life. We know the Beatitudes, the law of love, Jesus’ own example of humility and sacrifice.  The foundation has been laid. And we are called to build on it.

We have a place to stand, and we should be thankful for that.

Build yourselves up, Jude urges. Pray to the same Holy Spirit who laid out the foundation of the faith in the first place.

Be gentle with and merciful to the doubters, Jude advises, but don’t give in to their doubts. In other words, let us be who God in Christ called us to be.

It was good advice then. It is good advice now. It is simply the Good News.

In verse 1, when Jude opened his brief epistle, he talked about how those whom God has called are also kept safe by Jesus Christ. We are kept - safe.

When he opened this letter, Jude humbly called himself no more than a servant of Jesus and a brother of James.

But given how important this little book is, you have the feeling that when it is all said and done, Jesus will not merely tell Jude “Well done, good and faithful servant,” but will perhaps commend Jude for being such a wonderful little brother.

Writing the kind of things Jude did was very much in keeping with the family way.

Thanks be to God that by the grace of our adoption in Christ, Jude, James, and even Jesus himself are our brothers, too.

Nice family to be a part of, if you ask me!

 Amen.