So this our fourth week reading through the book of Hebrews.
We are delving into these verses from chapters 9 and 10. It is a somewhat graphic reading. There are complex concepts here and no doubt language some people struggle with. As always we will delve into that but before that a little recap as I often do.
The book of Hebrews is a New Testament epistle (that is a letter) but it’s style has led most scholars to believe it was originally a sermon. We do not actually know who wrote the text, but I have been persuaded by the arguments for Priscilla and so for this series that is what we are assuming. I won’t go into that again but if you missed my arguments and are interested you can find the previous sermons on the ASUC website.
While, this book has also been experienced as anti-Old Testament and anti-Jewish, in the first week we read from chapter 1 and reflected on the ways that the author draws on the stories of her faith, her people, her tradition to encourage and inform her faith and community.
While the author believes that Jesus is the superior revelation of God, in her words, “the exact imprint of God’s very being,” she does not believe that Jesus voids the previous promises of God. Rather He fuses, clarifies, and fulfills them. Or as Long puts it, “God’s speech did not suddenly change its essential character when it came in Jesus but was always the good news of blessing and peace across the generations.”
We then read from chapter 4 and reflected on Sabbath. A practice the author insists, still remains for the people of God.
We discussed that Sabbath, is not simply a day to do nothing, rather it is a day in the life of God’s people to remember the finished work of God in creation, when on the seventh day God rested. A day to remember God’s people were once slaves in Egypt but God brought them out and therefore no one should be denied rest.
It is a day to anticipate the finished work of redemption, the new creation to come, when Christ will be revealed as Lord; when pain and toil will end and death will be no more.
It is a day to resist the current economic reality that depends on the endless generation of greater needs and desires that leaves us feeling restless, inadequate, unfulfilled and anxious.
Of course some kind of outward rest helps with this but this will look different for everyone. Again I won’t go over all of that but if you are interested that sermon is also on the website.
Last week we reflected on passages from chapter 5 and 7. Here, again drawing on the stories of her faith, her people, her tradition, the author describes Jesus as a high priest who offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears. He was made perfect through suffering. That we may know that in all the suffering and grief of our lives and the world, God is with us. We are not alone.
And Jesus was designated high priest by God, according to the order of Melchizedek.
Melchizedek was a king of Salem and “priest of God Most High.” who met Abraham as he was returning from a military victory and blessed him. Abraham then gives Melchizedek one tenth of everything.
He is an outsider to the Abrahamic line as well as the Levitical priesthood and yet he seems to know the God most high and the author of Hebrews comes to believe that Jesus was designated by God, according to his order.
This story has been significant to the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress who have come to see themselves in this order as well.
Last week we reflected on the tension throughout the Bible between the particularity and the universality of the story.
This paradox is clearly present in the assertion that the God of all humankind is disclosed through the history of a particular people, even a particular family, but their calling will find its fulfilment only as Abraham becomes ancestor of a multitude of nations.
The choice of this family does not deny God’s covenant with all creation; rather it is this family who will bear witness to the universal reach of God’s purposes.
I wondered if this is why Melchizedek was there. To remind Abram (and us) that right from the beginning God is also working within and through others, outside his line?
I think this has implications for the way we live together with those from other faiths, philosophies, beliefs and practises. I do not think this means that everything is true and equal and leads to the exact same God. But I do think God is bigger than just my beliefs. We need to be discerning but curious about where and how and in whom God is working.
In this week’s reading the author of Hebrews continues to reflect on Jesus as a high priest.
To understand this reading we again need to have some understanding of the Old Testament and the temple and the role of the high priest.
In Exodus, while the people of God were in the desert, they were instructed to make a sanctuary for God to dwell. This sanctuary was a tent divided by a curtain into two chambers. In the first chamber there is a lampstand and a table with the bread of the presence. This chamber was considered holy and could only be entered by priests.
But the second chamber was holier. In that chamber was the ark of the covenant and in the ark is the golden jar of manna, Aaron’s rod, and the tablets of the 10 commandments. This was the holy of holies. Only the high priest could enter the holy of holies and only once year, on the day of atonement or Yom Kippur. On this day the high priest would enter the holy of holies with the animal sacrifices of the people for their atonement and sanctification.
When the temple was built in Jerusalem it was based on this same plan. And the Jewish people continued to practise the day of atonement every year.
But the early Christians came to see in Jesus, a greater and more perfect tent, to the one made of human hands, as the author Hebrews puts it. As Son of God, He was in fact God, as Trinitarian theology would attest. In Him God came to dwell on earth and thus He was able to make a once and for all atonement for sin.
This week I have been reading NT Wright’s book, “the day the revolution began.” As many of you would know NT Wright is an Anglican bishop, New Testament scholar and author of about 80 books. He currently teaches at Oxford and is one of the most revered theologians of our time.
He argues that modern Christianity has not fully understood what exactly this means. He suggests we have shrunken the meaning of the cross.
He says, “in most popular Christianity heaven (and fellowship with God in the present), is the goal and sin, (bad behaviour deserving punishment) is the problem. A Platonized goal and a moralising diagnosis that together lead to a pagnized solution in which an angry divinity is pacified by human sacrifice.”
However he believes this is the wrong goal and problem. He says, “Humans are not made for heaven but for the new heavens and the new earth. And the human problem is not so much sin, seen as the breaking of moral codes – though that to be sure is part of it, but rather idolatry and the distortion of genuine humanness it produces. These two mistakes go together, reinforcing the basic heaven and earth dualism that continues to haunt Western Christianity. The goal is not heaven but a renewed human vocation within God’s renewed creation. This is what every Biblical book from Genesis on is pointing toward.”
This new human vocation Wright describes as being a royal priesthood, reflecting the divine image. Language of course that Hebrews uses. This means “standing between heaven and earth, even in the present time, adoring the Creator and bringing his purposes into reality on earth, ahead of the time when God completes the task and makes all things new.”
What gets in the way of this is idolatry. By idolatry he means giving away our calling, our hearts, our very selves to forces in the world – money, sex, power, war, celebrity etc – to which we eventually become enslaved. These things may have their place – they are good servants but not rulers.
The revolution of the cross sets us free from these. To be in between people, caught up in the rhythm of worship and mission.
In the crucifixion, Wright says “the loving purpose of God, working through the sin forgiving death of Jesus, frees us from the power of evil so that we many be part of God’s new creation, launched already when Jesus rose from the dead, awaiting its final completion when he returns, but active now through the work of redeemed humans called to bring redeeming love into the world.
Hebrews puts it, “Christ, through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God to purify out conscience from dead works to worship the living God.”
This is all pretty high and lofty Christology. What might this look like for us.
Well Hebrews 10 gives us a good start, “therefore, since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us (one) approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith. 23 Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
24 And (two) let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,
25 (and finally) let us meet together, and encourage one another.
