So this is our fifth and final week in the book of Hebrews. And we have jumped forward to chapter 13, the final chapter in the book. And I love so much that this is how the book of Hebrews ends.
As we have been exploring these past few weeks, the book of Hebrews delves into a lot of elaborate and complex ideas about the nature and meaning of Jesus. Barrett, in one commentary I drew on says, “the picture of Christ that emerges from Hebrews is decidedly more cosmological than worldly.”
However, as we have also been exploring these past few weeks I think that the complex, perhaps other worldly, Christology of Hebrews has very practical implications for the way we live. Long, in another commentary says, “In Hebrews, the gospel is not merely an idea submitted for intellectual consideration; it is a life embracing demand that summons to actions.”
Over these past few weeks in amongst trying to understand what it means to say that Jesus is “the exact imprint of God’s very being, a great high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, a greater and perfect tent who purifies our conscience from dead works to worship the living God, we have also reflected on what Hebrews can teach us about practical things. Things like how we can draw on the ancient stories and traditions of our faith to address issues we are dealing with today. How we might practise Sabbath, relate to those deemed “outsider” and hold onto hope in difficult times.
And today’s text is the most practical of all and it is how the sermon ends. This sermon that is addressed to early Christians, who are tired and struggling to hold onto faith are encouraged to do these things. It seems the preacher believed that the answer to their spiritual weariness is knowing who Christ is in their lives and living that out practically.
The preacher is pretty clear how to do this and I do not think this passage needs much from me except perhaps to reiterate what she says.
“Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Indeed opening our homes, sharing our tables is a way to show mutual love to each other and to the stranger. In our ever more divided world, table fellowship is at the heart of the Kingdom the God.
“Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.”
This is something Jesus also tells his followers to do. In Matthew 25 in the well known parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus speaks of the time to come when the Son of Man comes in glory and separates the people one from another. To those on his right he says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
For those of us living in this time and place, in which prisoners have become victims in a political game of ping pong played by our govt, this has perhaps even more significance. As Central Australian women are moved to Darwin to make room at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre and young people are moved out of a facility that was purpose built for them at great, great cost to the Northern Territory, the church should remember these words of Jesus, in which he identifies himself with those in prison.
“Let marriage be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.”
I really like this word honour. I think perhaps neither the church nor the secular society has not done this particularly well. The church I think has gone way beyond honouring marriage to, in some circumstances, almost worshipping it. We have held up getting married to young people as the most faithful thing they can do as a follower of Jesus. And married Christians (and I am one) can become very inward looking, making their own nuclear family their sole focus and purpose.
And we have made staying married until you die, even if there is violence or it has become toxic and miserable, the only measurement of whether we have held marriage in honour or not. Does not honouring marriage also mean honouring our spouse with respect, choosing to see the good rather than just the negative, choosing kindness over being right and doing the hard work of staying connected, engaged and committed emotionally, physically and spiritually rather than checking out?
Secular society on the other hand, has perhaps swung in the opposite direction. Less and less people are choosing to get married believing committing to one person limits their freedom. We see this fear of commitment in other areas as well. In the modern world where we have almost endless choices, people do not want to commit to anything, even coming to church on a Sunday morning, in case something better comes up.
It is a good thing that a lot more people now have more agency over their lives, their careers, their relationships. However, there is a lot of research to show that endless choice mostly leads to less satisfaction. It leaves us endlessly wondering if we chose right. The right person, the right job, even the right holiday or meal off the menu. It’s a balance isn’t it? How do we ensure we as individuals are able to flourish but also build committed and nurturing relationships and communities where people feel safe to be and share who they really are?
I get that the biblical condemnation of “the sexually immoral and adulterers” is extremely uncomfortable for the modern reader, including me. But we would do well to remember that Hebrews was written at a time when women, slaves, children had very little agency. Adultery could lead to pregnancy which lead to ostracism at best, stoning at worst. It was rarely between two consenting adults whose partners had also consented to polyamory. These guardrails were to protect the vulnerable.
And yet I am not convinced that consent as the sole ethical lens through which we view sex is sufficient. I think perhaps the Christian sexual ethic still has something to say to a culture in which an awareness of another’s full humanity, complexity, dignity and vulnerability is absent in a lot of our sexual activity. You do not need me to give endless examples of this.
Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he himself has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
I am conscious that most of us, if not all of us, here would not consider ourselves to be people who loved money. I know you pretty well and I do not think any of you are here, doing what you do, “for the money.” However, we live and breathe and have our being in a system that is constantly seeking to make us believe that we would be happier, that life would be better if we just had a little bit more. Nothing raises our anxiety like an expensive bill, maybe that’s just me, but I think not. It doesn’t matter how many times I read the research that points to the fact that money does not actually lead to more happiness and contentment, it still has a grip on my soul. All I can do is keep praying that God will loosen that grip, keep giving even when it feels so counterintuitive, keep practising simplicity and gratitude, focusing my gaze on what I do have and not what I do not.
Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
As people who follow Jesus we should not engage in condescending charity. Rather we walk into the hard places, we walk alongside people who are really suffering because we know that this is where Christ is and there we will encounter Him. And we do this with hope because we know the Kingdom of God is here, that Christ has come and redeemed us so that we can bring redeeming love into the world. We trust that suffering and pain will not have the final word but that Christ will come again to make all things new.
Let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God.
Yes along with the challenges of the Christian life – the calling to bear the pain that Christ endured – there is also joy and celebration, thanksgiving and praise. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus himself attended weddings and festivals and enjoyed good food and wine with his friends. He delighted in the people and the creation around him. “Consider the lilies of the field,” he said, “how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
This is yet another reason I think the practise of Sabbath is so important. We need to give ourselves at least a day, to slow down enough to enjoy what we have been given and give thanks.
And finally, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
This week a lot of churches are celebrating Christ the King Sunday. The last few years we have observed this Sunday as well.
We are not this year, as we are reading Hebrews instead and it can get difficult coming up with something new every year.
But, I am aware at times such as these, in which it feels like so much of the world is been run by war mongers, oligarchs and self interest it is good to remind ourselves that indeed it is Christ who is King. And what better way to honour Him than by doing good and to sharing what we have. I am more and more convinced that God is working in the world not through politics and power but through small acts of love and kindness rising up from the ground.
Amen
