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Sermon - The Fifth Sunday in Lent (B) - 29th March 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 and 10am
Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 119:9-16, Hebrews 5:5-14, John 12:20-33
The Christian faith grows out of and is sustained by the conversation between the church and the Bible. From this engagement, generation after generation, come the beliefs, the ethics, the liturgy, the purposes and the relationships that define the Christian faith. Other voices enter the conversation, invited and uninvited, affecting the language used and the conclusions reached; but the primary and most influential partners are the community and the book. Of course, not all persons in the community are equally engaged in the conversation; some prefer to be silent, and some are silenced. Neither do all the books of the Bible participate equally. The reasons for this unevenness usually lie in the contents of the writings themselves, but not always. Sometimes there is quite a distance between what a document has to say and the church’s willingness or ability to hear it. The Letter to the Hebrews is a case in point, from whence this morning’s second reading comes.
Why has Hebrews not had a stronger and more influential voice in the conversation between the church and the Bible? Let us not forget that Hebrews has been called on to say a few words at quite a few assemblies of the church. Most commonly it is to offer the benediction:
“Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (13:20-21)
However, there are other moments in the worship service at which Hebrews is invited to speak. Hebrews provides the epistle reading every year on Good Friday as well as on Monday and Wednesday of Holy Week. Likewise, during the Christmas season, the prologue to Hebrews always sings the praise of Christ in tandem voice with the prologue to the Gospel of John. At the festival of the Annunciation to Mary, which we celebrated last Wednesday and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple we hear every year brief passages from Hebrews.
For two brief periods between Pentecost and Advent semi-continuous readings from this epistle give us opportunities for a bit more extended engagement with Hebrews. Interestingly this letter, which speaks every year on Good Friday, never says a word during the Easter season or on Pentecost. Does this seasonal silence reveal something about the message of the book or merely the preferences of the conversation partner, the church?
The lectionary that we use through out the year reflects what is broadly true of the conversation between the church and the Bible; namely, that while Hebrews is invited to speak on occasion, the church is not as attentive to this voice as it is to others, such as Romans or 1 Corinthians. Hebrews is the finest example of preaching material available to us from the first century. This letter offers the most elaborate Christian reading of the Old Testament to be found in the New Testament; as a theologian, the writer of Hebrews is not inferior to Paul or John. These witnesses have been heard with appreciation, but the distance between the church and Hebrews remains.
In my New Testament of 205 pages, Hebrews begins on page 171. Justified or not, a position near the end is often read as a value judgment. The reader of the New Testament moves through the Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s writings as a traveller on a well-lighted street, not quite familiar but providing enough names and addresses so as to remove the sense of one’s being a stranger. However, once past Paul, the traveller finds the road uncertain, the houses dimly lit and no familiar landmarks. The temptation is to stop and turn back to the Gospels, Acts and Paul. After all, for these areas there are excellent maps.
In addition to its location in the canon, this letter suffers from a title that has a distancing effect on the reader. The title is a later scribal addition, but still it is the first word the reader sees, large bold print over the entrance to whatever may await the one who enters. Other titles temporarily distance us, after all, we are not Galatians, Corinthians, or Philippians, but these are geographical designations. All of us have travelled enough to know that initial strangeness soon dissolves and once inside, we find ourselves more alike than different. “Hebrews” is not a geographical term; it is ethnic and ethnic distances are more complex, more difficult to negotiate, requiring more energy than some people are willing to expend.
Once inside, the reader never relaxes, never quite feels at home. The paragraphs are not written in such a way that they can easily be extracted, rather, they are carefully linked in one long sustained argument. The furniture seems permanently in place. As for the message of the argument, it is offered in a style strange to most readers. The writer is certainly not estranged from the Christian tradition that we meet elsewhere in the New Testament, nor is there any attempt to contradict it. That style is recast in categories and images that make vivid and vital what other writers were content to handle by allusion and implication. As a framework for understanding the redemptive work of Christ, the writer takes us inside the religion of the tabernacle of Israel’s wilderness journey. Priest, altar, sacrifice, atoning blood and cleansing rituals, these are not the ancient and remote trappings of a people past but the stuff of the writer’s presentation of what Christ has done and is doing for us now.
Most other New Testament writers, in making statements about Christ use Psalm 110:1 but Hebrews compels us to look at verse 4 of that psalm:
“The lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’“.
Suddenly a shadowy figure, hardly holding a place in the margin of our memories, moves centre stage in the explanation of who Christ is. Most readers are not in familiar country. The author assumes an audience familiar enough with the Old Testament to make detailed explanation of its texts convincing, word studies delightful and swift allusions powerful.
One other matter needs to be mentioned: the very stern nature of its imperatives. Even though the writer does not think the readers have reached the point of no return, that grim possibility is held up before them in very sharp language. Those who receive all the blessings of salvation and then fall away are beyond restoration. Those who wilfully continue in sin face the fearful prospect of certain Judgment:
“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”
Be warned by Esau, says the writer, who sold his birthright, then later sought to regain it but
“found no chance to repent, even though he sought the blessing with tears”.
A letter containing such sentences is usually attractive only to those groups who deal easily in judgments and ultimatums. I can certainly a test to hearing such judgements made in which others with a different point of view are told that they are not spiritual adults but spiritual babies and need milk not meat! Certainly those churches that not only do not believe they are anywhere near such dangerous spiritual brinks but also do not believe that such brinks even exist will look to other writings for words more gentle and gracious. Especially for those who have luxuriated in a world of grace without ethical demand, who regard all moral urgings as ‘quaint echoes of a puritan past, Hebrews is not welcome reading.
As we read Hebrews, this is the moment to caution for us to be patient. Be in no hurry to collapse the distance between the church and the text. Restrain the appetite for immediacy, for a “lesson for today”. Trust that that will come in due season. Recall the reminder of Clement of Alexandria that the Bible does not yield its hard-won truths to every casual passer by.
Hebrews takes very seriously the historical career of Jesus. Nowhere in the book is this more evident than in today’s reading where the writer deals with the question of the function of the life of Jesus of Nazareth for the life of the church and for Christian faith. Hebrews has thus far drawn from the life of Jesus two central meanings. As one in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, he is able to serve as our priest with sympathy and patience; and as one who experienced life as we know it with faithfulness and full obedience, he is the pioneer and model for the Christian pilgrimage.
As priest, his sympathy flows out of his being tested, not out of failing the test; therefore, his being without sin does not reduce his capacity to be touched by our weaknesses. As model, his faithful obedience through suffering qualifies him. This is to say, he lived his own life and faced his own struggles and hence can be a model. However, to say that he acted and spoke as he did in order to be a model for us is to rob his life of meaning in itself and, therefore, to remove him as a good model. For example, if he prayed in order to be a model of prayer life, then he is not a model of prayer life. This is not to imply that the writer of Hebrews thus removes meaning from Jesus’ life. On the contrary, his Jesus prayed with loud cries and tears, was heard for his reverence and learned obedience through suffering, but the church’s Jesus has sometimes been portrayed as moving through his life as a self-conscious example for others. Why was he baptised, as an example? Why was he tempted, as an example? Why did he pray, as an example? This is a gross misunderstanding of Jesus and a mishandling of the biblical texts. We find meaning in Jesus’ life only if that meaning is already there.
The two interpretations of Jesus’ life offered by Hebrews are not exhaustive, but they do prompt the church to understand his life in ways appropriate to its time and place. From Advent through Easter, lectionaries place gospel stories about Jesus at the centre of the worship and preaching of the church, but these texts can be used week by week without dealing with the overarching question: What does the life of Jesus mean for the life of faith? If the gospel is the death and resurrection of Jesus, as Paul insists, is all that precedes his death not gospel but preface to the gospel as well? Or are Jesus’ healing, feeding, receiving, forgiving, loving and caring also gospel? The author of Hebrews not only offers a way of reading texts about Jesus but also by so doing also presses us to think through again this vital question.
Hebrew’s enables us to ask the question along with the Greeks “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” and so we get an audience with Jesus the Son of God and Man.
This sermon prepared using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol XII Abingdon Press 1998.