 |
|
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost Back when we were in junior high, do you remember how mean we could be? Yes, Junior Highs can be veritable hotbeds of psychopathology. I remember one particular bit of torture we used on each other. On some unsuspecting classmate, we would stick a piece of paper that said “hit me” on it. And the poor kid would then walk through the halls, enduring the jabs and pokes from everyone who passed his way. Being an Episcopalian in recent days feels a little like this. We have been taking hits, left and right, in the media, on the street, in day to day conversations. It seems like we Episcopalians have become a big target for every cheap shot and pent up aggression that’s out there. And I for one am sick and tired of it. Perhaps this is why the Letter to the Hebrews, from which we have been reading these past several weeks, feels like such a solace and strength. For it comes from a time and place, not unlike our own, when the church was assaulted on every side. We don’t know exactly who wrote the Letter to the Hebrews. Some say the Apostle Paul. Others say one of Paul’s protoges, Barnabas or Apollos. Whoever the author was, however, writes Fred Craddock, the great preacher and biblical scholar, in the New Testament “there is no other document that represents the mounting of so strong an effort by a pastor to save a church.” As soon as you begin reading Hebrews, you know why this is so. Everywhere you look there is sense of urgency. Hold on, we hear. Don’t despair. Don’t give up. Lift your drooping hands and knees. In every chapter and verse, there is the tireless endeavor to restore his flock to the joy, love, and delight in service of God. The Hebrews of this letter, you see, are tired, weary to the bone. They are tired of serving the world, tired of having to support their church with their tithes and offerings, tired of being peculiar and whispered about, tired of taking hits for their convictions, tired of trying to maintain their spiritual integrity, they are tired of walking the walk. In fact, many of them are ready to leave the faith and spend their Sunday mornings on the beach and golf course. Many of those early believers are so sick and tired of the cost of discipleship that they on the verge of abandoning their Christian vocation. So they were encouraged with these words: “Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” (3:12) And with these words: “Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.” (10:36) The Book of Hebrews addresses a beleagured community of faith. And the antidote to this spiritual anemia is a new vision of who they are as the body of Christ. The author does this via two major themes: priesthood and pilgrimage. Jesus is portrayed as the great high priest. He is the mediator between the human realm and the divine. “He cleanses our consciousness, he removes our sin, and intercedes for us before the throne of grace.” Through Jesus, writes the author, we are drawn into the very presence of God. Jesus is also portrayed as a pilgrim, a pioneer, who leads us to faith’s destination, our home with God. Christians are to look “to Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” (12:2) The church is to be a pilgrim church, on the move, so that the weary pilgrims reach the Promised Land. After delineating the whole sojourn of faith, begun in Abram of Ur, and completed in Jesus of Nazareth, Hebrews culminates with the 12th chapter, with these stirring words: Since, therefore, you are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, “let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perserverance the race that is set before us.” (12:1) Return to the faith that has saved you, the author proclaims! Faith that is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (11:1) Faith that believes in the new world, the Kingdom of God. Faith that lives by a vision of God’s reality, God’s purposes, God’s future, God’s deliverance. Now I wonder this morning, what this passage might have to say to us in the Episcopal Church at large, and to us at St. Mary’s in Barnstable in particular. I think the Book of Hebrews teaches us first that we are on a pilgrimage of faith. One of the great lessons I learned on my pilgrimage to Santiago Campostela a few years ago is the faith is primarily a matter of practice, and only secondarily a matter of doctrine. We have gotten ourselves in a heap of trouble in the Anglican Communion, I believe, because we have gotten these two thing reversed. We have leaned heavily on doctrine, and forgotten how to practice our faith as Christians. Remembering we are pilgrim people allows us to return to the practice of faith, where actions speak far louder than words, and where we become doers of the word, and not hearers only. Second, the Book of Hebrews teaches us we are a royal priesthood. A good part of what ails the church today, I believe, is the kind of clericalism that elevates some as priests and disregards the rest of Body of Christ. In Hebrews, Jesus drawing us all into a priesthood of all believers, where everyone is valued and called into the full ministry of the Church, and where the laity are empowered and equipped to be a full, functional members of Christ’s body: where each of is indispensable, each of us has a calling and a vocation. Finally, the Book of Hebrews teaches us that faith is a race. In the mind of the writer to the Hebrews, we are the latter day saints. It is as if we are in a stadium being cheered on this great circle of witnesses in the stands. Those who have gone before us are now passing off their baton to us. As runners, we are commended to lay aside all excess weight. We are to look ahead to the pioneer and perfecter of our faith in Christ Jesus. We are to be disciplined and undistracted. We are to persevere and show compassion to those with weak hands and feeble knees. There’s an old spiritual that captures the essence of the Letter to the Hebrews that I would like to share with you, in closing. If you are weary this morning, if you are spiritually exhausted, depleted, run down, in need of a boost, if you are at the end of your rope, look around you. There’s a great cloud of witnesses. They know you can make it. They are shouting alleluia. Hold on. Keep your eyes on the prize. Hold on.
|
|