Hebrews
1.1-4, 2.10, 3.1-4
Psalm
148:1-13
Earlier this week, the former Mayor of London Ken
Livingstone
resigned
from the Labour Party amidst ongoing accusations of antisemitism.[1]
Meanwhile the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, continues to face
accusations
that he has
failed to adequately address an anti-Jewish bias within his party.[2]
Well, whatever the rights and wrongs of the accusations
levelled at
Messrs Livingstone and Corbyn,
and
I’m certainly not going to get drawn into that from the pulpit,
the
question of how non-Jews should relate to Jews
is,
it seems, a highly relevant topic.
It is well know that Western Christianity,
the
political and religious tradition from which many of us come,
has proved itself capable of perpetuating, condoning, or
justifying
the most
horrific abuses against the people known as the Jews.
From the anti-Jewish policies of the pre-Christian Roman
Empire,
to the
post-Constantinian targeting of the Jews
on the
basis that they were the people who crucified Jesus,
to the Crusades and the attempt to take the Holy Land for
Christ,
to the
first ghetto in Venice established in in the early sixteenth century,
to the presentation of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of
Venice,
to the
horrors of the Nazi holocaust,
the catalogue of antisemitism is long, insidious, and
disturbing,
and we are
its heirs.
So it is with great care that we begin our series
looking at
the New Testament text sometimes called the Letter to the Hebrews,
and as we negotiate this text,
written by
a Jew to a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles,
we will need to be alert to our language, and to our
presuppositions, as we go through.
As with all forms of racism, antisemitism can sneak up on us
unawares;
and as with
all forms of racism,
it’s
not always easy for us to have sufficient perspective on our own views
to
fully avoid problematic language and ideas.
As Christians, we need to be alert to the fact
that we can
easily caricature Judaism as a religion of legalism,
against
which we present Christianity as a religion of grace;
and we need to hear very clearly the voice of Jewish
scholars
who remind
us that the law in Judaism
is
encountered by those who live it as a means of grace
and
not as a source of oppression.
And as a church which has been active in supporting the
rights of Palestinians
who have
had their land taken and their homes destroyed
by the
Israeli expansion into the occupied territories,
we need to be very clear that our criticism of the actions
of the Israeli state
does not
become a fear or negativity
about those
who are Jewish by heritage and religion.
So, for example, we are registered as a Kairos congregation,
and are
committed to a process of boycott, divestment, and sanctions
as a
protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestine;
but as the sign outside our building reminds us,
we also
stand in solidarity with both our Jewish and our Muslim neighbours.[3]
Getting this right can be difficult,
especially
when come to passages in the Bible such as our reading this morning
from the
beginning of Hebrews.
Long ago God spoke to
our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets,
2 but in these last days
he has spoken to us by a Son,
whom he appointed heir of all
things,
through whom he also created the
worlds.
3 He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very
being,
and he sustains all things by his powerful
word.
As opening phrases for biblical books go,
it’s
certainly at the punchy end of things.
Not for Hebrews some standardised formulaic Pauline
greeting,
with a
salutation and a short prayer of thanksgiving.
Hebrews just jumps straight in with the meaty and
controversial theology,
and here we
get a strong clue that this isn’t a normal New Testament letter.
Did you know that Hebrews actually lacks
almost all
of the conventions of an ancient Greek epistle?
The conclusion from this is that what we have here in
Hebrews isn’t a letter at all,
it’s
probably best described as a sermon.
Which means that technically, I’m preaching a sermon on a
sermon.
Which is
rather pleasing, now I stop to think about it.
I mean, it’s a sermon about Jesus, but it’s also scripture,
which means
that it is also God’s word.
So my words, are words about words,
which are
themselves the Word, and are also about the Word.
Anyway.
The sermon of Hebrews is a rather shadowy document in New
Testament terms.
We don’t
know who wrote it, or when, or from where, or who they wrote it to.
We can have a guess at these,
and the
best guess is that it was written sometime in the late 60s,
some
thirty to forty years after Jesus,
to a mixed
congregation of Jews and Gentiles living in the city of Rome.
In terms of authorship, Martin Luther suggested
that it
might have been written by Apollos,
but there’s nothing to substantiate this
apart from
the fact that the description of Apollos from the book of Acts
seems to be
a description of the kind of person
who comes through
from the
words of the text.
Acts 18:24-25 Now there came to Ephesus a Jew
named Apollos,
a native of
Alexandria.
He was an eloquent
man, well-versed in the scriptures.
25 He had been instructed
in the Way of the Lord;
and he spoke with
burning enthusiasm
and taught accurately the things
concerning Jesus.
I find the
desire to imagine the author of Hebrews as a woman very attractive,
and suggestions from scholars have
included Mary Magdalene
and indeed almost every other woman
named in scripture,
regrettably
it was almost certainly written by a man.
It’s important
for us to remember that the Bible is an almost exclusively male text,
and we can’t impose our contemporary
desire for equality and egalitarianism onto it.
Whoever
wrote it, one of the central concerns addressed by the sermon
is the experience of those receiving
it,
that Jesus is in some way
absent from them.
Hebrews
describes two ways in which Jesus perceived to be absent:
firstly he is absent in time, and
secondly he is absent in space.
Temporally speaking,
Jesus is in the past,
the stories about him are all set
during his lifetime,
and that was then, but this is now.
And
spatially speaking, Jesus is not on the earth,
he has ascended to the heavens and
is seated with his father on high.
So, in two
very definite ways, Jesus is absent
from those in the early congregation
of Christians in Rome
to whom the sermon is addressed.
He is in
the past, and he is in heaven,
which means he is very definitely not ‘here and now’.
And so the
preacher of Hebrews
addresses this problem of the
absence of Jesus
by taking
his congregation on a journey through a variety of different ways
in which he believes Jesus can
become known to them;
and these
different ways of encountering Jesus
are going to inform our own
engagement
with the book of Hebrews over the
coming weeks,
as we too
discover that just because Jesus is past and ascended,
does not mean that he is not present
and real to us today also.
And the
preacher begins
by establishing a trajectory of continuity
between the
revelation of God in olden times,
and the revelation of God in Jesus.
And here we
have to turn our antisemitism antennae on
as we explore what he means by this.
Long ago God spoke to
our ancestors
in many and various ways by the
prophets,
2 but in these last days he has
spoken to us by a Son
The
important thing to say here
is that this is no mandate to ignore
or denigrate
the revelation of God through the
religion and traditions of the Jewish people.
The Jewish
prophets and the books which bear their names,
and indeed that whole collection of
texts which we call the Old Testament
and which the Jews call
the Hebrew Bible,
is a revelation of God’s activity in
drawing people to himself in love,
and we need to keep
hearing it in that context.
This
doesn’t mean, of course,
that we have to read the Old
Testament uncritically,
any more
than we have permission to read the New Testament uncritically.
We have to
ask questions of all our scriptures,
to test the nature of the revelation
of God that we find there;
but we
cannot write off the revelation of God
in those parts we might not like.
Marcion was
famous for wanting to cut the Old Testament view of God
from the Christian scriptures,
along with
various parts of the New Testament
But if
there is something in the Old Testament that we struggle with,
well, the insight from Hebrews is
that
we just have to struggle with it, we certainly
shouldn’t ignore it.
As those of
us who came to the Whitley Lecture
held here at Bloomsbury a couple of
weeks ago discovered,
there is
great insight and godly reflection to be found
from spending time with some of the
deeply distressing tales
of violence in the Old Testament.
In fact,
one of my frustrations with the lectionary of set readings for Sundays
which many churches follow each week
is that
they skip over the bits of the Bible,
and particularly the bits of the Old
Testament,
that are problematic or unpalatable.
I’m toying
with the idea of a preaching series on the anti-lectionary,
where we deliberately spend time
with those parts of the Bible
that we normally ignore because we
find them difficult.
But at the
very minimum,
we need to hear loud and clear from
the preacher of Hebrews
that there
is a continuity between the words that God spoke
through the Jewish prophets,
and the
words that he speaks through his son Jesus Christ.
But in
fact, he goes further than this,
because he describes the people to
whom God spoke in olden times
as the ancestors of
those in the congregation listening to his sermon.
There is no
decisive break here between Judaism and Christianity,
it is a continuity of revelation,
and a continuity of community.
The people
of God are, as they have always been,
those who hear, embrace and
persevere in the word of God,
regardless of their religious
affiliation.
And if this
is true of Jews and Gentiles,
I would want to suggest that it is
also true of those
who seek the truth of
the word of God in other religious traditions
including
those that have come into being
since the
book of Hebrews was written.
None of us
have a monopoly on truth,
whether Jew or Gentile, Christian or
Muslim,
Baptist or Roman Catholic, or
whatever.
What we
have in common
is that God reaches out to us in
love to draw us to himself,
and that none of us understands
fully what this means.
For those
of us who search for God within the Christian tradition, however,
what it means for us is an
unswerving focus
on the revelation of God in the
person of Jesus.
‘In these
last days, he has spoken to us by a
son’.
And I can’t
help but wonder,
if Christians spent more time
focusing on Jesus as the word of God,
and less time on telling others
where they’re wrong in their belief and practice,
we might
all find ourselves a bit closer to the one we’re seeking.
So, who is
this Jesus?
And what does it mean to say that he
reveals God to us?
Well, here
we get to the preacher of Hebrews’ presentation
of Jesus as the sustainer of all things.
If you’re a
regular here at Bloomsbury,
you may hear an echo of the blessing
I often use at the end of a service,
where I use
the phrase ‘creator, redeemer, sustainer’
to speak of the Father, the Son, and
the Spirit.
In that
formula it’s the Spirit who sustains us.
But in Hebrews, it is Jesus who
sustains not just Christians,
but all things and all
people.
Jesus is
described as the one through whom God created the worlds,
and as the one who sustains all
things by his powerful word.
This is a
vision of the universal cosmic Christ,
present in all places, and all
times;
the
complete opposite of the congregation’s experience
of Christ as past and distant.
This is
Jesus active at the beginning of the universe,
present in every atom and molecule,
at one with creation in
all its diversity,
drawing all things towards their
eternal conclusion
in the all-embracing
love of God.
I have a
friend who runs a website called Christian Animism,[4]
which offers a fusion of ideas which
I think helpfully reflect
this concept we meet in
Hebrews
of Jesus being in and
through all things.
Animism is
the idea that all things are alive,
that all things have some spark of
eternity within them that gives them life.
And Animist
religions are often thought of as the belief systems of indigenous religions
as opposed to the more structured
beliefs of organized religion.
But my
friend Noel Moules suggests that the fundamental insight of animism,
that spirituality permeates all of
creation,
can offer something profound to
those who seek God in Jesus.
It may
sound counterintuitive to those of us
who have been schooled within the
rationalist categorisations
of, ‘Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?’
But the
ancient Hebrews saw no such distinction.
They were quite happy to speak of
God-given life existing in all things,
and as we saw in our
first reading the Psalms
they would call the sun,
moon, stars,
fire, hail,
snow, frost,
winds, mountains and
hills to praise God.[5]
Within the
Jewish tradition, there was no such thing as an ‘inanimate object’
because all things existed to give
glory
to the one who had called them into
being.
Noel Moules
captures this well, he says:
…the creative word and spirit-breath of God
(both
the source and most intense expression of life imaginable),
not only brings all things into being,
but
sustains them moment-by-moment as well. (Cf. Ps 33.6)
The earliest Christian voices saw Christ at the
heart of this reality:
‘
… in him all things hold together’ (Col. 1.17)
‘
… he sustains all things by his powerful word’ (Heb. 1.3)
The insight
from Hebrews is that the word of God,
spoken through the prophets of old,
is most
fully heard in the divine word that is Jesus,
and that this word-made-flesh is a
word of divine love
spoken so loudly that it
echoes throughout all creation
from the very beginning
to the very end,
infusing all things with the love
and life of God.
But this
insight is only the beginning,
it is the starting point for
everything that follows.
In the
coming weeks we shall be journeying
through the various different ways
in which the book of Hebrews
invites us to encounter
Jesus,
but for
this morning we’re going to stay with the universal vision of Jesus
as the one who creates and sustains
all things by his powerful word.
Because if
all things reflect the life of Christ,
then everything is sacred.
If all
things have their source in God and are called into being by Christ,
then there is no such thing as the
profane, because everything is holy.
From the
food we eat to the ground that produces it,
‘the whole earth is filled with
God’s glory’, as the prophet Isaiah puts it.
And if
everything is alive, and everything is sacred,
then everything is connected.
Those in
the congregation of the preacher to the Hebrews
were worried that Jesus was absent
from them,
either stuck in the past
or up in the heavens.
But the
insight of the sustaining Jesus is that all things are connected,
whether past or present, on earth or
in heaven.
So the
preacher of Hebrews can describe Jesus
as seated at the right hand of the
father,
but see no
contradiction between this and his vision of Jesus
in and through all things, in all
places and at all times.
And if
everything is alive, and if everything is sacred,
and if everything is connected,
then everything
and everyone is of value to God.
No one race
is God’s sole chosen nation,
no one path to God can claim
absolute priority over all others.
There is no
place for exclusionary religion
within a world sustained by Jesus
This is the
great challenge that Hebrews brought
to its original congregation in
Rome,
and it’s
the great challenge it still brings to us when we encounter it today.
Do we
really believe that Jesus sustains all things by his powerful word?
Not in a scientific way,
I’m not suggesting some
God of the gaps theology
where Jesus is equated
to Hawking Radiation, or Dark Matter or some such.
Rather, do
we believe that because of the word of love spoken in Jesus,
all things, in all times and all
places, are deeply and eternally loved by God?
Do we
believe that God’s love is at work in Christ
drawing all things and all people to
himself?
Do we
believe that all things are brought to life by Christ,
who makes everything sacred,
and who connects all things at their
deepest and most primal level?
Because if
we do, we can be released from all our anxieties
about whether we are successful or
not
in saving people from some wrathful
vengeful deity.
Rather, we
are freed to join our lives
with the life of the one who
sustains all things,
and brings us and all creation to
its loving eternal conclusion.
[1]
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/21/ken-livingstone-quits-labour-after-antisemitism-claims
[2]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43887223
[3]
http://www.kairosbritain.org.uk/2315-2/
[4]
http://www.christiananimism.com/
[5]
Ps 148.3,7-10
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