Week 5:  “Follow Him”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen; Wednesday, 20 March 2013; texts: Hebrews 13:1-3, 7-16, 20-21; John 15:8-17

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Much notice has been made of Pope Francis’ early signs that he might be a different kind of pope than his immediate predecessor, especially his non-verbal actions that seem to signify a different way.  Internal sources say that he did not ascend the papal throne after being elected as he received the greetings of his brother cardinals, but remained standing on the main floor, addressing them as “brothers,” not “your lordships”.  He’s reached out in graciousness to the press, to people of other faiths, and has continued his previous practices of not covering himself with all the trappings formerly considered due his office.  The word used a great deal in describing his early actions is “humility.”

The writer to the Hebrews would be surprised, I think, that we are surprised by this.  This author would be a little nonplussed to discover that when the pastor charged with leading the largest communion of Christians on earth, the priest called the vicar of Christ, acts in a way that reminds people of Jesus Christ, people are astonished by it, remarking on it.  For Hebrews, it should be expected, and not just of the Bishop of Rome.  For Hebrews, this is the shape of the life of all Christians, that we imitate our Lord Jesus Christ in our actions and in our love, and we imitate those who have gone before us who modeled that same way of Christly life.

We have been exploring the ways in which Hebrews invites us to consider our lives as pilgrimage from our earthly city to the city that is to come, language which now we hear in today’s reading.  But as this author concludes this sermon of Hebrews, we are reminded that not only is this not an individual journey each of us makes on our own, but we are actually obligated to serve each other on that journey, just as our Lord has served and continues to serve us.

Hebrews begins the final chapter with exhortations to pay attention to each other, exhortations to mutual love, hospitality, doing good and sharing all we have.

Up until this point it could be possible, though not wise, to have read much of Hebrews’ argument from an individual perspective.  This whole sermon that is Hebrews invites the hearers to follow Jesus through the wilderness of life.  To see him as our access to God, our entrance into the holiest of places.  And even to see those who have gone before us as surrounding us in encouragement.  And without care, one could take that strictly in an individualistic sense.

But now in the final persuasive argument of this sermon, the author makes it explicitly clear, if it wasn’t before, that we are called together to be like Christ ourselves, for each other and for the world.

The last verses of chapter 12 really are better attached to chapter 13, by setting up the exhortations of 13 with this exhortation: therefore since we are receiving an unshakeable kingdom, let us give thanks and offer our acceptable worship to God.  And our response, our worship to God, Hebrews says, is serving others, after the model of Jesus.

Here this serving is called love, both inside the community and outside, though the translation we know commonly doesn’t show the parallel very well.  We are invited to “mutual love” and “hospitality to strangers” in our translation.  There’s more here if we dig.  “Mutual love” is philadelphia, the love of the brothers (and sisters, we would add.)  But this word is more about a bond of connection, a deep tie, than emotional feeling. [1]   We are in Christ together, and we are to let that bond of Christly love between us continue.

“Hospitality to strangers” is interestingly philoxenia, love of strangers.  So there’s a parallel construction here: we love our sisters and brothers in the community, are bound to them.  And we love strangers, are bound to them.  In fact, we might best translate this “care for each other and care for strangers.” [2]

Both directions are central to our life on the pilgrimage.  We cannot be individuals in Christian community, worshipping for ourselves, believing for ourselves.  We belong to each other in ways we did not devise, through the waters of baptism and the joining of our lives to Christ: we are made one.  So Hebrews says: live that way.

But we cannot simply look to each other, close the circle, Hebrews says.  We are also bound to the stranger, whomever it is we encounter.  By so caring for the other, welcoming them into our midst, we serve God with a worthy worship.  And we might even be entertaining messengers from God, angels, Hebrews says.

The care we give is further expanded to cover all who are in prison and tortured, all in need we might say.  Reminding us of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25, Hebrews lifts our vision from ourselves to others in our community and outside, for no one is outside our call to care and love in Jesus’ name.

It is in fact, because of whom we follow, our pioneer, the center of this whole writing, that we are called to such love and care.  We are called to go where he goes.  And that’s not always to nice places.

Hebrews uses a powerfully arresting image to bring this home.  In the Israelite camp in the wilderness, the layout was one of circles of holiness, centered on the Tabernacle.  Unclean things were taken outside its boundaries. [3]  So the leavings of the sacrificial animals whose blood was brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for atonement were burned outside the camp.

Hebrews has already said we have no need for such sacrifices, for our High Priest offered himself.  But here Jesus isn’t the High Priest, he’s the refuse: Jesus went outside the camp, outside the city gate, to sanctify us by his blood, Hebrews says.  He went to the garbage heap, where unclean things are burned, to be burned himself in order to make all things clean.

And so we are told to get out there, too.  To go where he goes.  So Hebrews has told us on the one hand that Jesus has entered the Holy of Holies for us and opened it to us forever.  But now we see that he leaves the center, the place of God’s presence, and brings God’s presence outside the city to the worst of the worst.

We know from our own work and homes that tough, disgusting jobs sometimes need to be done.  It always makes it harder for us to avoid them if our superiors or colleagues or family members are unwilling to avoid them.  That’s where we are in the whole of our lives, this author says: we have a boss, a Lord, a Master, who goes to the darkest, dirtiest, worst places to bring the love and grace of God.

Outside the city, to the place no one wants to go.  Since he’s there, how can we stay where we are?  “Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured,” our preacher says.

It’s a powerful argument that compels us out of our complacency to act, to move, to reach out to others.  It’s like when someone starts cleaning up a house and you’re sitting on the couch with the paper.  It takes a relatively high level of stubborn rudeness to remain there while hard work is being done around you.

Hebrews reminds us that our call to care for each other and the stranger will likely lead us to places of discomfort and pain.  But our Lord has already gone there, and is there still.  You see, the Pioneer of our journey isn’t only making the path easy for us.  Sometimes he takes us off the path into the bogs and swamps, into the infested places, because there’s someone there who needs our help and care.

In the end, Hebrews simply reminds us of Jesus’ original call to us, that we love one another and the world as he has loved us.

Do good, share what you have, Hebrews says, care for each other, care for the stranger, don’t care for money or your comfort here.  Love one another even if it means losing, being hurt, because that’s what our Leader has done and is doing.  And if we’re following him, it’s not just for our comfort, it’s for the sake of all on this pilgrimage.

Because we are all on our way to a city that is to come, we’re in this together.  And with our Lord guiding us, “making us complete in everything good so we may do his will,” with such help and strength we can help all on this pilgrimage of life, that nobody gets left behind, nobody falls to the wayside, but all make it safely to the city that is to come.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen


[1] Craig R. Koester, Hebrews (The Anchor Yale Bible), copyright © 2001 by Yale University, as assignee from Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.; p. 557.
[2] Ibid, p. 557.
[3] Ibid, p. 570.

Week 4:  “A Great Crowd”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Wednesday, 13 March 2013; texts: Hebrews 11:1-3; 12:1-2, 12-13; John 17:1a, 6-19

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Last weekend a number of people from Mount Olive were privileged to worship at Great Vespers at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in St. Paul, where our administrator Cha Posz is a member.  Some of us arrived an hour early and were able to witness a baptism as well.  It was a beautiful evening and the hospitality and welcome of the people of Holy Trinity was gracious and warm.

As in most Orthodox places of worship, the walls and ceiling of the nave and chancel were covered in icons, and the icons at Holy Trinity were almost overwhelmingly beautiful.  We spent a little time after Vespers with Fr. Jonathan as he gave an introductory talk about them.  The place of the icon in Orthodox liturgy is a topic which requires far more time than we have here today.  But I wanted to share one impression that I had throughout the evening, as a Western Christian worshipping for the first time in a place where these faces surrounded us all, faces mostly of Biblical figures, but also some of more recent years.  At more than one point in the Vespers, I looked around and was deeply moved by the sense that I was experiencing a little of what the author of Hebrews was describing, that I was “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.”  These people of faith whose faces, and in some cases, whose words, were before and behind and beside, surrounded our prayer and our song, even encouraged and strengthened our prayer and our song.  It was an experience of the holy that I’ll not soon let go.

This might be the best part of this sermon to the Hebrews, the part we’re considering today, the claim by this ancient preacher that we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us as we journey through our lives.  One almost gets the image of a great stadium with this author’s language of running “with perseverance the race that is set before us.”  It’s as when in the Olympics, the marathon runners run their course with crowds encouraging them from the side of the road all along the way, and then at the end the runners arrive in Olympic stadium to a massive roar from the rest of the spectators who are gathered to cheer the finish.  It’s thrilling beyond description to think of our lives as so surrounded, so supported, so encouraged along our road, and to consider the greeting we will find at the finish of our own race.  And as we experience that pilgrimage of our lives, at whatever place we now find ourselves, it’s tremendously comforting and a great gift from this author to us.

There are several ways in which this great cloud, or perhaps we could say, great crowd of witnesses are God’s gift of grace to us on our journey.

The first is the witness of faith that those who have gone before us offer us.

The preacher to the Hebrews makes this point movingly in chapter 11, after the opening verses we heard just now.  After introducing the topic of faith, Hebrews moves to a great litany of people of faith who are for us models of faith and trust in God’s goodness.

Abel, Enoch, Noah.  Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph.  Moses, the people of Israel at the Red Sea, Rahab.  Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah.  David, Samuel, all the prophets.  All these people, like those in the icons at Holy Trinity, are offered to us as witnesses of what it is to live in faith.

“Faith,” Hebrews says, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  That’s a little hard to hold some days.

And these witnesses that Hebrews offers us, along with a list we would also add from the New Testament, were we to write this chapter, people like Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas, Mary and Martha, Stephen, Paul, these witnesses are our encouragement.  Because they are like us and yet lived in faith, we can learn from them and be encouraged and strengthened by their witness and experience.

And we have beyond these biblical witnesses those whom we call saints, some known to us and others known to the world, who are also such models and witnesses.

As I understand it from Cha, in the Orthodox church only those who have formally been called saints are referred to with that term.  In the West, we use it more freely to include both those officially recognized by the Church and those whose lives are lived in Christ, even to we ourselves as baptized children of God.

But that means that we in effect each make our own list of witnesses who have helped us.  Some are those shared by many, people like Francis, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther, Julian of Norwich, countless saints whose lives have been and continue to be witnesses to us of what it is to live in faith.  The Church has an abundance of blessing in the sheer numbers of such witnesses.

But then we all have our more quiet list of those saints who have modeled the faith to us in our lives or to our families, those whom perhaps few others know but without whom we would not believe as we do, would not be able to journey as we do.

And this is the great crowd which shows us a life of faith in the wilderness, which helps us see a path, helps us understand our own faltering steps.

But this preacher doesn’t limit the crowd to those who have witnessed in the past.  There is also confidence that we all are companions to each other on this journey, in profoundly important ways.

The gift of the community of faith that Jesus gives is that we do not journey through this wilderness of life alone.

As some of you know, I’ve been in a spiritual direction group with three other pastors and a spiritual director for 14 years.  It’s been a tremendous gift of companionship having these four people on my journey of faith and in my ministry.  And that has been the metaphor that has best described the experience: these are companions who walk on the same path as I, and they are looking ahead with me.  They help me see potholes, catch my arm when I stumble, and help me as I reach a crossroads to discern which path seems best.

This is what Hebrews says we all are for each other.  We are given the gift of community in Christ, and this is no small gift.  As companions in our journey together, we surround and care for each other and look to the needs and concerns of each other, we “lift drooping hands,” as the writer says, “strengthen weak knees, make straight paths for the feet”.  This is Jesus’ gift of the Body that he creates, that others help us as we walk the path of our lives, help us navigate the tricky parts, even help smooth out the rough parts, as Hebrews says.  Knowing that we do not walk alone, but are strengthened by our fellow travelers sustains and refreshes us again and again for the journey.

But if you look at these words, this is not only comfort, but exhortation, that we take seriously our role as companions of others on the journey.  Hebrews exhorts us all to be this to each other, not simply to bask in receiving it from others.

And at our best, as a community of faith, we both receive and give help on our pilgrimage, because we do it together.  And that companionship is also simply the comfort of having fellow travelers, who share our stories, pass the time, laugh with us and cry with us, who make our journey lighter by being with us and we with them.

There is one more element we’ve not considered about this “crowd” of witnesses, and that is the word “cloud” that Hebrews uses.

When the writer says we are surrounded by so great a “cloud” of witnesses, we are given an image which suggests the very real presence of those who have gone before us, the hosts of heaven.  This is not simply the role we’ve already considered, that these are past witnesses of faith, either in our lives or the history of the Church and before, the people of Israel.  This is something much more.

There is in Hebrews, and subsequently in the theology of the Church these past 2,000 years, a pervasive sense that those who have gone before us are even now surrounding us and encouraging us.  This is the role of saints as those who cheer on the sidelines at a marathon.  They who have gone before us and who are at the throne of God now surround and cheer us on in our race, our journey.

There is much we don’t know about what it is like to have died and still have the world awaiting Jesus’ return and the full restoration of the kingdom.  There are some who pick up on hints in Paul that we simply all sleep, and all are raised at the last day.  That may well be.

But there are also these hints, which the Church has deeply rooted into its theology and powerfully in its hymnody, that those who have died and gone before us are not asleep but actively worshipping at the throne of God even now, and as Hebrews suggests, surrounding us.

Hymn after hymn speak of the saints who worship God and who are joining us in prayer and praise.  Our Eucharistic prayers frequently invite those who have gone before us to join in our prayer and thanksgiving.  And frankly, many of us have experienced a sense of this presence, this surrounding cloud, as comfort and hope in our journey of life.

Therefore, Hebrews says, let us run with perseverance this race set before us.

With such witnesses past and present, models and encouragers, cheerers-on, we now take our turn in the journey, and focus ourselves on our pioneer, the perfecter of our faith, our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose death and resurrection we also hope and find life.  He is the One who, as we hear in his prayer in John, specifically asked the Father to support us as a community, that we might be together even when he is gone.  He is the One who asks this of the Father in order that we, his community, might have his joy completed in ourselves.

This is the joy which sustains us in our race, our pilgrimage, our journey.  We are not alone, with Christ ahead of us and all the witnesses around us, and so we move forward with hope and confidence toward the life God is even now making in us all.  And best of all, toward that life which we will only know fully when we finally arrive at the stadium and finish our race to the cheers of those who have already finished and are celebrating our arrival.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Week 3:  “A Better Way”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen; Wednesday, 6 March 2013; texts: Hebrews 4:14 – 5:3, 7-10; 10:19-25; John 14:6-13

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

At the Adult Forum last Sunday, Professor Earl Schwartz reminded us that the name for the Jewish people at the time of Moses and the Exodus, “Hebrews,” comes from a word common in the Ancient Near East, “habiru,” which was used by settled people, city people, to describe wandering, migrant, “passing through” people, people that also weren’t native.  But what’s been sticking with me since Sunday is Prof. Schwartz’ assertion that the God of Israel was also “habiru,” a wandering, “passing through” God, with no boundaries to protect and no permanent home.  This was a great gift to the Hebrews, it turns out.  With no permanent temple (which came later during the monarchy), God could go with and be with the Hebrew people wherever they were.  At Sinai, Moses was given instructions to create a tabernacle, a tent, which not only kept the Ark of the Covenant, but in its inner section was believed to be the place where heaven and earth came together, where the presence of God could be found.

However, though God went with them along the way, that inner sanctum of the tent of tabernacle was protected by a curtain which kept even the priests from entering.  Only once a year would the high priest carry the blood of the sacrifice through the curtain and enter the Holy of Holies, the presence of God, for the atonement of the people, the forgiveness of their sins.

After the tabernacle, the Israelites built a temple modeled in the same way, with the same barrier curtain.  And in this center section of this sermon to the Hebrews is an extended argument that while this access to God that the first Hebrews enjoyed and that the Israelites also knew in the Temple, was a good thing, a gracious thing, what Jesus has done for us is a better thing.  A better way to God.  The word sometimes translated “better” appears in Hebrews more times than in all the rest of the New Testament combined.

It’s worth saying again: Hebrews is not arguing that the old way, the old covenant is bad.  In fact, core to this argument is that it was a good gift of God.  But this is a better gift, a better covenant, a better high priest that we have.  Because of who Jesus is and what Jesus does, he is for us the access to God that we never had before.  In our pilgrimage of life, we don’t just have a God who wanders with us but stays in the tent.  We actually can know and see and be blessed by the fullness of God in our journey.

So Hebrews tells us that we have in Jesus a better covenant, written on our hearts.

In the writing between what we heard read today, Hebrews quotes the familiar words of Jeremiah 31, words we hear each Reformation Day.  “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.”  And as we remember, this is a covenant where God’s laws will be written on our hearts, and we will be God’s people.  And all will know the Lord, from the least to the greatest.  And best of all, God promises to remember our sins no more.

The covenant made with Israel at Sinai, the old covenant, was their companion in their pilgrimage to the Promised Land.  It was based on God’s saving of them from slavery, and upon their following God’s ways, God’s law.  But as Jeremiah, now echoed by Hebrews reminds, the people broke this covenant.

For our journey of faith, we have a new covenant, based on God’s Word being implanted in our hearts and God’s forgiveness shaping our lives.  And the mediator of this covenant, according to Hebrews, is what guarantees that this is a valid covenant.

But here’s the powerful insight as to that guarantee: Hebrews reads “covenant” to mean the same as “will,” because in Greek the legal sense of the word can mean both.  In a will, you don’t get the inheritance until the person who made the will dies.

So for Hebrews, Jesus’ death becomes the guarantee of his promises, the shedding of blood which supersedes and ends all other sacrifice, the death which opens up the will.  And that makes him a better high priest than any before him.

Jesus, in sacrificing himself as atonement for us and our sins, permanently opened the curtain to the presence of God.  That’s the center of this whole book.

We don’t need to go into all the detail about the way high priests operated here, which the book of Hebrews does, but a simple summary might help.

Human high priests, as we heard in our reading today, made atonement once a year for the sins of the people and for their own.  Each year this needed to be repeated, and each year a human being would enter the Holy of Holies and the presence of God to atone for the sins of all the people.

But Jesus, as the eternal Son of God, offered himself as the sacrifice, Hebrews argues, and opened for us a way through the curtain.  And at his death, powerfully, the actual curtain before the Holy of Holies was torn in two.

Because he was and is human, he shared our weakness and could come before the throne as our High Priest.  But because he was and is the Son of God, it is the Triune God who makes an offering, who is sacrificed, through the death of the Son.  And this brings heaven and earth together in Jesus, instead of in a Holy of Holies.

The curtain between us and God is taken down because God became one of us and in dying and rising brought us into complete access to the throne of God’s grace, as Hebrews calls it.  Because of Jesus, the Son, we can see the Father, and we are filled with the Holy Spirit.  Because of Jesus we understand what Philip and Thomas do not yet understand in the reading from John 14, that if we’ve seen and know Jesus, we’ve seen and know God.

And this is our hope for our pilgrimage: we have access to the grace and presence of God constantly through the work and gift of the Son of God.

So we are exhorted by Hebrews “to approach the throne of grace with boldness.”  That’s our gift and our possibility.

There is no curtain hanging in our chancel between us and the altar, with a space only reserved for a high priest to go, and then only once a year.  We all come before the altar of God and are fed the body and blood of the Son of God.

That sacrificial language isn’t accidental: as often as we eat of this bread and drink from this cup, we say at the Eucharist, we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  We have access to the fullness of the Triune God in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

That’s why this covenant and this high priest are better for us, and for the world.  There is no curtain anymore, in here, or anywhere in our lives.

And so Hebrews urges us to approach God’s throne of grace in several ways:

First, “with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” Hebrews says, because we now have access.  We can trust fully that the Triune God wishes to be with us and hear us.  And will receive us graciously.  So we come with true hearts to see God, we don’t stay away.

Second, we approach “with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water,” Hebrews says.  No more goats and sheep are sacrificed for their blood to be sprinkled on us and on all people to cleanse us.  Our hearts have been sprinkled clean and our bodies washed with pure water of Baptism, a gift from the one whose death saved us all, and whose resurrection brings us and the world to life.

And last, Hebrews says, we approach the throne of grace “holding on to our confession of hope without wavering,” gathering together in the presence of God to encourage and support one another “as the Day approaches.”  Hebrews urges that we cling to this confession of hope on our pilgrimage, and we do it together.  We journey together as the Day of the Lord approaches, encouraging and supporting one another. And that we will focus on more next week.

We have heard from Hebrews that we are on a pilgrimage in life, and we follow a Guide, the Son of God.

This guide leads us through the wilderness of life on paths he’s already walked, and now we discover that he is the source of all our life and joy, the one who opens the way to God for us now and for all time, who makes a new covenant of life between us and God.

As a wandering people, there is no better news: the Triune God is wandering with us, and because of the grace of the Son, is present in our lives, our hearts, our community, our world, giving life and leading us on the way to the new creation that lies ahead.

Thanks be to God.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Week 2:  “On the Road”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen; Wednesday, 27 February 2013; texts: Hebrews 3:1-14; John 6:47-58

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

My family was not an outdoorsy family growing up.  Our joke was that “roughing it” for my mother meant staying at a Holiday Inn where you had to call the desk for more toilet paper.  So as I was involved in youth ministry as a young person and then a youth director, I found myself in a number of wilderness scenarios that I was not brought up for.

Some of the time on each of these trips it was a good experience.  I’ve seen incredible beauty created by God in the Boundary Waters, northern Wisconsin, and the mountains of Montana.  But every single trip I’ve ever taken, alongside those joys, and the grace of the fellowship with the group, was a level of misery that I never quite got used to.  As much as I looked forward to such trips as a youth and an adult, I also dreaded them.  Fear of animals tearing through the food, painful ground to sleep on, hiking through sleet or storm, and constantly being dirty, these are not attractive things for me.  I’d still go on a trip like that now, but it will still have both those elements, I’m sure.

The both/and nature of my relationship with the wild is something the Scriptures seem to share.  On the one hand, there is great joy in the creation and in what God has made, wonder at its beauty.  On the other hand, the wilderness in Scripture is always a place of testing and difficulty, whether it was the Israelites wandering for 40 years or Jesus for 40 days.  Not for nothing does the prophet Isaiah declare in words familiar to our Advent worship that when the day of the LORD comes there will be a great landscaping project in the wilderness, with valleys being filled, mountains leveled, and a highway brought through it (Isaiah 40).  This image is one that repeats in several places in the prophetic witness, especially the idea of a safe, level highway through the wilderness of life, created by God.

What’s so helpful about this image biblically is that it is true about our lives.  Our lives are both filled with the beauty of God and with struggles and trials, challenges and difficulties.  It makes sense that when the writer to the Hebrews was trying to help the reader understand this, the wilderness wanderings of the Israelite ancestors came to mind as a parallel experience.

And so we begin today where we left off last week: we’re on a road in our lives, we are on a journey of faith through the wilderness.  And what we learn is that for several reasons, this is not a bad thing at all.  Even if it is challenging and difficult.

Hebrews reminds us today that Jesus is our Guide and he is leading us on the right road, difficulties notwithstanding.

Comparing Jesus to Moses, Hebrews tells us that as Moses went into where people were in bondage and led them to freedom, so did our Lord Jesus take on our slavery to lead us to freedom.  Because Jesus is “worthy of more glory than Moses,” according to Hebrews, because he is the Son, we can be confident that following him will keep us on the right path.

And that’s a huge relief in the wilderness.  There’s nothing worse than being lost and not knowing where to turn.  Or to keep going along a path or road and keep looking for familiar landmarks or sights and not seeing them, and getting more and more frantic.  This writer encourages us to trust the direction our Lord is going, the way he invites us to live, which will be further described later in this book.

But the comparison also reminds Hebrews of the failure of the Israelites to follow Moses, and their collapse in the wilderness that led to 40 extra years of wandering.  Hebrews urges us to do better, to learn from them and not to turn from the living God.  If we are journeying through the wilderness, let’s not go it alone as they did, we hear.  Rather, let’s trust the One who goes with us to know the way.

And as Jesus teaches the crowds in John 6, trust that he provides the bread of life, the food we need for the journey.  To seek the grace of his Body and Blood to feed and nourish us, and bring us to eternal life.  The image of our lives as a journey through a wilderness, sometimes beautiful and sometimes harsh, is only helpful to us if we keep our eyes on Jesus and trust him.  And so be faithful in ways the Israelites were not.

For Hebrews, the promise is clear: we are partners with Christ, if only we can hold our confidence firm to the end (3:14).  And our confidence is in the Lord Jesus who goes with us on our journey.

And it seems that the point of this image is to encourage us in two ways.

First, to help us understand that our goal is better than the Promised Land – the freedom Christ offers is far greater and lasts to eternity.  We are living our lives in a wilderness, walking with each other from slavery to the promised land.  As we heard from Luther last week, all our lives are in transit, becoming what we are not yet, growing in the grace of the Spirit.

But there’s a big difference between our journey and that of the Israelites.  They were literally traveling in the wilderness, going to a new home, the promised land.  We, Hebrews says to us, are walking a wilderness life, but we are going to a new home that is in eternity with our Lord Jesus.  We have a goal, as we read near the end of Hebrews: “For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (13:14).

So the joy of this life is that no matter the good or the bad, the pleasant or the difficult, we not only are living it with our Lord Jesus at our side, we’re also on the way to a life prepared for us beyond anything we’ve known here.

But second, the point of this for Hebrews also seems to be to encourage us in the midst of a life that feels like wilderness to appreciate the journey, to find in it a blessing because we are with the Lord.  This is a letter, a sermon to pilgrims, this book of Hebrews, and is intended to encourage pilgrims to live in the joy of God on the journey.

We’re not sour, depressed people who only live for a hoped-for world to come.  If that’s our only focus, we’re going to miss a great deal of the life God intends for us.  For me on my wilderness trips, that was always my challenge, not to mentally and repeatedly count down the days until we got back and thereby miss all the grace and joy of the actual present.

This life is a good life, even if lived in between Jesus’ resurrection and the full restoration of all things.  We are not what we will be, but we are on the way, and being on the way can be rich and surprising and grace-filled.  Because we are fed by our Lord in the Meal of life for this journey, we are blessed with forgiveness and grace from our Lord, and we are given sustenance and joy by the Holy Spirit to become these new people.

And all of that is good and joyful, even if we’re walking in the wilderness.  In fact, with our eyes on Jesus we can find this life delightful even in the midst of the most difficult times.

So, like all believers who have gone before us, we are on the road.  But we are on the road with Jesus, which makes all the difference.

As we will hear in a few weeks from Hebrews, we are exhorted here to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (12:1b-2a).  It’s a long road, filled with many bumps and bruises, surprises and joys, setbacks and easy stretches.  But it is a road blessed by the grace of the crucified and risen One who goes with us and leads us to life.

And that makes the wilderness seem a lot less wild, and our journey one to look forward to rather than dread.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Week 1:  “Looking to Jesus”

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen, Wednesday, 20 February 2013; Texts: Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:1-4, 14-18; John 1:35-51

Sisters and brothers, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

In June of 1520, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull condemning Martin Luther’s teachings, specifically 41 statements made in previous writings, calling them, among other things, “poisonous” and “offensive.” [1]  As we can imagine, Luther responded to these condemnations in rather forceful ways, including four separate documents where he addressed the specific charges.

In his fourth attempt, from March 1521, and the one he considered “smoother and simpler” [2], one of the articles he defends himself against is the condemnation of his claim that sin remains in people even after Baptism, a claim he made in the Leipzig debate in 1519.  He writes eloquently about how Christ and Paul both understand this, and part of his defense is that he understands our lives to be like the flour the baker in Jesus’ parable has, and the presence of the Spirit to be the yeast as the woman kneads the dough.  Our lives, for Luther, are made more and more like this leaven, this yeast, until, as he says, we “eventually [become] a bread of God.” [3]  He goes on to say:

“This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise.  We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way.  The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on.  This is not the goal but it is the right road.  At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.” [4]

I find this conviction immensely important to my life of faith, and find that it addresses us as well in the modern day as it does in dealing with a theological dispute of 500 years ago.  Because whether or not we articulate a theology of baptism where it has wiped out sin in us for good and for all, we do tend to struggle with the reality of our lives as incomplete.  We do recognize that sin still pervades our existence.

We would like it to be different.  We would prefer to bypass the process of becoming the people either we hope to be or, as people of faith, we believe God hopes us to be, and simply be those people, now.  We get frustrated that even after forgiveness we find ourselves in sin again.  We get frustrated in our spiritual journey when it’s not going as well as we’d like.  We get frustrated at our attempts to be better people, to break habits, to change ways, attempts which seemingly fall apart all too often.  And we certainly get misled by others, who are also not completed, not perfect, and we tend to see their current, incomplete state as the final truth about them, and judge it accordingly.  We don’t have a lot of patience for the need for others to continue to grow and become, wanting them to be perfect to us right now.

This Lent we will be exploring this by way of the book of Hebrews, a book in the New Testament that is more a sermon than a letter, and one that we don’t often take much time to study.  The writer to the Hebrews had a deep conviction that saw life as Luther described it, as a journey, a process, a pilgrimage.  For the writer, part of that awareness is knowing where the pilgrimage will end, in the “city yet to come,” our heavenly inheritance.  But that’s not the main point.  In fact, rather than being a “pie in the sky” dream, this writer is intent on helping the reader discover the joy and grace of being in the pilgrimage right now, of living one’s life on a journey, of realizing we are “on the way,” not arrived.

So these five weeks we’ll be considering our pilgrimage of life, considering our lives as a journey through the wilderness, not as a bad thing, but as our reality, and we will see what this writer would have us see as important points on that journey.  And we begin with the One the writer to the Hebrews introduces as our guide and companion on the pilgrimage of our lives, our Lord Jesus himself.

We are led on our pilgrimage, says our writer, by the very Son of God, the imprint of God.

In this famous opening, we are told that “in many and various ways” God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets, but now in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son.  There is for this writer a central idea: that God is not unknowable but has been speaking to people from long ago and to today.  But now in Jesus we have direct communication unlike any before.

A large part of this book-length sermon is devoted to describing the superiority of Jesus to angels (a major concern of the original readers), to Moses, to all.  But here we see the pinnacle: Jesus is heir of all things, through whom all things were created, as St. John also has told us.  Even more, he is “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”  The image used here is like that of a die used to stamp out coins with the image of the emperor: Jesus is imprinted exactly with the being of God, Jesus is an exact image of the eternal God.

And so as a guide in the pilgrimage of life, we could ask for no better.  If we want to know what God thinks of us, we look to Jesus.  If we want to know where God would have us go, we look to Jesus.  If we want the definitive answer about God’s will and God’s intent, we look to Jesus.

So we begin consideration of our journey of life with the credentials of our Guide on that journey.  And the importance to us is pretty high.  We may not be tempted to worship angels, but there are lots of guides, lots of authorities, lots of influences in the world we can be tempted to follow.  The writer to the Hebrews urges us to follow the true authority, the true influence, the true guide.

But as we hear from the start of the second chapter, we not only need to remember Jesus’ credentials.    We need to pay attention to him, too.

There are doubtless few of us who need to be reminded of Jesus’ importance as the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, our Lord and Savior.  But Hebrews urges us to pay attention to what we know.  Otherwise we might “drift away.”  And this seems to be a very important point.

If in fact we are journeying through life, on a pilgrimage, and we don’t listen to our Guide, we’re going to get lost, or worse.  If you’ve ever taken a wilderness hike, or a trip through the mountains, or the Boundary Waters, and you’ve never been in that place before, your guide is absolutely critical.  If she tells you not to step in a certain place, you’d be wise to listen.  If he tells you not to eat a particular plant, by all means don’t eat it.

And so it may seem obvious, but in fact it isn’t: if we believe Jesus to be our Guide in life, we would do well to pay attention to him.  To follow what he says, do what he commands, live as he lives.  To seek in all things to better know where Jesus would have us be, how Jesus would have us walk, what Jesus would have us do.

Ultimately, it’s the only way to keep from being lost on the pilgrimage, or getting spiritually sick, or falling by the wayside.  Keep your eyes on Jesus, Hebrews says.

But there’s one more thing about our Guide we’re supposed to know.  And that is, he’s done this pilgrimage before.  You wouldn’t want to follow a guide who’d never taken that trail or experienced that wilderness.  And this is our best hope and grace in our Lord Jesus.

Hebrews says he had to become like us in every respect, be tested like us, so he is able to help us when we are tested.

In the second season of the television show The West Wing, there’s a scene in the Christmas episode where one of the President’s staff, Josh, is dealing with post-traumatic stress.  His boss Leo, the chief of staff, tells him a story to let him know that he will always have a job with him, no matter what.  Leo’s story goes like this:

“This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole.  The walls are so steep he can’t get out.  A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you.  Can you help me out?’  The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on.  Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, ‘Father, I’m down in this hole – can you help me out?’  The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole, and moves on.  Then a friend walks by.  ‘Hey, Joe, it’s me – can you help me out?’  And the friend jumps in the hole.  [The] guy says, ‘Are you stupid?  Now we’re both down here.’  The friend says, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.’ ”

That’s the great gift of our Lord.  He’s been down here before.  And he knows the way out.  We walk on a pilgrimage of life, becoming the children of God we were meant to be, and it’s a challenging, difficult journey.  And on this first step of the journey, we start by learning that Jesus, our Guide, has been here before.  He has faced all we faced, “testing,” as Hebrews calls it, temptation, suffering, fear, anxiety, even death.  And he has risen from the dead and come to lead us to life.

This is the great promise of Hebrews: we have a Guide who is like us in every respect, and at the same time the very imprint of God’s being.  So he not only knows where we need to go, he’s been down that path and suffered what we will suffer.  And he becomes for us not only our Guide, but our faithful friend at our side all the way, helping us as only one who has lived like us can help us.

And so we continue on our pilgrimage with this hope.

“We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way.  The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on.  This is not the goal but it is the right road.”

This is the right road.  And we know who is going before us and beside us.  And so we do not fear, but look with joy to this journey, reveling in the pilgrimage itself because of who is with us.

We hear his voice saying to us, as to his first disciples, “Come and see.”  And so, we go.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Introduction to Luther’s Works, vol. 32; p. ix, copyright © 1958 Fortress Press.
[2] Introduction to “Defense and Explanation of All the Articles;”  Luther’s Works, vol. 32, p. 5, copyright © 1958 Fortress Press.
[3]Martin Luther, “Defense and Explanation of All the Articles, March 1521;”  Luther’s Works, vol. 32, p. 24, copyright © 1958 Fortress Press.
[4] Ibid, p. 24.