And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
(Hebrews 10: 11-14, 19-25)
You are probably all fed up of Mary, Gloria and myself telling you what a wonderful book "The Letter To The Hebrews" is. But, I'm sorry - I'm going to say it again. It's a wonderful book.
It's wonderful because it tells us so much about the thoughts and practices of the early church and, therefore, gives us a direct link back to the roots of our faith that we can explore ourselves as opposed to having to make do with some historian telling us what he or she thinks the early church was like.
Our reading this morning from this epistle tells us something very important about the beliefs of our spiritual ancestors concerning both the achievement of Christ and how we should behave as Christians in the light of that achievement. It also alludes to one of their main practices which we still take part in today, albeit in a somewhat different form.
The passage starts with a bold statement that is a central tenet of out faith. Christ's willing sacrifice of himself achieved salvation for all people for all time. As it achieved everything that could possibly be achieved in respect of our salvation it does not need to be repeated by Christ or emulated by anybody else. This means that there is nothing that we can personally do to gain salvation for ourselves and also, that there is no need for us to gain salvation for ourselves because Jesus has already gained it for us.
Now, when a person realises the truth of that statement their natural reaction will, almost certainly, be to experience joy at whatever level is conducent to that person's personality. I am sure this has always been the case right back to the people who witnessed Christ's resurrection and realised what it meant. But, the people who first believed this proposition not only received an emotional and intellectual prize, they also received a very practical benefit as well. At morning prayer in this church there is always a reading from the Bible. Up to a few months ago our little group had been steadily working our way through the first five books of the Old Testament. What a slog it was! Okay, the books of Genesis and Exodus are full of interesting stories but after you get passed them it's all about rules and regulations; page after page of them. And a ridiculous number of these rules and regulations concern the ritual killing of animals to appease the wrath of God; an anger that the Israelites believed they deserved because of their failure to abide by the terms of the covenant they had with God.
It is more than likely that these five books, which Jews refer to as "The Law," were written about six to seven hundred years before the birth of Christ when the Jews were having a thoroughly miserable time in forced exile in Babylon. No doubt they were looking for explanations as to why their God had appeared to have deserted them, even punished them. The prophets of that time were convinced that God had turned his back on his people because they had failed to follow his commandments. Top of the list of their sins was the people's failure to worship God alone.
So, how were they going to reverse their misfortunes?
Even at the time there was disagreement among the Jewish people concerning the answer to this question.. We know from reading the prophets that there were some who believed that God could be appeased if his people merely changed their attitude towards God, if they became thankful to God for all God had done for them. And if they demonstrated this change of heart by acting generously, justly and mercifully in their dealings with other people.
But this course of action does not appear to have been accepted by most Jews and especially not those within the priestly caste. The majority believed that God needed appeasing in a far more tangible way. Basically, they believed that a fine had to be paid for their crimes. That something valuable had to be given to God to make God like them again. The most valuable thing that most Jews possessed was food, and their most valuable food was their livestock. So, the biggest sacrifice they could make, other than the giving up of their own offspring, was the giving away of their food animals. As it was believed that God existed somewhere above the earth it would have been logical for them to conclude that the best way to get these gifts to God was to burn them so they could travel to God in the resultant smoke and fragrance.
These ideas were formulated when the Jewish people were in exile and I doubt that they had the wealth or opportunity at that time to put their ideas into action in a big way. But, when they were released from captivity, they took these ideas back to their homeland with them and, as their fortune improved, the sacrifice of animals became more and more a central part of their religion. When the Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt it became the main arena for this cultish activity and, by the time Jesus was born, the building had become, at its centre, a slaughterhouse for the processing of the sacrificed livestock.
A question that is often asked is why did God send his Son to live among us at that particular time in history and to that particular place. One suggestion is that it was a sensible thing to do because the Roman Empire made communication easy and fast and so the message that God wanted to communicate through his Son would travel throughout the world quicker than during any previous era. Maybe that's true, but I personally think that God was actually just responding to an emergency. Although God's chosen people had constantly misunderstood what God wanted from them throughout their history, I think that this misunderstanding had never been as acute as it was at the time of Christ's birth. Once again the Jewish people were being oppressed by a foreign power and, once again, they mistakenly believed that their misfortune was a punishment from God. So, God sent his Son to Jerusalem at that particular point in time because that was when this action by God was most needed.
And, the fact that this colossal misunderstanding was most apparent in the sacrificial practices of the Temple cult explains why sacrifice was such a central and necessary part of Christ's purpose on earth. To put it very simply, God wanted to persuade his people that they were not required to continue their wholesale carnage. But, as they would not, as history had shown, listen to persuasive words from prophets, God had to personally make a REAL sacrifice so infinitely effective that no further sacrifice would ever be needed. By getting rid of the need for physical sacrifice God made it possible for his people to move away from their preoccupation with guilt and appeasing God, and enter into a healthy, loving relationship with God. It had to be a real sacrifice because that was the only thing that would get through to the people because they had become so obsessed with the need to make sacrifice to appease God.
The uncomplicated, beautiful message that the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews wants to communicate to those he or she is addressing is "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."
"For goodness sake, people," the author says, "Get it into your heads that you must not worry about appeasing God anymore. Your salvation is definite. It was given to you by God, for all time, when God died on the cross. It was shown to be a real salvation when God was raised from the dead."
And, not only are the people of God now exempt from all the rules and regulations concerning animal sacrifice, they are also exempt from all the other laws in The Law.
But, "Hang on a second!" I hear you thinking. "Surely some of those laws, like not killing people or stealing, were perfectly sensible laws that are still necessary?"
To which I reply that they are, in fact, not necessary. We do not actually need written laws to make us live righteous lives. Well, in theory we don't. I mean, do the parents in this congregation refrain from strangling their children because it is against the law to do so? No, it's because they are good and selfless parents who know what is right and what is wrong.
Unfortunately, it is just a theory, because if I asked those same parents if they ever drove at 35 m.p.h. in a 30 m.p.h. zone some of them, if they allowed themselves to be honest, would have to say, "Yes." Even though they know that their actions could easily lead to an unnecessary death. And they continue to behave in this way because we are also bad and selfish people. We have it in us to be both selfless and selfish and can switch from one to the other in nanoseconds.
So, how do we go from being people who are, at the same time selfish and hateful and selfless and loving to being people who do only that which is good?
Again, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has an answer. And, again, it is very straightforward. The answer is that we encourage each other to be good people.
Where do we encourage each other to be good people?
In our Christian communities, primarily when we are taking communion together or sharing social activities together.
This church is a lovely church full of lovely people. But we still need to work on this encouragement thing. Almost all of us are too prone to be negative about other people and to put other people down. We criticise readily but we find complimenting even our friends very difficult at times. Worst of all, I think we are guilty of enjoying the belittling of others. I don't know, perhaps it makes us feel more highly about ourselves when we push others down.
Coincidently I came across a rather apposite quotation yesterday which was posted on a friend's website. It's from a man called Sidney Madwed.
The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond our wildest dreams.
If we, the people of St. Francis, truly want to become an even better, more successful, more vibrant church than we are and full up to the rafters with people every Sunday morning, then we must make the encouragement of the good in others something we do naturally and as a matter of course.
Stick or carrot - which is the better way?
It's the carrot. Of course, it is. We know that.
Jesus was God's carrot and if we accept Jesus, God's gift to us, God's encouragement of us, we can forget about the stick because it will not be necessary. But it will require teamwork and lots and lots of encouragement if we are all to get to that place of grace together.
He was an outstanding priest in all the capacities in which he served, both in the parish, and in the Diocese, Ulrich said. He guided the Altar Society members in their work through the myriad of liturgies over the year, always in a caring manner and with a wonderful sense of humor. We all feel blessed to have had him serve as our Rector, for what we now realize was much too short a timeframe. He will be missed immensely by all of us who had the pleasure of knowing and working with him.
RIP George Linn Bland, Jr.
