This sermon is an outline rather than a full text – apologies for somewhat less ease of reading! Here is the annotated page I prepared of this text, which you can open or print.
- INTRO
- Clergy don’t know all of Scripture well, or equally…
- Hebrews is one of the parts I don’t know well.
- When it comes around in lectionary …., I tend to wait it out.
- But last time it came around, I noticed a sentence I liked & kept it to use as a Scripture to lead us from the Peace & announcements, towards the Eucharist….
- A place in Anglican worship where it is traditional for the priest to read some short piece of Scripture.
- Hebrews 12:28-29 – “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.”
- Printed it out, taped it to the ambo! I say it, many weeks.
- THIS year, when this part of Hebrews comes around – What does this mean?…
- Hebrews
- One of the letters of the Early Church
- Very finely written – literary
- Author unknown – Pauline but not Paul
- Priscilla? – named leader in the early church
- Thinking and writing at the interface between Judaism and emergent Christianity – describing Jesus in terms of the ritual practices of the great Temple.
- Hebrews is hard to teach and preach today because of its supercessionism. That big word means the belief that the Church replaces Israel and the Jews as God’s people.
- Not a new branch grafted onto God’s holy tree – Paul – but a whole new tree that has taken over the old tree’s roots.
- When this was written: Christians were a minority, not much power. When Christians become the politically powerful majority, a couple of centuries later, this idea starts to become very dangerous.
- Gospel story – Let’s be clear that everyone here is Jewish. And Jesus’ response here is also very Jewish.
- This leader is uptight because he’s uptight, not because he’s Jewish.
- Friend – kids helping in worship – “sucked all the holiness right out of the room”.
- Episcopalians can get a little anxious about disrupting orderly worship, even if the disruption is life-giving.
- But stories like this eventually become part of Christian thinking about Judaism as superficial and legalistic, vs. Christianity as religion of the heart.
- Let me be clear: that is not a distinction that holds up to scrutiny!
- We have to be careful with texts like this. What do they actually say? How have they been used?
- Today’s passage…
- Towards the end of the letter – 13 chapters – this is the “how to live” part, after the big theological argument.
- I was starting somewhat from scratch
- Discovered a really densely allusive text – Page!
- Working through the page…
- This passage: Contrasting two mountains. First, Sinai – where Moses received the covenant, on the wilderness journey from the book of Exodus
- God’s presence – fire, earthquake, storm – other places in OT, too – signs of power.
- Stay away from the mountain!! Exodus 19…
- Sense of terror and danger in God’s presence.
- Could kill you just to see God directly!
- The second mountain – Zion.
- Jerusalem – City of David – 1000 years ago now – becomes an idealized image of the holy City – “the heavenly Jerusalem.” (The heavenly New York…)
- The gathering at/on the mountain… Sinai: people filled with dread. Here: at my first reading, a party! “Festal gathering.”
- WorkingPreacher – actually this is Greek political terminology – assembly, enrollment, festal gathering – this is an alternative body politic, a renewed civil society, a divine democracy.
- Different from party image – but also appealing!
- God the judge – could sound scary, we’ve heard a lot about God’s judgment. But maybe positive here?
- Contrast to the fear and trembling of Sinai.
- WorkingPreacher – actually this is Greek political terminology – assembly, enrollment, festal gathering – this is an alternative body politic, a renewed civil society, a divine democracy.
- “Sprinkling blood” – what?
- Abel – Adam and Eve’s son killed by his brother – reference to human tendency to kill each other?
- Based on practices from the wilderness Tabernacle that became part of Temple worship
- Animal sacrifice – blood as holy, represented life force.
- Sprinkling blood as act of symbolic cleansing –
- Exod 24 – Moses sprinkles the people to affirm the covenant with God.
- Earlier in Hebrews – ch 9 – explicit contrast of these practices and Jesus’ self-sacrifice. Blood of goats & bulls can clean people superficially, but “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ… cleanse our consciences…, so that we may serve the living God!”
- I hope you are starting to notice how well this author knows the OT & how skillfully they are weaving it into their writing here!
- Re: supercessionism: The text wants to say that Jesus has replaced those old ritual practices.
- Thing is, Judaism ALSO emphasizes that rituals aren’t enough in themselves & need to have the right heart towards God!
- This passage: Contrasting two mountains. First, Sinai – where Moses received the covenant, on the wilderness journey from the book of Exodus
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- Okay, new paragraph, and a new aspect to the contrast. God’s people at Sinai struggled to listen, obey, and trust. Wilderness stories…. Call for the Christian community to do better!
- Quotation – “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This is from the prophetic book of Haggai. (How did I find that out? Google.)
- Haggai – prophet during the building of the Second Temple. Minor Prophet – means we didn’t learn very much about them in seminary.
- Telling the people to have confidence and trust that God will help them rebuild.
- People who have been through great “shaking” – conquest, exile – next “shake” will be to your benefit!
- This author’s interp – not much to do with Haggai. — “Yet once more” as pointing towards end times – everything shake-able, that is, everything earthly and tangible, will be gone, soon.
- But what cannot be shaken will remain, endure.
- Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken… What kingdom?
- This is basically the only time Hebrews uses this word. But it’s pretty clearly alluding to Jesus’s kingdom language. Examples on page – two out of MANY.
- Hard to unpack briefly! An alternative reality we can choose to step into now, and also, something beyond this world that we are promised…
- One more quotation – “For indeed our God is a consuming fire.”
- This is the ONLY TIME this particular Gk word appears in the NT! (How do I know THAT? Google. Well: an online concordance, which is a kind of index to all the words used in the Bible.)
- BUT it is used a couple of times in the Septuagint, which is a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible. It’s the version of the Old Testament that this writer would have known.
- I’m almost certain this line is a direct quote from Deuteronomy 4.
- Deut – one of those parts I do know relatively well – at least the gist – because I wrote a paper on it in seminary!
- Moses’ last words to the people before entering the Promised Land.
- Strong theme: Choose faithfulness, choose to follow God’s ways & stick with God, as you enter this new chapter, and things will go well for you.
- This passage consistent with that – a reminder that faithfulness includes not messing around wiht other gods, because our God does not like that!
- Deut – one of those parts I do know relatively well – at least the gist – because I wrote a paper on it in seminary!
- So while this passage begins by saying we – as Christians – aren’t like God’s people huddled in terror below Mount Sinai, it ends on this note: we should rightly feel some awe before God.
- Okay, new paragraph, and a new aspect to the contrast. God’s people at Sinai struggled to listen, obey, and trust. Wilderness stories…. Call for the Christian community to do better!
- So – having gone through all that – better sense of meaning – still a text I want to use liturgically? Appropriate?
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- “Since, then…” (or, “Therefore…”)
- Here, wrapping up this argument.
- In worship: Everything before – readings, hymns, sermon, prayers, confession – should point us towards this realization/affirmation.
- Since, then, we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken…
- We have to bear with the mystery of the kingdom & let those layers of meaning add up over time.
- “That cannot be shaken” – don’t need context – The idea of something unshakable – appealing.
- Let us give thanks – Or, Let us have grace.
- Charin – which is the “char” in Eucharist.
- Translated as grace and as gratitude or thanks. Scope for a whole word study there!
- “Since, then…” (or, “Therefore…”)
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- “Let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.
- “Acceptable” – Gk: “well-pleasing.” Translator DB Hart – worship that delights God.
- LOTS of examples in the Bible (Isaiah, recently) of worship that doesn’t please God because it’s not offered with the right state of heart or mind.
- So: A call to worship with gratitude and reverence.
- For indeed our God is a consuming fire! This part isn’t on the paper on the ambo… but sometimes I say it anyway!
- God’s generosity towards us, our response of gratitude and wonder – sometimes adding that final note of God’s powerful otherness also feels important.
- Worshipping at synagogue recently – how much their worship emphasizes God’s holiness.
- Kabod in Hebrew – heaviness, weight. Approaching the living God is a serious matter.
- We “God is love”-type Protestants can sometimes need a little reminder of that.
- “Let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.
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So.
Since, then, we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
Let us give thanks… let us have grace…
By which we offer God well-pleasing worship, with reverence and awe… for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
- Conclusion
- Doing this work helped me appreciate this author, their voice, their craft. I hope for you too.
- Doing this work helped me go deeper into the meaning of something I say often. I hope you found some meaning too.
- And doing this work stirred up some of my awe, my gratitude, at being called into the presence of the Living One. At being, indeed, promised a kingdom that cannot be shaken. I hope for you too.