The letter to the Hebrews is a challenging read. We are, fundamentally, not its intended audience, and you need a lot of context to understand what any given passage is trying to say. But let’s try to find a foothold in the text, today. 

Hebrews was probably written fairly early, like some of Paul’s letters that are also preserved as Epistles. In the year 70, about 35 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Great Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman army, in the course of crushing a revolt against Roman rule in Judea. As Jesus predicts, in our Gospel today! 

The loss of the Temple was a HUGE event for both Judaism and early Christianity. Now, the author of Hebrews writes a lot about the religious practices of the Temple. The destruction of the Temple would fit into their argument really well – but they don’t mention it. So, they’re likely writing before that happens, the mid-60s or so. 

The letter is clearly addressed to a Jewish Christian audience – people who were pious and committed Jews, and then also became followers of Jesus, without abandoning their Jewish identity. That’s why it’s called the letter to the Hebrews – meaning, here, people of Jewish heritage. 

The letter offers Jewish Christians a series of ways to think about Jesus in terms of Jewish faith and teaching, such as presenting Jesus as a new Moses, and Jesus as both a great High Priest, and the ultimate Sacrifice, in the terms of Temple worship. The overall message is: You can be deeply grounded in Judaism and still follow and worship Jesus!

There’s also a recurring call in the letter to stay faithful to Jesus and the church. This author may be writing to people who are considering abandoning their new faith and returning to Judaism – perhaps in the face of some persecution. 

It’s hard to tell in English translation, but scholars say this letter is a very literate and sophisticated piece of writing. It’s written in more elegant Greek than, for example, the letters of Paul. This author was educated and eloquent. 

So… who was this author? Who wrote this letter? In terms of theme and timing, it was probably someone close to the apostle Paul, and with a significant role as a leader and teacher in the early decades of the church. But interestingly, this person’s name isn’t recorded. Hebrews is anonymous; if a name was ever attached to it, it was lost early on. 

There’s a theory among some scholars that this letter might have been written by Priscilla, or Prisca. Priscilla and her husband Aquila were Jews from Italy who met Paul in Judea and became Christians. They then traveled with Paul on some of his missionary journeys. They’re mentioned several times in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. On one occasion they take another preacher aside to explain some Jesus stuff to him more clearly. 

The couple is also mentioned twice in Paul’s letters. Priscilla and Prisca are the same name – the “illa” is a diminutive. Paul doesn’t use the diminutive; he calls her Prisca. It’s a little like everyone else calls her Becky but Paul calls her Rebecca. Make of that you will! 

Paul also names her as a co-worker: “Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus,” in Romans, implying they had ended up in Rome. And in First Corinthians: “Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, greet you warmly in the Lord.” So, this couple were leaders of a local church community, at one point.  

But why name Prisca, specifically, as the possible author here? BECAUSE the letter comes down to us as anonymous. This fairly remarkable piece of early church theology, clearly the work of one voice, is not attributed. We know from the trajectory of New Testament writings that for the first couple of decades, the church followed Jesus’ lead in taking women seriously as spiritual leaders. Paul joyfully shared leadership and ministry with women like Prisca, Phoebe, and Lydia. 

But over time patriarchy reasserted itself. Women started to be sidelined, and told to be quiet in church. Formal church leadership became mostly a dude thing, for a couple of millennia. 

So, the theory goes – and it makes sense to me! – maybe Prisca wrote this letter, and the first generation of Christians knew that. But over time that tradition fell away, and the book became anonymous… kind of like the Harry Potter novels. 

If any of the men surrounding Paul had written this, their name would still be attached to it. One scholar writes, “The lack of any firm data concerning the identity of the author… suggests a deliberate blackout more than a case of collective loss of memory.” (Gilbert Bilezikian)

So what does Prisca have to say to us today? 

In the verses just before this passage, Prisca is wrapping up one of her extended analogies about Jesus and Temple worship. She says: in the Great Temple, the high priests have keep offering the appointed sacrifices, every day, because those rites can never fully take away human sinfulness. But Jesus gave himself as the ultimate sacrifice, which restores and sanctifies all believers, and eliminates the need for any further ritual sacrifices, ever. 

(By the way, for the folks who feel particularly burdened by substitutionary atonement theology – the idea that Jesus had to be sacrificed in our place, in order for an angry God to forgive us – the letter to the Hebrews, as a whole, could be a helpful read. Prisca does play with that idea, or something close to it; but she also works through four or five other ways of framing the meaning of Jesus’ life and death through Jewish Scriptures and practices. The early church was using all kinds of metaphors to try to describe what folks had experienced and come to believe about Jesus. It’s much later that substitutionary atonement emerged as a dominant theme, and you are 100% free to take it or leave it.) 

As our passage begins, Prisca continues to riff on the practices of Temple worship: the curtain that separated the holiest place that only a few could enter; the blood and water sprinkled in rituals of repentance and purification; the ritual washing that prepared someone to approach God. Prisca says: We have all that, always, already, through Jesus. It’s done, once and for all. All we have to do is hold onto it, to our commitment to Christ and our hope in Christ, without wavering. To be as faithful to Jesus as he is to us.

And then she says one of my favorite lines in the Epistles: “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.”  … 

That bit about “not neglecting to meet together” is clearly a little dig at folks who don’t get to church that regularly. And “all the more as you see the Day approaching” is pointing towards the end of time, the day when God will turn the world upside down and right side up. 

Prisca’s generation of Christians expected it any moment. We have learned, two thousand years later, that there will be many seasons of war, and rumors of war; of conflict, famine, and disaster; and that all of that is still just the birthpangs of the new world God is laboring to bring forth, with our help. 

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds. Provoke is an attention-grabbing word there, isn’t it? It’s only in the New Testament in three other places: once about a fight among the apostles; once when Paul is stirred up by idol worship in Athens; and once in the famous passage about love, from 1 Corinthians: Love is not irritable – not easily provoked. The Greek word means: Provoke, irritate, exasperate, incite… 

Provoke one another to love and good deeds? Can’t we encourage each other, instead? Inspire one another, maybe? … 

But the thing is: I know exactly what it feels like to be provoked to love and good deeds. 

It’s the interruption of someone at the church door who needs help with rent, or gas to get to their new job, or some clothes for the kids they just took in. 

It’s a longtime member asking a tough question that opens up a whole new direction in ministry. Or it’s a new member with particular needs, or particular hopes, pushing us, pushing me, to make space for new priorities.

It’s having someone tell me: We can’t just pretend that conflict didn’t happen. We should talk it out and learn from it. 

It’s deciding, a decade ago, to clarify our welcome for LGTBQ+ people, and then discovering we have work to do on actually BEING truly welcoming. And then having new people show up and say: I heard about y’all; are you ready be my church? 

And having people who’ve been here their whole lives say: Will you still be my church if I show up as my true self? 

So many of the directions in which we’ve changed, grown, stretched, or deepened, in the past many years, are because some person or group in this parish, or outside it, provoked us to love and good deeds. 

I love this verse because for Prisca, it’s not enough for people to keep the faith, to hold fast to the confession of our hope. Her vision for the church extends beyond some kind of bunkered, locked-down faithfulness. She wants to see her people, Christ’s people, living faith in action, in love and good deeds. 

And she knows that the way that happens isn’t all warm fuzzies and affirmation, marshmallows and daisies. We ask things of each other. We challenge each other. We struggle, sometimes, with directions, priorities, balancing needs, allocating scarce resources, managing anxiety, holding grief. 

But Prisca knows that that’s just how it is – that’s what happens when people choose to belong to each other, and to God. It’s part of the work, and even when it’s hard, it’s good. It’s holy. 

So let us consider, beloveds, how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, and to encourage one another – all the more as we see God’s Day approaching. Amen.