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18.10.2009_Hebrews 4:14–5:10_What God desires?
| 18.10.2009, 18:03 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 104:1–9, 24, 35c; Isaiah 53:4–12; Hebrews 4:14–5:10 “What God desires” In the previous chapters of Hebrews, author, pointed his readers to Christ as the only source of salvation but also warned about a danger of being deceived by sin and turning away from the Living God. A possibility of loosing God is not a very good one for a person that believes that there is no life without God, such person, thus, wants to know what is needed to avoid such terrible thing. How to remain with God? What does God want? I just started reading Paul Young’s “The Shack”. On a hike a father named Mack told his three younger kids an Indian legend about a tribe in which right before a wedding of the Chief’s beautiful daughter and her beloved one, a terminal illness stroke almost the whole tribe. Chief gathered his elders to decide what to do and one of them remembers an old prophecy about this sickness and that it said that to stop it a young most pure lady must volunteer to jump of the cliff to fulfill the prophecy. After much discussion, the elders decided that they couldn’t ask anyone for such a precious sacrifice and the sickness continued to take lives. Soon, the groom also fell sick and the young bride quietly sneaked out of the village, without much thinking she prayed to the Great Spirit and jumped off the cliff to fulfill the prophecy. Back in the village those who had been sick arose well and strong and everyone rejoiced until they realized that the bride was missing. They understood right away where to look for her – at the cliff where she chose to sacrifice herself to save her beloved and the while tribe. Soon after this legend, conversation shifted to Jesus and that this was a real story. Missy, the youngest daughter asked, “why is God so mean? He made the bride jump of the cliff and made Jesus die on the cross? That seems so mean”. “Honey, Jesus didn’t thing his daddy was mean. He thought his daddy was full of love and loved him very much. His daddy didn’t make him die. Jesus chose to dies because he and his daddy love you and me and everyone in the world. He saved us from our sickness, just like the bride saved her tribe”. After few long minutes of silence when Mack thought his kids were already asleep Missy asked: “daddy, will I have to jump of the cliff”? Mack’s heart broke, as he understood what this conversation had really been about. He hugged his girl and answered as gently as he could, “no, I will never ask you to jump off a cliff, never, ever, ever”. “Then, will God ever ask me to jump off a cliff?” “No, Missy, God would never ask you to do anything like that”. Many people have exactly such image of God – always seeking retribution, some pay back – which robs them of ability to trust God. When ministers try to explain that death of Christ once and for all “paid” our debt we once again are bothered by the image of God who wants to balance His books through some suffering. Who will want to draw near to such God? It’s when we view God as the One always wanting retribution it also seems logical to us that God just might give us that cancer cell to teach us some moral lesson or to send a tsunami on some coast for some universal ethical lesson. Perhaps, it was such fear and inability to believe in God’s goodness that author of Hebrews sensed in community he addressed. For many of them, to draw near to worship God was like drawing near to “a burning fire, darkness and gloom” (12:18). Many preferred to stay away from worship. Their religion, their understanding of God caused ill feeling and fear because in the center of their faith was the God always seeking retribution; God, who always has to be satisfied. This community made of the Jews, like the priests in the days of their fathers dutifully went to the temple bringing forth their offerings. Week after week, year after year they brought everything they could but found no renewal. “God, what are you waiting for? What do you need from us? Bread offering? Or tithe? May be my testimony? Or a sense of guilt? Do you want me to serve in the church or be a philanthrope? May be you want me to pray unceasingly or fight for peace and equality in this world?” No, answers author to the Hebrews in chapter 10: “Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me; In whole burnt offering and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure. Then I said ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, o God” (10:5–7). The only thing God wants is a fully human life, a life well lived. Irenaeus many centuries ago already said: “The glory of God is humanity fully alive” (Against Heresies, book 4, ch. ХХ, p. 7). But a life truly well lived is the one thing we cannot, on our own, bring to God. This could become even a greater reason for pessimism for not only we don’t live our lives fully well but God knows that we don’t: “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (4:13). Author is realistic and knows that human condition is rather bad but he knows something else: it’s because people failed and sinned and couldn’t bring to God the only thing He wants – “a fully lived human life”, Jesus had come to walk that path and to restore to us the gift of that “life fully lived”. Because of Jesus we can rid of our false image of God who (we thought) always wants retribution and see God who desires only one thing – a fully alive person. Jesus came to this world not to satisfy some questionable God’s desire of pay back for our sin, of getting something back even at the price of His own Son but to restore fully human life that we lost and would never be able to find again. Life as it was given to humans was lost and the gap between humans and God has become so wide and people realized it long ago. For centuries, people understood that there was a need of bridging this gap. Such was the role of priests in the religious life of Israel. A priest (especially high priest) according to Hebrew Scriptures was called to be a bridge between people and God. They had a ceremonial role, offering gifts and sacrifices not in order to manipulate God as if what people do can put God in their debt, but to thanks God for creation and covenant, and to express and embody God’s atoning for their sins. On the other hand, priests had a pastoral role, looking after people, sympathizing with them, getting alongside them and making the idea of the ‘bridge’ a reality in their in their experience. A priest had to be compassionate towards sinful people who in their ignorance and misdirection sin before God. A priest never condoned sin but he had to control his emotions, understand both the width and reality of human problems. For a priest who is repulsed by typical human failures will never be able to understand. But as author to Hebrews reminds us, all human priests were themselves sinners and must therefore offer sacrifices in relation to their own sins as well as those of the people. Their ministry reminded of God’s mercy but didn’t help people to retrieve that only thing that God desires – “a life fully lived before Him”. The only one who could bring that lost life back was God’s own Son who became our High Priest, Jesus Christ in whom we believed. And from the very beginning God prepared the way for the coming of this High Priest of a different order. Jesus didn’t take this role upon himself like something hi dreamed up for himself. No one in Israel became priests on their own liking, who would assume a role of representing men before God, and all the more – representing God before men. It’s not a job, it’s a calling. Jesus wasn’t even from the tribe of Levi and was often was in conflict with priestly type. But God did appoint Him to be His representative between Himself and us: “You are my Son, today I became Your Father… You are a priest forever” (5:5–6). But a priest is not only of God; he is also of the people – like them in all things, not to hold distain towards the ignorant and the lost. He is God’s Son and knows God perfectly but He is of the people, “a little lower than the angels” (2:9), “not ashamed to call us brothers” (2:11), “has taken on flesh and blood” (2:14) and even tempted like us, feeling for us, understanding our feelings, weaknesses, fears, anxieties, doubts, battle to make the right choice. Jesus, having become our brother came to walk the journey of human life, to face the same temptations that we do. That he was tempted “in all things” as we are doesn’t mean that his life repeats ours in all details but that He experienced all the aspects and power of temptation that humans can ever face. But with one important difference – he never lost his bearings, never compromised his humanity. Because He’s gone through the whole range and power of temptations – enticements that are not from God but from the evil one, as well as tests of faithfulness that God allows, He knows what we are going through when we are tested and could become our compassionate High Priest and because He didn’t sin our compassionate High Priest. It’s a paradox: He is not like us; He is without sin and therefore can help us. But He is like us, has gone through all temptations in flesh and blood and therefore can help us! What Jesus has done for us as the High Priest is the ministry of another kind than of any earthly priests. Hebrews says that what He brought before God was not gifts and offerings like priests of the past but “prayers and supplications with tears and cries”. These words must remind us of one very important moment in the life of Jesus – His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane where at the end of His earthly journey He fought His last battle with those same temptations so typical for human life. But He didn’t loose His bearings, didn’t compromise his humanity. It was he who walked as the high priest, into the great sanctuary and, on behalf of us all, placed himself into the offering plate, the one things God truly desires: a human being fully alive. He didn’t bring a sacrifice but a prayer to God, which is a sign of a much closer relationships than those of a debtor and a creditor. It wasn’t pain and violence that God desired. It was human life as God created it to be, summoned it to be. The pain and the violence were already out there on the path; they had been there since the blood of Abel soaked the earth and cried out for vengeance. Suffering and pain are consequences of a lost fully human life. And no one can walk this human path in faith in obedience without encountering suffering; no one, not even God’s Son and our High Priest. But in the midst of that suffering Jesus cried out with tears, not for revenge and not in hate, but “with prayers and supplications… to the one who was able to save”. And his prayer was answered not in a way that He avoided death but in the fact that He embraced His Father’s will with His whole heart, “may Your will be done!” and fully understood the meaning of sonship. And it wasn’t that God wanted death to pay for sin but that Jesus wanted to live fully human life to the end that He would rather die than compromise His true self. A human being fully alive like God created us to be and no one of us was able to be, Jesus became. Having lived a fully human life He, as Hebrews puts it, “passed through the heavens”, that is ascended to the throne of God like the Pioneer, while we follow Him and He interceded for us before the Father and calls us to follow faithfully in His steps in living a fully human life. Our life fully lived, just like Jesus’ life is the only thing we can offer God. Yes, we are lost children who wondered far away from home and forgot what fully human life is all about. But Jesus, our brother presented himself in the sanctuary of God his humanity fully intact he did not cower as though he were in a place of “blazing fire and darkness and gloom”. Instead he entered calling out, “I’m home, and I have the children with me” (2:13). And that means that when we come to our Heavenly Father in prayer, we don’t need to shout across a great gulf as if trying to catch the attention of someone who has little or no concern for us. We can come to the throne of God without fear or doubt not because we are arrogant. But if we truly understood who Jesus is, what he’s done and what he’s still doing on our behalf, the real arrogance would be to refuse to accept his offer of standing before the father on our behalf, to imagine that we had to bypass him and try to do it all ourselves. And what is on offer for those who come to God through Jesus is “mercy and grace”; mercy to free us from sin and folly in which we would otherwise sink completely; grace, to strengthen us and set us on our feet so we could offer God the only thing He desires: I fully lived human life. What does God want? Once again in words of Irenaeus: “that a human being would not completely fall away from God and cease to exist. For the glory of God is a human being fully alive”. So, let us draw near to the throne of grace so that we can receive mercy and find grace to help us in a time of need. | |
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