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Hebrews 7:11-28
| 26.10.2009, 08:15 | |
| Rev. Tatiana Cantarella Psalm 34:1–10; Romans 6:4–10 Hebrews 7:11–28 Perfectly once and for all Yesterday, Natalie Kirs’ family celebrated a very important event – her sister Tanya’s wedding. And as it often is, as the wedding draws closer, brides and grooms (the former perhaps more) experience both anticipation and lots of stress. “I want it to be perfect! Everything has to be just right!” And although many people today no longer believe in the institution of marriage, others, including young people, consider wedding to be one of the most significant events of their life. They lived like everyone else, and all of a sudden – they are in the center of events, surrounded by the people who love and know them the most. Of course, they want everything to be perfect, so that they would not have to draw their memories of the event through the “Funnies home video” programs, being painfully reminded how her dress got stepped on and tore or the table crashed under the weight of the cake or the broom got wet by the water dripping from the ceiling. But as we all know well, perfection doesn’t just happen but takes lots of work and attention to every aspect of the event. Take the dress – it needs to be chosen, tried on and fitted. The same with food. The same with the ceremony itself: what music is playing, who says what and when and how, who and when gracefully walks in. And then, of course, there is the dance. Tanya and her husband came here on a Thursday night to practice their dance. It must be perfect, just like it is planned. Hebrews has much to say about perfection and today’s chapter is not an exception. “So you see, if it had been possible to arrive at complete perfection thought the Levitical priesthood, what further need would there have been to speak of another priesthood being established ‘according to the order of Melchizedek’”. But it’s not easy for us to understand what perfection means. Most of the time we understand it to mean “moral” perfection which we think we can reach through our hard moral efforts until not only our wrong actions, but also thoughts and motives will be ironed out of our character. But a closer look reveals it to be something quite different. The word “perfect” in the New Testament means for something to have reached the full measure of its quality, fulfilling its purpose. That is the sense of “completeness”, “wholeness”, when everything is put in its place so that the ultimate purpose can be achieved. Hebrews shows that this ultimate purpose the reaching of which is reaching perfection is nothing less than God’s plan for the whole of creation. It certainly includes human behavior, but it’s much more than that. This world is God’s Great Project; and like the bride and the groom plan their wedding and do everything for it to be perfect, God works towards bringing this world to perfection, does everything to make it whole, so that it would ultimately become what it was created to be. For those who lived in the times described in the Old Testament, under the Law of Moses, it was easy to imagine that to participate in this great project of God one simply had to be part of the community whose life focused around the Temple and relied on sacrifices brought by Levitical priests. Ancient Israelites somehow believed that God the Creator would use all these sacrifices and rituals to bring Israel to perfection, and then the whole world to perfection through them. But as we know, it didn’t happen, because God never intended it to happen that way. That’s why Hebrews says that “the previous commandment is set aside as week and useless”. That doesn’t mean that the whole Old Testament is thrown away and only the New Testament matters. For in the next chapter the author will quote Jeremiah 31:31–34, saying that the Old Covenant will be replaced with New, but the New simply means for the Old to be written in the hearts of people! The truth and will of God as it is set out in the Old covenant are not thrown out as something bad. But what touched people only externally, God intended to become the center of human being, to be rooted in the hearts. Paul said something similar to the Romans: “because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering… in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:2–4). God’s plan wasn’t set aside or changed but as author shows from Ps 110 again, God knew that human priests were just a temporary solution pointing to a need of the One Priest who will lead people to perfection and bring them before God. And all previous priests and sacrifices were set up for a time being, but to solve the problem but to point to the ultimate and perfect solution – Jesus Christ who by His death and resurrection will become the basis of “the better hope”. It is in Jesus Christ that God set in motion that perfection which was impossible before. Jesus died but rose again and lives forever more and his resurrection brought the “power of a life that cannot be destroyed” (16). That means that those who belong to Jesus no longer depend on the religious system which cannot give perfection but trust in the only Eternal, Ultimately effective priesthood of the Son of God, Messiah. This is that “better hope” which brings us closer to God (19). If you’ve not noticed yet, but the world “better” is the favorite one in Hebrews. It is used more times in this letter alone than in all the rest of the New Testament books together. The author constantly contrasts not something bad with something good, but something good with something much better! He is not saying that the ancient system of worship and sacrifices was bad but that the time came when in Jesus we are offered something much better! Now perfection (the world as it was created to be) is already a reality because Jesus has set it in motion. And that’s why we are asked to move on in faith and hope in order to experience perfection, the glorious new world that God prepared for us. Modern reader, certainly, cannot appreciate all these intricate arguments about Judaism and old order of things, but we can see in all that the author’s desire to show that at the right hand of God sits the One who cares for us and our earthly journey, Jesus who continues to intercede for us, reminding God about our situation and need of help. Not that God needed the reminder, but rather, we need to hear again that the One who has gone through the same sufferings and tests that we go through is before God even now representing us until the day when we will stand before Him ourselves. There was a tradition in Judaism, which believed that angels had a mediating role, so the first readers of Hebrews might have tried to pray to and worship angels as intercessors. So, the author of Hebrews explains: Christ is the only and the perfect mediator and intercessor before God. This is also a reminder to us of how foolish it is to worship and pray to any angels, saints or any other perishable beings, showing our lack of trust in Christ as the only perfect mediator. When our journey becomes especially difficult, we have a tendency to look for “extra” options of help. In Russia it’s often when those who believe themselves to be Christians facing especially difficult situations begin to turn to fortune-tellers, healers, go to the back of beyond to touch some saint’s icon… But Scriptures reminds us today – there is no aspect of our life that our High Priest Jesus cannot take care of. And if there is an aspect of our life where we fail or fall and we thing that Gods saving power is not active, perhaps that’s because we have not brought this problem or failure to the altar of our Priest Jesus. As Lane rightly stated: “His responsibility is unceasing intercession; our responsibility is to approach God through him”. There is no suffering or temptation that are our of our Lord Jesus’ ability to help. Dietrich Bonhoeffer – well known German pastor who resisted the Nazi regime, very well understood what Hebrews is trying to say. He understood it so well, in the midst of suffering which most of us cannot even imagine, that on the altar of a tiny seminary in Finkenwald concentration camp he wrote just one Greek word: “hapax” (Once)! This word variations of which appear in Hebrews many times in order to emphasize the absolute, superior importance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. There, at the concentration camp, in the heart of that symbol of human evil, this word on the altar was proclaiming loud and clear: “That ‘once’ – that moment of death and resurrection changed everything. At that ‘once’ the eternal something happened and all of human history became relative to this ‘once’”. Bonhoeffer knew the world was still full of evil and Nazi regime that brought such suffering was still a reality. But because of that “once”, He knew full well that this world is God’s and must and will reflect God. And when we feel that the world has not changed and nothing in our lives changed, we are being reminded that Christ is interceding for us, constantly, unceasingly, so we can draw close to God. The world is not yet perfect and we face pain and evil, sickness and despair but because of Jesus and only Jesus we have a chance. We are not too late. He is interceding for us and opens the way before us. He is always doing it and we don’t need to look for another way. And in fact, no other way will do, no other mediator will guarantee us successful entrance into God’s presence! And in order to make this clear, Hebrews once again talks about uniqueness of Christ in comparison with other human priests. He is the only true mediator because only He is “Holy”. That is not primarily a reference that Jesus is sinless but that His relationships to God and to people are based on absolute faithfulness to Covenant. He is the One who lived in obedience not only to the letter of the law (externally) but to the spirit of the law (internally), He remained the One whom God appointed him to be. As we said last week, Jesus is the One who lived a human life in its fullness. Only He is “without blame”, neither his reputation nor life had any evil attached to it, He is without sin. And only He is “without stain”. Not only that He never actively attached to any sin or evil, neither sin nor evil even passively attached themselves to Him. Hebrews reminded us in earlier chapters that Jesus was like human priests in the ways we needed him to be, so He could help. But He is also not like them, so that He can help. He has forever become a Perfect Priest who bought to himself to God, offered to God “a human being fully alive”. You see, Christians are constantly in the forgetting mode. We forget how central and vital Christ is for all aspects of our Christian lives. We get so distracted by different theological ideas and practical matters that we think of Jesus (if at all) only in passing or view him as just one of the elements of our faith. Hebrews wants to shake that tendency off us. Page after page the author continues to talk about Jesus and cannot say enough about who He was, Who He is and what He has done through His death and about that new life that emerged on the other side of the resurrection. Yes, He died on the cross but that death could not hold Him and His resurrection gave him a different quality of life, which will knows no end. And it is this life that He offers to those who come to God through Him. This alone is worth a good deal of pondering. And as we think of how Christ brought to perfection God’s plan and put an end to the long line of priests, our pondering should turn to gratitude and gratitude to assurance and hope. The world is not what is should be or will be. Our life is still far from being perfect. Many of you might be going through hard times and tend to start doubting and start looking for answers else where besides Christ. I call on you today to lift your eyes to the One who alone sits at the right hand of God eternally, who alone knows you and your life, to the One who even now near the throne of God Almighty is interceding for you, calling you to draw near to God, to draw near through Him. Do not forget, do not doubt – His ministry goes on and will go on until the moment when we ourselves will enter into the presence of God having walked from beginning to the end on the road named Christ. | |
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