Nothing Else to Say

As a Christian, I find the Letter to the Hebrews to be a comfort. As a preacher, I find it to be a challenge. One can’t help but admire the boldness and the intelligence of the writer, whoever he or she was. (Yes, some scholars have theorized that the writer might have been a woman.) The Epistle takes on a religious system that had been in place for centuries and declares the entire system obsolete, bankrupt, kaput. The elaborate rituals of animal sacrifice in the Book of Exodus and in the great temple of Jerusalem have been made redundant, says the writer of Hebrews, all because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

No need for sacrifices on the altar. Christ himself has been sacrificed for us. No need for a high priest to stand before God on behalf of the people. Jesus is himself that high priest, who sympathizes with us in our weakness. Jesus is both priest and victim, having laid down his life, once and for all. He is the Passover lamb; he is the high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, superior to Moses, far surpassing the levitical priests, the agent of the new covenant.

According to Hebrews, Jesus Christ put an end to religion, if by religion you mean a prescribed ritual for approaching God. He also did away with the need for priests, if by "priest" you mean a human intermediary who stands between us and God. By virtue of Jesus Christ, the true high priest, we have all been made priests, the writer declares. "By the blood of Jesus," even sinners like you and me have been made holy, can "enter the sanctuary," can open the curtain that divides the profane from the sacred. We can go into the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God, and live.

That’s a bold and powerful message, if you know enough about the religion of ancient cultures to appreciate it. The problem is, most of us don’t think in terms of animal sacrifice when we consider our relationship to God.

If you lived in a city of the ancient Roman Empire, you’d probably walk by a couple of sacrificial altars on your way to work every day. The smell of wood smoke and seared flesh must have been hung heavy in the air – a bit like the parking lot around Doak Campbell Stadium on a game day. Back then the local butcher shop, like as not, was a franchise operation of the neighborhood pagan temple -- a fact which, you will recall, caused the Christians of Corinth a good deal of soul-searching.

I know a Lutheran pastor who spent the first part of his ministry as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. His parishioners loved the Letter to the Hebrews, because animal sacrifice had been a way of life for their ancestors before those stout Lutheran missionaries arrived late in 19^th century. (If fact, my friend admitted, he sometimes thought his congregants liked those references in Hebrews rather too much. He wasn’t altogether sure that there wasn’t something else going on when they killed a pig and invited him to the feast.

I love to sing that last verse of the hymn "Alleluia! Sing to Jesus!"

Thou within the veil hath entered,
Robed in flesh, our great High Priest;
Thou on earth both Priest and Victim
In the eucharistic feast.

I love those words because I have inherited them from that "great cloud of witnesses" the Letter to the Hebrews invokes. This language has deep meaning for me because I have come to associate it with this meal laid out before us today. I’ve learned to speak this special language, even though it’s not the lingua franca of my day.

I doubt, however, that someone raised on video games, MTV, and microwave popcorn would find this language meaningful. If I were sharing the gospel with someone who didn’t speak this special language, I don’t think I’d start with Christ, the high priest in the order of Melchizedek, or Christ, the Passover lamb sacrificed for us. I think I’d start with another declaration from Hebrews – the declaration that we can rely on God because God keeps God’s promises. "Let us hold fast to the confession of our faith without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful."

Our culture may not be conversant with animal sacrifice, but we know all about promises – the kind that are kept, and the kind that are broken.

We just finished holding a national election. Election season is an orgy of attack ads on the one hand and promises on the other. Remember "A chicken in every pot?" Remember "Read my lips"? Remember "I’m sticking with Donald Rumsfeld for the next two years"? We know all about those kind of promises.

Children, we know, expect promises to be kept. What parent hasn’t heard those dreaded words, "But you promised!" No recrimination hurts quite so much. Politicians are not the only people who make promises they don’t keep.

I very seldom have to turn down a couple who asks for marriage. Years ago, however, I did turn a couple down. There were lots of red flags flying by the time we got to the final counseling session, but the last straw came when the groom asked to alter the marriage vows. "Instead of saying, ‘As long as we both shall live,’ he suggested, "Couldn’t we say, ‘As long as we both shall love?’. We feel that’s more realistic."

"You could," I replied, "But that wouldn’t be Christian marriage, and it certainly wouldn’t be realistic. Christians don’t ground their marriage vows in their feelings of love for one another. Feelings wax and wane. They change as people grow older. How you define ‘love’ right now will change over time. If you start out in marriage with an eye toward bailing out when the going gets rough and your feelings for one another change, you’re not really making a true commitment in the first place. You make the promise for life, not because you feel love right now, but in order to keep loving.

How is it that Christians can talk this way? It’s because God made a promise long ago. With a heart full of love for the whole creation, God chose the most unlikely collection of people and said to them, I will be your God and you will be my people. I will forgive your sins, and I will remember your evil deeds no more. I will write my law, not on tablets of stone, but on your hearts. I will be faithful to you, even if you break my heart with your own faithlessness.

God kept that promise to Israel, says Hebrews, and now it has been taken new life in Jesus Christ. He is the promise. He is God’s heart broken and God’s law kept. He is the law fulfilled and the law abrogated. No need for sacrifices now. Grateful hearts are all we have to offer.

Therefore, says Hebrews, "Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful."

It is only because God keeps God’s promise that we dare to make promises to one another – in marriage, in baptism, in coming to this Table. At the heart of the gospel is a gracious God who keeps promises. In a world where promises are made with no intention of keeping them, in a world where promises are broken because they are grounded in nothing more than transient feelings, in a world that is afraid to trust anyone or anything, the news about such a God is Good News indeed.

However you arrive – through the imagery of sacrifice or the wonder of promises kept – the destination is the same. Years ago, when our older son was about four, I was reading to him from the Chronicles of Narnia. Andra and I never said a word to our boys about those books being Christian allegories. We felt that would spoil the magic and undermine the genius of C. S. Lewis.

One night I was reading the account of Aslan’s death in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I read how the hags and the ogres and the other agents of the White Witch bound with strong ropes the Lion who was no ordinary lion. An ogre produced a pair of shears and clipped off Aslan’s majestic mane. Sheared of his mane, Aslan looked like an ordinary cat. The Witch’s minions mocked him, asking if he’d caught any mice and would he like a saucer of milk. Then they put a muzzle on those mighty jaws and dragged Aslan to the great Stone Table.

The two girls in the story, Lucy and Susan, are hiding nearby, and see the Witch whet her knife, see it gleaming in the moonlight, but they do not see the actual killing of Aslan. They shut their eyes when that moment comes, as well they should. When the Witch and her company have left, Lucy and Susan creep from their hiding place and approach the Stone Table. They remove the muzzle from Aslan’s face, but their hands are too cold to untie the many cords which bind Aslan to the Stone Table. A host of field mice appear – hundreds of them – who gnaw the ropes in two, and leave his lifeless body unbound upon the stone altar.

Lucy and Susan walk away. "I’m so cold," says Lucy. "So am I," says Susan. They hear a deafening crack behind them. They run back to the Stone Table. The stone is cracked and Aslan is gone.

"Let’s stop there," I say to Adam. We’ll find out what happens next tomorrow. (I hope he doesn’t the tears in my eyes. I can’t read any more.)

"Don’t worry," my four-year old says to me. "I can guess what happens. It’s just like Jesus."

Aslan on the Stone Table – It’s just like Jesus. The high priest in the Holy of Holies – It’s just like Jesus. The lamb on the high altar – It’s just like Jesus. The promise kept – It’s just like Jesus. Whatever route you take to get there, you’ve arrived at the same place, and the only words left to say are "Thank you."