Pentecost 25 (November 18, 2018)
Holy Wisdom Monastery
Madison, WI
After reading today’s lessons, I thought “My luck has run out.” So I went to the commentaries, but found little help there. But then these texts began to open up for me, especially the reading from Hebrews. I was surprised by this, since this reading is full of references to the Jewish sacrificial system and its bloody sacrifices, a system entirely alien to us. However, it would have been was very familiar to the author’s original audience because it was at the very heart of their religion. In fact, this system was at the heart of all religion at the time and had been since religion first emerged in culture many millennia earlier. It was a system of exchange between God and humanity controlled by a hierarchical priesthood which offered bloody sacrifices to God in exchange for forgiveness and blessing. Richard Rohr calls it a system of bargaining with God.
Most commentaries argue that the author of Hebrews embraces this sacrificial system and interprets Jesus’ work in that context. I believe the exact opposite is true. I think the author of Hebrews demolishes the sacrificial system and the understanding of God on which it’s based. And a few scholars agree with that, including the famous French philosopher Rene Girard, whose studies of the sacrificial system and its function in religion and society are widely known.
The life of the New Testament community also supports this interpretation. Ritual sacrifice had no place in the life of the early Christian community. And when referring to the community’s leaders, the New Testament mentions bishops, elders, deacons, teachers and prophets, but never priests, because the community had no priests. Why would it? What would a priest, whose primary duty is to perform ritual sacrifice, do in a community that did not practice ritual sacrifice.
The absence of priests in the Christian community continued for some time after the New Testament period. Considering how central and universal ritual sacrifice and priesthood were in all religion at this time, this is stunning, even revolutionary. It also explains why the Romans didn’t think Christianity was a religion and why one of the charges they brought against them when they were put on trial was atheism. Second century apologist, St. Athenagorus, refers to this in one of his writings. “They charge us with two points,” he writes. “That we do not sacrifice and that we do not believe in the gods of the state.”
In today’s reading the author of Hebrews does call Jesus a high priest and speaks of his death as a sacrifice. But he can do so only because he radically redefines both terms. The author does not understand sacrifice as the bloody offering of Jesus as a victim in exchange for God’s forgiveness and blessing. At the very beginning of today’s reading he says explicitly “these sacrifices can never take away sins.” The author understand Jesus’ sacrifice to be his whole life offered to God in service to his brothers and sisters and in faithfulness to his message that God is Love. His death is the price he paid for his faithfulness to his mission and he paid it willingly though not gladly. It completes and consummates his mission. But Jesus’ sacrifice itself is not what saves the world. The love of God incarnate in Jesus and released into the world through his life, death and resurrection is the energy that redeems and reconciles the world. Paul expresses this pre-eminence of love over sacrifice so eloquently in one of the most beautiful chapters of the Bible when he writes, “Even if I give up all my possessions and hand over my body, if I do not have love, I gain nothing.” This love is not just an abstract idea. It exists here and now among us on earth and gives birth to the new community of Jesus’ followers. In today’s reading, the author of Hebrews refers to this community and exhorts its members to “always think how (they) can stimulate each other to love and good works.” This exhortation is addressed to us also, since we are members of this community.
This is where the rubber hits the road. This is not just theory. The love of God that lived in Jesus and is still living in his followers is changing the world. The saints are evidence of that. There are thousands whom we could name but I’ll mention only one this morning, Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1961 I heard him describe his experience on the night his house was bombed and his wife and infant daughter narrowly escaped death. A great crowd of African Americans gathered around his Montgomery home ready to do some bombing of their own. From the porch of his bombed-out house, he reminded them of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount and exhorted them to “Love your enemy.” They were deeply offended by this. “How can you love the people who destroyed your house and nearly killed your wife and daughter” they demanded to know. “I can do so,” King replied, “because I have cosmic company.” It’s this love that redeems the world.
Jesuit priest, mystic and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin contemplated this love throughout his life and writings. He believed love is “the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” He believed love is the evolutionary energy that has been drawing the universe together for 15 billion years, forming sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, people and finally the cosmic Body of Christ. Teilhard believed that drawing humanity together in a universal community is the most urgent and challenging task of contemporary spirituality and ethics. Teilhard saw much suffering in the world when he was a medic in World War I and he experienced a lot of personal suffering at the hands of his order and the Vatican, but he never gave up on love and never lost hope that in the end humanity would rise to the challenge of love. That’s why he could write in his book, Toward the Future. “The day will come, after harnessing space, winds, the tide and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, (humanity) will have discovered fire.” May that day come, and may we never lose hope in its coming. And while we wait for it, let us “always think how we can stimulate each other to love and good works”.