Lying eyes, crying eyes
Commentary
Object:
The great composer Felix Mendelssohn loved to tell the marvelous story of how his grandparents Moses and Frumte Mendelssohn met and married. Moses was very short and far from handsome. He walked with a limping gait, partly because he sported a very noticeable hunchback.
The day Moses met Frumte, Cupid’s arrow struck deep. He determined to win the hand of this young beauty, the daughter of a local businessman. He knew it would be difficult because, like other young women of Hamburg, Frumte was repulsed by his misshapen body. Only after Moses made many requests to her father did she reluctantly agree to see him.
Frumte did not fall in love with Moses, however. At the same time, in spite of her constant resistance Moses’ hopes did not dim. He persisted in calling on her until one evening she told him firmly and clearly that he should not return. She did not want to see him again.
Moses threw caution to the wind. This would be the last time he could get a foot in the door, so he asked an intriguing question: “Do you believe that marriages are made in heaven?”
“Yes,” replied Frumte hesitantly, reluctant in the insecurity of not knowing where he was headed with this. “I suppose so.”
“So do I,” agreed Moses. “You see, in heaven, just before a boy is born, God shows him the girl he will someday marry. When God pointed out my future bride to me, God explained that she would be born with a hideous hunchback. That is when I asked God if he would please prevent the tragedy of a beautiful girl with a hunchback. I asked God to let the hunchback fall on me instead.”
Frumte’s eyes filled with tears. Years later she wrote, “I looked into the distance and I felt some long-hidden memory stir in my heart. At that moment I realized the depth and quality of this deformed young man. I never regretted marrying him.”
Maybe Moses Mendelssohn overplayed his hand in conjuring scenes of prenatal heaven. Still, there is something quite insightful about his analysis of who we are in ourselves and what lies inside the persons we meet day to day. For one thing, there is something of divine beauty in every person knit together by God in each mother’s womb. We did not emerge into this existence by our own volition or at the design of our own hand. And if our lives are a divine gift, we ought to be careful about artificial criteria of worth we might use as plumb lines in measuring the bent of another soul.
Second, though physical realities, including beauty and social status, may initially mark our assessments of each other, they rarely tell the whole story of human meaning. “Poor eyes limit your sight,” said Franklin Field. “Poor vision limits your deeds.”
He knew us well. Who wants to kiss a hairlip? Who wants to hold hands with a stump destroyed by meat tenderizer mistakenly injected by a junkie? Who wants to form “spoons” in bed with a hunchback? Perhaps only those whose vision is not encumbered with limited perspective and thus have eyes to see the true person. Some might say it is only those who love.
Third, there is something refreshing about stumbling into the Kingdom of God and finding relationships of meaning that are not prejudged and limited by the rules of others. By the rules of the day, Frumte should not have married Moses. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott should not have remained with his disfigured wife. Likewise, Hosea should have divorced his wayward spouse. There are millions of other relationships that ought to have dissolved, at least on our terms. But what a serendipitous delight to find power in the passions of heaven!
When we play favorites, we miss the gifts God lavishly showered in unlikely corners. We miss a beauty beyond status. And, as our gospel reading today reminds us, we miss Jesus himself, because he was playing ball with the kids down that very alley.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By his time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah’s northern brother neighbor Israel (722 BC). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 BC by its eastern bully province called Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. For decades already, the country had been paying yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon. Since 606 BC, Judah had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule the nation as regents of Babylon.
For reasons like these, Egypt began to loom large in many minds as the only possible ally strong enough to withstand Babylon’s domination of the region. Even though Israel’s identity had been forged through a divine exit strategy from oppressive Egyptian mastery several centuries before, now a good number of voices were publicly suggesting that the remaining citizens of Jerusalem get out of town before a final Babylonian occupation and find refuge in the safer haven of Egypt.
Into these times and circumstances Jeremiah was born. From his earliest thoughts he was aware of Yahweh’s special call on his life (1:4-10). This knowledge only made his prophetic ministry more gloomy, for it gave him no out in a game where the deck was stacked against him (chapters 12, 16). So he brooded through his life, deeply introspective. He fulfilled his role as gadfly to most of the kings who reigned during his adult years, even though it took eminent courage to do so. Although he lived an exemplary personal lifestyle, political officials constantly took offense at his theologically charged political commentaries and regularly arrested him, treating him very badly. Jeremiah was passionately moral, never allowing compromise as a suitable temporary alternative in the shady waters of international relations, or amid the roiling quicksand of fading religious devotion. He remained pastorally sensitive, especially to the poor and oppressed in Jerusalem, weeping in anguish as families boiled sandals and old leather to find a few nutrients during Babylonian sieges, and especially when he saw mothers willing to cannibalize their dying babies in order to keep their other children alive. Above all, Jeremiah found the grace to be unshakably hopeful. He truly believed, to the very close of his life, that though Babylonian forces would raze Jerusalem and the Temple, Yahweh would keep covenant promises and one day soon restore the fortunes of this wayward partner in the divine missional enterprise.
Today’s reading is a kind of summary of the larger message that Yahweh would bring through Jeremiah. God, the ever-present, ever-faithful companion of Israel, moans in disappointment that his people try so hard to find meaning in other gods, and water from other cisterns. Years ago Gary S. Paxton sang powerfully Sammy Hall’s mournful words of mystic longing:
I wonder if God cries when we do the things we do?
Does his heart feel sad, and break in two?
Sometime I’d like to rise, and for the world apologize,
for all we’ve said and done. I wonder if God cries?
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
In making the comparison between the old and new expressions of the covenant, the author of Hebrews does not criticize the former but turns common perceptions on their head. He assumes that the recent developments, related to Jesus’ coming, were intended all along, with the cultic ceremonies of Israel functioning like a prelude or a preamble (Hebrews 10:1-4).
Since Jesus has entered our history as the definitive revelation of God’s eternal plans and designs, he has fulfilled the intent of the sacrificial system and thus made it obsolete. This message, along with the enthusiasm of the divine Spirit, energizes the community of faith that now spreads its witness in this messianic age as the Christian church (Hebrews 10:19-25).
Steeped as he is in Jewish culture and covenantal outlook, the author reduces all of life to the symbolic representations of the Tabernacle. When God took up residence on earth, the furnishings of the Tabernacle were designed to provide means by which sinful human beings could approach a holy deity. In the Tabernacle courtyard, on the Altar of Burnt Offering, a sacrificial transaction took place, atoning for inner sin and alienation from God. The Bronze Sea standing nearby, although used only by the priests and Levites, symbolized the external cleansing necessary when making contact with Yahweh. In the Holy Place, the first room of the Tabernacle proper, were the visible representations of fellowship -- a table always prepared for mealtime hospitality, a lamp giving light for Yahweh and his guests, and the altar of incense which, with its sweet smells, overcame the stench of animal sacrifices outside and created a pleasant atmosphere for relaxed conversation. Finally, intimacy with God could be had by passing through the curtain and stepping into the throne room itself, the Most Holy Place. Here the Ark of the Covenant, with its Mercy Seat throne, was the actual place where Yahweh appeared to his people. Because this spiritual journey was too large a leap for most sinfully compromised humans to make, access was granted and taken only once a year in the person and representative acts of the high priest. Israel, as a people, met Yahweh in the Tabernacle (the “House of God”) through these symbolic representations.
What Jesus has recently done, according to Hebrews, is short-circuited these feeble and repetitious efforts at renewing human relations with God. He did this by fulfilling all of the deep-down meaning of these practices in the grand once-and-for-all activity of his death and resurrection. Now the old meanings, good and proper as they were, are connected to new symbols: the cross becomes the Altar of Burnt Offering; baptism is the cleansing washing that replaces the waters of the Bronze Sea; the Lord’s Supper is the ongoing experience of the hospitality table; the Holy Spirit is the illuminating presence previously offered by the lamp; prayers (both ours and Jesus’) form the new incense that sweetens the atmosphere when we seek God; and the Most Holy Place, with its Mercy Seat atop the Ark of the Covenant, is nothing less than God’s grand throne room in heaven itself. Indeed, if the microcosm worldview of the Tabernacle is expanded and inverted, we can sketch out the meaning of Jesus and the true religion of our lives as a journey from outside the camp into the holy presence of God.
It is obvious from the writer’s argument that he and those he is addressing are deeply steeped in the worldview, culture, practices, and religious rites of Judaism. Not only so, but theirs is a conservative, orthodox, historical understanding of the religion of Israel. The Old Testament is the revelation of God, and Israel holds a special place in transmitting the divine outlook and purposes with the human race. Israel’s identity was shaped around its religious ceremonies, which themselves emanated from the Tabernacle, its furnishings, and its symbolism.
Although the author of Hebrews shares these perspectives with his audience, there is one significant difference between them: he fully believes Jesus has ushered in a culminating change that transcends and makes obsolete these previous expressions of religious identity, while they, due to cultural pressures around them, are not so sure of that. This document is written to convince a community, which is on the verge of slipping away from Jesus back into a pre-Jesus Jewish ritualistic context, that such a move would be both unwise and inappropriate (Hebrews 10:19-39). The summation of his instruction is today’s lectionary reading.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was traveling in Rome when he noticed a crowd of people gathered around a large red poster. They were talking rather animatedly among themselves about the message it announced, and Ibsen was curious to know what was causing the commotion. When he reached into his coat pocket, however, he realized that he’d left his eyeglasses back at his hotel. Not wanting to be left out of the excitement, he turned to the fellow next to him and said, “Signore, could you please tell me what that sign says? I’ve forgotten my glasses.”
The man turned toward him with a “knowing” look in his eyes and replied, “Sorry, Signore, but I don’t know how to read either!”
As I was getting into bed on a night many years ago, one of our daughters (very young at the time) saw me take off my glasses. She thought that was a wonderful thing for me because then I wouldn’t have any bad dreams -- I couldn’t (in her logic) see the monsters in my nightmares!
Corrective eyewear is a physical necessity for many of us. But Jesus says that corrective eyewear is also a spiritual necessity for our hearts. As Dr. Karl Menninger once put it, “Attitudes are more important than facts.” Once we enter the light of Christ we need glasses that will change our attitudes about each other. We need glasses of the heart that will alter our perceptions. We need corrective lenses of the soul that will make us encourage and build others up rather than cut them down.
Johan Eriksson learned that lesson well. In 1939 trainloads of Jewish children were piling into Sweden. Because of the changing political climate under Hitler’s European campaign, parents were trying to get their young ones out of Germany. Boys and girls, sometimes only three or four years old, stumbled off boxcars and into culture shock carrying nothing but large tags around each neck, announcing their names, ages, and hometowns.
The Swedes had agreed to take in the children “for the duration of the war.” Unfortunately there were more children than suitable homes, so even Johan Eriksson was called. Johan was a widower, middle?aged and gruff, and not a likely candidate for foster parenting.
Without comprehending why, young Rolf walked away from the train station next to Johan. The boy was starving at the time, and frightened into silence. Every time he heard a noise at Johan’s door, little Rolf would run into a closet and pull coats over his head.
For years Rolf wouldn’t smile. He hardly ate. Johan created a spartan but stable home for Rolf, biding his time until Rolf would be gone and he could get back to his life. Yet Rolf never went back to Germany because no one ever sent for him. His parents perished in the ovens.
So Johan did his best with a son he never anticipated. When Rolf was in his twenties, Johan managed to get him a job in Stockholm. For a while Rolf struggled along, but he couldn’t handle the pressures. “His mind just snapped one day,” his employer said, and the local authorities wanted to put him in a mental institution.
Johan set out immediately to rescue his boy. Johan was an old man now, yet he brought Rolf home again to the little city of Amal. For many years Johan nursed Rolf back to health.
Rolf finally got better. He married a wonderful woman. He established a fairly successful business, and even became quite wealthy. All along, though, he knew that his achievements were only possible because of Johan, the big Swede who took in a nobody, loved him back to life, gave him an identity, and hugged away his fears.
When doctors called Johan’s children home for a final parting in his dying days, Rolf was the first to arrive. From an orphan’s tragedy, his life had become the story of a dearly loved son.
Johan was a Christian. He found the spiritual corrective eyewear that Jesus prescribes. It gave him the ability to see little Rolf as God saw him, and Rolf began to live that day.
Said Mark Twain, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” True! But when you get that new pair of eyeglasses for your soul, everything begins to look different.
Application
C. S. Lewis said that it was precisely our human perceptions which led him from atheism to Christianity. He was amazed that peoples of all cultures similarly demanded to have their “rights” protected. A child fights to hang on to a toy in a nursery. A man attacks the one who scratched the paint on his new car. A woman feeds the gossip network to get back at someone who wronged her. It’s the stuff of the office scramble. It’s the vicious competition fostered in schools and colleges. It’s the thing on which societies hang their hats and load their guns.
Before Lewis became a Christian, all of this strength of moral indignation tormented his soul. How could there be a universal craving for justice without some Higher Power to plant it as a seed in the human spirit, or standing as a final arbiter behind all things moral? Even where I may not be entirely honest or have full integrity, there is an urgent sense of “rights” at work within me. When Lewis relentlessly pursued the trail of moral responsibility, it led him back to God.
It was then, according to Lewis, that a new order of values took over. Even though thirst for justice in some form is universal, the logic of justice ultimately breaks down. For one thing, none of us is ever as righteous in our own lives as the moral behavior we expect from others. In other words, we will always attempt to lay a heavier burden on those around us than we are willing to submit to ourselves. Even where we excuse society generally as being immoral, we will want others to treat us with great justice and more. This double standard fosters a plague of moral decay since we cannot retain human dignity when we will destroy each other on the logic of justice untempered by mercy.
That brought Lewis a second stage in his quest for a new order of things. He read about Jesus. Jesus, he realized, fully met the demands of God’s justice, but did so in such a way that, as the psalmist put it, in God “love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other!” (Psalm 85:10).
The logic of justice serves well to prove the reality of God’s presence in this world, as Paul talked about it in Romans 2. Yet justice alone leaves us fainting for a quality of life that transcends the fear of both human and divine vengeance which justice brings. Only when we meet Jesus do we find something greater than mere justice. And only then can we go beyond favoritism in order to love with the grace of mercy.
Alternative Application
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16. Who were the first recipients of this document? Where were they living? What was their background? When were they caught up in these things?
There are a number of clues that come through the author’s notes about the experiences they have faced:
* these are second-generation Christians (2:1; 2:3; 13:7)
* who had come through tough times (10:32)
* many were publicly ridiculed (10:33)
* a number of their leaders apparently were killed (13:7)
* at least some of them had their property confiscated (10:34)
* although most had not been martyred, many had spent time in prison (10:34; 13:3)
* they knew the Hebrew scriptures well (obvious from the continual stream of scriptural quotes and allusions)
* they had practiced Hebrew religious ceremonies in the past (13:9-10)
* but they were likely Gentile in ethnic background, having come into Judaism in the first place by way of conversion (10:32)
When all of these things are considered together, subtle demographic lines emerge. Because they are well-educated, communicate in Greek, and appear to have come to Judaism from a Gentile background, it is likely that these people were proselytes to Judaism who had been seeking moral grounding in an increasingly debauched and debasing Roman society. There were many instances in the first centuries BC and AD where non-Jews became enamored of the rigorous lifestyle found in Jewish communities scattered around the Roman world. After going through years of non-participating observation and instruction, these converts were then officially declared to be Jews through ritual entrance ceremonies.
New adherents of any cause or religion are often the most zealous for their newly adopted perspectives and philosophies. It certainly seems to have been the case with these folks. So it must have been quite exciting and shocking when news about Jesus circulated, announcing the arrival of messiah and the coming of God’s final act of revelation and transformation. No doubt many of these Gentile proselytes to Judaism were quick to take the next step in exploring the messianic fulfillments of the religion they had recently adopted.
Of course, it did not take long before tensions within the Jewish community, and later persecutions from without, took the glow off these exuberant times. Now, in the face of renewed threats against Christians by the Roman government, a complicating twist had been added. All Christians, whether Gentile or Jewish in background, were specifically identified as participants in an illegal religious cult, while Jews who did not believe in Jesus retained official protections as part of an already sanctioned religion.
This heightened the confusion of identity issues for proselyte Jews. If they continued to profess Jesus as messiah, they would be separated from the rest of the Jewish community and persecuted by the Roman government, perhaps losing their property, their families, and even their lives in the process. If, however, they gave up the Jesus factor in their messianic Judaism, they would be able to return to the safety and camaraderie of the general Jewish community, with all of its religious rigor and righteousness, and at the same time escape threats from the Roman officials. The latter option was a very tempting choice to make. This seems, in fact, to be the background of one of the last and most specific exhortation of Hebrews (Hebrews 12:1-4, 12), which leads directly into the charges and challenges of today’s lectionary reading.
The writer of Hebrews points to others, of both Old Testament times and recent difficult circumstances, who chose to keep in step with the messianic progression of God’s activities, culminating in the coming of Jesus, the messiah. If these followers of the right way could keep their faith, even when it cost them everything, you can do it too! And look! They are the ones who are cheering you on! They believe you can remain faithful. In fact, Jesus himself stands at the end of your journey and beckons you on to the finish line! So don’t give up now, just when you are achieving a newer depth in your relationship with God! You can continue on! You can make it!
The day Moses met Frumte, Cupid’s arrow struck deep. He determined to win the hand of this young beauty, the daughter of a local businessman. He knew it would be difficult because, like other young women of Hamburg, Frumte was repulsed by his misshapen body. Only after Moses made many requests to her father did she reluctantly agree to see him.
Frumte did not fall in love with Moses, however. At the same time, in spite of her constant resistance Moses’ hopes did not dim. He persisted in calling on her until one evening she told him firmly and clearly that he should not return. She did not want to see him again.
Moses threw caution to the wind. This would be the last time he could get a foot in the door, so he asked an intriguing question: “Do you believe that marriages are made in heaven?”
“Yes,” replied Frumte hesitantly, reluctant in the insecurity of not knowing where he was headed with this. “I suppose so.”
“So do I,” agreed Moses. “You see, in heaven, just before a boy is born, God shows him the girl he will someday marry. When God pointed out my future bride to me, God explained that she would be born with a hideous hunchback. That is when I asked God if he would please prevent the tragedy of a beautiful girl with a hunchback. I asked God to let the hunchback fall on me instead.”
Frumte’s eyes filled with tears. Years later she wrote, “I looked into the distance and I felt some long-hidden memory stir in my heart. At that moment I realized the depth and quality of this deformed young man. I never regretted marrying him.”
Maybe Moses Mendelssohn overplayed his hand in conjuring scenes of prenatal heaven. Still, there is something quite insightful about his analysis of who we are in ourselves and what lies inside the persons we meet day to day. For one thing, there is something of divine beauty in every person knit together by God in each mother’s womb. We did not emerge into this existence by our own volition or at the design of our own hand. And if our lives are a divine gift, we ought to be careful about artificial criteria of worth we might use as plumb lines in measuring the bent of another soul.
Second, though physical realities, including beauty and social status, may initially mark our assessments of each other, they rarely tell the whole story of human meaning. “Poor eyes limit your sight,” said Franklin Field. “Poor vision limits your deeds.”
He knew us well. Who wants to kiss a hairlip? Who wants to hold hands with a stump destroyed by meat tenderizer mistakenly injected by a junkie? Who wants to form “spoons” in bed with a hunchback? Perhaps only those whose vision is not encumbered with limited perspective and thus have eyes to see the true person. Some might say it is only those who love.
Third, there is something refreshing about stumbling into the Kingdom of God and finding relationships of meaning that are not prejudged and limited by the rules of others. By the rules of the day, Frumte should not have married Moses. Similarly, Sir Walter Scott should not have remained with his disfigured wife. Likewise, Hosea should have divorced his wayward spouse. There are millions of other relationships that ought to have dissolved, at least on our terms. But what a serendipitous delight to find power in the passions of heaven!
When we play favorites, we miss the gifts God lavishly showered in unlikely corners. We miss a beauty beyond status. And, as our gospel reading today reminds us, we miss Jesus himself, because he was playing ball with the kids down that very alley.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Jeremiah lived almost a century after Isaiah. By his time, Assyria had long ago destroyed Judah’s northern brother neighbor Israel (722 BC). Judah was itself only a tiny community now, limping along with diminishing resources and constantly tossed around by the bigger nations of its world.
But things were changing rapidly on the international scene. Assyria was being beaten down in 612 BC by its eastern bully province called Babylon. After snapping the backbone of Assyrian forces at Carchemish and wrestling the capital city of Nineveh to the ground, Babylon immediately took over Palestine, the newer name for the old region of Canaan.
Judah was experiencing a rapid turnover of kings, many of whom were puppets of Babylon. For decades already, the country had been paying yearly tribute or security bribes to Babylon. Since 606 BC, Judah had been forced to turn over some of its promising young men for propaganda retraining exile in the capital of the superpower, in anticipation that they would return to rule the nation as regents of Babylon.
For reasons like these, Egypt began to loom large in many minds as the only possible ally strong enough to withstand Babylon’s domination of the region. Even though Israel’s identity had been forged through a divine exit strategy from oppressive Egyptian mastery several centuries before, now a good number of voices were publicly suggesting that the remaining citizens of Jerusalem get out of town before a final Babylonian occupation and find refuge in the safer haven of Egypt.
Into these times and circumstances Jeremiah was born. From his earliest thoughts he was aware of Yahweh’s special call on his life (1:4-10). This knowledge only made his prophetic ministry more gloomy, for it gave him no out in a game where the deck was stacked against him (chapters 12, 16). So he brooded through his life, deeply introspective. He fulfilled his role as gadfly to most of the kings who reigned during his adult years, even though it took eminent courage to do so. Although he lived an exemplary personal lifestyle, political officials constantly took offense at his theologically charged political commentaries and regularly arrested him, treating him very badly. Jeremiah was passionately moral, never allowing compromise as a suitable temporary alternative in the shady waters of international relations, or amid the roiling quicksand of fading religious devotion. He remained pastorally sensitive, especially to the poor and oppressed in Jerusalem, weeping in anguish as families boiled sandals and old leather to find a few nutrients during Babylonian sieges, and especially when he saw mothers willing to cannibalize their dying babies in order to keep their other children alive. Above all, Jeremiah found the grace to be unshakably hopeful. He truly believed, to the very close of his life, that though Babylonian forces would raze Jerusalem and the Temple, Yahweh would keep covenant promises and one day soon restore the fortunes of this wayward partner in the divine missional enterprise.
Today’s reading is a kind of summary of the larger message that Yahweh would bring through Jeremiah. God, the ever-present, ever-faithful companion of Israel, moans in disappointment that his people try so hard to find meaning in other gods, and water from other cisterns. Years ago Gary S. Paxton sang powerfully Sammy Hall’s mournful words of mystic longing:
I wonder if God cries when we do the things we do?
Does his heart feel sad, and break in two?
Sometime I’d like to rise, and for the world apologize,
for all we’ve said and done. I wonder if God cries?
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
In making the comparison between the old and new expressions of the covenant, the author of Hebrews does not criticize the former but turns common perceptions on their head. He assumes that the recent developments, related to Jesus’ coming, were intended all along, with the cultic ceremonies of Israel functioning like a prelude or a preamble (Hebrews 10:1-4).
Since Jesus has entered our history as the definitive revelation of God’s eternal plans and designs, he has fulfilled the intent of the sacrificial system and thus made it obsolete. This message, along with the enthusiasm of the divine Spirit, energizes the community of faith that now spreads its witness in this messianic age as the Christian church (Hebrews 10:19-25).
Steeped as he is in Jewish culture and covenantal outlook, the author reduces all of life to the symbolic representations of the Tabernacle. When God took up residence on earth, the furnishings of the Tabernacle were designed to provide means by which sinful human beings could approach a holy deity. In the Tabernacle courtyard, on the Altar of Burnt Offering, a sacrificial transaction took place, atoning for inner sin and alienation from God. The Bronze Sea standing nearby, although used only by the priests and Levites, symbolized the external cleansing necessary when making contact with Yahweh. In the Holy Place, the first room of the Tabernacle proper, were the visible representations of fellowship -- a table always prepared for mealtime hospitality, a lamp giving light for Yahweh and his guests, and the altar of incense which, with its sweet smells, overcame the stench of animal sacrifices outside and created a pleasant atmosphere for relaxed conversation. Finally, intimacy with God could be had by passing through the curtain and stepping into the throne room itself, the Most Holy Place. Here the Ark of the Covenant, with its Mercy Seat throne, was the actual place where Yahweh appeared to his people. Because this spiritual journey was too large a leap for most sinfully compromised humans to make, access was granted and taken only once a year in the person and representative acts of the high priest. Israel, as a people, met Yahweh in the Tabernacle (the “House of God”) through these symbolic representations.
What Jesus has recently done, according to Hebrews, is short-circuited these feeble and repetitious efforts at renewing human relations with God. He did this by fulfilling all of the deep-down meaning of these practices in the grand once-and-for-all activity of his death and resurrection. Now the old meanings, good and proper as they were, are connected to new symbols: the cross becomes the Altar of Burnt Offering; baptism is the cleansing washing that replaces the waters of the Bronze Sea; the Lord’s Supper is the ongoing experience of the hospitality table; the Holy Spirit is the illuminating presence previously offered by the lamp; prayers (both ours and Jesus’) form the new incense that sweetens the atmosphere when we seek God; and the Most Holy Place, with its Mercy Seat atop the Ark of the Covenant, is nothing less than God’s grand throne room in heaven itself. Indeed, if the microcosm worldview of the Tabernacle is expanded and inverted, we can sketch out the meaning of Jesus and the true religion of our lives as a journey from outside the camp into the holy presence of God.
It is obvious from the writer’s argument that he and those he is addressing are deeply steeped in the worldview, culture, practices, and religious rites of Judaism. Not only so, but theirs is a conservative, orthodox, historical understanding of the religion of Israel. The Old Testament is the revelation of God, and Israel holds a special place in transmitting the divine outlook and purposes with the human race. Israel’s identity was shaped around its religious ceremonies, which themselves emanated from the Tabernacle, its furnishings, and its symbolism.
Although the author of Hebrews shares these perspectives with his audience, there is one significant difference between them: he fully believes Jesus has ushered in a culminating change that transcends and makes obsolete these previous expressions of religious identity, while they, due to cultural pressures around them, are not so sure of that. This document is written to convince a community, which is on the verge of slipping away from Jesus back into a pre-Jesus Jewish ritualistic context, that such a move would be both unwise and inappropriate (Hebrews 10:19-39). The summation of his instruction is today’s lectionary reading.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen was traveling in Rome when he noticed a crowd of people gathered around a large red poster. They were talking rather animatedly among themselves about the message it announced, and Ibsen was curious to know what was causing the commotion. When he reached into his coat pocket, however, he realized that he’d left his eyeglasses back at his hotel. Not wanting to be left out of the excitement, he turned to the fellow next to him and said, “Signore, could you please tell me what that sign says? I’ve forgotten my glasses.”
The man turned toward him with a “knowing” look in his eyes and replied, “Sorry, Signore, but I don’t know how to read either!”
As I was getting into bed on a night many years ago, one of our daughters (very young at the time) saw me take off my glasses. She thought that was a wonderful thing for me because then I wouldn’t have any bad dreams -- I couldn’t (in her logic) see the monsters in my nightmares!
Corrective eyewear is a physical necessity for many of us. But Jesus says that corrective eyewear is also a spiritual necessity for our hearts. As Dr. Karl Menninger once put it, “Attitudes are more important than facts.” Once we enter the light of Christ we need glasses that will change our attitudes about each other. We need glasses of the heart that will alter our perceptions. We need corrective lenses of the soul that will make us encourage and build others up rather than cut them down.
Johan Eriksson learned that lesson well. In 1939 trainloads of Jewish children were piling into Sweden. Because of the changing political climate under Hitler’s European campaign, parents were trying to get their young ones out of Germany. Boys and girls, sometimes only three or four years old, stumbled off boxcars and into culture shock carrying nothing but large tags around each neck, announcing their names, ages, and hometowns.
The Swedes had agreed to take in the children “for the duration of the war.” Unfortunately there were more children than suitable homes, so even Johan Eriksson was called. Johan was a widower, middle?aged and gruff, and not a likely candidate for foster parenting.
Without comprehending why, young Rolf walked away from the train station next to Johan. The boy was starving at the time, and frightened into silence. Every time he heard a noise at Johan’s door, little Rolf would run into a closet and pull coats over his head.
For years Rolf wouldn’t smile. He hardly ate. Johan created a spartan but stable home for Rolf, biding his time until Rolf would be gone and he could get back to his life. Yet Rolf never went back to Germany because no one ever sent for him. His parents perished in the ovens.
So Johan did his best with a son he never anticipated. When Rolf was in his twenties, Johan managed to get him a job in Stockholm. For a while Rolf struggled along, but he couldn’t handle the pressures. “His mind just snapped one day,” his employer said, and the local authorities wanted to put him in a mental institution.
Johan set out immediately to rescue his boy. Johan was an old man now, yet he brought Rolf home again to the little city of Amal. For many years Johan nursed Rolf back to health.
Rolf finally got better. He married a wonderful woman. He established a fairly successful business, and even became quite wealthy. All along, though, he knew that his achievements were only possible because of Johan, the big Swede who took in a nobody, loved him back to life, gave him an identity, and hugged away his fears.
When doctors called Johan’s children home for a final parting in his dying days, Rolf was the first to arrive. From an orphan’s tragedy, his life had become the story of a dearly loved son.
Johan was a Christian. He found the spiritual corrective eyewear that Jesus prescribes. It gave him the ability to see little Rolf as God saw him, and Rolf began to live that day.
Said Mark Twain, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” True! But when you get that new pair of eyeglasses for your soul, everything begins to look different.
Application
C. S. Lewis said that it was precisely our human perceptions which led him from atheism to Christianity. He was amazed that peoples of all cultures similarly demanded to have their “rights” protected. A child fights to hang on to a toy in a nursery. A man attacks the one who scratched the paint on his new car. A woman feeds the gossip network to get back at someone who wronged her. It’s the stuff of the office scramble. It’s the vicious competition fostered in schools and colleges. It’s the thing on which societies hang their hats and load their guns.
Before Lewis became a Christian, all of this strength of moral indignation tormented his soul. How could there be a universal craving for justice without some Higher Power to plant it as a seed in the human spirit, or standing as a final arbiter behind all things moral? Even where I may not be entirely honest or have full integrity, there is an urgent sense of “rights” at work within me. When Lewis relentlessly pursued the trail of moral responsibility, it led him back to God.
It was then, according to Lewis, that a new order of values took over. Even though thirst for justice in some form is universal, the logic of justice ultimately breaks down. For one thing, none of us is ever as righteous in our own lives as the moral behavior we expect from others. In other words, we will always attempt to lay a heavier burden on those around us than we are willing to submit to ourselves. Even where we excuse society generally as being immoral, we will want others to treat us with great justice and more. This double standard fosters a plague of moral decay since we cannot retain human dignity when we will destroy each other on the logic of justice untempered by mercy.
That brought Lewis a second stage in his quest for a new order of things. He read about Jesus. Jesus, he realized, fully met the demands of God’s justice, but did so in such a way that, as the psalmist put it, in God “love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other!” (Psalm 85:10).
The logic of justice serves well to prove the reality of God’s presence in this world, as Paul talked about it in Romans 2. Yet justice alone leaves us fainting for a quality of life that transcends the fear of both human and divine vengeance which justice brings. Only when we meet Jesus do we find something greater than mere justice. And only then can we go beyond favoritism in order to love with the grace of mercy.
Alternative Application
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16. Who were the first recipients of this document? Where were they living? What was their background? When were they caught up in these things?
There are a number of clues that come through the author’s notes about the experiences they have faced:
* these are second-generation Christians (2:1; 2:3; 13:7)
* who had come through tough times (10:32)
* many were publicly ridiculed (10:33)
* a number of their leaders apparently were killed (13:7)
* at least some of them had their property confiscated (10:34)
* although most had not been martyred, many had spent time in prison (10:34; 13:3)
* they knew the Hebrew scriptures well (obvious from the continual stream of scriptural quotes and allusions)
* they had practiced Hebrew religious ceremonies in the past (13:9-10)
* but they were likely Gentile in ethnic background, having come into Judaism in the first place by way of conversion (10:32)
When all of these things are considered together, subtle demographic lines emerge. Because they are well-educated, communicate in Greek, and appear to have come to Judaism from a Gentile background, it is likely that these people were proselytes to Judaism who had been seeking moral grounding in an increasingly debauched and debasing Roman society. There were many instances in the first centuries BC and AD where non-Jews became enamored of the rigorous lifestyle found in Jewish communities scattered around the Roman world. After going through years of non-participating observation and instruction, these converts were then officially declared to be Jews through ritual entrance ceremonies.
New adherents of any cause or religion are often the most zealous for their newly adopted perspectives and philosophies. It certainly seems to have been the case with these folks. So it must have been quite exciting and shocking when news about Jesus circulated, announcing the arrival of messiah and the coming of God’s final act of revelation and transformation. No doubt many of these Gentile proselytes to Judaism were quick to take the next step in exploring the messianic fulfillments of the religion they had recently adopted.
Of course, it did not take long before tensions within the Jewish community, and later persecutions from without, took the glow off these exuberant times. Now, in the face of renewed threats against Christians by the Roman government, a complicating twist had been added. All Christians, whether Gentile or Jewish in background, were specifically identified as participants in an illegal religious cult, while Jews who did not believe in Jesus retained official protections as part of an already sanctioned religion.
This heightened the confusion of identity issues for proselyte Jews. If they continued to profess Jesus as messiah, they would be separated from the rest of the Jewish community and persecuted by the Roman government, perhaps losing their property, their families, and even their lives in the process. If, however, they gave up the Jesus factor in their messianic Judaism, they would be able to return to the safety and camaraderie of the general Jewish community, with all of its religious rigor and righteousness, and at the same time escape threats from the Roman officials. The latter option was a very tempting choice to make. This seems, in fact, to be the background of one of the last and most specific exhortation of Hebrews (Hebrews 12:1-4, 12), which leads directly into the charges and challenges of today’s lectionary reading.
The writer of Hebrews points to others, of both Old Testament times and recent difficult circumstances, who chose to keep in step with the messianic progression of God’s activities, culminating in the coming of Jesus, the messiah. If these followers of the right way could keep their faith, even when it cost them everything, you can do it too! And look! They are the ones who are cheering you on! They believe you can remain faithful. In fact, Jesus himself stands at the end of your journey and beckons you on to the finish line! So don’t give up now, just when you are achieving a newer depth in your relationship with God! You can continue on! You can make it!
