To Become Children of God Proper 22B

 To Become Children of God Proper 22B

We begin this week praying, “Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve…” Suggesting, perhaps, that although we may be hesitant to address God with all that is in our hearts, God, through an “abundance of mercy and forgiveness” never ceases to give to us “more than we either desire or deserve.” And we may as well admit, we desire an awful lot.

This prayer does not mean to suggest that whatever it is we hesitate to ask for will be given to us, but rather that God is always ready to give us more – more than we can even imagine.

When I had been ordained a priest only a couple of months, my Rector and mentor, The Reverend Frank M. McClain took me to Dekoven House on the banks of Lake Michigan in Racine, Wisconsin, for a three-day silent retreat with the clergy of the Diocese of Chicago. It was my first three-day silent retreat, and it was led by a bishop from Scotland, The Right Reverend Richard Holloway who led us in meditations on Hebrews – sometimes called an epistle or letter, but more likely is an early Christian treatise by an unknown author on the nature of the most unimaginable gift of God to this world, Jesus. God’s Son. He is the subject of endless books which seek to tell us just who he is and what he is all about.

Possibly written before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (and therefore before the writing of the four gospels), and possibly written by a woman of great renown, Priscilla, Priska, a time already of great turmoil and persecution for the emerging communities of followers of Jesus. I say followers because the earliest communities of Christ were gathered primarily by his invitation to “follow” him. Which is an emphasis the author makes in this treatise when she reminds us, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching,” [Heb 10:25] which text we are instructed to read every Good Friday.

Amidst the turmoil and change following Jesus’s death on a Roman Cross and rising again on the third day, a primary question on nearly everybody’s mind, Jews and Gentiles alike, was understandably, “Who is this guy?” The text known in its original Greek simply as, “To the Hebrews,” seeks to answer this question, and does so in perhaps the most sophisticated and eloquent prose out of all the New Testament literature.

Beginning with the first four verses of chapter 1 we hear that, 1) long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways through prophets, but now speaks to us by a Son, 2) through whom he also created the worlds, 3) that this Son is “the exact imprint of God’s very being,” 4) that he sustains all things, 5) through his death as one of us, a human, he accomplished the priestly purification of our sins, 6) and was exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on High, having become “much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs!”

That is, he was there at the beginning of all things, and will be here at the end of all things, so that therefore, this Son of God is the constant source of our salvation, which is, as we pray, beyond anything we might desire or deserve. Much of the turmoil and confusion that surrounds us on all sides every day results from taking our minds off of the invitation to live our lives in the Way of God’s kingdom, allowing other voices and other ways to distract us and mislead us in what has felt, especially these past two years of the Pandemic, as if everything around us is in constant flux and change. Competing voices from many different directions seek to entangle us in endless argument and debate, such as we hear about in Mark 10:2-16, where a group of Pharisees seek to entangle Jesus in the ongoing arguments and debates of his day.

In the midst of this entanglement, we are told, people were bringing children to him “in order that he might touch them,” but the disciples sought to prevent them from even getting near to Jesus. To which Jesus responds, now for the third time, by taking a child in his arms and declaring that anyone seeking the Peace and Shalom of God’s kingdom must receive it like this little child. As precious as this sounds to us, these children in first century society had no privilege, no status, no rights, and their presence was seen as a nuisance. Nonsense, says the Son, who was there when all things came to be! The rule of God belongs to such as these: vulnerable, weak, and powerless people who often are seen as a nuisance to the rest of us. To receive life in his kingdom, we must admit we too are vulnerable, weak and powerless against the turmoil and chaos of our own age and our own ways of thinking.

We may note that the text does not idealize any particular characteristic of children, but is talking about the receiving of the kingdom by powerless persons; those who make no demands and have no stakes to claim. The rule of God comes as pure grace to those of us who are at the crossroads and byways of life, experiencing things changing day-to-day, at our wits end, and comes to any and all, regardless of status, or of no status at all.

This is where the sophisticated language of To the Hebrews speaks to us. The language of the argument sounds strange to contemporary ears. Yet, this treatise means to confront us with new ways of knowing Jesus, and to convert us to experience him as the one, the Son, who is always present. He was there before the beginning, He will be there till the end of time, says Hebrews, and is always ready generously, with mercy and forgiveness, to give us more than we can possibly desire or deserve. The only outstanding question for all of us is are we ready to receive what he is freely giving without money, without price, and without condition?

The gospel, the good news, is that amidst life’s many changes and distractions, God’s Son stands, unchanging and unchanged, both at the beginning and at the end. He is here, now and forever! That we can depend on.

May almighty God inspire us to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but to encourage one another; so we might become eager to be taken up into Jesus’s arms and received as blessed children of his Father’s kingdom. Amen.