Scripture: Hebrews 13:1-16

Keep loving each other like family. 2 Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it. 3 Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them, and people who are mistreated as if you were in their place. 4 Marriage must be honored in every respect, with no cheating on the relationship, because God will judge the sexually immoral person and the person who commits adultery. 5 Your way of life should be free from the love of money, and you should be content with what you have. 

After all, he has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. 6 This is why we can confidently say,

The Lord is my helper,
    and I won’t be afraid.
What can people do to me?

7 Remember your leaders who spoke God’s word to you. Imitate their faith as you consider the way their lives turned out. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

9 Don’t be misled by the many strange teachings out there. 

It’s a good thing for the heart to be strengthened by grace rather than by food. Food doesn’t help those who live in this context. 10 We have an altar, and those who serve as priests in the meeting tent don’t have the right to eat from it. 11 The blood of the animals is carried into the holy of holies by the high priest as an offering for sin, and their bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy with his own blood.

13 So now, let’s go to him outside the camp, bearing his shame. 14 We don’t have a permanent city here, but rather we are looking for the city that is still to come.

15 So let’s continually offer up a sacrifice of praise through him, which is the fruit from our lips that confess his name. 16 Don’t forget to do good and to share what you have because God is pleased with these kinds of sacrifices.

The Word of God for the People of God

Thanks be to God!

Harmony

On a quiet night in August of 2011, just a few days before my freshman year began, I left my dorm and joined the rest of Davidson College’s class of 2015 in an auditorium across campus.  Everyone else was wearing their best business clothes.  I–assuming that I wouldn’t need nice clothes for the first few weeks of school at least–had borrowed a dress shirt that was too small and a pair of khakis that were too big from some of the guys who lived on my freshman hall.  After a few speeches from campus dignitaries, one by one, we walked on stage to sign a piece of paper.  That piece of paper was Davidson College’s honor code.   

Most schools take their honor codes seriously.  Even then, Davidson is at a different level.  In all four years of college, I don’t recall ever taking a final exam with a professor or teaching assistant in the room. Nothing would have stopped me or my classmates from taking out notes, or asking another student for help, in the middle of a final.  And yet, I never once saw this happen, or heard of this happening.  During my sophomore year, I heard about a senior who had intentionally accepted a failing grade in a class because she had done something she hadn’t realized was cheating, and when she was formally tried by our student-run honor council, decided she would rather be an example for others than save her GPA.  She undermined her own future, because even in the face of big consequences, that was the right thing to do.  That willingness to do what was right no matter what was something we hoped made us stand out.  

Christians are also supposed to stand out for their willingness to do the right thing.  Today, we hear the writer of Hebrews offering moral instructions to readers.  Love “Each other like family.”  Be hospitable.  Look after the vulnerable.  Be faithful in marriages.  Avoid the love of money.  Imitate worthy leaders.  Trust God.  This all sounds familiar, but the why behind these instructions is surprising.  In the Greco-Roman world, the word “city,” or polis, wasn’t just a city, but a shorthand way of describing the community to which individuals belonged.  Hebrews, which was written under threat of persecution, reminds us that to be a Christian is to accept that “We don’t have a permanent city here, but rather we are looking for a city that is still to come.”  As Christians, our citizenship belongs to the Kingdom of God.  Living according to its laws will be uncomfortable when we are outside of its borders.  And yet, our solemn duty as citizens of that city is to do the right thing, and love others, especially when it is dangerous to do so.  

This passage should be a gut check for us.  Pretty much every church in America talks about loving others and believes it is doing a fine job.  Most of the churches who talk about standing apart, and not belonging to this world, do so without compassion, but with a smug sense of superiority.  These two messages meet in one place, at the foot of the Cross.  Jesus loved others better than anyone ever has, and for his actions was crucified as an enemy of the Roman polis.  If we are to truly be citizens of his Kingdom, we must ask if our acts of love have similarly separated us from the polis of 21st Century America.  In a time when our land is so divided that American troops are deployed to American cities, this quote from Rachel Held Evans rings true: “What makes the Gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.”  If you aren’t willing to put your own future on the line by risking love for those others consider dangerous, you are choosing to live inside the polis, rather than beside the Cross of Christ.  To live for Christ in this world is dangerous, and uncomfortable.  Why risk it, rather than compromise with today’s status quo?

I have to tell you, I spent several hours trying to answer that question yesterday.  Not because I didn’t have an idea of what I wanted to say, but because I couldn’t figure out how to say it.  How do you describe something you have never seen?  How do you make complete peace, complete perfection, real and understandable in a life that knows neither?  Here’s my best shot.  In the 2003 film, The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, two of the film’s main characters, Gandalf and Pippin, are locked in battle, fighting to hold off the forces of darkness and evil in a city whose defenses are about to fall.  This experience will be common for those of us who take Christ’s example seriously.  Standing with the light in a broken and dark world is dangerous.  Gandalf in particular is a powerful and revered figure, but at this point, he knows the numbers of the enemy are too great for even him to overcome.  So, with the city on fire, the screams of innocents filling the air, almost all of its defenders dead, and the end just minutes away, Gandalf smiles, and describes to Pippin what awaits them.  “The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.  White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”  

The Kingdom of God is not something we make.  If it were, the loss of the battle would be the end, and stories like that would have no deeper meaning.  But Gandalf can smile about life after death for the same reason we can smile about our world’s future, and Hebrews can speak of the “City that is still to come,” with confidence.  The fate of this world isn’t up to us.  And a power much greater than us is on our side.  When we are true to our citizenship, we do not to save the world, but to give the world a taste of what life will be like when God’s Kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  That day will come.  And when it does, the darkness and desolation of this world will be rolled back, and we will see a world of true peace.  May we be citizens of that Kingdom, and always choose to do the right thing, trusting that in the end, God will bring all creation into harmony.  Amen.