“Remember Your Leaders” (Hebrews 13:7-16)

 

Wow! We’ve been reading and making our way through Hebrews for a long time. It was way back in January that we started. Now it seems almost as though that is shrouded in the mists of history. And I want to express my gratitude to Pastor Marvin, who has steadfastly and faithfully been leading us through this rich book of the Bible all that time—in spite of a car accident resulting in a serious concussion and later falling victim to covid. Now here we are part way through the last chapter, and in my Bible I’m into the final column of this profound and challenging message to the church.

It seems to me, as I read through it, that this concluding chapter is something of a catch-all. It may be that our anonymous author is running out of parchment to write on. I can imagine his hand (or the hand of his scribe) might be aching after all this writing. So now he is packing as much as he can into his concluding words. It is almost as though he were saying, “Oh, and by the way, before I put down my pen…”—with the result that he pours forth with a whole jumble of wise and timeless counsel, things that he feels need to be said.

Remember

The first thing he calls upon us to do in these verses is to remember. “Remember your leaders,” he says, “those who spoke to you the word of God.” So I want to let you take the next couple of moments to pause and think back to the people who have had an impact on you, men and women whom the Holy Spirit brought into your life as an influence for the good. Who were the individuals who helped you to come into a living relationship with Christ? Who were those who drew you back onto the path when you were going astray? Who were the individuals who stood by you and held out a light for you in the darkness? Who were those who prayed for you? Who were those who had the thoughtfulness to encourage you or the boldness to caution or to scold you?

What a wonderful thing it is that the Lord does not call us to walk the path of discipleship alone! As the author has already reminded us in the previous chapters, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And, as he has made clear in that long catalogue of God’s faithful servants in chapter 11, that cloud is not limited to the present.

In addition to that list, we owe a huge debt to our Christian forebears who have come since that time: for their steadfast commitment to the truths of the gospel, even in some cases, to the point of death; for their willingness to journey hundreds, even thousands, of miles to share their faith; for their deep insights into the mysteries of God.

Last Sunday at the end of the service we did something slightly out of the ordinary here at First Congregational… We sang a song that was penned nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. That hymn was written by a young woman named Frances Ridley Havergal. And one of its verses began like this:

Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold…

I had to laugh to myself a little as we sang it because, in the hymn book that we used in the church where I served before I retired, that verse had been omitted by its editors! Yet behind it there lies a marvellous story and one that I find quite moving. It comes in a quote from a letter that its author sent to a friend. Here is what she wrote:

‘Take my silver and my gold’ now means shipping off all my ornaments—including a jewel cabinet which is really fit for a countess—to the Church Missionary Society where they will be accepted and disposed of for me. I retain only a brooch for daily wear… I don’t think I need tell you I never packed a box with such pleasure.[1]

How much we have to learn from an example like that! And Frances Ridley Havergal is just one of thousands, no millions, who have paved the way for my faith and yours today.

We live in a generation that tends more and more to focus on the immediate. Our lives are governed by catchy headlines and sound bites, on tweets and social media posts. And I don’t for one minute debate that we need to keep up with the present. Yet we can’t allow our obsession with the now to happen at the expense of plumbing the deep riches of the past, to learn and to benefit from the lives of women and men of faith who have gone before us.

So allow me to commend the study of Christian history and biography, to encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the lives of great men and women of faith from the past. You will find yourself challenged and enriched by the depth of their faith, by their profound insights and by the steadfastness of their commitment to Christ.

Way back nearly nine hundred years ago a very wise man named John of Salisbury wrote these words:

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God.

The Unchanging Christ

We would not be who we are or where we are without the witness of those faithful saints who have gone before us. More importantly, our author tells us, we would not be either of those things without Jesus: Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Circumstances may change; Jesus does not. The world of 2022 is a markedly different place from what it was only a few years ago—and the pace of that change continues to accelerate. Many of the things we take for granted now were unheard of twenty years ago: iPhones and iPads, Facebook and Twitter, Netflix and Amazon Prime, smoking bans in restaurants, text messaging, led lighting, drones, and electric cars, to name just a few. And I doubt that anyone would have seriously considered the notion of this worship service being broadcast online even three years ago!

All of that has been accompanied by some huge societal shifts as well: the increased frequency of gun violence, the rising acceptance of alternative sexual lifestyles, our awareness of global climate change, and the fact that it’s not just robbers who wear masks into stores any longer! I am even more amazed when I pause to think that my grandfather was born into a world where there were no cars, no telephones, no sound recordings and no electric lights!

Into the midst of this ever-accelerating pace of change, we stand with the author of Hebrews and proclaim, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And before I utter another word, I want to affirm that that does not mean that we are reactionaries or that we spend all our time longing for the good old days. (And realistically, if we look at them objectively, we’ll find that they weren’t nearly as good as we might wish to think they were.)

What I do want to state unequivocally is that Jesus Christ is not limited by time or the passing fashions of any age. He is still able to speak as powerfully to the twenty-first century dweller as he was in the first. Yet over the centuries there have been people who have tried to paint a different picture of Jesus from the one given to us in the gospels.

Even before the ink of the last books of the New Testament was dry on the parchment, there were already some who were denying that Jesus could have been a true human being, but that he only appeared to be so. When I was a university student, there were theologians who argued that Jesus never rose from the dead and an archaeologist who claimed that Jesus was really the leader of a psychedelic mushroom cult!

No doubt there will always be those who will try to shed doubt on who Jesus is. But like those in the past, they will prove to be nothing more than a temporary fad. For as we have read this morning, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” And as the author of Hebrews has already stated, “He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him” (Hebrews 7:25).

Let’s hold on to those words of assurance from the apostle Paul, that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). And let’s trust in Jesus’ final words in the gospel to his followers, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

The sacrifice of praise

At this point we may be tempted to stand with those disciples and stare upwards in wonder at the risen, ascended, glorified Christ. Or to want nothing more than to gather with that great crowd of ten thousands times ten thousands and cry with them “Worthy is the Lamb!”.

There’s an old hymn that runs,

Father of Jesus, love’s reward,
What rapture it will be
Prostrate before thy throne to lie
And gaze and gaze on thee!

And you might think that that is what the author of Hebrews is calling upon us to do when he writes, “Through him let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God…” Yet we need to read on. And when we do that, what do we find that he says? “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have…” That is the sacrifice that is pleasing to God. And it is an ongoing theme of Hebrews:

•  “Let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works” (10:24) 

•  “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” (13:2)

•  “Remember those who are in prison” (13:3)

Yes, being here on Sunday morning is important. Yes, being caught up in worship and in praise is vital to our souls. But it loses its purpose if it is divorced from what happens “out there”—if it doesn’t motivate and transform the kind of people we are and the things we do once we step across the threshold at the back of the sanctuary.

I remember visiting a church several years ago and participating in a wonderfully lively time of worship. We had great music. There was solid, challenging biblical preaching. The congregation, drawn from all walks of life and representing every age group, was enthusiastic in its participation. I was in no doubt that the Holy Spirit was truly present. But what I remember most about that church was that, as we left we were met by the large letters of a sign over the door that read, “You are now entering the mission field.” That’s what worship is about. It’s not just to have some kind of spiritual high. It is to empower and equip us for the other six days of the week.

I suspect you may have noticed the new glass doors as you enter the church. (If you haven’t, you’re excused—they’ve only been there for two or three weeks!) What I like about them is that they help to connect “in here” with “out there”. They remind us that the world is right there at our doorstep.

How crucial it is that we maintain that connection! We often call what we are doing right now a “service”. But the real service begins as we step outside the door. How important that we see our worship Sunday by Sunday not as an isolated event, but as being equipped to live for Jesus in the world, to carry the compassion and the grace—the sheer goodness—of Jesus into our homes and neighbourhoods, our workplaces and our classrooms. “For such sacrifices,” the author of Hebrews tells us, “are pleasing to God.”

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[1]     Albert Edward Bailey, The Gospel in Hymns, 405

“We told him to stop” (Mark 9:38-50)

My dictionary defines the word “paranoia” as “a serious mental illness that causes you to falsely believe that other people are trying to harm you”. It also gives this secondary definition: “a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others”. I just wonder if that isn’t what we see among Jesus’ followers in our reading from Mark’s gospel this morning.

Once again, we find them making their way through the towns and villages of Galilee on their way towards Jerusalem. I can imagine, as it was the pattern of his ministry right from the beginning, that people of all kinds continued to besiege Jesus from every direction. There were the sick and the handicapped, begging to be healed. There were those with all kinds of questions about God and about their relationship with him, desperate to find answers. And then there were the doubters and the skeptics, forever casting about for an opportunity to get a jab in here or a poke there, always wanting to shed doubts on Jesus’ credibility.

I suspect that at those times the disciples must have found themselves acting as crowd marshals, trying to make sure that those really in need had an opportunity to see Jesus and to keep things from getting out of control. (For example, do you recall how, when faced with a hungry crowd, Andrew brought a young lad to Jesus with a few loaves and fish; or how they had been pestered by a Canaanite woman whose daughter was in terrible suffering?) I suspect that there were also times when the disciples found themselves with nothing to do, when they could kind of kick about town. Had there been a tavern, they might have found themselves sitting down for a rest over a pint or two.

Stopping

However, on this occasion I imagine the disciples somewhere on the edge of town when they see something strangely familiar happening. A little cluster of onlookers has gathered and as they come up closer they discover that their interest is focused on a man who is casting out evil spirits. Not only that, he is doing it in Jesus’ name. What are they to do? Who gave this man the right to do this? What was he doing stepping into Jesus’ territory?

Now let me ask a question: Does any of this sound the least bit familiar to you? I suspect that we don’t have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find the same kind of paranoia (if you want to call it that) in the church today. I come from a family of died-in-the-wool Anglicans. My great aunt was a member of the Chancel Guild of the cathedral in Ottawa for forty years. When my uncle announced that he was planning to marry a woman from the United Church, the best that she could do was to mutter, “Well, at least she isn’t a Catholic.”

How contrary such an attitude is to the spirit of Jesus! When the apostle Paul was in prison in Rome, there were those who tried to take advantage of the situation. Different people vied to fill the leadership vacuum that he had left behind. Some of the would-be leaders were motivated by selfish gain. Others thought that they could climb to power by denigrating Paul’s ministry. How did Paul react to all of this? Did he curse them? Did he call for their destruction? No. Here is what he said: “What does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18).

We may not raise our hands and clap and shout “Hallelujah!” all the time in worship. But let us not be critical of those who do. We like to use a Prayer Book. But let us not look down on those who prefer to be more spontaneous. We prefer simplicity in our services. But let us not write off those whose worship involves elaborate ceremony and incense and icons. The key question is, is Jesus being honoured? Is the gospel being proclaimed? Are men and women being drawn into a living relationship with him? Let’s not confuse style for substance. Let us take to heart Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Stumbling

I wonder if you’ve ever heard the old saw that whenever you point a finger at someone else, there are always three pointing back at you. In the conversation that follows this incident, Jesus cautions the disciples not to be quick to criticize others without first taking a careful look at themselves. And the language he uses is stark and uncompromising.

In those days there were at least a couple of ways of grinding grain into flour. Much of the time this was done using a small hand mill, usually turned by women. However, that is not the kind of millstone that Jesus was referring to. What Jesus was talking about was an enormous flat, circular stone weighing hundreds of pounds that had to be turned by a donkey or an ox. Imagine having one of those tied to your neck and then being hurled into the sea!

And if that image were not powerful enough, Jesus goes on to speak about being cast into the fires of hell. The word which our Bibles translate “hell” is actually Gehenna, and Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom, which runs along the west and south of the old city of Jerusalem. In Old Testament times this was where the worshippers of Moloch had thrown their children onto sacrificial fires. For that reason it was regarded ever after as cursed. In later years it became used as burial ground and in the time of Jesus the Romans used it as a site for cremation. And so you can picture this desolate place, abandoned and putrid with the odor of death.

Neither one is a pretty picture. And it’s not as though Jesus is threatening us with that kind of future. What he is saying is how high the stakes are—how important it is that we attend to the quality and purity of our own personal lives, not only for our own sakes but for the sake of those around us. Being a follower of Jesus is a round-the-clock, twenty-four-hours-a-day assignment.

How crucial it is, then, that we use all our faculties in ways that bring glory to God—and Jesus lists a few of them for us in this morning’s passage: our mouths, our hands, our feet, our eyes. The Bible elsewhere warns us how with the same tongue we can praise God at one moment and slice another person to ribbons at the next (James 3:9). We can raise our hands in worship and quickly use them to hurt and destroy. The same feet that bring us into the sanctuary can also lead us into places of darkness where we never ought to tread. And Jesus’ final warning about the eyes is particularly relevant to our own time, when pornography is so readily available from so many sources. We need to have in mind the words of Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn of a century and a half ago:

Take my hands and let them move
at the impulse of thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing
always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
filled with messages from thee.

Salting

With this we come to what are some of the most difficult words in this morning’s reading, and perhaps some of the most difficult to understand in the whole of the New Testament: “Everyone will be salted with fire.” What did Jesus mean when he said this? Far better minds than mine have pondered over this for centuries. To get at what Jesus was saying you have to understand how salt was used in biblical times.

First of all, salt was used as a preservative and a purifying agent. In a hot climate where there were no refrigerators, salt was what was used to keep food from going bad. Salt could also be used destructively. If you wanted to ruin your enemy’s fields so that they could not produce crops, the way to do it was to spread salt over them. Then nothing would be able grow there until the salt had been washed away by several rainy seasons. Thirdly, salt was used in sacrifice. “Season all your grain offerings with salt,” we read in Leviticus 2:13. “Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.”

So what was Jesus getting at when he said, “Everyone will be salted with fire”? When you think of it, fire also can have the same three uses. We roast meat and cook vegetables over a fire to purify and preserve them. We all know the destructive properties of fire, particularly after the wildfires this past summer that wiped out thousands of hectares of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. And of course fire was almost invariably used in sacrifice.

Now, if we put all three of these uses together, I think we can begin to arrive at something of an understanding of what Jesus was saying. First of all, then, there are the fires of trial and suffering that are a part of human life and not least of the Christian life. Yet painful as those trials may be (and I do not want to underestimate that in any way) the Holy Spirit is mysteriously able to use them in our lives to produce in us more of the character of Christ. Again and again in my pastoral experience I have been humbled to see how by God’s grace and through his power men and women have emerged richer, stronger and deeper as they have come through even the most terrible tragedies.

This morning we read from the book of Job in the Old Testament—and if you want to see an individual whose life was afflicted by tragedy, Job is the place to look. Through the loss of his property, his wealth, his children and finally his health, Job is reduced to the point where all he wants to do is die. Yet somehow Job can affirm, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the last day… My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 19:25; 42:5).

Yet I believe that there is also a deeper meaning. And it comes in the question that Jesus puts before his followers in the final verse of this morning’s passage: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?” How does salt lose its saltiness? It doesn’t happen today when we buy it neatly packaged from the grocery store. But in Jesus’ time, salt was taken from the deposits around the Dead Sea, and those deposits were filled with impurities. Gradually over time the salt would leach out, so that all that remained was a tasteless white powder—and that was what Jesus was talking about.

So let me ask, how do we become the salt that brings flavour and life to the world? Certainly not by criticizing others or writing them off as the disciples did. It will be as we put him who is life at the centre of our lives, as we allow Jesus to live in and through us, as we give ourselves wholly and entirely and without reservation to him.