October 13, 2024
Remember Monty Python? I remember in high school one of my favorite lines was, “And now for something completely different.” I want to open this sermon in a way that’s very different from my usual way of beginning. Please turn to page 747 in the back of your hymnals, and let’s read Psalm 95:1-7 responsively. (You may remain seated):
O come, let us sing to the Lord.
Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into God’s presence with thanksgiving.
Let us make a joyful noise to God with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God, and a great Ruler above all gods. In God’s hand are the depths of the earth.
The heights of the mountains are God’s also. The sea belongs to God who made it, and the dry land, which God’s hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.
For the Lord is our God, and we are the people of God’s pasture, and the sheep of God’s hands.
Maybe you remember when I began my sermon series on Hebrews last week that I mentioned how the author of this letter quoted extensively from the Hebrew Bible. And the opening verses of the passage you just heard are intended to wrap up an entire section that uses the psalm we just read as its main argument.
It’s a beautiful psalm, after all, so why not? It’s all ab
out joy and singing and worshiping the Creator! It’s a wonder it’s not quoted a lot more often in the New Testament. The problem for us is that the psalm as we just read it has seven verses. But when we look it up in the Bible, it goes on; there are four more verses at the end. And when the Letter to the Hebrews uses Psalm 95 to make an important point, it talks not about the first seven verses—the ones we’re familiar with, the ones that are comfortable to us—but verses 8-11, which go like this:
The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah, as they did at Massah in the wilderness. For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience, even though they saw everything I did. For forty years I was angry with them, and I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts turn away from me. They refuse to do what I tell them.’ So in my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest.’”
And that’s where this psalm leaves us. It’s unique among the psalms in that it closes not with assurance and not with praise and not with a promise, but with the anger of God.
With that in mind, Hebrews tells its readers to be careful not to close their hearts to God. But unlike the end of Psalm 95, Hebrews 4 does contain a promise. It says that the promise of rest that was made to God’s people in ancient times is still open and valid. God’s rest is still there for those who have faith enough to be true to God’s word.
Why? Because the word of God didn’t go silent when the last of the Hebrew prophets died. It’s still alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword. This is an image I think we’ve heard before. The next part, though, isn’t as familiar, and it’s much less pleasant. The writer of Hebrews talks about the sword of God’s word in terms of what sounds like what we did when we had to dissect a frog in high school biology class. And unless you have made medicine or biological research your life’s work, that’s probably not your favorite high school memory.
But I want to go back to that image—the image of the sword. The sword is mentioned over thirty times in the New Testament—more often than not quite literally, as a physical weapon. But on several significant occasions, the sword is talked about symbolically.
The earliest point in the life of Jesus that a sword is mentioned is found in Luke 2. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, I like for our prayer after communion to be the one first spoken by the old prophet Simeon. He’s the one who Mary and Joseph encountered in the temple when they took Jesus there to dedicate him. The words he spoke over Jesus are among the most beautiful in the New Testament:
Lord, now dismiss your servant in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people: A light to shine on the Gentiles, and to be the glory of your people Israel.
But Simeon’s voice did not fall silent at that point. He went on to say to Mary,
This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your soul, too.
The sword Simeon talked about has long been a part of Christian thought. There’s a beautiful devotional hymn from the 1200’s about Mary standing at the foot of the cross called the Stabat Mater. Translated into English, the first couple of verses go like this:
At the cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing,
all his bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.
Now, it’s a near certainty that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews never read the Gospel According to Luke… which makes it all the most fascinating when you compare Hebrews 4:13 and Luke 2:35: Jesus—the Word made flesh—will expose people for who they truly are and create a crisis of faith in the world and in each believer.
Another place where the sword is used symbolically is in Matthew 10:34 where Jesus says something we don’t want to hear: Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword. What does he mean he didn’t come to bring peace on earth? Didn’t the angels literally proclaim “Peace on Earth” when he was born?
But somehow the Prince of Peace also brings a sword, and the Word of God exposes us like a dissected frog. Hebrews speaks of it in terms of showing God our inner being. But, of course, this isn’t necessary. If God is God, then God already knows us through and through. So the point Jesus makes in Matthew, and the point being made in today’s reading from Hebrews is that the Word shows us who we are, and reminds us that we are accountable to God.
That sounds ominous. But it’s not where Hebrews leaves us. It goes on to assure us of the most amazing thing about Christianity—the most amazing thing in human history, really. Hebrews 4:14-16 tells us that the priesthood that stood between them and forgiveness—between them and God—has now been moved from the inner temple into heaven. And the great high priest is the Son of God—not a remote divinity who can’t relate to being human, but One who became human for the very purpose of freeing us from our troubles.
Christ experienced our pain and temptations and came through it. So now we can come to him freely and without fear to receive his love and forgiveness. The sword is no longer a weapon, but a tool for discernment. What is exposed can be redeemed. And those who have been redeemed can approach God with the calm assurance that the One whose power is overwhelming is also all-loving.
To encounter Christ is to be met with crisis. But to embrace Christ is to see the crisis resolved.
—©2024 Sam Greening
