Shaken
Hebrews 12:18-29
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Just a couple of weeks ago we concluded our summer sermon series through the Ten Commandments. Last week was momentous for us as we met and affirmed the call of Stephanie Kremmel to become our new Associate Pastor, starting Labor Day weekend. Call it blind luck, or happenstance, or the peculiar mediation of the Holy Spirit, as we wade back into the waters of the common lectionary- that cycle of readings that we share with many different Christian traditions- we find ourselves hearing a very relevant Word in epilogue to our time with the commandments. Our second reading comes from the 12th chapter of letter to the Hebrews, verses 18-29. Listen for God’s Word to you this morning.
You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.
For they could not endure the order that was given,
If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.
Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said,
I tremble with fear.
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised,
Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.
This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
In our house there is a simple rule when approaching a gift shop: hands in pockets. If you’ve spent any time with a young child you may understand this rule. The whole point of a gift shop is to make the merchandise attractive, to entice the shopper to buy what is on display. The drawback to this kind of merchandising, however, is that it also attracts the eye of a child who wants nothing more than to investigate what he or she sees, to discover how it works, why it shines. For parents this is something of a worry because, well, kids break things. They do. They often don’t mean to, but that doesn’t really matter when you, as the responsible adult have to then pay for the thing that has been broken; this thing that the child just wanted to look at. Of course we used to say, “look with your eyes and not with your hands.” But that may be just a little too abstract of an idea for little brains to process, so we resort to the very unequivocal, hands in your pockets. Because if hands are in pockets, they cannot pick up the all too breakable wares that seem to populate gift shops. It’s a difficult rule to abide by, I’ll admit. Because there is something within us that so very much wants to touch what we see. Something in us that wants to hold it in our hands to know what it is.
This is why I am ambivalent about shopping online. Sure you can see the picture of the thing you want to buy, but you can’t touch it, try it on, feel its weight, assess its quality or durability or fit. It’s fantastic when what you order comes and it’s exactly what you were hoping it would be, but the unknowing between finalizing a transaction on the internet and opening the box when it comes is somewhat unsettling. That may be why some people simply refuse to shop online. It’s also why some people are more comfortable with Mount Sinai than they are with Mount Zion.
Now before we go down that path, something needs to be said about this passage and the letter to the Hebrews in general, and really a whole lot of what we read in the Christian scriptures that we call the New Testament. Because there is something historically dangerous about a passage like this, something that grows out of splitting the bible between something we call the Old and New Testaments instead of the more descriptive Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. And that is the danger of something called supercessionism. I know, I know it sounds like one of those fancy words that people like to throw around to sound smart. But in this case it is the false belief that the covenant promise established by God in Jesus Christ supersedes, or takes precedent over, the covenant that God established with God’s people on Mt. Sinai- to be their God and they God’s people. It’s dangerous because it’s the kind of belief that led to the anti-Judaism of Nazi Germany and the Shoah that killed 6 million Jews. The same anti-Judaism that led Christian crusaders to do violence to Jewish families as they traveled to defend the holy land. Or more recently the kind that prevented Jewish people from buying homes and belonging to certain private clubs in this country. This can’t be said too often, or too clearly. Judaism is not the enemy of Christianity, and God’s promise to God’s people still holds. Because to suggest otherwise is to call God a liar. Without Judaism, there is no Christianity. Without the bedrock witness of the Law, Prophets and Writings that make up the Hebrew scriptures, our understanding of Jesus would likely be more overrun by Greek and pagan philosophy than it already is.
So when we talk about Mount Sinai, or at least what I want to suggest is that when we come to these words today, we are not in the same position as the people who likely first heard this letter read. That is, we are not a people who were raised in a Jewish culture who are struggling to reconcile that identity with what we have come to see and know in Jesus as God’s anointed Christ. Because the truth is that the brush of legalism that all too often is used to paint and discredit Judaism, cannot and is not restricted to a single faith. There are just as many, if not more, legalistic Christians as there ever were of the Jewish faith. In fact, every faith tradition seems to have its share of adherents who understand what they believe only in very rigid and concrete terms. And I would suggest that this tendency is a far better way of thinking about the choice of identities that is set before us here between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion.
Sinai is attractive because it can be touched and it is spectacular. There is blazing fire and darkness and gloom, a tempest and a trumpet and a voice so terrifying that those who hear it beg that it stop speaking to them. And yet they cannot get enough of the fire and brimstone. They cannot get enough of something concrete, something that they can see and touch and know exactly where they stand. Say this prayer, follow these rules, believe these six essential tenants and you’re in, past the velvet rope and into the holy of holies. Sinai is a place where God’s presence is both thrilling and terrifying. But I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met along the way, particularly through that stretch of road known as the Bible Belt, for whom the thrill (if there ever was any) is long gone and all they have been left with is a sense of terror; this fear that God is going to get them if they don’t come to church, or do go dancing, if they enjoy a glass of wine, or an off-color joke. Sinai is a place that says that God is up there on that untouchable mountain, beyond reach and ready to smite even the smallest misdeed.
We’ve just finished exploring the gift of the Ten Commandments and the importance of Mt. Sinai as the place where God gives shape to the freedom of a people who’ve been liberated from centuries of slavery. When you’ve been set free that is what you need. When all you’ve known is one kind of life, to suddenly be given unlimited freedom can be just as oppressive. It reminds me of the conversation the inmates have in the movie The Shawshank Redemption when they hear that one of their own, Brooks, went crazy when he heard that he was going to be released. “He’s just been institutionalized,” explains Red. “The man’s been in here 50 years… This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man. He’s an educated man. Outside, he’s nothin’, just a used up con with arthritis in both hands.” He goes on, “I’m tellin’ ya’ these walls are funny. First you hate ‘em. Then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on ‘em. That’s institutionalized.” Sinai is where God’s promise begins, but it is not where it ends. Our habit is to institutionalize the experience, to build walls that become such a permanent part of the landscape that we don’t know how to live without them. We get stuck there until the gift becomes our burden and we forget where we were supposed to be going in the first place.
God’s promise begins at Mount Sinai, but it doesn’t end there. Because the promise is to lead the people, and us to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God who is not remote and untouchable in a place up high, but with us, and among us. For too long we have institutionalized God in these vertical structures and been told that the goal is to get up there (wherever ‘there’ is), eventually, when we die maybe; depending more on the walls than on the One they are meant to contain. But the invitation of Zion is to enter into the realm of what God is doing down here, with us, right now. If Sinai is fear and trembling and dread at what God might do, then Zion is the joy of discovering that what God has done and continues to do is make all things new in Jesus Christ. If Sinai is the place where a liberated people receive the law that describes the shape of their freedom, then Zion is the place where that freedom gets lived out in peace. If Sinai is the wilderness that strips away the old, then Zion is the city where we are clothed in the light of God’s steadfast and unwavering love. It isn’t so much a matter of choosing one over the other as it is recognizing that where God’s promise begins is never where it ends. Wherever we may have first met God, that is not where God would have us remain. Whatever we may have first learned, or thought we knew about God, there is so much more that we do not know, and even more that we have yet to see.
Sometimes God has to shake the institutional walls that we think we can’t live without in order for us to see and know and enter into the unshakable truth that doesn’t just save us in the end, but that saves us each and every day we move in the direction of the God who is with us. It’s the good news that where we start isn’t where we’ll end up, that who we’ve been doesn’t have to determine who we’re going to be, and that as the fire of God’s love consumes us, it refines us too. Until what remains is pure and unshakable.