November 17, 2024 — Proper 28 in Ordinary Time

Anthony: Our third pericope of the month is Hebrews 10:11-25. It’s a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 28 in Ordinary Time, which is November 17, and it reads:

And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. ¹² But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” ¹³ and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” ¹⁴ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. ¹⁵ And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, ¹⁶ “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,” ¹⁷ and he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” ¹⁸ Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

¹⁹ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), ²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³ Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵ 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.

So, Jon, let’s do a bit of theology here as we talk about sanctification. Verse 14 appears to tell us that Christ has already perfected those who are sanctified. And yet generally, when I hear about sanctification, it’s about the ongoing process of sanctification.

So, my question is it both/and? Or is it reading too much into a single verse or what is it entirely? Help us understand the nature of sanctification.

Jon: Yeah, sure. In a certain sense, yeah, it’s a both / and.

And from the point of view of our perception in this fallen reality, because we said we’re not perfect in our experience (that’s just empirically true), it appears and is experienced as a process for us in our everyday lives. That’s how we experience it. But the more meaningful reality, I think, objectively is Jesus Christ and what he’s doing.

So, his perfection (I think that’s what Hebrews is getting at), his perfection is our perfection breaking in now, but not fully realized as people still constructed of flesh. We’re still in the flesh until the final consummation of all things when our flesh will be removed, and we’ll get this, what’s known as the soma pneumatikon, the spiritual bodies, right?

And that happens the final consummation of all things when God will be all in all. So, in reality, in the most fundamental sense, we are perfected because Christ is the most fundamental thing about reality. What Christ says about who we are is the most true thing. We have been transformed. We have been raised and seated with Christ at the right hand of the Father.

So, it’s helpful to think about these things in terms of overlapping realities from our point of view, we have one foot in the muck and mire and then one foot in the new transformed reality in Christ. And because we’re still in the flesh, because we’re still involved in this fallen reality, that’s how we experience it. But the most true thing about us is what Christ is saying about us, which is that we are perfected, and that will be fully realized from our point of view in the age to come.

A great work on this would be Jeff McSwain’s on simul sanctification. I think he does a wonderful job explaining this, pulling on Barth and adapting that in certain ways. But that’s how this passage strikes me and how to make sense of it.

Anthony: Yeah. And just thinking about Barth, I remember his quote. “I was, and I am the old man. I am and I will be the new man.” And I think that speaks to sanctification that what is objectively true, nothing’s going to change that we have been perfected in Christ. And yet in my day-to-day journey, I can see growth. I can see letting down old habits by the Spirit. And both can be true at the same time.

So, I think that’s really helpful, especially there’s so much talk about backsliding in the evangelical church sometimes, to just remember what is already objectively true, what’s already been accomplished for us in Christ.

Jon: Totally. And I think one way to illustrate this, (that I’ve learned from Jeremy Begbie, who is at Duke; he’s a musician as well as a theologian) is trying to …

Anthony: And a previous podcast guest. If I may say so.

Jon: (Oh, nice! Good. I love Jeremy.) … is trying to step into the world of music here, auditory stuff, instead of — we tend to be locked up into kind of visual understanding. So, overlaps don’t really make a lot of sense to us in the [inaudible] because you can’t have two physical objects actually overlap in the same space at the same time, right?

What can do that is actually music. So, if I were to play a, I don’t know, I hate to use death metal as the music of Satan or the fallen world because I love metal. But I’m just, for the sake of this illustration, I could play, if we’re in the same room, I could play a piece of metal music. And that would fill our entire heard space, right?

It would fill all of our auditory space at the same time in the same space. I could play. I don’t know, pick your favorite song, but what should we use?

Anthony: You know what? I’m a child of the ‘80s, so let’s go “Safety Dance.”

Jon: Okay. “Safety Dance” is the music of Christ.

Anthony: I’m really going to be embarrassed. Thanks, Jon, for asking.

Jon: That’s awesome. So, the “Safety Dance” is the music of Christ. I could start playing that on a different device, right? It would fill our auditory or heard space at the same time that this metal music is playing, right? There’s no real competition in terms of the heard space. They’re existing in the same space at the same time.

We can hear both of them simultaneously, right? One may be louder than the other, right? Like I could blast metal music, and we could play the “Safety Dance” a little bit lower, you can still hear it, right?

So, what it means to be a Christian in our journey of discipleship is trying to get in tune with the “Safety Dance.”

Anthony: This conversation is going places. I should have said “Enter Sandman” or something.

Jon: Does that make sense? I think the world of music can get us to understanding how we exist in this overlapping space. And eventually, what happens is the metal music, in the final consummation of all things, it’s no more. Finally. It’s no more.

Anthony: Oh, that’s so good. I’ve heard Dr. Begbie do several presentations and just play different notes and the beauty of it, but how it works together. They are entirely different when they’re played, but they’re harmonized. It is such a rich way of looking at theology because we tend to be dualistic.

It’s either this or that. And that’s caused so many problems when we think about God. So, to think of it in more of a holistic harmonization is, that’s the way to go.

Jon: It’s so helpful with thinking about Trinitarian theology, thinking about the hypostatic union as well, thinking about human freedom in relation to God. There’s so many awesome things to tap into in the world of music. So yeah.

Anthony: Yeah. All right, Jon’s a metal fan, just note to self and keep that in mind as we move forward.

I’d be grateful if you would exegete verses 23 – 25. What does it mean to hold fast to our confession of hope? And maybe just in a practical way, what does it look like to provoke one another to love and good deeds and not neglecting to meet together? Is there a strict way of reading this? Is there more? What’s going on?

Jon: I think what’s happening here in Hebrews is, especially with the — I’m going to start backwards, starting with the meet together thing. I think there is something wonderful about the way that we’ve been constituted as people; we are fundamentally relational because we’re made in the image of a relational God.

And when we shy away from meeting together — this meaning here, I think “meeting together” in worship context. When we resist that a bit too much, we’re not really living in the way that we’ve been created to live. We’ve been created to be in communion with each other, to meet together.

And that can be difficult. I’m an introvert. I don’t particularly like meeting new people all the time. But I know at the same time, the way I’ve been created is to be in community, to be in relationship. And when we offer ourselves into those spaces of relationship and especially relationships of trust and love, together we become more of who we actually have been created to be. We lean into that.

And I think that’s so important for us, even those of us with certain different personalities and different dispositions, different temperaments. It can be more difficult for some people than others. But I think it’s important at the end of the day.

And I think Hebrews is getting at that provoking one another to love and good deeds, do good deeds. I’m not quite sure how to exegete that language of provoking in a particular way. I think this could be read in lots of different ways. I think provoking could mean, by the way that we’re loving somebody else, by the way that we’re loving one another that could, by the act of doing that, provoke someone else to live in that same sort of way.

Someone could resonate with that. We’re creatures who like to imitate each other, right? We’re creatures who like to emulate what others are doing when we see good things happening, right? And so, I think that’s probably what’s going on here is that we, by the way we live, we can provoke others to do the same sort of thing by how we live, how we speak, how we interact with people.

And this is a good way of thinking about sort of witness to other people, right? It’s not just persuasion. It’s also just by the way that we ourselves are loving and communicating with each other, holding fast to our confession of hope. This is hard, right? It’s probably just as hard as loving people that you don’t particularly like at the moment. Hope’s hard, especially in this world that we live in.

We look around. You read the news; it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of hope for us. It’s hard. But given that (as we were talking about) we live in this overlapping reality, the most fundamental of which is Christ, holding on to the confession of hope is going to be holding on to that fundamental reality, even when it looks like it’s not there, even when we can barely hear the “Safety Dance,” even when we can barely hear the music of Christ, we know that it’s there and we’re trying to get in tune with that.

So, I think that’s what holding fast to it means. It’s trying to turn up the volume on that music of Christ. And that will lead to ultimately informing how we relate to one another in love. And that will inform of course, our desire, our draw to meet and to be in communion with each other.

So, I think all these are connected, which is why I started the opposite way around.

Anthony: Yeah. I liked the way you tied it together because there are times when I show up in a space of adopted brothers and sisters where I don’t feel like I’m holding much of anything. And I certainly don’t feel like I have much to provoke others to love and good deeds, but their testimony, they’re bearing witness to the goodness of God helps me hold fast.

So, it’s very much — just scripture itself, we tend to think sometimes me and my Bible, but it’s communal. It’s meant to be read aloud in the body. It’s very much about the communion of the saints and our confession together.

Jon: And Hebrews here isn’t talking about specifically the Holy Spirit, but the thing that binds us together, again, it’s not something we do.

We have [inaudible] intercessory figure who comes in and binds us together. It’s the Holy Spirit that does this. So, we shouldn’t come into a communal space thinking, Oh, just because I’m having a really crappy day, I can’t be engaged in communion with the people around me.

We have to trust in the reality that’s connecting all of us together. Even when I’m having a bad day, or even when I really, really don’t want to be there, because sometimes I really don’t want to be around people, that something is at work already, drawing us together.

Anthony: Yes. Yeah, that’s good because even when you’re having that bad day, we have to remember our presence matters.  Your absence, my absence, it makes the community not nearly what it would have been if I’d been there, even on a bad day. So that’s really [inaudible].

Jon: And that, that just goes back to how we’ve

been created as people. We’re created, we are constituted by our attachments, by our loves, by people, even people we don’t really know, they constitute who we are. Which is a weird thing, especially in our modern Western context, where we think of ourselves as discrete individual subjects, but that is not true.

That is actually a lie. It is a lie that keeps getting spread, that we are autonomous individuals. We are not; we are connected beings.

Anthony: And boy, how this world would look different if we understood that we belong to one another.