Glad Places and Bad Places (Hebrews 12:18-29)

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, whether for purposes of research, as I do, or for purposes of entertainment, as I do not, you are bound to be exposed to a lot of strange stuff. I simply ignore the great majority of it, but now and then something does grab my attention. Recently, one of those things was a list of 10 places you definitely do not want to visit. Since this seemed to be absolutely counter to the endless blandishments on the Internet of places that advertisers think you will want to visit, I decided to investigate it.
At the top of the list was the volcanic island of Oshima, off the coast of mainland Japan. Oshima, surprisingly enough, has a web site, complete with a cheery message from the mayor of the island’s town. What the mayor’s message does not mention is the constant and pervasive stench throughout the island of sulfur dioxide gas coming from the island’s volcano. Sulfur dioxide is the stuff that smells like rotten eggs. Levels of the gas rose so dangerously high in the year 2000 that the entire island had to be evacuated for five years. The people returned in 2005, but both residents and visitors are now required to carry gas masks at all times, in case the gas levels rise again unexpectedly.
You can go there if you want to; I don’t. This, in effect, is what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews said to Jewish Christians in the New Testament letter before us. The choice is yours: you can retreat into the religious enslavement of darkness and fear that your ancestors experienced at Mt. Sinai, or you can live bravely without fear in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the sense of a bad place versus a glad place, the writer contrasts two different religious states of mind, two different spiritual cities. In the sense of taking a spiritual journey, rather than a vacation visit, our lesson presents one frightening and forbidding destination, and on the other hand, a city filled with happy celebration.
I.
It is not the main point of the novel, but in A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens does vividly contrast the order of London with the disorder of
Paris during the French revolution. In Paris, the intelligentsia lived in danger of losing their heads on the guillotine. In London, the same persons could live in peaceful stability.
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, in effect, postulates a tale of two cities and says to Jewish Christians that they must choose to live in one or the other. We may think of the first possibility presented to us as the city of fear. We can, if we choose, go on our spiritual journey to life’s end in fear and dread.
This letter is not easy for us to understand because we have never been Jews, and this letter was written to people whose lifelong religious heritage had been Judaism. It was very hard for many of them to embrace the newfound freedom offered by their Christian churches. One of my best friends in the service, and for years afterward was a good ol’ boy named Luke. We used to say of him that the Marine Corps took Luke out of the country, but it couldn’t take the country out of Luke. So it was with these Jewish Christians. Being converted to belief and faith in Jesus Christ did not mean that they had cast off all the ties of their Jewishness.
To them, Jerusalem, which means “city of peace,” was the religious capital of the world. It may be the most inappropriately named city in the world. Except for brief periods, it has never known peace socially, politically, or religiously. Jerusalem for hundreds of years was the seat of a fear-ridden religion.
The “Hebrews,” the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was addressed, would have been quite familiar with the story of Moses and the people at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Recall from our Old Testament readings that the people were so frightened of God that they implored Moses not to make them listen to the voice of God directly or they would die. Even Moses himself trembled with fear at having to come so close to this terrible God. In their later history, continuous sacrifice at the great temple in Jerusalem was an ongoing attempt to placate this God of whom they were so terrified.
Even in the temple of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus, the presence of God was experienced only by the high priest and only in that small inner sanctum sanctorum area of the temple known as the holy of holies, and then only once a year at Yom Kippur. When the high priest entered the holy of holies, he did so with a rope tied around his ankle. If the bells on his robe fell silent, meaning that he had died or fainted, the other priests could use the rope to drag his body out.
First-century Jews, by and large, experienced God as the God of Mt. Sinai. But this letter says to the Jews, “Come away from Mt. Sinai in the desert; come to Mt. Zion.” Zion, to the Jews, meant the larger concept of the promised land.
II.
Before Jesus, no Jew had ever thought of calling God, “Our Father.” This was an utterly stunning, dumbfounding thought--a shockingly personal idea of God that was so strange as to be incomprehensible. God was a god of sheer, unapproachable majesty to them. Their God was so far exalted above mere humanity that they dared not even speak God’s name, Yahweh, as it was written in the scriptures Instead, they used the euphemism “my Lord” when reading aloud in their synagogues. They feared rather than loved this God.
It is quite possible for Christians today, just as it was for the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was addressed, to continue worshipping this awesome and terrible god of fear. And many do. Some believers and some churches are much more at home in the Old Testament than in the New. Their god is a god who hates sinners as well as sin, a god of vengeance and retribution bent on punishment rather than guidance and fastened on laws rather than love. They would consider the notion that God ever smiles as a blasphemous thought, because God is too great, too fearsome, too awesome ever to smile--especially at human beings who make mistakes. They are the enthusiastic members of the churches that post such signs as, “Where will you spend eternity? Smoking or nonsmoking?”
Religiously, they dwell in the city of fear. I don’t like it. It is an unhappy place, a bad place. I don’t want to live there. I don’t even want to visit there out of curiosity. And I don’t think you could drag Jesus there with a team of horses. Jesus had a different idea, and he wants us to have one with him.
III.
The Letter to the Hebrews suggests an alternative to dwelling religiously in a state of fear. What Jesus has in mind for our spiritual dwelling place is what we may call the city of love. It’s where Jesus lives. And it is where I choose to live.
Jesus came preaching a new idea: the Kingdom of God. The principle tenets of this kingdom are the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and Jesus’ commandment of love. We are all the children of God and God’s love for us is the accepting, forgiving love of a parent. Since we are all children of God, it follows that all men and women are our brothers and sisters. The proper relationship of parents and children and brothers and sisters is mutual love, respect and assistance.
We are all citizens of the city of love and Jesus is the Lord Mayor, sharing in the fatherhood of God with us. It is where we may dwell in this very moment, if we only say “Yes” to it. It is a happy place, a glad place. Every day is a celebration day in the city of love.
It is a happy place not least because Jesus dwells with us in this city of love. It was Jesus who made possible the new understanding of God that replaces the old images of the terrible, punishing God. It is Jesus who reminds us to call God our Father, and to turn from being people filled with fear and to be happy, thankful people. Jesus takes away from the world the terrible, shuddering fear of the religion of Mt. Sinai. Jesus calls us to come out of the city of fear, to come and live with him in the city of love. It is a good place to live. Amen.



Sermon preached by Chuck Swann, Faith Presbyterian Church, August 22, 2010