Meditationen am Gnadenstuhl: Easter Saturday - Hebrews 13

Saturday of Easter

Daily Lectionary Readings: Exodus 19:1-25; Hebrews 13:1-21; (Sirach 38)

Hebrews 13:1-17

[1] Let brotherly love continue. [2] Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. [3] Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. [4] Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. [5] Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” [6] So we can confidently say,

“The Lord is my helper;

I will not fear;

what can man do to me?”

[7] Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. [8] Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. [9] Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them. [10] We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. [11] For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. [12] So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. [13] Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. [14] For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. [15] Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. [16] Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

[17] Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (ESV)

The Holy Life of a Holy Congregation

This last meditation on the book of Hebrews may be best used over two or more days, as the preacher to the Hebrews has a great deal to teach us in the final chapter of his sermon, much of which takes several readings to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”

The conclusion to the preacher's sermon outlines how the congregation that possesses God's grace is to offer pleasing service to God. The instructions mix ethics and liturgical matters, which is confusing to us moderns. But how we treat one another is tied to the Divine Service because the liturgical community shares in God's holiness. Holy brothers with a heavenly calling.

v.1 “Brotherly love” φιλαδελφία, philadelphia, this is the preacher's first instruction in this concluding chapter that such love continues as they are now a priestly brotherhood in Christ. This must form the foundation for congregational life.

v.2 “The love of strangers. Hospitality.” φιλοξενία, philoxenia. Continue to be a hospitable community. Hospitality to strangers was especially prized in the ancient world because outsiders had no legal rights or protection. If a family offered hospitality to them, they were under the sacrosanct protection of that family as members of it. Christian hospitality included Christians escaping persecution, itinerant preachers, as well as others. They knew they may be "receiving angels as guests," like Abraham and Lot did in Genesis 18-19. Such receiving of angels may be more common than you think because the congregation joins with the angels in the Divine Service. Since the congregation now belongs to the realm of heaven, the angels are its companions. The angels are as much a part of the congregation as the people and offer spiritual protection and blessing to those who offer food, shelter, and legal protection to the unprotected stranger.

v.3 The third instruction is the call to the congregation to care for the prisoner and the maltreated. To make provision for those in prison meant not only prayer and visitation but also food and clothing, as the jailers ordinarily did not provide these things. The preacher calls on their sympathy by telling them to imagine they are in chains beside them. Solidarity with the unjustly imprisoned was their own interdependence on one another as the body of Christ and therefore persecuted themselves for such aid to them, property seized, etc., is of no consequence to such brothers in Christ. Therefore persecution which was meant to isolate members and destroy the community, served only to further consolidate the congregation.

v.4 This verse deals with marriage in two ways. For one, it instructs marriage is honorable and by so keeping it dispels any disparagement of marriage as an institution, which was as common in the ancient world as it is today. The institution of marriage as a life-long union between one man and one woman is God's priceless and precious gift to humanity, given to be of benefit to all, not only the married. The second regards defilement of the marriage bed, again to dispel the common view about sex outside of marriage, both held then and now. Married intercourse is "ritually clean," and defiling it not only desecrates it and disrupts the peace of the family as a unit within the congregation it also desecrates the community.

v.5 The preacher’s fifth instruction deals with the congregation’s relationship with money. Not their use or misuse of wealth and possessions, but their lifestyle as God's people. Unlike the pagans, they possess a new life free from the love of money, where they may be content with their possessions as sufficient for their needs. No longer do they need to be a consumer society (yes, in the first century as well as the twenty-first, there is nothing new under the sun) because they belong to a community based on φιλαδελφία, philadelphia, brotherly love. Does this sound familiar? They and we certainly need money and things, but we no longer need to be driven by their pursuit because they and we have a more reliable sense of security: the presence and promise of God in the congregation. Princes and powers have been able to confiscate lands and possessions and even take away their livelihood, but they cannot take away what God has given them. They have true security in an insecure society.

v.6 Psalm 118:6 cited here is the last Old Testament citation in the preacher’s sermon. In response to what has been promised them, the preacher and the congregation can say this verse like the victorious king who was vindicated by God for his reliance on Him for deliverance from defeat in battle. Here the preacher expands to include Christ in their three-part confession of faith. The Lord is their helper – a powerful ally who hands them the victory. “I shall not be afraid” – a declaration of fearlessness in the face of opposition. Finally, a boast of triumph- “what can any man do to me?” We confess by exactly repeating back to Him what He has said to us.

v.7-8 The preacher’s sixth instruction is to emulate the former pastors of the congregation. They are told to remember them because they spoke the Word of God to them. That is how they led the congregation: by being God's spokesman. They were part of an unbroken chain of speaking that came from God through the prophets & Jesus to the Apostles, to the pastors they formed, and finally to them. They are best remembered for what they taught and also how they lived. The church is to imitate them by believing what they believed as well as believing as they did, viewing their lives as a whole, and dying as men of faith. And what they taught and believed remained because Jesus is unchanging. Leaders may change, but Christ is unchanging.

v.9 The seventh instruction warns the congregation against being "carried away by strange and diverse teachings." The biggest threat to a congregation's peace is the spread of unhelpful teaching that destabilizes a liturgical community which pulls its focus toward something other than Christ. They are called "diverse" and "strange" because they appeal to boredom by superficial novelty, alien to the Christian tradition, unauthorized by Christ and those He has called to teach the word. What these were is not specified but likely dealt with the benefit of holding to the Old Covenant regulations regarding clean foods. The preacher does not condemn the practice but tactfully says they are not helpful. They do not accomplish what it is said they do. They might make people feel good but do not make consciences certain of their status before God.

v.10 The focus of this verse is on one specific function of the altar of burnt offering. It produced holy food for the priests who served at it. The congregation, too, has such an altar. What it is, is the single most controversial question in the interpretation of Hebrews, with no consensus. The most likely answer is the place of the Divine Service, which lies between God in the heavenly sanctuary and the church on earth, which is in keeping with all the other things in Hebrews that are both heavenly and earthly. By implication, the Christian congregation may eat from it, and we do so in the Lord's Supper during the Divine Service.

v.11 On the Day of Atonement, the priests were not allowed to eat the meat of the sin offering. Instead, they must burn it outside the camp. This sets a "ritual precedent" for the new covenant. The old covenant priests have no right to eat the sin offering of the new covenant, either, that is to say, Christ's altar. This right belongs to those "outside the camp." This is new. If all the people outside the camp have the right to eat Christ's sin offering, then they must be ritually clean priests and have no need for any further atoning sacrifice.

v.12 Jesus is no Levitical priest. He is an eternal High Priest – the last Melchizadek. He serves at the true tent (8:1-2) and needs to offer no sin sacrifice of His own. Sin offerings were slaughtered ritually inside the holy place to keep it holy. Jesus dies outside the city gate – which is common ground belonging to those outside the congregation of Israel – people who are not "the people of God," meaning Gentiles. Jesus' death was for them all. All of the verses in Hebrews dealing with Jesus' atoning for the sins of those He claims as a holy priesthood climaxes here in this verse. Jesus gives priestly status, privileges, and responsibilities to all the new covenant people of God, cleansing them from sin and impurity. All of this explains what is meant when we talk about “God’s grace.” And in contrast to the old covenant proscription about eating blood, we can now consume Christ’s body and blood as holy food and drink from the altar.

v.13 Now, the preacher ties all the previous instructions of this chapter into an exhortation inviting the congregation to join him and all the saints as they "go out" to Jesus "outside the camp." This place is the Divine Service. It is the place where heaven comes to earth, and Christ sanctifies them with His blood, the place of meeting where His blood gives access to the heavenly realm. Mark well: this is an insecure place where there is no real earthly protection for disciples. Just as Jesus went outside the city to suffer and die, the congregation may also have to suffer with Him by "bearing the mockery He bore" even to the point of bloodshed (12:4). As a foreign minority without legal protection, they were prone to personal suspicion, social misunderstanding, discrimination, and political persecution, not under the protection of Imperial Rome or any others. So they go out to Jesus and seek safety with Him, their only protection.

v.14 The temptation for the congregation is to go along to get along and become assimilated by the surrounding pagan culture. The preacher reminds them that they have gone outside the walls because they are members of the heavenly Jerusalem (11:10, 16; 12:22). They may not yet reside there securely but settle there like the Patriarchs (11:16) rather than any other place on earth. It is another paradox that they are pilgrims on the earth (11:10) and yet already visit it regularly in the Divine Service (12:22). The congregation is, therefore, an earthly colony of the heavenly city. Rome claimed to be the eternal city. The New Jerusalem to come is eternal (13:14) and is the city that remains forever in God's presence (12:27).

v.15 The preacher's final instruction to join the corporate praise of God is the summary of all those previous. They all exhort the congregation to join corporately in the service of the living God. Against all the old covenant ceremonies, we now have a new service which is entirely a "sacrifice of praise." A thank offering because Christ offered the final and universal sin offering. God told Daniel (Daniel 9:24) there would be no need for more sin offerings (Hebrews 9:26; 10:11-18), and Jeremiah foresaw all sacrifices for atonement would be replaced by a service of thanksgiving in the age to come (Jeremiah 33:101-11). So we now have a Eucharist (which word comes from the Greek meaning "thanksgiving") in which the sanctifying body and blood of Jesus are received with thanksgiving. Christ is the host of the holy meal and the high priest who presents an offering to God by leading the congregation in thanksgiving and praise. This "sacrifice of praise" is offered to God "regularly." The congregation offers it every time they gather for the Divine Service. It is also offered "continually" by the saints and angels in the heavenly throne room (Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 4:8). It is the "fruit of the lips that confess the name" of Jesus. It is the fruit of that confession itself and the holy meal that comes within it.

v.16 Their sacrifice of praise is closely connected with the "common offering," food and money, which included the bread and wine used in the Sacrament. The exhortation to offer this leads to the eighth instruction not to forget it. The "do good and share" most likely refers to the gifts of mercy for the prisoners and marginalized and the acts of mercy done after the service in the name of Christ (6:10). By these offerings, the congregations provided hospitality to strangers (13:2), food for prisoners (10:34; 13:3), and help for the persecuted (10:33). God is as pleased with these sacrifices as with praise and thanksgiving. The Divine Service is thus enacted by thanksgiving to God through Christ and acts of charity done in His name.

v.17 The ninth instruction and final verse in Hebrews used in the Lectionary (the list of readings used in church services) is an encouragement to the congregation to heed their present pastors and defer to them. They are the ones that speak God's Word to them as they gather for worship. In other words, it is a call to hear God's Word. They defer by going along with what they say and do in accord with God's Word and accept them and their authority as the leaders of the congregation. This is because pastors are responsible to God for them and their souls and have to give an account for them on the last day. Now, they exercise pastoral care and keep praying for them. Since the congregation profits temporally and eternally from their pastor's vigilance, it has much to gain by making this task easier for him. If they defer to their pastor, the pastor's tasks will be a joy and a cause of thanksgiving and rejoicing in his prayers.