Neil Richardson prepares us for some autumn lectionary readings

You don’t have to be an academic theologian to preach from Hebrews. In fact, no book of the Bible can ever be the preserve of the few, since the Scriptures are given to us all.

Congregations need sermons from Hebrews, as the lectionary implies. From the 27th to the 33rd Sundays in Ordinary Time after Trinity, (4th Oct. to 15th Nov. in our diaries), we have the following readings: Hebrews 1.1-4 and 2.5-12, 4.12-16, 5.1-10, 7.23-8, 9.11-14, and, finally, 10.11-14, with 11.32 to 12.2 on All Saints’ Day for good measure. So – this autumn, preach from Hebrews – to your own and your congregation’s benefit!

Notice the words – and use your imagination!
This is the first step, not forgetting, of course, your prayers. Noticing the words of Scripture is easier said than done. But attending to the text in this way is like attending to God in prayer; with the Spirit’s help, stilling our minds and centring our hearts, it is possible for all of us.

As this begins to happen, notice key words and phrases, how a sentence fits together, or how one statement follows on from another. So start by reading your passage from Hebrews slowly, reading it two or three times (at least) and making a note of what strikes you, or questions that occur to you.

And begin to use your imagination. Biblical writers used theirs! Using our imagination is to use our minds – with heart and spirit engaged – creatively, for the sake of our congregation. As you do so, linger prayerfully over the crucial images in Hebrews. Two images of Jesus complement each other: Jesus as one of us and Jesus our High-Priest. We shall look at each of these in turn.

One of us
This is a prominent theme in Hebrews and the preacher should help the congregation to see in what ways Jesus is one of us, and how that helps us. First, we look at Heb.1.1-4 and 2.5-12 (5th Oct.); 2.11 which reads:
‘For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters...’¹.

Notice it’s that way round; Hebrews doesn’t call Jesus our brother; that is not where the emphasis falls in Scripture. (Compare Matt. 28.10 or Romans 8.29). We are not naturally Jesus’ siblings; we are raised to that status by grace, or, to put it another way, Jesus shares his status of being ‘a son’ with us (as v.11 shows). (Don’t be put off by the male images of ‘son’ or ‘brother’; the transforming revelation of Father and Son calls us into an inclusive family in which there is ‘neither male nor female’ (Gal.3.28)).

The first part of this reading, 1.1-4, shows that Jesus was and is God’s Son in a unique way; John’s gospel calls him ‘only-begotten’ (e.g. Jn 3.16), and that is part of the truth, but other NT writers, like Paul and the writer to the Hebrews, think of him as ‘first born’ of many brothers and sisters – hence one of us.

Another reading, Heb.4.12-16 (11th Oct.), explores the theme of Jesus as one of us from a different angle:
‘For we do not have a high priest  who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin’ (4.15; compare 2.17-18).

In the previous verse, v.14, Hebrews’ two leading titles for Jesus come together: ‘Son of God’ expresses his relationship with God, ‘High Priest’ his relationship with us, as well as with God. But here in v.15 we note an important contrast with the Jewish high priest, who had to keep himself apart from the people in order to avoid being contaminated, and therefore unfit to enter the holy of holies on the day of atonement.(Leviticus 16 and, from the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 50.1-21 provide important details).

Beware of saying ‘Jesus could not be contaminated – i.e. by sin’. The Church has always distinguished carefully between saying he was not able to sin (i.e. sinning was never a possibility), and saying he was able not to sin. In the language of Hebrews, Jesus was tested (tempted)  as we are, yet without sin.

There is another important cameo of Jesus as one of us in Heb. 5.7-9, part of the lection for 18th Oct. The picture is strikingly reminiscent of the picture we have of Jesus in Gethsemane in the first three gospels. Again, the preacher ponders carefully the distinctive words Hebrews gives us here. This is no window-dressing or play-acting: real prayers, real tears, and real learning, (‘he learned obedience through what he suffered’, v.9).
V. 9 goes on: ‘he was perfected...’. We tend to think of Jesus’ perfection as a static condition conferred from birth. Hebrews seems to think of it more as a struggle or process to be completed. Charles Wesley’s lines express the thought here very well:

Ready for all Thy perfect will
My acts of faith and love repeat
Till death Thy endless mercies seal,
And make the sacrifice complete.

So Jesus’ perfection wasn’t complete until death, not because he was imperfect – he was ‘without sin’ – but because he was tempted until the very end and his sacrifice could not be complete – i.e. perfected – until his obedience had been completed.

So, with this major Hebrews’ theme of Jesus as one of us, avoid clichés: the theme is too important, too profound, too wonderful for clichés.

Our High Priest
Hebrews 4.12-16 (anticipated by 2.17), has already introduced us to this image of Jesus. But 5.1-10 (18th Oct.), 7.23-28, (25th Oct.),  9.11-14 (8th Nov.) and 10.11-14 (15th Nov.) have more to say. We shall look at the first two of these four passages in this section, and the last two in the next. Heb. 5.1-6 contrasts merely ‘human’ high priests with Jesus. We need to be careful with language here; it is crucial to Hebrews’ argument that Jesus was human. The NRSV gets the sense: every other high priest is ‘chosen from amongst mortals’, whereas it is God who appointed Jesus (v.5), (Hebrews doesn’t say when) and appointed him for ever: 
‘“You are a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek”,’ (v.6, quoting Psalm 110.4).

Psalm 110 – the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New – is one of only two places where Melchizedek is mentioned. The other is Genesis 14.18-20, where he is described as ‘priest of God Most High’ who blessed Abraham. So these two passages make a connection, according to many Jewish interpreters of the time, between Melchizedek, (the name means ‘king of righteousness’), the Messiah (Psalm 110.vv1 and 4), and Abraham. No wonder one of the Dead Sea Scrolls speaks of a priest-king called Melchizedek who will be a future deliverer. As for Melchizedek having no parents, (Heb.7.1-3), this speculation grew out of the widely-held conviction of the time that if something isn’t mentioned in Scripture, it doesn’t exist!

The preacher, of course, needs to avoid overloading people with details about Melchizedek. Approaches will vary according to the congregation. But everyone can grasp the fundamental ideas:

Jesus’ High Priesthood begins and ends in heaven: God appointed him by divine oath, (7.21) – guarantees don’t come any stronger than that –  and, what is more, appointed him forever. So this high priesthood must be superior to all others, including the Levitical priesthood; and a priest who can bless Abraham, father of the nation, must be very special, (to put it mildly).

But what does our high Priest do in heaven? Hebrews 7.23-8 recapitulates some of the themes of the earlier passage – Jesus is appointed for ever (v.24), and so: ‘... he is able to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them’ (v.25).

Protestant and Catholic commentaries complement each other very well here. Protestant commentators, rightly, point to the death of Jesus as the once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. Catholic commentators, again rightly, speak of Jesus’ eternal sacrifice – eternal liturgy, even, because Jesus’ life was and is his prayer – not because Jesus offers it over and over again, but because his sacrifice is himself, and he has been exalted to heaven.

The image of one ‘interceding’ on our behalf is another difficult image. Does God have to be persuaded to forgive us? It’s helpful to remember, first, that the Greek word ‘intercede’ also means ‘meet’, and second, that Jesus is ‘the exact imprint of God’s very being’, (1.3;compare 1.8, one of the very few verses in the NT which calls Jesus ‘God’). So God meets God? In a sense, yes: God goes out from himself as only God can do, and returns to himself, having forged a way for us. But that is the subject of the next section.

The Way Through
By the time we reach our final two lections, 9.11-14 (8th Nov.) and 10.11-14 (15th Nov), our writer has offered his readers the longest Old Testament quotation of his epistle – Jeremiah’s prophecy of the new covenant (Heb.8.8-12, Jer.31.31-34). (It is valuable, of course, for us, when preaching from Hebrews, to read as much of it as we can, especially its central argument, from 4.14 through to 10.18).

9.11-14 and 10.11-14 offer still further reasons why the new covenant is superior to the old, and why Jesus’ high priesthood is superior to all that had gone before. Not only was he appointed by God for ever, not only was he one of us, but his sacrifice of himself, as God’s Son, was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, because ‘he entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood....(9.12). Here, as throughout the epistle, the writer works with a crucial distinction between the earthly, or the material, and the heavenly or spiritual. The earthly is transient, imperfect and has a specific location, like the sanctuary in Jerusalem; the heavenly, or spiritual, is perfect and eternal, and so, in a sense, everywhere and for always. But notice how Jesus as one of us and as the eternal high priest brings the earthly and the heavenly together: his ‘blood’ was real blood, but its significance was spiritual, and his sacrifice was an historical event, but its efficacy is for ever.

10.11-14 repeats and develops earlier themes, including v.14, (recalling 2.11 in our earlier discussion of Jesus as one of us): ‘For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified’.

And that means that we, too, may ‘enter the sanctuary’ (10.19-24). So here is yet another contrast with the Levitical high priests: the people did not, indeed could not, follow them into the holy of holies, but Jesus was ‘a forerunner on our behalf’ (6.20, compare 12.2).

Interpreting Hebrews for today
In the first place, respect the actual words and images of Hebrews; the writer hardly ever uses the words ‘cross’ and ‘resurrection’, for example, but they clearly underlie all that he says about the ‘once-for-all’ sacrifice and the High Priest’s entry into heaven. Second, celebrate his conclusions; whilst we can’t subscribe with conviction to all the writer’s arguments, appropriate though they were for his time, his conclusions stand because they are true. Third, and complementary to the first point, look for contemporary points of connection. Behind the – to us – strange concepts of high priesthood and animal sacrifice lie human concerns which are fundamental and universal. Jesus, who shared our life and our death, is now our representative ‘in heaven’ (i.e. everywhere and for ever), and invites us to enter the presence of God – everywhere and for ever. Our ‘great High Priest’ is God with us and God for us².

¹ ‘Sanctify’ denotes both a relationship and a process. All quotations in this article are taken from the NRSV.
² See the Epworth Commentary on Hebrews by Paul Ellingworth for further help.

Neil Richardson is a supernumerary minister, living in the South Shropshire Circuit. He was New Testament Tutor and Principal of Wesley College, Bristol and was elected President of Conference in 2003. His books include Paul For Today, (SCM Epworth 2009). He is currently writing a book on the Gospel of John.