Holding Fast and Letting Go...

 “Holding Fast and Letting Go”

 

Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25
10:11 And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.

10:12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God,"

10:13 and since then has been waiting "until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet."

10:14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

10:15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

10:16 "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,"

10:17 he also adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."

10:18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

10:19 Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,

10:20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh),

10:21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,

10:22 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.

10:23 Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.

10:24 And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,

10:25 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.

 

 

Throughout Christian history, a theological debate has raged between “saved by faith/grace” and “works righteousness” people. For the life of me, I just don’t see this as a debate, frankly. They are two essential elements of Christian discipleship, not competing means of atonement. Yes, there have been those who promoted the idea that only “good people” go to heaven, and that our “good works” will be put on some kind of a cosmic balance scale when we croak, and see if they weigh more than our sins, but I question whether many serious theological thinkers endorsed this idea. There is what I would call a “comic book” summary of the three main views of salvation out there and it goes like this: 

 

1.    Some are “predestined” or “elected” by God to be saved, and you either are among the elect or you are not (this is often labeled “Calvinism”).

 

2.    Anyone who desires to be saved from their sin can be, simply by having faith in Jesus Christ, by whose grace we are saved when we believe (attributed to the Reformer, Martin Luther).

 

3.    We are “weighed in the balance” by our good works, and either given the thumbs up or the thumbs down by God at the judgment, and since we never know if we are measuring up, we just have to keep grinding out the good works, which hopefully will lead to righteousness (this is often attributed to John Wesley).

 

So, who’s right? In a manner of speaking, all three positions have a piece of the truth. I’m not a “Calvinist,” so I’ll leave most of the “election” argument in Point One to my Presbyterian friends, but in seminary, I read quite a bit of Karl Barth’s work, and Barth locates “predestination” in Jesus, himself. Barth believed that even from the foundation of the world, it was God’s plan to send his Son into the world to redeem humankind and to guide us back to a righteous life, one that would benefit the whole of the human community. So Jesus was the one “predestined,” not us. I also don’t understand how one can interpret the scriptures to say atonement is “limited” (election) when Jesus invites “whosoever” in John 3:16, and Paul goes on and on about the ever-abundant grace of God, and that we are “saved by faith.” The part of Point One that I think is worth considering is that God is intentional about being out to redeem the world, not just “offering” salvation--so much so that God’s passion for saving is not open for debate, and neither is one’s redemption, when it is received. This is a pretty liberal defense of the “Calvinist” point of view, but as I said, I’m not a Calvinist. And if I heard one of my professors, Dr. Charles Partee right, neither, really, was John Calvin, only dabbling in these “predestination” and “election” concepts toward the end of his famous two-volume “Institutes of the Christian Religion.” 

 

On to Point Two. I wrote this week that I am now calling myself a “Protestant” instead of a “Christian” because of how badly this latter term has been perjured by fundamentalists, evangelicals, right-wingers, and others who weaponize scripture and use it to exclude and harm people. I like to introduce myself as “Protestant” in religious discussions, for if my company is part of a faith community, they will understand that term, and may be prompted to ask why I’m using it. That would be a good conversation. If the parties with whom I’m speaking are not of the religiously “initiated,” they may well ask what I am “protesting,” and that, too, would be a good conversation. I think it’s a win-win. Of course, the term “Protestant” comes from the religious movement launched inadvertently by Martin Luther in 1517 when his exhaustive study of Paul’s Letter to the Romans led him to have some real issues with the prevailing theology of the Roman Catholic Church, which in his mind had taken a serious turn toward “works righteousness,” or believing that a. we find redemption only through accumulating enough “good works,” and b. it would be the Catholic Church that was the arbiter of whether the save-ee measured up. Luther came to fervently believe in salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, and that salvation was a gift of God’s grace. He got pretty hopped up on this concept, so much so that after his Protestant movement was off and running, he railed against the concept of “works righteousness,” afraid it would be the “black hole” that sucked people back to the hierarchical “works righteousness” church centered in Rome. In my opinion, Luther’s paranoia about “good works” launched another inadvertent movement that continues to this day wherein as soon as one mentions salvation and “good works” in the same sentence, a panic ensues, especially among evangelicals.

 

Let me state firmly that Point Three is not John Wesley’s position. Wesley never preached “works righteousness” as the way of salvation. Why, then, has the idea that “being good” was the means of pleasing God enough to bribe one’s way into heaven? Well, as already alluded to, there was a season in the life of the Roman Catholic Church when this was the dominant position, and that it was “the church” that served as the judge. It was an excellent way of controlling mostly illiterate people toward the end of keeping them faithful to the church, and therefore, God. 

 

However, something also happened later in American history that cemented “works righteousness” as the official “civil religion” on this side of the pond. I read in seminary that when the Puritans came to America, they practiced a brand of Christianity learned primarily from the Church of England—the Anglicans. This was a blend of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ AND was then manifested by the saved believer in “good works,” or “acts of mercy” toward one’s fellow human beings. These “good works” were how we lived out both our gratitude for God’s saving grace, and served to help usher in the “Kingdom of God” on earth. Doing “good” toward one’s neighbor was a primary teaching of Jesus, and it is a necessary element in building a loving community, which was a key Puritan aim. But to quote Dr. Emmett Brown in “Back to the Future,” “It’s your KIDS, Marty!” The Puritan’s children born in the New World rebelled against the Old World religion of their parents, and that was trouble, enough, but when they grew up, married, and began having the first grandchildren in America, the Puritans were in a pickle about wanting to baptize them. However, their strict church rules didn’t allow for this, if their parents weren’t “churched.” So, a Puritan Council—most certainly made up of new grandparents—met and declared something called the “Halfway Covenant,” which, if their sons and daughters would agree to, would allow the grandkids to be baptized. And guess what was in that covenant? You guessed it—“good works.” If their kids were willing to “do good,” and live a moral life, the Puritan church could baptize their children. And there you have the central element in America’s unofficial “civil religion.” A number of years ago, a group of religious researchers polled Christian church-goers in a wide variety of churches, asking attendees, “Do you believe you are going to heaven?” Guess what most of them said: “Yes, because I try to be a good person.” Way too few pew-occupying Christians answered it was because of faith in Jesus. Thanks, Puritans! You made our job as preachers of the Gospel that much harder!

 

As I said earlier, John Wesley took the theology of the Anglican Church and “personalized” it to the life of the believer. Wesley did not believe in “works righteousness,” but believed that the righteousness (forgiveness, redemption) that we receive by faith in Jesus Christ compels us to “live rightly,” following the teachings of Jesus, meeting the needs of the “least of these,” welcoming the stranger, and helping usher in the Kingdom of God. Wesley’s emphasis on holiness and piety was not driven by a desire to “gain” God’s favor unto salvation, but to please God by loving God’s people and following God’s commands. As one of my Presbyterian seminary professors would say, “John Wesley’s contribution to the Body of Christ was helping us see that our lives were to move FROM faith TO good works, out of gratitude for what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.” 

 

Now, with all of this theology and history out of the way, I hope it begins to be obvious as to why today’s passage from Hebrews brought all of this to mind. The Hebrews text makes it clear that redemption for the believer is solely the efficacy of the Christ Event: 

 

…Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God," and since then has been waiting "until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet." For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.  (Hebrews 10:12-14)

 

Christ has saved the whole world and all of history for those who believe AND for those who don’t know it yet, and hopefully someday WILL believe. The efficacy of the Christ Event was once and for all:

 

Where there is forgiveness of these [lawless deeds], there is no longer any offering for sin.    (Hebrews 10:18)

 

Then the Hebrews author says that God is now going to write the new law on the hearts and minds of believers, and this law would now be the “law” (teachings) of Christ. To this great gift, and to the new hope that it brings to the world and to all who have already believed, we are called to hold fast because the one who has given both salvation and the promise is faithful, that being God. Holding fast means to claim the gift of God’s grace and redemption by believing in Jesus. Holding fast means to sell out to the surety of our salvation, and then to “move on.” Moving on requires a certain letting go—letting go of the inordinate emphasis on “personal salvation” that permeates what has come to be known as evangelical Christianity, for example. I remember going through “witness” training to be a “teen counselor” for a Billy Graham film (“Time to Run”) back in the 1970s. As a teen myself, I was quite impressionable, and the “evangelical” brand of Christianity I had latched on to back in that day led me to accept fully the idea of not just individual salvation (“being saved”), but a passionate need for it, even to the point of being told in that training, “If you can’t name a day and a date when you accepted Christ as your Savior, then you are not saved.” I remember that, as one raised in a mainline church, I didn’t have a specific “day and date” when I had come to believe in Jesus Christ, so in my anxiety, I asked the friend seated by me, “What should I do?” His answer: “Just make one up.” I often wonder if this sentiment is what began the sad slide the evangelical movement has made into darkness and entanglement in right-wing political intrigue? In fact, the Bible is clear: Christ offers salvation to all, and simply saying “yes” to God’s “Yes” to humankind IS salvation. It doesn’t require specific words, a doctrinal prayer said in earnest, or even a remembered “day and date.” Just say YES to the love and salvific grace of God, and then be a public witness to this faith—a witness that should be more through actions than words, according to St. Francis of Assisi.

 

This leads us to the next message we see clearly in the Hebrews text in verse 24: “provoking one another to love and good deeds.” Holding fast to the gift of God’s grace is the foundation upon which we build; letting go of our anxiety about salvation is the motivation to aspire to love and good deeds. These actions and not taken as an requirement for salvation, but instead, as a grateful response TO it. This is Wesley’s thought. Again, the “FROM faith TO works.” Of course the thread through all of this is love—God’s love for us, demonstrated and gifted through Jesus Christ, and the love that Christ and the Holy Spirit germinate and empower within each of us. This love is what motivates our “good works” toward others and the broader human community. No matter how you look at it, desiring this thread of divine love to flow through us requires a letting go. We must let go of the definitions of others that we have been “programmed” with through our family systems, or ones that our own minds have programmed as part of our primordial “self-preservation” instinct. God’s love must be directed toward all, not just persons who pass our cultural, familial, racial, religious, or even moral litmus tests. These “filters” we all develop, one way or another, are not easy to let go of! They are deeply ingrained, and often been reinforced (even by our religion!) so strongly that we have bonded them on to the “grace” foundation of our faith. For the conservative evangelical, for example, acceptance of persons with other than a heterosexual orientation is based on the ultimate idea that they must change, to be fully “Christian.” For the white, privileged society, persons of color must be willing to become “more like us” to be fully accepted, or at least to be fully included in the culture (even in the CHURCH culture). For the financially secure, “ministry” TO the POOR is from the top, down, with the eventual goal of helping them lift themselves out of poverty and moving them to a more “suburban” lifestyle. For many Americans right now, refugees and immigrants have been simply declared “not worthy” of our love and acceptance, and should be sent packing, or walled out. (This one always intrigued me: if we really are the “greatest country on earth,” which many of these people believe, should we be surprised that others would want to find a better life here? And would shutting them out and refusing to find a way to receive them “legally” not constitute an extremely cruel policy?)

 

If we are to manifest the divine love of God—which we have all benefitted from ourselves—we are compelled to let go of these artificial and aberrant “filters.” If we do not, we are guilty of the man in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 18 who is forgiven a great debt by the king, who then goes out and demands that one who owes him a paltry sum by comparison, pay him back immediately or suffer the consequences. The king in this parable is not happy when he hears of this, and sends the unforgiving man to be “tortured.” I believe that when we put so many conditions on love, we are torturing ourselves.

 

Let us look, finally, to the last sentences of this Hebrews passage: 

 

…not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…

 

The author is making clear that Christ followers are called to be a part of the Body of Christ—a beloved community that supports and helps each other, and one that engages in ministry for others and the common good. “Meeting together” is the essential part of building the beloved community imagined by God in scripture, and seeded in humanity by Jesus Christ. The author is cautioning that forsaking these “meetings together” is a very bad and degrading thing, but one that too easily becomes habitual, when we focus on the “I” rather than the “we.” COVID has launched most churches who weren’t already there into the virtual world of live-streaming. While this may have kept the “community” together, in once sense, when the pandemic forced us to live apart, it also provided a convenient way to encourage “spectator” religion. How convenient it was to “watch church” on our big TVs while lounging in our pajamas and sipping home-brewed coffee. It has been estimated that as many as one third of regular worship attenders have made this new practice a habit, and may not return to face-to-face fellowship, classes, or worship. This is not a good thing. It will depreciate the value of the degree of beloved community the church had been able to create, which was struggling in many corners in the first place. The Hebrews author—echoing the teachings of Jesus and Paul—urges believers early on to not give up on face-to-face community experiences. 

 

I’m reading a wonderful book right now by the late Rabbi and philosopher, Jonathan Sacks, called “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times.” Sacks makes the case for morality as the third essential of a healthy, productive, and free society, the others being the state and the economy. Morality is that which “humanizes” any society and builds the trust necessary to sustain its freedom, without leaving anyone behind. Among the many important points he makes in the book, one is about the necessary “face-to-face-ness” in the community experience. This is a long quote, but worth reflecting upon, in light of today’s Hebrews passage:

 

Morality is born when I focus on you, not me; when I discover that you, too, have emotions, desires, aspirations, and fears. I learn this by being present to you and allowing you to be present to me. It is deeply subtle interaction that we learn slowly and patiently through ongoing conversations with family, friends, peers, teachers, mentors, and others. We develop empathy and sympathy. We learn what it is to receive acts of kindness and then to reciprocate them. Morality is about engaging with the raw human vulnerabilities of others that lie beneath the carefully burnished image, and about our ability to heal some of the pain. I learn to be moral when I develop the capacity to put myself into your place, and that is a skill I only learn by engaging with you, face to face or side by side. [Page 57]

 

This is the morality of Jesus. This is the morality of the church, when it is functioning correctly and in accordance with the Spirit of God. This is the morality, as Sacks suggests, of a healthy, compassionate society. And this is the morality of the author of Hebrews 10. Unfortunately, our American society is currently on hiatus from this morality, probably due partly to the pandemic, but more so, due to our political, social, racial, and economic division. 

 

If ever there was a time for God’s people to hold fast to the grace and love of God, to our gift of redemption, and the hope that these bring to us all, and to let go of our selfishness, our “rights,” when they become fighting words, and of our will to power, it is now. The division in the church and in American society is killing our world’s environment, making the poor poorer, setting neighbor at odds with neighbor, and poisoning the future for our children and grandchildren. We will never be the “greatest country on earth” unless we let go of the “I” and rediscover the “we,” and we will not be restored as the People of God until we do so, either. It’s time, Dear Ones, to hold fast and let go. Grace and peace. Amen.