Sunday, January 8

Hebrews 6:13-20: We understand that ñhopeî is a word central to our Christian vocabulary, and, given the frequency of this word in the history of Christian literature, there is no way that understanding can be wrong.

In fact, however, Jesus Himself perhaps never used the Aramaic equivalent of the word ñhopeî. The noun itself is never found in the Gospels, and the verb is never heard from the lips of Jesus.

When, on the other hand, we turn to the sermons in the Acts of the Apostles or read the epistles of the first Christians, ñhopeî is found everywhere. It is found in Peter, Paul, John, and Hebrews..

From this observations it is safe to conclude that the idea and the word ñhopeî came to us, not from the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus, but from the Gospel proclaimed by the early Christians about Jesus.

The noun is found several times in Hebrews (3:6; 6:11,18; 7:19; 10:23), very notably in today's reading about those ñwho have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.î This hope the author goes on to proclaim this hope as ñan anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.î

When we embrace Christ, we embrace hope; ñLet us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithfulî (10:23). Hope is something to which we commit ourselves when fully we accept the grace of Christ in our conversion and baptism. Hope is a duty.

At the same time, like any duty, we can let it slip. So in today's reading we are exhorted to lay hold of it again, or to intensify our grasp on it. Throughout our lives, God's providence arranges occasions in which we see the need to heighten our hope.

Hope is the anchor of the soul; it tugs us back; it is the stability in our lives.

Monday, January 9

Hebrews 7:1-10: Today we are introduced to ñMelchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God,î whose name means ñking of righteousness,î but who was ñalso king of Salem, meaning 'king of peace.'î I take it as significant that righteousness here precedes peace.

Indeed, it is the constant teaching of Holy Scripture that righteousness precedes peace - comes before peace - that there is no peace without righteousness.

It is no great problem getting men today interested in peace. On almost any day there are pictures of thousands of people taking part in peace demonstrations. Past counting are the various organizations that go to make up the ñpeace movement.î On all sides, high and low, may be heard the cries for peace. Nowadays there is no shortage of interest in peace.

What is perhaps less self-evident is a corresponding interest in righteousness. Yet, the one depends on the other.

Our generation may be likened to a farmer who wants to grow a large field of corn. His interest in corn is well known and readily documented. He is a corn expert. He has read everything ever written about corn. Indeed, he has written much of it himself. People come to him to confer about corn. If a corn rally is wanted, he's our man. He conducts seminars about corn at the agricultural college. He is never late with his dues to the national corn federation. He buys TV advertising time to laud the glories of corn. Every evening his friends assemble in his living room to discuss corn. Large, colored posters of corn adorn the walls of his home. He has authored a pamphlet condemning those whom he considers nonchalant and indifferent to the merits of corn.

But when sowing time comes around, he sows his fields with green beans.

He somehow fails to understand that, in order to harvest corn, it is necessary also to plant corn. This is a basic truth of life: A man will reap what he sows (Galatians 6:7-8).

The secret is the seed.

Now the seed of peace is righteousness. Peace is not the absence of war. (Indeed, there are times when the mere absence of war signifies the dominance of unrighteousness.) Peace is the fruit of righteousness: ñNow the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peaceî (James 3:18).

It is important, then, to get the order right. We recall the third stanza of the hymn, ñThe God of Abraham praiseî:

There dwells the Lord our King,
The Lord our righteousness,
Triumphant o'er the world and sin,
The Prince of Peace.

Tuesday, January 10

Hebrews 7:11-28: Today's reading introduces us to the ñsacrificeî of Jesus. The word ñsacrificeî is ambiguous because it pertains to so many and so varied uses. We find it in a great number of contexts.

During this next summer, for example, we will be hearing the word ñsacrificeî on the radio and television pretty much everyday. Sportscasters will tell us that so-and-so made a sacrifice bunt or hit a sacrifice fly. This example may appear trivial, but it does illustrate an essential feature of sacrifice. A man gives up something in order to advance something else. The batter who hits a sacrifice fly or a sacrifice bunt is always out, but the good of the team is advanced.

This is a substantial feature of the notion of sacrifice. A person gives up, lets go of, something for the sake of something else. It is the ñpriceî he pays. Whenever we speak of sacrifice, this aspect seems always to be present. Thus, Dr. Webster defines sacrifice as ña giving up, a destroying, permitting injury to, or foregoing of some valued thing for the sake of something of greater value or having some more pressing claim.î

Thus, soldiers sacrifice for their country, and parents for their children. Sacrifice always involves both a loss and a gain.

It is the unanimous view in the New Testament that Jesus sacrificed Himself. The view is unanimous because it came from Jesus Himself: ñFor even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many,î and ññThis is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for manyî (Mark 10:45; 14:24).

We are redeemed by Jesus' blood, because His blood is His own life, His inner being, His own soul: ñYou make His soul an offering for sinî-ñ He poured out His soul unto deathî (Isaiah 53:10,12). We were bought by His wounds, and by His stripes were we healed, because the sufferings of Jesus were the mode in which He handed over Himself. We were purchased by His death, because in His death He gave up Himself.

Wednesday, January 11

Matthew 4:12-17: This is the first of three pericopes about Jesus' ministry in Galilee. The next two stories are the calling of the first apostles at the Sea of Galilee (4:18-22) and the gathering of the great multitude (4:23-25) that will hear the Sermon on the Mount in the next chapter.

In the present text Matthew sets the stage for this Galilean ministry by showing it as a fulfillment of prophecy, specifically Isaiah 9:1-2. This prophecy, having to do with Gentiles finding the light, takes up the same theme as the earlier story of the pagan Magi who followed the star.

This early emphasis on the Galilean ministry is important to the structure of Matthew. At the end of his Gospel (in stark contrast to Luke) the revelation of the risen Christ to the Church will take place in this same ñGalilee of the Gentilesî (28:7,10,16). Matthew's story of Jesus ministry thus begins and ends in Galilee, the place where Jews and Gentiles live together. Galilee is thus an image of the Church.

This passage sees the ministry of Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy. Indeed, a full half of today's Gospel reading is taken up with a quotation from the Book of Isaiah, and this quotation is preceded by the words, ñthat it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet.î

It is important to look closely at this word ñfulfilledî with respect to prophecy: pleroth°. That is to say, in Jesus Christ the Old Testament has achieved the fullness of its meaning. No other meaning can be legitimately derived from it except through the interpretive lens of Christ. We do not attempt to find meanings in the text except those that flow directly through the "Christ filter."

I make a point of this interpretive principle because a great deal of American religion ignores it completely. It has become a commonplace in American religion to read biblical prophecy according to norms other than those of its fulfillment in Christ.

Let us be clear on this principle. It will save us from the error of reading biblical prophecy as though it were a set of regulation about contemporary politics, especially geopolitics, and most particularly the politics of the Holy Land. To read the Bible this way is to impose on the Sacred Text a meaning that it does not have.

To assert the Bible's ñfulfillmentî in Christ is to deny the legitimacy of biblical meanings apart from Christ. It is to make the Bible say what the Bible does not say.

Indeed, it is worse. I regard this non-Christian approach to the biblical prophecy as ñdemonicî in the strict sense of coming from the demons. Dreadful social, economic, and political evils come from such a reading of Holy Scripture. By their fruits do we know them.

We insist, then, that Christians are to read and understand Holy Scriptures solely through the interpretive lens called Jesus Christ. This principle is taught everywhere in the New Testament.

Thursday, January 12

Hebrews 8:1-13: Today's reading includes a quotation from the prophecy of Jeremiah (31:31-34), the longest Old Testament passage ever quoted in the New Testament. With its reference to the ñnew covenant,î this text was clearly a favorite among the early Christians.

Indeed, Jesus used that very expression in the institution of the Last Supper, so that Christians heard the words at least once a week. Jeremiah's text was impressed on their minds. In using this expression the Lord announced His own fulfillment of a prophecy uttered six centuries earlier.

Pursuing this theme, the Apostle Paul also wrote of the ñnew covenantî (2 Corinthians 3:6) and contrasted it with the old (Galatians 4:24).

In the prophecy of Jeremiah we observe that this new covenant consists in the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Torah given to Moses was chiseled in stone, but the new covenant is an inner testimony, the penmanship of the heart. A younger contemporary of Jeremiah said it no less forcefully: ñI will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do themî (Ezekiel 36:26-27). A later editor of the Book of Isaiah took up the theme too: ñAs for Me, says the LORD, this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouthî (Isaiah 59:21).

Friday, January 13

Hebrews 9:1-15: Let us continue to consider Jeremiah. We know that when Jerusalem was about to be surrounded by the Babylonians in 587, Jeremiah went into the Temple and removed the Ark of the Covenant, which he carried to Mount Nebo and concealed in a cave (2 Maccabees 2:4-5). Now among the objects contained in the Ark of the Covenant was a golden urn in which was placed a part of the Manna that fed the people in the desert.

This Manna was the heavenly bread, the ñbread of angelsî (Psalms 77 [78]:23-25). It was concealed in that golden urn; it was the ñhidden Manna,î and Jeremiah hid it still further in a cave. In the final analysis, however, it is not man that hides the Manna. In its very nature it is hidden from man, because the Manna is the bearer of mystery. It contains the eternal mystery of God, who becomes man's food. He feeds His children with His own life. We feed on this Manna in the Holy Eucharist, as is obvious in John 6, but it is also the eternal life of heaven (Revelation 2:17).

In addition, this Manna is the grace of prayer, as confessed in the great hymn ñGlorious Things of Thee Are Spokenî:

Thus deriving from their banner,
Light by night, and shade by day,
Safe they feed upon the Manna,
Which he gives them when they pray.

The Manna is also God's Holy Word, proclaimed in the Scriptures:

For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth (Isaiah 55:10-11).

Saturday, January 14

Hebrews 9:16-28: For the ancients, blood was not simply a bodily fluid. It was the source of the body's life. It was, for all practical purposes, the soul: ñFor the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soulî (Leviticus 17:11).

For the ancients, blood was a thing of the spirit. As the source of man's life, it was the blood that joined man to his Creator. Blood was fleshly, but it was also godly. It was the link between man and his Creator. When it flowed out of his body, man died. He was no longer linked to his Creator, so he died.

This intuition explains why, in the Bible, all sacrifices of atonement are blood sacrifices. All sin offerings involve the shedding of blood. Only blood can mediate atonement. Whenever the link between God and man has been sundered, there must be the shedding of blood.

In the case of Jesus, however, the blood is ñgodlyî in a new sense, because of the Incarnation. If the shedding of human blood, according to Genesis 4, cries out to God, how much more the blood of God's Son. Inasmuch as the ñlife is in the blood,î the pouring out of Jesus' blood is the pouring out of the life that God assumed in our flesh. This is the sacrifice by which we have access to God.

According to the moving hymn of Horatius Bonar in 1855,

Mine is the sin, but Thine the righteousness;
Mine is the guilt, but Thine the cleansing blood.
Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace;
Thy blood, Thy righteousness, O Lord, my God.