Sermon for 25th Sunday after Pentecost – Hebrews 10:11-25

Have you ever felt like you’re fighting a losing battle? Maybe you’ve heard of “The Great Resignation”? There’s an epidemic of folks who are quitting their jobs for a bunch of reasons, and a lot of companies who seem desperate to fill openings, but somehow things aren’t coming together. I’m not an economist, so I’m not qualified to speculate why, but I seem to know a lot of folks with strong opinions about what the problem is, and most of the time I hear them blame people for not wanting work. Somehow, I suspect the situation is way more complicated than this. But the other side of the story concerns folks like me who are still working. My company just had a bunch of really valuable folks leave, and that leaves it to me to pick up the slack. Customers don’t stop demanding new features, and bugs don’t magically stop happening, just because we don’t have enough folks for all the work. I love to cross off my to-do list as much as anyone, but after a while, I just feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. And it can be really demoralizing. So, do you keep fighting or do you give up? How do you decide?

This morning we have a reading from Hebrews, and Hebrews is like one long sermon written to folks who feel like they’re fighting a losing battle. Folks ready to throw up their hands because they’re just tired. Now, Hebrews is a mysterious book. It’s a sermon. But we don’t really know who wrote it. We don’t know who the preacher was. We don’t really know who it was written to. But it gives us a picture of the situation. This is a congregation of folks who heard the gospel proclaimed by evangelists. It fired them up. They got together. The preacher talks about how God gave them signs and wonders and even miracles. So you know amazing things were happening. But after a while, it got really hard. The preacher says, “remember after you were enlightened? You endured a hard struggle with suffering. Publicly exposed to abuse and persecution. You cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions.” Some were even thrown in prison.

Now, I know this sounds a little melodramatic. But back in the Roman Empire, the emperor was considered a god that you had to worship. You had to make sacrifices to the emperor. You had to make public confession of your faith in the emperor. Which is a problem if you believe that there’s only one true God. So the state used to punish Christians for treason. They prosecuted Christians on false accusations or for illegal assemblies. Now, it wasn’t everywhere. It depended on who your local officials were, and what city you were in. But it sounds like that was the situation where these folks were. And it’s not just that they were getting in trouble. The preacher talks about how they used to be partners with others who were abused and persecuted. They had compassion for those who were in prison. He doesn’t say for sure, but if we read between the lines, it sounds like these folks might have been speaking up about other injustices too. Because the Roman Empire was pretty corrupt and quick to silence whoever it decided was a “problem”. Ask Jesus how it went for him….

Now, it’s hard for us to really get what life was like for these folks because we’re American Christians. We don’t think this happens here. But we also hear stories about folks getting arrested for peaceful protests. Protesting for Black Lives Matter. Protesting against public executions. Protesting for justice for Native Americans. And we’re always suspicious of these stories because folks don’t get arrested for no reason, right? But how do we know for sure if we weren’t there too? So it’s not a stretch to think that faith in Jesus put big targets on the backs of these folks. Now, sometimes that kind of shared persecution can really make a group tighten up. Cults work this way. The more they’re attacked, the more they hunker down. Every time the world doesn’t end when they predicted, every time folks prove them wrong, they grow stronger. But of course, this isn’t a cult. These are folks just trying to follow Jesus. Folks trying to stand in solidarity with their neighbors. So it wears them down. They’re keeping their mouths shut. They’re drifting away from each other. Some have stopped gathering. They’re losing hope, and losing faith. But this isn’t just a spiritual problem. If they give up it leaves others vulnerable too.

So there’s a crisis, and the preacher knows it. He wants to get folks back on board. But I’m not sure he took pastoral care class, because he comes down on them pretty hard. He says, “For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire.” (10:26-27) And he says, “If you’ve tasted the heavenly gift but fall away, you crucify Jesus all over again and hold him up to contempt.” (6:4-6) Wow! I mean, talk about beating folks when they’re down! It doesn’t feel inspiring, does it? If anything, it feels like the kind of stuff that drives some folks away from the church.

Although, what’s worse is that he’s right. If the powers of injustice win, then everyone loses. It’s like Jesus died for nothing. But who can really stand up against all those powers? And when you’re already burnt out and feeling stuck, it’s that much worse. It feels like doom and the preacher says, “It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

But the good news is that it’s a far more hopeful thing to fall into the arms of Jesus. The one who knows how burnt out and stuck we feel. The one who knows how powerless we are. So Jesus does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. He goes to the cross to offer himself for our sake, to take all of our shame upon his own body and it kills him. But after 3 days Jesus rises in power and glory, to become our great priest over the house of God. And so the preacher proclaims “the new and living way that he opened for us through his own flesh”. Because Jesus raises us with him. So that wherever he is, there we go, “with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”

This is good news for us, because we still have days when we feel like we’re fighting a losing battle. It’s not just that our best intentions go awry. How often do we mean well, but still fail to do as we ought? Or mean to encourage others but still tear them down without realizing it? We still get in our own way all the time. So that’s why the preacher reminds us of God’s great promise. “This is the covenant that I will make with them. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds. I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” I know it’s hard to believe, because God remembers everything. What kind of God has selective amnesia? But the preacher testifies that “he who has promised is faithful.” Even and especially when we’re not.

But faith is hard. We still see injustice and corruption. We still see folks being marginalized and maybe that intimidates us. Maybe we feel like we don’t know what to say. Or afraid of what other folks might think about us. So that’s why Jesus gives us the gift of each other. His beloved community made manifest in us right now. Where we can confess the deepest hopes of our hearts and be heard. Where we can’t help but inspire each other to love and good deeds. Where we get to meet together and encourage one another. And all the more as we see the Day approaching. Because it will, and its light will be glorious.