Biblical Text

You can read Hebrews 9.1-10 here.

Sermon Video

You can watch the sermon video here.

Sermon Transcript

[Note: The actual sermon will differ somewhat from what I had typed.]

The great church father, Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Symbols are powerful because they are visible signs of invisible realities.” If you do not grasp the power of symbols, think of what would happen if someone burned a flag or if a person did not stand when a national anthem was being sung. Symbols are indeed powerful aspects of our lives and we ignore them to our detriment. However, precisely because of the power inherent in them, symbols are also able to blind us to the invisible realities to which they were intended to point us.

Our journey toward understanding today’s passage and its meaning for us begins, strangely, in the first chapters of Genesis. Those of you who attend the Friday bible study would not be surprised. Hardly a session goes by in which we do not eventually reach the first chapters of Genesis only to devote considerable time there. As the saying goes, “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.” And it is my firm belief that almost all the atrocities that have happened while humans have lived on earth are because we have forgotten.

We have forgotten who we are, the purpose for which we were created and the destiny we have rejected and continue to shrug off like a piece of cloth that we are eager to discard. And mind you, this is not just in the world that does not accept the bible as scripture or believe in the saving work of Jesus. This rejection is ironically almost foundational in much of the church and the reason we do not recognize it is symptomatic of our forgetting. We have cut ourselves off from the roots of our faith and are tossed about with no idea of the original purpose.

In order to understand today’s passage, we need to go back and rediscover our original purpose. Genesis 1 begins with a grand account of creation. But it is a strange account with light appearing before the celestial bodies. And day and night are established without the sun and moon being mentioned. Even plants begin to grow on this planet without the sun. All of these are impossible and so should tell us that the account is not giving us a blow by blow description of what we would have seen had we been there at the time.

To the contrary, something far deeper is being communicated through the account. And it is something we read in the very first sentence where the text declares, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” We read a similar statement in the first verse of chapter 2 where the text summarizes the earlier account by stating, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.” We read again in verse 4, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

Four times the text has told us something that we have forgotten. We have bought into a Platonic view of the world and have denied the goodness of what is physical. We have surrendered to the onslaught of the Enlightenment and have split what God had made as a unified whole. You see, there is no “earth” without the corresponding mention of “heavens” in the very same phrase. It is either “the heavens and the earth” or “the earth and the heavens.” They are two sides of a coin and we have done our best to cut right through the coin to split it.

We think either that our destiny is to go to heaven when we die, forgetting that there is no heaven without the earth and forgetting that the new creation includes not just a new heaven, but a renewed heaven that comes down to be unified with a renewed earth. This, unfortunately, has been the view of most Christians, over the last few centuries especially and is a virulent idea that a few Christian leaders like me are doing our best to eradicate from the conceptual framework of the church.

Or we think that this world is all there is, denying the existence of anything our frail, fallible and fickle senses cannot perceive. This is the view of many naturalistic scientists who, while being combative when others might presume to speak within their own fields of specialization, fail to recognize when they themselves have crossed the line demarcating science from philosophy. Not only that, they often do not even recognize that each scientific sub-branch has its own kind of evidence, and methods of gathering and interpreting that evidence.

But Genesis tells us that there is one reality, which it calls “the heavens and the earth.” Both were created to function together in a symbiotic relationship in which each supports and is supported by the other. In technical terms that make sense only after Genesis 3, biblical scholars like John Walton and Sandra Richter claim that the first account of creation is designed to narrate the creation of a cosmic temple. We will get to what that means shortly, after we consider what happened in Genesis 2 and then Genesis 3.

In Genesis 2, we read of God forming the human being from the dust of the earth and placing him in a pristine garden that had been cultivated by God himself. God forms the woman as the only being who is capable of giving the man the kind of strong, secure, and mutually selfless support he would need to continue the work God had started. The invisible God and the visible humans were working in harmony in this garden. And this was possible because “in the beginning God created” not just the heavens nor just the earth but “the heavens and the earth”.

In Genesis 3, the humans disobey God and as a consequence God drives them out of the garden and places Cherubim to guard the way back in and deny humans the access they once had. They are sent into the uncultivated parts of the world and it is uncultivated precisely because it does not have free access to the supporting presence of the invisible realm. The two entities – the heavens and the earth – that were intended to work in a mutually supporting manner had now been split apart and subjected to futility to borrow Pauls’ words from Romans.

Then began the great rescue plan. And it is not just a rescue of humans. This is where the Church has failed the world and the rest of creation. We have presented a truncated gospel in which God is only concerned about humans. But let us get something straight. If God is not faithful to the rest of creation, then we cannot claim he will be faithful to us. For if God is faithless to any part of creation – a part that did not rebel, mind you – then how can we have any assurance that he would be faithful to humans – the part that did rebel and turn its back on him?

You see, God has not created anything without value and purpose. Whether it be a tiny amoeba, a speck of stardust, or humans, God has created things and beings that have intrinsic value because it is the loving and faithful God who has created them. His decision to bring them into existence is what gives them value and his character of being faithful is what guarantees that he will not forget them when he orchestrates his grand rescue plan because whatever he declared to be good is what he determines is worthy of rescuing.

Now, when God created humans, he created them to be his stewards of creation, governing his good and beautiful creation in a manner that reflected the goodness and beauty of the God who had created it as an expression of love. So when God began his great rescue, the purpose of creating humans to be his stewards would have been futile if his rescue did not also include the creation that humans were supposed to govern. I am reminded of Japanese kintsugi art in which broken pieces of pottery are put back together with gold.

The end result is a unique piece of art that cannot be replicated, but that often is stronger than the original pottery. But more importantly, the recreated pottery can be used for its original purpose. The purpose is never forgotten, but the imperfections are assimilated in the artwork in order to create something that is even more beautiful than the original and can serve the original purpose just as well. So if God created humans to be his stewards and rescues us without that purpose in mind, what would be the point? Then his original purpose was purposeless!

However, if humans were created as stewards, then when we are recreated, we must be recreated as stewards. And so the rescue plan includes all of creation, just as Paul declares in Romans when he writes, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

But for that to happen, the visible and the invisible needed to once again work together, symbiotically, supporting and being supported by each other. For that was how God made them to function. The humans knew this. We can see signs of it in the account about Babel in Genesis 11 where, in order to create sacred space where the visible and the invisible realms would intertwine and interlock, the humans began to build a ziggurat to give the gods a way back to earth. The ziggurat was intended to establish the symbiotic relationship between heaven and earth.

The humans at Babel, however, were doing that with the express goal of rejecting the original purpose of humans in creation. And so God thwarted their plans and responded by unveiling his own plan. He would indeed establish a beachhead on earth where heaven and earth would intertwine and interlock. But for that he needed a people and a place so that at that place and among his people he would reveal his presence. And this took shape when God gave Moses the plans for the tabernacle in Exodus.

Our passage briefly describes the layout of the tabernacle. Please note that Hebrews does not mention the temple, but the tabernacle. This is quite intentional because Hebrews presents the life of faith as a journey toward a city founded by God. The temple, as a structure that belonged to the monarchical period of Israel’s history, could not evoke the same ideas that the tabernacle, which belonged to the wandering period as well, could evoke. Hence, Hebrews discusses the tabernacle at length and, in our passage, pays close attention to the layout.

The tabernacle precinct, leading from the outer courts to the holy of holies was intended to not only provide access to the presence of God, but also to remind the Israelites and, through them, the world of how deep was the fracture of the relationship between God and humans, between heaven and earth, between the invisible and the visible. The entire structure was designed not only to evoke a sense of awe but also the sense of foreboding. Now it was only one man – the High Priest – who had access to the holy of holies and only on one day of the year.

But not only that, once the High Priest entered the holy of holies, he was faced with the daunting sight of two Cherubim guarding the covering of the ark, where Yahweh was considered to be enthroned, reminding the High Priest of the Cherubim that still guarded Eden against the presence of sinful humans. The tabernacle, you see, was supposed to be a microcosm of what the entire creation was. Whereas at creation the heavens and the earth were designed to intertwine and interlock, so also this was supposed to happen in the tabernacle.

The tabernacle, in other words, was supposed to be a pointer to the reality that was experienced in the original cosmic temple where the invisible God and the visible humans were able to interact and have communion with each other. But the tabernacle also pointed to the fact that something was dreadfully wrong for there still were obstacles to access. But these obstacles to our access to God have been taken away by Jesus’ work and Hebrews goes to great lengths, in the passage before today’s and the one after, to explain how this has happened.

Something drastic happened when Jesus died on the cross and this is indicated to us when we read about how the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. However, for the most part, Evangelical Christians have forgotten this universe altering effect of Jesus’ death. The orthodox traditions, however, have not forgotten. I grew up in the Mar Thoma Church. On the days when we had communion service, when we entered the church building a curtain would be drawn in front of the congregation, obscuring the altar from view.

When the service started, we would hear the priest incantate words of the liturgy that describes how God is enthroned among the heavenly hosts and inaccessible to sinful humans. Then the congregation joins the incantation, acknowledging that God is glorious beyond measure. And when the congregation confesses their sins and pleads with God to forgive them, the curtains are drawn back revealing the smoke-filled chancel in which the smoke slowly dissipates. Altogether, this progression symbolizes the journey from exile to access.

If the significance of this story of salvation in the liturgy had been explained to me when I was growing up, I might still call myself a Mar Thoma Christian. But the liturgy calls to mind a time when we had no access to God because of our sins. But now, because of Jesus’ work, all who confess their sins in his name are able to draw into God’s presence without the fear that surely must have gripped the High Priest on the Day of Atonement when he had his mandated annual rituals inside the holy of holies.

The tabernacle, in other words, was a reminder to the High Priest and to the Israelites of two things. First, humans are not designed to function without access to God. That’s because “in the beginning God created” not just the heavens, nor just the earth, but “the heavens and the earth.” Humans were to be God’s visible stewards in his visible world. We cannot function without this access to God, as is revealed to us in the story about Cain and Abel, where it is their desire to have access to God that provides the backdrop for the conflict between them. The necessity of access to God also comes across when we read the rest of Genesis 4, leading up to the institutionalized violence of Lamech who, precisely because he is a descendant of Cain who had fled from the presence of God, couches unrestrained vengeance in quasi-religious terms and invites others to do the same. When God calls Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, one reason is to establish an outpost on earth where heaven and earth can intertwine and interlock, thereby partly re-establishing the original symbiosis. The tabernacle then is the focus of this intertwining and interlocking of invisible and visible. More specifically, it is between the Cherubim that presided over the ark of the covenant that this merging of two realities – invisible and visible – is accomplished.

The second thing the tabernacle reminded the High Priest of is that regaining access was not a simple matter. Despite all the elaborate accoutrements of the tabernacle and after it the temple, access was severely restricted. Yahweh had reclaimed only a small strip of land in the Levant for his people. And within that land only the tabernacle precinct was sacred space. And within that only the holy place was truly reserved for the people to approach God. And within that only the holy of holies was where God’s presence was to be found in a small raised horizontal area of forty-five inches by twenty-seven inches that was accessible on one day out of three hundred sixty five, to one male out of the hundreds of thousands of humans who lived.

Put together, the two reminders to the High Priest in the tabernacle declared, in an almost deafening manner, that God was at work to restore the heaven and earth creation that he had made and we had marred. It pointed to what God was still doing, not just to what God had done. Now Hebrews uses a specific word to describe the role of the tabernacle. However, our translations refuse to render it with its normal meaning. And I think this is yet another sign of our being held captive to the Platonic idea of eternal truths than the Hebraic idea of story.

The word that Hebrews uses is παραβολή (parabole), which occurs fifty times in the New Testament and is translated as parable in forty-six instances. It occurs twice in Hebrews and our translations use ‘figure’ or ‘illustration’ or ‘symbol’ rather than ‘parable’. And I think this is because, having been duped into thinking that the Christian faith consists of eternal, timeless truths, we cannot construe truth being communicated through story. However, this is precisely the primary method by which Jesus communicated his ideas of the kingdom of God.

In other words, when Jesus clearly demonstrated a preference for story to communicate his ideas about the kingdom of God, our refusal to recognize the parable as a viable means through which truth can be communicated is a rejection of Jesus’ own methods. More to the point in the context of today’s passage, we fail to recognize the storied nature of the tabernacle. Just as in the case of the Mar Thoma communion service, the tabernacle told a story – God was restoring the heaven and earth reality without which neither heaven nor earth can truly function.

Now if we look at the parables of Jesus we will realize that they all, despite being varied in their story elements, contained one critical element. The parables are subversive stories in which the people we would normally think were the good guys turn out to be not quite so good and the ones we think were to be shunned turn out to be the ones we had to emulate. So when Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” he told a story in which the priest and the Levites, both honored in Jewish society, turn out to be the ones who did not love their neighbor.

But the Samaritan – the product of intermarriage with foreigners and who was despised by the Jews – turns out to be the one who knew what the commandment meant. And when the profligate son returns home after his period of rebellion and debauchery, it is his elder brother, who might initially have been considered the epitome of virtue, who turns out to be unforgiving and unaccepting of his repentant brother. And similarly, when the invitees to the wedding banquet excuse themselves from the feast, the invitation is extended to even the outcasts.

The parables are subversive in nature and when Hebrews uses this word when there were other words available to mean ‘figure’ or ‘symbol’ or ‘illustration’, we must understand this to be a deliberate choice of words to communicate what the word normally means. Hebrews, in other words, is telling the hearers that the tabernacle told a subversive story. It existed for this one purpose – to tell a story that no one expected precisely because we humans cannot even conceive of a story that is so damningly subversive.

You see, the story the tabernacle told was that of its own insufficiency, its own future obsolescence, its own upcoming demise. This is what Hebrews wants the hearers to understand. And Hebrews thinks that this first instance of ‘planned obsolescence’ is something any thinking Israelite should have grasped. To understand this, let us approach this by considering the most beloved Psalm – Psalm 23. After singing of how Yahweh was his shepherd, David ends the Psalm with the words “and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.”

Now, when David wrote this, the temple had not been built. Hence, the only house David could have been referring to was the tabernacle. And David proclaims that he would “dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.” Now if this were true, if David’s hope of dwelling in Yahweh’s tabernacle forever was based in reality, then it must mean that the tabernacle would last forever. And this would mean that God had finished his rescuing work with the design and construction of the tabernacle.

Now recall what the tabernacle accomplished – a one day a year access to one man over a place that had an area of eight and a half square feet of land. If the tabernacle was the final stage in God’s plan, then God had woefully failed to re-establish and re-implement the symbiotic reality that he had originally conceived of when he created the heavens and the earth. In other words, the tabernacle absolutely could not have been the final stage in God’s plan for, if it were the final stage, it would belie God’s faithfulness , which is the bedrock of our faith. Let me explain.

If the tabernacle were the final stage, it would mean that God was satisfied with not re-establishing the symbiotic heaven and earth reality for most of the earth and most of humans. He would then be unfaithful to most of his creation, something that is unfathomable in the bible. As Paul says in Romans 3.4, “Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true.” In other words, if the cost of showing that God is faithful is that every human is shown to be unfaithful, then we must choose that option. For, if God is not faithful, we hope in vain.

Hence, since the tabernacle only re-establishes a heaven and earth reality in a very limited way, it just could not have been the final stage in God’s plans because then that would make God unfaithful to most of his creation. I know I am repeating. And I do not normally do this. But this is so important that I must repeat. The sad truth is that, once the tabernacle was constructed, the Israelites forgot to think about what the tabernacle was intended to communicate. They quickly forgot the parabolic meaning inherent in its design.

They quickly forgot how subversive its very existence was and they began to think of it as the final stage in God’s plans, as revealed in David’s words in Psalm 23. The parable became a symbol and the symbol became reality and very soon we lost sight of what was real and began to believe that the only reality was this ahistoricized symbol now stripped of the story it was designed to tell. I say ‘we’ because the Church has done pretty much the same thing that the ancient Israelites did when they began to think of the tabernacle as the final reality.

We have forgotten that the people of God exist for the world. We have surrendered to forgetfulness our God given task of acting in this world like those who have been made aware of the original vocation of humans as stewards of God’s creation. We have accepted a truncated gospel as though it were the whole package and we have given a myopic vision to the world about what it means to be human. No wonder so few want to join our ranks! Who would want to trust Jesus based on the most common message the Church announces?

If our destiny is just to go to heaven when we die, the only ones who will sign on are those who are looking to escape and not the ones who know in their bones that they were designed not to escape, but to engage. If the salvation we announce does not encompass all of creation then the only ones who will be attracted by the message are those who selfishly want a fire insurance policy and not those who know in their bones that humans were created to selflessly steward a creation that desperately needs selfless stewards.

The tabernacle was a parable that told a story of its own upcoming obsolescence. And in like manner, the Church too is a parable that tells a story of a God who earnestly desires that the two halves of his creation – the invisible heavens and the visible earth – would once again function together for their mutual benefit. The metaphor of the Church as the bride of Christ communicates this very idea – that God’s people were designed to function in partnership with God. It is the same metaphor when Israel is likened to the bride of Yahweh.

And the same idea was originally communicated when God decided to make the woman to be the man’s companion and when the man recognized that she was a part of him and that they could only truly function when they were united once again. The unity of two similar but different entities is a theme that runs through the bible, reaching its climax in the unity of the divine and the human in the person of Jesus, revealed to us when John, in the prologue of his remarkable Gospel, tells us, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst.”

And so the Church exists to tell of a time when the Church will no longer be needed for “in the name of Jesus, every knee will bend, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” When God consummates his redemptive plans for creation, the Church will no longer be needed for there will be no one to witness to and no one to disciple because all of creation, especially all the humans, would acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and in so doing give glory to God the Father.

Because of the short sightedness of the Israelites, the tabernacle became a parable that lost focus. They began to think of it as the final stage in God’s plans and as a result it lost the power and ability to point beyond itself to a reality that it was designed to witness to. And in like manner, because of the short sightedness of Christians, the Church has become a parable that has lost focus. We have thought that individual salvation and going to heaven when we die are the final stages of God’s plans for his good and beautiful creation, accessible only to believing humans.

And as a result the Church has lost the power and ability to point beyond itself to a reality it was designed to give witness to. The Church, with its focus on going to heaven when we die, has become a shadow of what it was designed to be rather than the bearer of light, a voiceless spokesperson, a messenger without a message. It is time to climb out of this ditch into which we have fallen. It is time to recover the whole gospel based on the original God given vocation of humans and on the conviction that the bedrock of our faith is God’s faithfulness.

And so it is my earnest prayer that the Church rejects the Platonic, world rejecting and vocation denying message it has been proclaiming for some centuries now. It is my call to the leaders of the Church around the world to accept the more difficult, but truer task of making disciples of Jesus who understand that the Church, like the tabernacle, exists for the rest of creation and by so doing to stop being the parable that lost focus.