The chapter divisions in Hebrews are, so far, annoyingly in the middle of idea flow. This chapter finishes the idea started in 5 yesterday, and half way through, switches to the idea carried on in chapter 7. Not very helpful if you’re reading a chapter a day, let alone every few days.
The material about mature vs baby Christianity, the milk vs solid food teaching metaphor, takes a more urgent turn than I expected. His point is that for grown ups, milk is a starvation diet.
As a mature-ish Christian I was most interested in him defining what counts as mature teaching. He doesn’t, though it seems the rest of the letter will at least exemplify that.
It seems like the Hebrews have heard and accepted the gospel, the news that Christ is Messiah, but there are troubling signs that it’s made little long term difference to the leaders. They’ve acknowledged that Jesus is God, but otherwise stayed comfortably culturally Jewish.
It has to transform your whole world view and speak in actions, or it’s dead. The writer is dramatic, there’s no coming back if you hear it and it makes no difference.
This feeds a larger pattern I think I’m noticing in the Bible, that hell is a teaching primarily for believers. The responsibility of being privileged to hear and believe the gospel story of Jesus is greater than much of humanity.
He hastens to add that he believes that the Hebrews are still a way off the edge of the fiery pit, but it’s a warning, a strong encouragement that the rest of the teaching will keep them edging towards the better direction, towards God.
It’s ringing in my ears a bit because our pastor likes to describe our church as “comfortably anglican”. And it’s the morning after the Anglican church in Australia dramatically split with the creation of a breakaway parallel Anglican church defined by it’s hard line stance on homosexuality.
I’m still processing that, and won’t go into it much today.
Initial impressions are that the way it’s been done is either the most careful way that concerned conservatives could have taken a stance, or a really crafty power play. Or maybe a bit of both.
How it might impact homosexual people with sincere spiritual yearnings (aka, all of them at some point), I’ve barely thought about yet. I hope the breakaways have!
But this teaching, of the necessity of Jesus transforming our cultural comfort zones, flows in surprising ways around the shape of my internal debate about it.
The rest of the chapter returns to Jesus being a high priest like Melchizedek. I think there’s a chapter and a bit to go on that, so I’ll also leave that discussion.
Except to mention that this part of the chapter has the stellar quotes. This morning I particularly appreciated:
“God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised. God did this so that… we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.
“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure”
Anchor for the soul. Unchangeable. Phew!
Care work is still ramping up, 22 hours this week, close to my aim of about 25. But not regular yet, still a lot of fill-ins. And it’s quite exhausting. But so little of the exhaustion is from work politics, so much is from the strain of meeting someone in their need. That’s refreshing.
I’ll hear whether or not I’m a candidate for the Baptist job I applied for soon, which would be much more relaxing and comfortable… as long as it’s not the path to hell.