Tag Archives: Hebrews 4

A Die-Hard Tradition

March 4, 2022 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16 (NIV)

Priest (prēst) n. : Someone who is authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and God.

I’m wading into some deeper weeds today, but it’s something that has been important for me to understand in my spiritual journey, and it’s understanding the concept of a priest. A priest is a human mediator, go-between, or intermediary between another human being and God. A human goes to a priest to receive sacraments, confess sins, and be absolved of sin. The priest is a spiritual gatekeeper between the average joe member and almighty God. “Priests” have been a traditional part of religion forever. Growing up, the only “priests” I knew about were Roman Catholic.

The first time I remember stepping into a Roman Catholic church I was about 24 years old. I was there for the funeral of a young person who had taken his own life. In the years of my childhood, there were still small remnants of centuries-old antagonism between Catholics and Protestants. I remember that most towns had separate graveyards for Catholics and Protestants. I remember lectures from fundamentalist professors damning all Catholics to hell, which I found to be silly.

I was actually fascinated by the Catholic funeral that day and the rituals I witnessed for the first time. I was moved by the imagery. My study of the history, traditions, and theology of the Roman Catholic church has led me to a wide range of emotions from great appreciation to rage to honor and to sorrow. To be honest, I can say the same of Protestant denominations, as well. Human institutions are all human systems and are therefore given to the tragic failings of human beings and our nature. My observation has been that Roman Catholics make priests an official part of their system, while Protestants say they don’t have priests before treating their pastors as if they are exactly that.

For the Hebrew people who were first-century followers of Jesus, the priestly paradigm was a cornerstone of their religion for over a thousand years. The system God set up through Moses had a high priest who was the only human who could enter the “most holy place” of God’s presence in the temple. Only descendants of Aaron (Moses’ right-hand man) could be priests. It was an exclusive class of individuals who stood between the average human and God.

In today’s chapter, the author of the letter to early Jewish followers of Jesus is starting to address a huge paradigm shift in this priestly tradition. It’s going to continue to come up in upcoming chapters, and it has tremendous spiritual implications, so it’s important for a 21st reader to understand. Four times so far, the author has referred to Jesus as “high priest” and what the author is saying in today’s chapter is that Jesus was God come to earth, who was tempted but didn’t sin. Any believer can go directly to Jesus in our time of need, He understands our human struggles and will extend mercy (He won’t hold our sin against us) and grace (favor we don’t deserve).

In the quiet this morning, I find this simple truth so powerful. No more human mediators are required. Any believer can seek Jesus directly, access Jesus directly, confess our sins directly, and receive forgiveness, mercy, and grace directly. Why? Because my body is God’s temple and God’s Spirit lives in me. Because this is true of every believer, Peter says that every one of Jesus’ followers belongs to a “royal priesthood” (In Jewish history the monarchy and priesthood were separated, but Jesus unites the two as both king & priest). Paul wrote to Timothy: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.”

So, according to the author of Hebrews, according to Peter, and according to Paul, no other human priest is required as a go-between a human being and Christ Jesus Himself. Yet, some institutions and denominations continue the practice based on tradition.

I’ve observed along my life journey that human traditions die hard.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Spiritual Misperceptions from Growing Up in Church

July 5, 2017 Tom Vander Well 3 Comments

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:15-16 (NIV)

I grew up in a relatively small neighborhood church. It was a Methodist church that maintained a fairly traditional, liturgical approach to faith and worship. There was an altar at the front of the sanctuary that was respected as a special, holy place. There was a huge, loud pipe organ. The minister always wore long black robes on Sundays. The choirs also wore long robes and marched down the aisle behind the minister to their hallowed place in the choir loft. As a child watching and participating in this pageantry each week, there were some things that I quickly came to assume about spiritual matters:

First, our minister was different. He (and growing up it was always a he) dressed differently both in the church service and during the week. I was expected to behave differently (as in, better than normal) whenever I was around him. I even noticed that adults behaved differently when they were around him. I came to the conclusion that he was spiritually better than me. He was certainly closer to God than me and had a particular spiritual authority no one else seemed to have. He certainly had a pipeline to God the rest of us didn’t have. You don’t mess up or behave badly around him.

Having observed this social and behavioral distinction between the Rev and the rest of us, I came to believe that there is a certain spiritual caste system in life. There was religious nobility (ministers) and everyday commoners (like me and my family). The social system within our church fed this notion fairly rigidly. Even when I joined the youth choir I had to dress myself up in fine robes each week to approach the altar (always behind the minister, our proper place), sit in the choir loft, and participate in singing of the anthem. If I was to participate in the divine then I needed to dress differently (better and more religious) and be on my best behavior (goofing off on the choir loft during the service was a damnable offense). To participate in the ritual of communion I had to be 13, take a year’s worth of classes, and pass the confirmation class test which got me to a higher spiritual level in the system.

Over time, this distinction between the spiritual pageantry of Sunday and the every day life in my neighborhood with my family led me to believe that there was a certain compartmentalization in life between the sacred and the secular. Sure my family said our rote prayers before meals and before bed, but every day life was where you gave a passing nod to the divine and prayed for the Vikings to win the Super Bowl. [The Vikings always lost the big game, of course, teaching me that our minister had, indeed, a better standing with God…he was a Steelers and Cowboys fan.] The real spiritual stuff was always on Sunday morning, for which we cleaned ourselves up and made ourselves presentable.

In today’s chapter the author of this letter to Hebrew believers begins a discussion of Jesus as “High Priest.” Having been raised in the Protestant tradition, I find myself a few steps removed from an experiential concept of “priest.” The priesthood became a theological line of separation between Protestants and Roman Catholics in the Reformation. Nevertheless, as I’ve progressed in my faith journey I’ve found it an important concept to contemplate and unpack because it goes right to the heart of some of the gross, spiritual misconceptions that even the Protestant church gave me growing up.

Even in the opening of the discussion in which we are introduced to Jesus as High Priest, He is not introduced to us on a higher spiritual plane confined to the holy altar of some Tabernacle on Sunday morning. Jesus is introduced as one who empathizes and has experienced our every day struggles and temptations. Jesus the High Priest is God with us, in our working and playing and eating and drinking. Instead of cleaning ourselves up and approaching God with fearful respect and awkward religiosity, Jesus calls us to approach with confidence, just as we are. Rather than approaching to earn some kind of merit badge in the religious pecking order, we are approaching to receive a generous gift of unmerited mercy and grace.

This morning as I enjoy my coffee looking out over the lake, I am reflecting on the core misperceptions the church gave me about God as a child. It strikes me that these natural surroundings at the lake are a holier and more spiritual place than the altar of my old neighborhood church. In this “thin place” this morning I’m confidently approaching Jesus and asking for some increased clarity regarding my childhood misperceptions and how they might still be affecting me in unhealthy ways. I am asking God to reveal to me in the days ahead, in the following chapters, the important distinctions between the very human concepts of Jesus as High Priest that I am tied to by my human experience and religious traditions, and the true High Priest revealed in these chapters.

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Hebrews 4

March 1, 2012 Tom Vander Well 3 Comments

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable. Hebrews 4:13 (NLT)

Scene 8

GLADYS and DEAN exit. ARL steps up and sits next to THOMAS on the porch steps, he notices the cigarette in THOMAS’ hand.

ARL: You a smoker, Tommy?

THOMAS: No. Not any more.

ARL: I suppose you know your dad used to like a cigarette now and then. Kids always know their parents secrets.

THOMAS: Yes. He used to keep his stash of cigarettes in the shed. He used to always head out to “work in the shed” after dinner. Mom never said a word.

ARL: Oh, I think your mom gave him an earful from time to time, but she’d stay quiet in front of you. She wouldn’t want to admit it in case you didn’t know. But of course, you did know because kids always know the secrets of their parents.

THOMAS: Like the fact that you and dad and Mr. De Haas would meet in the shed to have a little nip at the bottle of Old Crow in the bottom drawer of dad’s tool cabinet?

ARL: (mocking incredulity) I don’t know what you’re talking about.

THOMAS: (laughs) I’m sure you don’t…

Secrets are powerful. Tucked away in dark places, secrets both great and small wield tremendous power over us and in us. And, as with most things you find in dark places, the results are generally not positive.

Secrets are powerful. We all keep them. It’s part of the human condition. We’ve been hiding things since Adam and Eve figured out how useful fig leaves can be. And so we make sure certain things are hidden away from public sight where we think no one sees.

The way things work out, however, is that things hidden in dark places eventually find their way to the light. As Arl muses in the above scene from Ham Buns and Potato Salad: Children discover the secrets of their parents. Parents discover the secrets of their children. Jesus himself said, “For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light.” That is, because everything is exposed to God. The deepest secrets of our lives, hearts, minds and souls are already fully laid bare before our Creator.

Exposure is not a bad thing. Why do you think Frank Warren’s site Post Secret has been continually flooded with postcards for years and years? Exposure can be painful, perhaps. Embarrassing, usually – at least for a time. But dark things exposed to the Light tend to lose their power over us. That’s why God commands us to confess our secrets to one another and to expose dark things to light. In doing so, we are stepping out of darkness and into Light. We are pressing forward in our journey rather than getting mired and stuck in murky places.

So, what’s my secret?