Daily Liturgy and Scripture

“You will be judged by the law that sets you free.” …what now? How does that work? It’s because, if we are following Jesus, we must put ourselves into the flow of his life. His way is to make life abundant, and also less worrisome. By chasing after the things that want to take his place, we also set ourselves against him. His love is a mighty river, a flow that washes over us in the Spirit. Being in a mighty river works as long as you’re following it. Once you decide to fight a flow like that, you’re going to set yourself against a force that you can never defeat. That’s the law, and we can ride that flow to freedom. The same flow could drown us.

Today we start the book of James, written by a fascinating author. It is thought that he was the brother of Jesus, and likely that he didn't believe in Jesus as Messiah until after the resurrection. (Remember that time Jesus' family showed up to haul him off because they thought he was crazy?) He opens the letter talking about wisdom and humility. That's a pretty fitting theme for a man who probably thought he had his crazy brother Jesus figured out, and wouldn't follow him!

At the conclusion of Hebrews, this new covenant comes down to its most important piece: love. This is what binds us to God and one another. It is the story of God, moving in his people through history, moving the Son to be come one of us and our High Priest. It is the undercurrent of God's being.

To complete the transformation from old covenant to new, the Temple must be taken into account. It was the centerpoint of Jewish worship. In this verse, we have just that: the people are not at Mount Sinai, where the law was given to Moses. Our temple is not of earthly buildings at all, but made of living stones. We join with Christ, the High Priest and the sacrifice, and we become the temple of the Holy Spirit.

We are surrounded by generations of believers who join us as citizens of the Kingdom of God. The birthright of that Kingdom is suffering, but our route is different that Esau’s: where he suffered and gave up his identity, our identity is born in suffering and is grounded in Christ. He is the one who has done the work of imparting holiness and citizenship, and the one with whom we stand.

The writer of Hebrews has just put us next to Jesus the High Priest in chapter 10, in chapter 11 he puts the legends of the Hebrew Scriptures with us in Christ. By faith, we are one. By faith, these great heroes of Hebrew history showed their belonging to God. So it it with us, and we join their ranks.

It’s really great that the Feast of Matthew lined up with this reading from Hebrews about Jesus’s opening of the Holy Place, because Jesus does an early version of that in this picture of Matthew’s calling. When Matthew becomes a disciple of Christ, he invites people he already knows. Not exactly the front row of your average church service, more like the people who have never darkened the door. But they are invited to come, and Jesus sits to dinner with them in solidarity.

For a sacrifice to satisfy the standard of God, it must come from God. This is why the blood of animals was never a complete sacrifice. God never intended that to be the final word, but he did use that system to form and define his people until the Messiah come. With that plan complete, we are eternally secure in his finished work.

The Temple would have been no place for someone who didn’t like the sight of blood. The whole place must have been covered in it. This seems really gory, but God didn’t put this in place for no reason. It also wasn’t in place to satisfy some blood lust of the Almighty. It was to bring the people to repentance, and their repentance was dire business. Is there any thing more significant than the loss of a life? God didn’t think so, and that’s why Jesus made that very sacrifice.

Today our scriptures come together! What happened to the idea of the Temple under the new covenant, this thing we’ve read so much about in 1 Kings? There is still a temple, and still a High Priest. The Temple is in Christ’s Kingdom, and Christ himself has become both High Priest and sacrifice.