By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Thursday
God's penetrating Word
Hebrews 4: 1-16
The next three readings are from the Epistle to the Hebrews. Here is a writer for whom making connections with the past is of great importance. The pattern for the saving work of Christ is all there in the story of Israel. The way God dealt with Israel is a foretaste of how God deals with us through Christ. The old-timers are held up sometimes as a "cloud of witnesses" and sometimes as bad examples. The faith of Israel is held in solemn awe at the same time that the
claim is made that our hero is better than your hero.
I can understand why the book of Hebrews has become an embarrassment to those present-day Christians who have begun to hear what we sound like to the Jews.
I also find that the author's prooftexts are not much help to me in putting my doubts to rest or overcoming my backsliding. But in the midst of all the stuff that leaves me cold or puts me off, I constantly come upon explosions of insight. I am not always moved by the arguments, yet I find myself addressed by God in this writing.
This is the writer who observes, almost as an aside, in chapter nine, verse 22, that the way Israel does it, "...almost everything is purified with blood. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." What do you think of that? It might just be the case. Any of us who have come upon anything that really needed forgiving can see how it would take something like that.
- This is the writer who quotes a line from Haggai, which had another meaning altogether when it was first used:
- Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.
To this author, our earth-shaking experiences have the purpose of removing what is perishable so that what is imperishable can remain.
This is the author who penned the lines.- For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
I find that most eloquent language, distinguishing a genuine God-experience from a spurious one: a time of penetrating insight, a time when the inner person is fully known. It seems to me that what helps this language reach its depth is its use of both spiritual and fleshy words:- ...piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.
Finally, the closing verses of our reading contain God-language that has long worked for me, and still does, even if the masculine pronoun grates on my new awareness:- And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
How different that language is from much of our talk about God. God is the one with whom we "have to do", whether we know it or not, whether we hold proper views of God or not, whether we feel God-forsaken or not, or whether we think the notion of God is nonsense or not. Life has to do with whatever life has to do with.
I find this word quieting to my feverish search for God. It says to me, "Open your eyes to the one with whom you are having to do." When life runs into something it must deal with - that's where to look for God.
Thy Kingdom Come
Eternal God, your kingdom is like a seed that has been planted in the ground.
Nourish that seed. Hasten its growth, and give us eyes to see where it flourishes even now.
Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a perennial stream.
Lift up the fallen; comfort the afflicted; deliver the oppressed; restore the violated; reconcile the estranged.
Give us eyes to see the servants of your reign that go unrecognized in our midst.
Bring peace on earth; cause warfare to cease; evaporate our trust in armaments; remove our need to strive with one another for mastery.
Give us eyes to recognize peacemaking when we see it.
Fill the hungry with good things and hasten the time when no one is sent empty away, no one forgotten or excluded.
Give us eyes to recognize those who are even now living and serving as if your reign were at hand.
Reign in our hearts so that we can care for the world; so that we can be instrumental in hastening your kingdom.
Amen