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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

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Saturday
Holy contamination

Hebrews 13: 8-16

Here is another passage by this author where I miss the argument but get hit by the word. Someone has been leading the early church astray by insisting on what sounds like dietary practices. We are told that it is more important that we be strengthened by grace than by foods which brought no real benefit to anyone. But the next two sentences explode with penetrating insight into the depth of the gospel:

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

A footnote points to a reference in Leviticus. There, we are instructed, not only must the sin offerings be burned outside the camp, but also that the person in charge of this burning must be cleansed of contamination before returning to the camp.

Clearly the inference in Leviticus is that the holiness of God must not be contaminated by sin!

Just as clearly, the inference in Hebrews is that Christ, the holy one of God, has taken this contamination upon himself. How better to put the scandal of the gospel?

Where is God in this wrong-headed world? Look under the burden of the world's sin. And as you and I become God-filled people, that's where we are, outside the gate, where the people of the world sin and suffer.

Credit for the following paragraph belongs to Roman Catholic Sister Mary Jagen of New York. It first appeared about 10 years ago in an inter-church publication to promote concern for economic justice in the third world. It became part of the language of the justice and peace movement:

It does not matter that we may be personally innocent of acts we perceive to be unjust, our institutions do our sinning for us.

Some of the evil in the world is there because bad people do bad things. But a more persistent and tragic kind of evil in the world is the kind our institutions do for us. Especially the good institutions: like the marketplace, like our political institutions, like the judicial system, like the health care system, like the welfare system, like collective bargaining. The operation of all these systems includes the doing of injustices.

Can you imagine a holy cure for that? Scold the wicked? Warn the sinner? Act as the conscience of the state? Make sure you and yours are clean? Withdraw from the world in order to establish an exemplary community? By themselves, all of these "cures" avoid taking responsibility for the sinning our institutions do for us.

What this "outside the camp" aside is telling us is that we will find God when we get under the load of the world's sin.

There is one more surprise for me in this passage. The writer says that the reason we can join Jesus outside the gate, bearing abuse for him, is that we have no continuing city here but seek a city that is to come.

According to this author, the purpose of the dynamic pull of the heavenly city is to empower us to join Christ, outside the camp, under the world's sin. The effect of having our true home in heaven is that we can truly love the world.

Benediction
Almighty, ever blessed God, lover of the world.
We come to ask your blessing on those we bring before you.
Here are the children. How vulnerable they are to the aggression of
those who have the care of them. How dependent they are on others. What wounds they can receive from the rest of us

O God, bless the children of the earth.

Here are the downtrodden, victims of the clash of cultures, their inheritance lost as they are overwhelmed by more militant peoples.

O God, bless the threatened peoples of the earth.

Here are the poor, the host of people, young and old, who never have enough, and who seem doomed to be without, while others have in ahundance.

O God, bless the poor of the earth.

Here are the forgotten, the unnoticed, the unheard from. All the hidden benefactors, the unheeded peacemakers, the unknown failures, the unrecognized faithful.

Pass these not by, O gentle Saviour.
Hear their humbJe cries.
And let the music they make be heard by the rest of us.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen