PASSAGES FROM THE book of Hebrews show up in the lectionary every Sunday this month. In Ernst Käsemann's landmark book The Wandering People of God, written in the context of 1930s Germany, this pastor and theologian characterizes the community described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as a people who wander in the wilderness of this world. “The basic posture of the bearer of [God’s] revelation should, in fact, be described as a wandering,” Käsemann writes; “the attitude of faith can only be described as wandering.” He locates the identity of the church in the biblical stories of Israel in the wilderness—the church as a people estranged from imperial power.
“I of course had in mind that radical Confessing Church which resisted the [Nazi] tyranny in Germany,” Käsemann wrote decades later, reflecting on his book as anti-fascist ecclesiology—a biblical theology for a German antifa church movement. When a society coheres around a nationalist identity that designates segments of the population as “other” and therefore a threat to patriotic unity, “the church must appear as a band of deserters.” To desert such nationalistic ideologies is to wander in search for Jesus because, according to Hebrews, he appears at the edge of society, outside the civic union, beyond the border—Jesus as the one who suffers “outside the city gate,” on the other side of the wall (Hebrews 13:12).
The last chapter of Hebrews invites the faithful to solidarity with Jesus, which involves a commitment to excluded people, to scapegoated populations: “Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured” (Hebrews 13:13).
October 3
Do We See Jesus?
Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
THE BOOK OF Hebrews begins with a vision of Christ as “the reflection of God’s glory,” who “sustains all things by his powerful word” (1:3). Jesus shares this glory with his kin, with humanity, with us. The author of Hebrews cites Psalm 8 for this vision of glorification. “You have made them for a little while lower than the angels,” the psalmist says to God; “you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet” (Psalm 8:5-6; Hebrews 2:7-8). Christ draws human life far above the troubles of the world.
Then the harshness of the world interrupts the text—as if the author looks up from the parchment and remembers the wounded life outside, a damaged humanity. The loftiness in the first half of the verse collapses in the second half. “As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them [human beings]” (2:8). Religion scholar J. Alexander Sider summarizes the theology of Hebrews 2:8: “It is a broken vision, and it will not be easily repaired,” because the author’s “picture of salvation, of God’s glory manifest in humanity, simply does not match his experience of the world.”
The author of Hebrews knows what we know: that we’re subjected to factors beyond our control, that we live in the rubble of failed plans for success. Yet, in the next verse, when the author starts to write again, a prophetic hope takes shape: “but we do see Jesus ... now crowned with glory ... because of the suffering of death” (2:9). We can’t pull ourselves out of this mess, but we do see Jesus—the one who promises hope, not as an escape from this world but as sustaining grace.
October 10
Rage for Hope
Amos 5:6-7,10-15; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
INJUSTICE SUSTAINS SOCIETY. The livelihood of the powerful depends on a structure of disparity. People sacrifice the poor to stock up on luxuries. The comforts of life are reason enough to look the other way as national policies allow employers to exploit workers.
In verse after verse, chapter after chapter, the prophet Amos condemns his people for their willful ignorance of the violence of their economy. The poor are trampled into the dust, and the oppressed are shoved out of sight, out of mind, so the middle classes can spend their summers at resort communities without guilt and the upper classes can vacation on their private islands without having to see homeless beggars.
In response, the Lord roars in judgment. “I will tear down the winter houses as well as the summer houses; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall come to an end” (3:15). The divide between the wealthy and the poor is a reoccurring theme for Amos. “You trample on the poor,” he prophesies, “and take from them taxes of grain” (5:11).
Amos confronts us. “There is no society to which Amos’ words would not apply,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the prophets. “God is raging in the prophet’s words.” This word of judgment from Amos, however, is rooted in a hope for a world that offers life not death, mercy not oppression.
October 17
A Peaceable Politics
Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
THE SONS OF Zebedee approach Jesus with a request: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37). As people who have been with Jesus from the beginning, they want a verbal agreement from this rising political leader—that he will share his power with them.
The other 10 disciples are enraged when they overhear this shameless plea for status. Jesus steps in before a fight breaks out and pulls the rug out from their hierarchical imagination. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them,” Jesus says, explaining that worldly stratifications of power won’t be observed in his community: “But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant” (verses 42-43).
This scene is central for theologian Stanley Hauerwas’ argument in The Peaceable Kingdom. “The gospel is political ... The church is a social ethic,” he writes, because Jesus has called us out of worldly forms of domination and into a politics of peace—“to be faithful to the kingdom by showing to the world a community of peace.” We work out the gospel’s peaceable politics through forms of congregational life that invite everyone to the table for decision-making—a politics without coercion, because no one has power over another.
October 24
‘Once for All’
Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52
JESUS OFFERED HIS life “once for all” (Hebrews 7:27)—a phrase repeated in chapters 9 and 10, and which becomes a refrain for what the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus means for our lives. Once and for all—that means we don’t have to offer ourselves as living sacrifices in order to convince God to pour out justice on earth. Once and for all—that means we don’t need to use moral purity to convince God to count us among the faithful.
This sacrificial language in the book of Hebrews has become significant for what are called “theories of atonement”—all those theological discourses that wonder about the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In Christ the Key, Kathryn Tanner’s intervention in these theological debates is to reaffirm an old truth: “Atonement returns to its English lexical roots: at-one-ment,” Tanner writes. “Humanity is at one with the divine in Jesus.” The incarnation and the atonement tell the same story: In Jesus, God is with us. Nothing we do or don’t do will change that truth.
“God has no need of streams of blood and libations and incense,” Justin Martyr wrote in the second century. Instead, our response to what Jesus has done once and for all is gratitude—“to offer thanks by solemn hymns for our creation.”
October 31
Bound in Love
Deuteronomy 6:1-9; Psalm 119:1-8; Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 12:28-34
WHEN ASKED ABOUT the most important commandment, Jesus recites the Shema, a passage from the Torah that he would have repeated every day—verses at the heart of Jewish prayer life. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:29-30; Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
As soon as he finishes quoting from Deuteronomy, Jesus turns the attention of his conversation partner to another significant part of the Torah, to Leviticus—a second commandment as a supplement to the first. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31; Leviticus 19:18). To welcome the kingdom of God involves holding together these two parts of the Torah, to let those two passages guide the faithful into God’s reign: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34).
Jesus is unoriginal in this story from Mark. He draws from themes central to his Jewish faith—a way of life that links love for God to love for neighbor, a life of prayer that opens the self to the other. Devotion to God involves devotion to neighbor. To pray involves our ethical commitments, our fidelity to the lives of others, to their well-being. The mysteries of God turn us to our neighbors, to recognize in them the love of God.
Isaac S. Villegas is pastor of Chapel Hill (N.C.) Mennonite Fellowship and president of the governing board of the North Carolina Council of Churches.
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