By Jennifer Schrock, Merry Lea public program administrator
Scripture: Hebrews 10:5-10 (NRSV)
I was the youngest child in my family. This means that on my birthday, I sometimes get cards from my siblings recalling what a delightful baby I was. While I appreciate the blast of affection from the past, I also experience a bittersweet regret that geography has prevented my siblings from knowing me better as an adult.
Therefore, I shouldn’t have been astonished to see Hebrews 10 turn up in the Advent lectionary, complementing Jesus the fetus, but I was. Never before had I noticed this obscure text tucked into the fourth Sunday of Advent.
What is this not very child-friendly Word about sin, sacrifices and sanctification doing here, at a time when most of us just want to sing Christmas carols? I think it is a reminder that if we wish to have an adult faith, we also need to grapple with the person and work of the adult Jesus. Writing for a community that was “drifting away” and “becoming sluggish,” the unknown author of Hebrews pursues an unlikely remedy: a vigorous exploration of Christ as high priest that aims to take readers beyond a “baby understanding” of the One who came to do God’s will.
If Christmas bores you (some of us have been at this awhile) the book of Hebrews models a fresh challenge: this year, skip the cookies and work on your Christology. Might the fact that God “takes no pleasure in sacrifices” free us to understand Christ’s death in new ways? How can our community’s language and traditions ground us without binding us so tightly to the past that we can’t respond to the present? How does your life bring Jesus’ story into the 21st century?
There are people and books and paintings—maybe even quilt patterns—that can help. Whether your answer is a treatise or a poem, a song or a sketch, a garment or a startling act of service, make it as beautiful as you can. And share it with someone.
Scripture: Hebrews 10:5-10 (NRSV)
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; 6in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
7Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’ (in the scroll of the book it is written of me).” 8When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.