What Holds Everything Together--July 23, 2021

What Holds Everything Together--July 23, 2021

"Hence not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For whenever every commandment had been told to all the people by Moses in accordance with the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people, sayin, 'This is the blood of the covenant that God has ordained for you.' And in the same way he sprinkled with blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.  Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these." [Hebrews 9:18-23]

Last summer we began plans for creating a playhouse for the kids in the back yard.  I had invited them to help me come up with ideas--what things did they want in it, and where should they go?  Would we have swings? A slide?  Two floors or one?  A rock climbing wall, or a ladder?  That kind of stuff.  Of course, their wild ideas went all over the place, and at some point, to help them visualize what it would be like, we made a model.  I took pieces of scrap wood and cut them to a roughly even thickness to substitute for the actual posts and cross beams, so they could picture what an actual structure could be like.  I also wanted them to see how many beams would be needed, even for a small structure, so they could see how and why it would take a while for the whole thing to come together.  The model was to help them understand what the real thing would look like, but also what all was involved in building it.

Now, while the real play structure would be put together with bolts and screws, the model was obviously too small for that.  So hot glue did the trick there--in fact, hot glue went about everywhere for the model.  Every joint, every cross piece, every intersection, was slathered in hot glue to get it to hold together on the sheet of scrap plyboard we built the model on.  Again, the kids needed to be able to visualize how the real thing would hold together, but at every point while assembling the model, I reminded them that the real thing wouldn't work with hot glue--we needed something stronger for the real thing.  This was a mock-up, a three-dimensional sketch in smaller size, to help them understand how the real would work, and to give them something to picture and to look forward to.

So, it is technically correct that the model functioned by having hot glue hold the pieces together. But the model was never really for playing--it was to point the real, which would take longer to construct.  It was to help them visualize how the real thing would be assembled, but it was never meant to bear their weight.  Hot glue will hold little model planks together, but it will never be load-bearing for actual humans.  If you want to hold human-sized burdens, you need something heavy duty.

Well, in a manner of speaking, this is how the writer of Hebrews sees the whole set-up of the temple and sacrificial system in Israel's ancient memory.  Yes, it was true that the blood of animals was sprinkled on each of the implements and items used in sacrificial worship of God, as a way of highlighting the seriousness and set-apartness of all of those items.  Like we might save the good dishes or the special glasses for a holiday dinner with the whole family, rather than mixing them in with the free plastic spork that came with the Chinese takeout order a few months ago, Israel kept the vessels used for worshipping God distinct and treated them reverently.  Marking them with the blood of sacrificed animals was an element of that setting apart, that "holiness."

But the writer of Hebrews says that those sacrifices decidedly did not buy God off or feed God's bloodthirst.  They were, rather, part of a sketch of what God was about to do in Jesus.  They were what held the model together, so that the people of God could look forward to visualize what God has now done in Christ.  Like the hot glue  in the model that stood in for the actual bolts and screws of the real structure, the blood of animals pointed toward another, sturdier reality--the blood Jesus offers, which is his own.  The writer of Hebrews says, basically, that generations of animal sacrifices never did anything really between us and God, but they were always part of God's way of showing us what was to come.  The work of restoring a broken relationship between God and a human race gone rotten was real work that required something radical to set things right, and God has wanted to be as clear with us possible just what lengths would be required to do it. But it was never that a hungry deity needed our livestock; rather that our minds needed a model.  God's design was never to be bribed with animals in exchange for giving us a pass on our rotten behavior; it was always to mend the entire universe with God's own self-giving love, all the way to a cross, in Jesus.  We have just needed a model to understand what really holds everything together.

So, now that there is a real structure taking shape in our back yard, with actual beams sunk into the ground in concrete footers, and now that there are real eight-inch carriage bolts fastening the posts to one another, my kids can clearly see what the model only could point to.  The hot glue was only for the purposes of them seeing how the model would work, but the real burden is borne by something stronger.  They can appreciate that for the span of time between making the model and setting the first posts, the model made with hot glue could at least give them something to visualize the real thing with.  But they know now that the plan was never to build a playset in our yard with hot glue.  It was always going to be something stronger, because the load that needed to be carried was not only heavier, but more precious: my own children.

That, in a sense, is where Hebrews lands for today: you, dear child of God, are far too precious a child to leave to something lesser to hold you up.  Your and my burdens are far too heavy to be entrusted to anything less than Jesus, in whom no less than God's very own self bears the load. No less than Jesus' own life is what really holds it all together.

Thank you, Jesus, for offering your life for us.  And thank you, whom Jesus taught us to call on as Abba, for the lengths you have gone to that we might understand what you have done for us.