A Word of Exhortation

Hebrews 13

Call to Worship

Welcome to Grad Chapel. Our text today, for those of you who grew up like I did, always brings a smile to my face. I grew up at church. My grandfather was an elder, my father was an elder, my mother was a Bible school teacher four quarters out of four both Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. I grew up in a home where babysitters came to my house so that my parents could go to Cottage Meetings to watch filmstrips. I started preaching when I was 13. Anytime I had a sermon and the preacher okayed the message, I could preach on Sunday nights at Elmwood Avenue Church of Christ in Lafayette Indiana. So if you grew up like I did, and I know some of you didn’t, there emerges insider language. I’ve used quite a bit of insider language already. Our text today makes us insiders smile for it is the text about entertaining angels in their underwear. And for a little kid, an angel wearing boxers or briefs is funny.

• I didn’t grow up where the insider language, “our text for today,” referred to a lectionary, a set of Sunday readings laid out not only for your church but also for all the churches that embraced the Christian Year as its liturgical calendar.
• Continuing for the fourth year, Grad Chapel is going to follow the lectionary in order to provide us a rhythm that for all of you who come regularly to this place through the academic year can worship our God and in the words of last Sunday’s lectionary text “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.”
• The Lectionary does not follow the academic year. The academic year begins towards the end of the Christian Year, during the season of Pentecost, Ordinary Time of Year C, Proper 17. And our text for this coming Sunday is Hebrews 13.
• Our text exhorts us with “a word of exhortation” to welcome you here in mutual love, for who knows, there might be angels among us… And they might be wearing their underwear.

Message

²² I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly.

1. “A Word of Exhortation” – it would not be Hebrews if we did not go back to the OT for some examples. The Deuteronomist places Moses with his GPS saying, “You are Here.” The little blinking dots says, “You are on the border between here and there and before you go forward, let’s look back to where and why you’ve been.” And Moses offers words of exhortation to the camp of Israel, words of memory and hope. Throughout the Deuteronomic history, words of exhortations, preaching, carries the story forward. Words that not only remind God’s people of God’s promises and mighty acts, but also words of warning, words of hope, and words of possibilities. Hebrews 13 reminds me of Moses and the Children of Israel who lived in the safety of a camp, protected by community and family, and who were exhorted to embrace the challenges and opportunities before them.
2. And the preacher in Hebrews replicates that tradition with his word of exhortation saying, “Hold on to your faith in Jesus, the author, pioneer, and perfecter of our faith.” And the preacher here makes an allusion, ¹⁰ We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat. ¹¹ 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. ¹² Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. ¹³ Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. ¹⁴ For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. And those who know the insider language know that “going outside the camp” is an exhortation that calls them to a different kind of ministry, a cruciformed ministry, a ministry of challenge and possibility. Words that call them, in his words, “torture.”
3. And, as all good preachers do, this preacher gives us a list of concrete expressions of those challenges and possibilities. Listen again to his list…

Let mutual love continue. ² Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels unaware. ³ Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured. ⁴ Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. ⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” ⁶ So we can say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper;
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”

⁷ Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. ⁸ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

This preacher chooses this list because these challenges and possibilities connect to the audience’s immediate context. As you begin this academic year, may this old list of challenges and opportunities guide you. Let this word be a word of exhortation.

• Who among does not need to hear about … Mutual love in a divisive world so full of “we” versus “them” rhetoric, discriminatory and hateful words that only build walls.
• Who among does not need to hear about … Hospitality in a wall building society where the strangers are cast in the role of enemy and fear of others is highly prized.
• Who among does not need to hear about … Remembering those in prison especially those who are systemically profiled as undesirable and disproportionately removed from our neighborhoods.
• Who among does not need to hear about … keeping our marriages and other covenant relationships pure and undefiled. In the midst of so much temporary and mobile connections, where “hooking up” is glorified.
• Who among does not need to hear about … contentment, especially when all we hear about security is only in terms of social, national, or financial.
• Who among does not need to hear about … leaders who are worthy of imitation because of their faith.

So as we begin this academic year together, with two final exhortations …

¹⁵ Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. ¹⁶ Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Benediction

²⁰ Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, ²¹ make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Available Powers

Reading: James 5:13-20

This chapter is James’s anti-money sermon. Only in a rich country do you have to take the time to qualify or justify preaching an anti-money sermon. And you especially don’t like a guest preacher coming into town and railing against your checkbooks. So we preachers justify. “I’m not talking against being rich. Abraham, Job, and Joseph of Arimathea were all godly rich dudes.” You’ve heard the old worn out joke about the preacher who constantly preached about those folks who own two cars. Then one day, he got a second car. And next week he preached about owning two cars … and a boat. So we preachers justify ourselves because we know folks do not like anti-money sermons. None of us like sermons about our pocketbooks.

I know I’m the guest preacher, but James 5 is the chapter that came next in my preaching calendar. I’m preaching through James. Last time I was here, you got James 2. This week, James 5 continues a theme that cycles throughout the book of James: The rich were oppressing the recipients of James’s letter. The rich are the folks that represent unbelief, immaturity, and instability throughout James. The rich are James’s rhetorical foil; his straw man that he sets up just to knock down.

And it is in chapter 5 that we find out why. James 5:1-6. The rich in the community were persecuting Christians. The rich put their primary trust in riches and not in God who gives us all things. James condemns the rich severely due to their injustice (4-6); selfishness in gratifying their own lusts (5); and murder. Do not envy them!!!! Money cannot buy health; Money cannot buy happiness; Money cannot buy a good name; Money cannot buy trust; Money cannot buy respect; Money cannot buy love. Money cannot secure your security. Money cannot protect you. Money cannot buy you God’s favor. And $ is the representative metaphor of all the powers of the natural world that oppose God and oppose God’s people.

The rich were oppressing folks in James’s church. And in the reading today, James’s asks

• Is there anyone of you in trouble?
• Is there anyone of you happy?
• Is there anyone of you sick?
• Is there anyone finding that your faith is wavering?

The sources of our troubles are manifold. I do not know your stories. But when you are alone at night, what keeps you awake? What are the anxieties that you put on a list? When you pray, what dominates your requests to God? When you open up to your best friend, what is on your heart? What is tearing up your days? Do you have your list?

And here’s the question. When you have your list completed, what resources do you depend on to address your troubles?

In James, there are two possible resources people turn to in order to address their list.

• Money represents a natural power source.
• The powers of the world, the structures and supporting beams of society, the pillars of the world, are powers/idols that work against God’s way in the world thus opposing God’s people. Paul’s description of this reality is “principalities and powers.” For James’s, it is money.

Let’s keep these powers in perspective:

• God is the first cause power, the prime mover, the originator and sustainer of all life. Human laws, rules, traditions, institutions, and other human activities are second cause powers. Such second cause powers as financial structures, commerce, unions, exchange of goods & services, educational or political institutions, and technologies are unable to address the items on your list.
• For graduate students, those powers press in on them in the form of debt.
• When second cause powers usurp God’s power, they become corrupt.
• When we move these powers to first place, the powers will oppress and overcome. We think we can handle and control these powers and use them for our own good, but these powers, left unchecked, dominate the world for their own good. They oppress the poor, the powerless, and the disenfranchised. When these powers usurp God in society, these powers not only hide God, they are at war with God. All these second cause resources complicate our lists; they do not address them.
• Christ dethroned these powers of injustice and death. God placed them under the footstool of Jesus. In their proper place as second cause powers, they can be used for the glory of God but only if they remain under the footstool.

But there is an alternative power source.

James’ church, they did not have banking systems, armies, computers, and modern advancements. They depended upon God, they trusted in prayer, they trusted in Jesus’ sacrifice. James is all about FAITH and he writes to this community in order to protect this church from the powers of this earth. His answers to the powers and principalities that oppress are: perseverance and fellowship.

James has been giving valuable lessons on how to respond during trials, suffering, and persecution. The mature man and woman of God will respond with a lifestyle that will be pleasing to God. James concludes his sermon with the same theme that he began in chapter 1: perseverance, patience, and endurance. James 5:7-11.

Patience: Until the Lord comes. Our victory may not be evident until then. Then our understanding of how God works will be made complete.

James gives three examples of patience:

1. The farmer takes care of his equipment. He plows, weeds, and fertilizes. This is active waiting–and he will be ready for the harvest.
2. The prophets spoke with no response. We now consider them great exemplars for God.
3. Job endured, unlike many of lesser character who would have lain down and cursed God.

Take out your list. You do not have to endure alone for your dependence is not on the rich or on the powers of the world, but instead, your dependence is on God and one another. When James gives concrete practical advice about how to access the power of God, he roots that advice in prayer, worship, and community. The Scripture reading this morning asks,

• Is there anyone of you in trouble? Pray (See Elijah vs. 17-18).
• Is there anyone of you happy? Sing. Don’t forget the Lord during the good times.
• Is there anyone of you sick? Call the elders–let the family of God support you through troubled times. Rely on each other in all areas of trouble. Confessing and praying with each other is good practice (vs. 19).
• If any of you wander from the truth, then let us all gather around that person and restore that person gently. What a wonderful display of the forgiveness of God.

I agree–I do not like anti-money sermons, because our trust is in the power of God.