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Eve of Saint Mark
The Fifth Sunday Of Easter
O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday Of Easter
Eve of Saint Mark
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Scripture citation(s): Hebrews 12:1-14
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Hebrews 12:1-14
✛
How to Understand the Chastening of the Lord
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The second of Dorothy Sayers’s great Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries bears a title adapted from the epistle to the Hebrews: Clouds of Witness. In that book, there are many suspects for a murder, but in the end it turns out there was no murder. It is my opinion that a good mystery story cannot help but be a Christian story, for the simple reason that in a good mystery there is truth (which comes out in the end), wickedness is punished, and the hero ends up with a good drink. Just so, Clouds of Witness; as a Christian priest, I recommend it.
But Hebrews does not say “clouds of witness”; it says “cloud of witnesses.” In Sayers’s mystery, Clouds of Witness, one is surrounded by lots of confusing evidence, lots of sinners who could be thought to have had motive for murder—in short, “clouds” in the sense of obfuscation or confusion. But Hebrews sets us in a different place. We are in a sinful world, yes (the author speaks of the sin which doth so easily beset us, sin which is a weight that we need to lay aside), but we find all around us encouragement to lay sin aside because we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.
We are surrounded by sin, we are weighed down in so many ways, but we are also surrounded by witnesses. These are saints who have run the race before us. The previous chapter of Hebrews has a list of them, from Abel to Enoch to Noah to Abraham, and so many more, all of whom lived by faith in something that had not yet been revealed. In Jesus Christ, the author is now saying, the revelation has come. So our life of faith, as persons compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, is a life the end of which has been revealed. We are persons looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus, it says, is the author, the initiator, the pioneer, the alpha. It is because of Jesus that we are able to run this race in the first place. The authority of Jesus is his power to authorize us to be persons who run the race that is set before us. But he is not only the author, he is also the finisher of our faith, the one who got to the end, the one who is himself the end of the race, the omega. Jesus is the point of the Christian life, the object of our hope and faith, the one with whom we hope to be united at the end of all things.
Chapter 12 of Hebrews aims to get its readers to persevere in the Christian life in the midst of troubles. To get us to persevere it replaces the framing of our present life as one surrounded by clouds of confusion with the alternate view: our present life is one surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, all of whom have run this race before us. Then Hebrews says that Jesus himself is the author and finisher of this race, to run which is to live by faith. It goes on to point out that Jesus could have had an easy life, but he chose the difficult way, endured the cross . . . endured such contradiction of sinners against himself . . . resisted unto blood. The reader, by looking at Jesus, can be strengthened to live by faith in the midst of troubles.
But whence cometh these troubles? They come, of course, from sin in the world, and if one tries to follow Jesus, there will be forces in the world that rise up to resist that—forces like ISIS, explicit opposition, but also insidious cultural forces. However, Hebrews is going deeper than that, and it is saying something more troubling still.
For the truth is, we are not okay as we are. We need to be fixed, and the word for the process of our fixing is “discipline.” God, to fix what is wrong within us, is going to be disciplining us. I’ll be honest: on first response, I do not like these words.
Hear these troubling words again [Heb 12:5f]. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. These words say that God’s love for us is expressed in chastening and scourg[ing]. They say that there is no way to be a child of God without God doing this. Here is the deep truth: things are not okay with us. We need to be fixed. And here is the troubling reality: God intends to fix us.
The process is called “discipline.” Discipline has layers of meaning, all of them connected with each other. It can mean, yes, something physical that impinges upon our pursuing our untrained, willful impulses. Discipline can be punishment, not every sort of punishment, but punishment in the sense of “correction.” But discipline is also training. Athletes submit to the discipline of their coaches and trainers, musicians to the discipline of their teachers, students in any subject to those who are called master. (Consider how—although things are inflated today—the traditional teaching degree was not the Ph.D. but rather the master’s; a master’s degree meant that its holder had mastered the subject, the discipline, and was thus qualified to teach.)
So the range of the meaning of “discipline” runs from punishment to training and learning. It also has a moral element. To be trained in a discipline is to acquire the virtues needed for that discipline. In this sense, discipline stretches to include an entire way of life.
We must never forget that Jesus had “disciples.” The disciples were students, yes, and he was their teacher. But the discipline they were acquiring was all-encompassing: to take on this discipline, to be a student of this master, is to subjugate all of one’s life to this point. Which is to say, it can never be the case that being a Christian is the fifth or sixth or seventh thing you say about yourself. If you are a Christian, that is the first thing to say about you. The discipline of following Jesus is the number one discipline in your life, with everything else somewhere down the line.
At the end of the race is Jesus, author and finisher, and when we get there, we will be like him. To grasp that truth is to exercise hope; to persevere towards that is to exercise faith. The end of all things is the triune God, love himself; and that means the end of our race is union with Jesus. At the end of today’s passage, it says that we need to follow peace with all men, and holiness, so that we may see the Lord. That’s union with Jesus.
In the meantime, since we are not yet pure, we may expect the Christian discipline sometimes to be experienced by us as chastening. Some of the troubles in our lives come from sin that’s out there in the world. But some of them may be taken as God’s response to sin within us. By this chastening, God is removing the clouds that witness to the sin in us. And when we are pure, we will be in that cloud of witnesses who see Jesus face to face.
