2016 Sermon 7-Hebrews 9
As you will recall Hebrews 8 is all about the new covenant, including vivid descriptions of Jesus as the priest of the new age of grace. Hebrews 9 begins with an even more specific description of the earthly tabernacle. Of course this is lovely to read, as mere literature, but in the case of Scriptures which describe physical things, we must never forget the metaphorical value of these images. Remember as well, that the author of Hebrews is always comparing the new covenant to the old covenant; thus we begin with a detailed discussion of the old covenant, with which the Jews in Jerusalem would have been very familiar.
Hebrews 9:1-7:
Worship in the Earthly Tabernacle
“1 Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary.
2 A tabernacle was set up. In its first room were the lampstand, the table and the consecrated bread; this was called the Holy Place.
3 Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place,
4 which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron's staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant.
5 Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover. But we cannot discuss these things in detail now.
6 When everything had been arranged like this, the priests entered regularly into the outer room to carry on their ministry.
7 But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.”
For emphasis I would like to read verse seven again, calling attention to two elements: the first being the distinction between inner and outer, a distinction which will gain in significance in the succeeding verses, and also the issue of blood.
“7 But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.”
It appears to me that this scripture is saying that the tabernacle of the old era of law ministered to the physical wants of the people, while the new tabernacle ministers to the spiritual wants of the people; first the outer, then the inner. This is of metaphorical interest, because it mimics the way human beings achieve spirituality; first in the flesh, then in the spirit; it can be no other way, because to incarnate in the flesh is to surrender certain spiritual sensitivities to the physical senses. It may be said that this is the primary challenge of human life--that is to say, from the perspective of the physical, to engage the spiritual, thus suffusing the physical with spiritual power and intelligence. We must never forget the humility that the flesh brings with it, that is to say, in a certain sense, the humiliation that the flesh brings with it; by blinding our spiritual eye, the flesh brings us down to a lower consciousness level, so that we may experience something that is denied to spirit consciousness. Whenever I think of my professional failures, or my small paycheck, or my cheap little apartment in Glenallen, I'm also reminded of the song:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.
Now the mention of BLOOD brings with it massive waves of resonance, significant to so many of the basic dogmas associated with Christianity. You may remember a few months ago, in a sermon concerning the virgin birth, I made these comments about the blood:
“Now, to begin with, we must remind you that much has been said at the Basin Bible Church, about Royal bloodlines, and the role of blood in determining the tangible character of the impact of the Divine Presence on the material plane. In this context, considering the blood vis a vis the virgin birth, it becomes significant who Jesus' relatives are.
The whole idea of a bodhisattva is of interest, because history indicates that there have been many, many advanced souls, who were no longer slaves of the wheel of karma, but who nevertheless chose to come back to this world from a higher plane, (the Tusita), to perform a life of service. Thus, Jesus fits snugly into the classic definition of a category: the category "bodhisattva".
The differences between Jesus and these other bohdisattvas are numerous and far-reaching, but a PRIMARY difference between Jesus and these other bodhisattvas might be measured by the mere MAGNITUDE of Jesus' message and His accomplishment. Jesus, more than any other saint in history, steered humanity around a corner into a new age. It is inconceivable that, any time soon, there will be another such bodhisattva so invested with the Christ that he takes ownership of the world--I think this real estate is spoken for. Jesus claimed responsibility for Original Sin, demonstrated His claim through dramatic action, and, in one HUGE quantum leap, brought forth, out of His blood, a new world.
Remember that it was blood untouched by Original Sin; to achieve this level of purity, in the blood of the Christ, was the whole point of the virgin birth, and was the whole point behind Jesus' being of the House of David. Jesus appeared at a synchronous moment in time when vast cosmic energies were poised on the horizon of a new beginning--Jesus set those energies in motion, and brought the deep, dark IDEA into the light of BEING. The chances of such a thing, happening again in the near future, are slight. The good thing about a quantum leap is that: once the electron reaches escape velocity, it NEVER falls back into a lower orbit.”
These considerations of the mystery of the blood have far-reaching ramifications, as we will see below; indeed there is hardly ever a mention of the authority of Jesus that does not go hand in hand with mention of His blood sacrifice.
For example, from The 5th Chapter of the Gospel of Thomas we read:
“Jesu, that hast accounted us worthy to partake of the eucharist of thine holy body and blood, lo, we are bold to draw near unto thine eucharist and to call upon thine holy name: come thou and communicate unto us.”
Notice the invocation of Jesus to “communicate unto us”. It is such a miracle that we can reach out of our limited carnal selves into the all-consciousness, and connect our puny human consciousness with the Christ consciousness. It makes me feel lazy that I don't do this more, meditate more, and experience the selfless consciousness of the Cloud of Unknowing more often, and more intensely than I do; but I know that one of my great professional downfalls has been greed, so I always guard against taking too much of anything. Certain levels of consciousness have been purposefully denied to me, by my spirit guides, and this must be for a reason. It is related to how I have come to live in this place, where worldly success is withheld, but where, of all places, I, as my highest self, wanted to be. It is also not unrelated to how I have let myself get fat—I may feel guilty when I look at a skinny man, but it's a gift to be simple, it’s a gift to come down where I ought to be. Can it truly be that there is a reason for everything, including our faults?
Rudolf Steiner was crucial to my coming to understand the significance of the blood. His lecture, The Etherisation of the Blood, Basle, October 1, 1911, goes very deeply into the actual mechanics of divine identity being transmitted through the blood:
“Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, a similar process takes place in the Macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our minds to the Mystery of Golgotha — to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ.
This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been said concerning the nature of Jesus of Nazareth it must be recognised as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds, a substance was imparted to our Earth, which in uniting with it, constituted an Event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the Earth's evolution — and it could take place only once. What came of this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of Earth evolution this blood passes through a process of “etherisation.” And just as our human blood streams upwards from the heart as ether, so since the Mystery of Golgotha the etherised blood of Christ Jesus has been present in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the Earth is permeated by the blood — now transformed — which flowed on Golgotha. This is supremely important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man's condition on the Earth could only have been as previously described. But since the Mystery of Golgotha it has always been possibe for the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.
Because the etherised blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the Earth, it accompanies the etherised human blood streaming upwards from the heart to the brain, so that not only those streams of which I spoke earlier meet in man, but the human blood-stream unites with the blood-stream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams can, however, come about only if a person is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ Impulse. Otherwise there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every epoch of Earth evolution understanding must be acquired in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on Earth, preceding events were rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner, John, and were baptised by him according to the rite described in the Gospels. They received baptism in order that their sin, that is to say, the karma of their previous lives — karma which had come to an end — might be changed; and in order that they might realise that the most powerful Impulse in Earth evolution was about to descend into a physical body. But the evolution of humanity progresses and in our present age what matters is that people should recognise the need for the knowledge contained in Spiritual Science and be able so to fire the streams flowing from heart to brain that this knowledge can be understood.”
Of the many nuggets contained in the above quotation, I would like to emphasize the word Karma in the special sense in which we have been using it lately. Steiner seems to attribute to Karma the same impersonal characteristics that were noted by Deepak Chopra last week:
“Karma, when properly understood, is just the mechanics through which consciousness manifests.”
Notice that Jesus was able to change Karma; Karma, the idea that: if this happens, then consequently that happens; in the natural world, Karma becomes the law. Jesus came to break the law, to break the chains of Karma, to do away with the necessity of things making sense on a mundane level, to point our spiritual eyes to abstract realms in which non-sensible things make perfect sense.
Continuing with Hebrews 9:8: here is reprised the idea that blood supplies the entryway into the inner room.
“8 The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing.”
Note how the author continues to pump up his audience with the point that the new religion of Jesus is better than the old religion of the Jews. He/She hammers in the idea that the old tabernacle must be destroyed in order for the new tabernacle to emerge. The death of Jesus as the first Adam, culminating in the birth of Jesus as the new Melchizedek, is a metaphor for the transformation all of us must undergo before we can advance spiritually.
In Hebrews 9:9-10, the author exhorts his audience to examine closely the regulation of the external practice of the many rituals which dominate Hassidic life, and seek new rituals in the new order. Another way of saying it would be, "Let us continue the practice of rituals, but let them be suffused with spiritual power; let us use the blood sacrifice of Jesus to connect us spiritually from below to above, and let this connection be accomplished through material pathways. What a miracle.
"9 This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper.
10 They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings--external regulations applying until the time of the new order."
In Hebrews 9:11-14 we return to the idea of blood--in this case, you might say the inner blood and the outer blood. The outer blood, the sacrifice that was made in the old tabernacle, was goats’ blood. We have spoken of goats, many times, as the paradigm of the dumb animal. The ultimate humiliation of reincarnation would not be reborn into the body of a cow, but into the body of a goat. Thus the author of Hebrews describes the old life as somehow horribly degraded, while the new life made possible through the etherised blood of Jesus, is totally magnificent.
The author keeps reminding us of an inner and outer consciousness, inwardly clean vs. outwardly clean, God-made vs. man-made. We are reminded that the tabernacle made available to us through the blood of the Christ was not part of mundane creation, but became the entryway into a new way of being human.
The Blood of Christ
“11 When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation.
12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.
13 The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean.
14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
Notice the appearance of the expression “once for all”. We have commented on this before, in its use as a way of emphasizing the unique position Jesus holds in history. Also is to be emphasized the idea that Jesus was unblemished. This is an important point for Christians to embrace, because it is one of these miracles that seem so impossible. As materialists we would like to think that Jesus was born as a man and became the Christ; but actually this is backwards: Jesus was born the Christ and became a man. One more miracle.
I also find worthy of comment the idea of the spirit cleansing "our consciences from acts that lead to death". Remember that the author of Hebrews is offering the Jews of Jerusalem not only the promise of heavenly redemption, but an earthly life suffused with spirituality.
As an old person I often have to ask myself how long is long enough? I have often deplored the idea of living into an old age of decrepitude, and have promised myself a quick death by suicide if that condition ever came to pass. However, if the blood of Jesus has supplied us with a way to experience heaven on earth, why would we ever forego one second that? It seems to me that if we are there, we are there, and we must embrace and cherish the blessings and the crosses fate impersonally flings at our heads. To put it another way, the acts of conscience which do not lead to death, may also lead us to the peaceful death we all would so much like to have.
Hebrews 9:15 again refers to the Christ as the mediator of a new covenant; it also speaks of an eternal inheritance of deliverance from sins committed in the old covenant.
“15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance--now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”
Hebrews 9:16-21 is one of these charming Jewish episodes which apply logical legal arguments to material for parable or metaphor. It explains the absolute necessity of the shedding of blood to usher in the new covenant. It goes back to Moses and the original shedding of calves' blood, then refers to the shedding of Jesus’ blood as necessary for forgiveness.
“16 In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it,
17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.
18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
19 When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people.
20 He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."
21 In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies.
22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
The argument comparing the calf blood to the blood of Jesus, reminds me of the verse in Matthew, where it is suggested that if the Father cares for the birds of the air, how much more will He care for you:
Matthew 6:25–27:
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”
I also love this image of Moses sprinkling calves’ blood on the people, because it is so easy to transpose that image of the old covenant into an image of the new covenant were Jesus is sprinkling His own blood on the people. If you like calf blood WAIT TIL YOU FEEL THIS BLOOD OF THE CHRIST!
The idea of heaven on earth, or indeed heaven in art, is reviewed with reference to copies of the heavenly things.
“23 It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24 For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence.”
With the sentence, "Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence," we encounter, once again, the miracle of transformation from a lower to a higher consciousness level; the suffusion of articulate verbal symbols with inarticulate eternal resonance.
In last week's sermon on Hebrews 8 we made the following comments:
"Hebrews 8:4-5
“4 If he were on earth, he would not be a priest, for there are already men who offer the gifts prescribed by the law.
5 They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’ ”
Additionally, of note is the expression, “a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven”, an image that is practically identical to Paul’s “through a glass darkly” image in 1st Corinthians. On the strength of this one passage one might be persuaded that Hebrews was IN FACT written by Paul; but, then again, a student of Paul would have picked up this idea from him, which he states in different ways, many times in his letters.
Also, note the idea of COPYING as faithfully as possible, (or you might say IMPRESSING) the patterns of the heavenly sanctuary onto its Earthly shadow. Heavenly PATTERNS. This idea presents the problem that all artists face when summoning up “images” of eternity—how does one recreate the forms of eternity in a material medium? William Blake says:
“Eternity is in love with the forms of time.”
The expression: “the pattern shown you on the mountain”, is so tantalizing to an aesthetician, because the idea of “as above so below” must necessarily be a constant preoccupation of the artist. The artist always attempts to recreate, in the materials of mundane expression, the heavenly forms perceived “on the “high mountain”. Previously I have given sermons on divine forms as they manifest in nature and in art, and the idea appears again, here, with the word “pattern”— "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’ ” We are instructed to seek the divine perfection in mundane things, as if, as above so below, Heaven might echo through the portals of time."
Hebrews 9:25-28 mentions, once again, the idea of “once and for all”, by reminding us that Jesus’ sacrifice was a one-time thing. The significance of this one-time thing is that, with one magnificent dramatic gesture, Jesus claimed our redemption from Original Sin forever.
“25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own.
26 Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”
Note the reference to the high priest entering “the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own”. Once again we are confronted with this image of a priest sprinkling powerless calf blood on the people, when they could be receiving the blood of the Christ.
So, today's discussion of Hebrews 9 has dwelt heavily on a mystery, the mystery of the blood. In philosophy we are always seeking for first causes—we want to know about that moment just BEFORE the Big Bang. In this discussion of blood the true mystery of spirituality is unfolded to us, along with metaphorical descriptions of the old covenants’ elements brought into play in a new way by the sacrifice of Jesus. Let us pray.
Jesus thank you for your sacrifice, and thanks for choosing your physical body in a very discriminating way. We hope that, contained in our bodies is the seed of Your blood, that connects us with Your higher consciousness and brings us into the Valley of Love and Delight. Amen.
