Governing Principles

When I was a child, a popular offering of prepackaged chicken in the grocery store was the whole fryer. The butchers behind the counter would take a chicken, cut it up into wings, breasts, thighs, and legs and place it in the foam tray and wrap it in plastic wrap. My mother liked the whole fryer because it provided both the right amount of food and the right diversity of offerings for our family. My parents each got a breast, and my brothers and I split up the thighs and legs. Nowadays, my family of six needs a whole fryer with an extra leg or two, but it's harder to find a chicken already cut up. One can easily find split breasts in one package, wings in another, and leg quarters or separated legs and thighs in separate packages, but the eight-piece-in-one isn't as popular as it was. And that's ok with me because I love cutting up my own chicken.

There's something satisfying about placing the edge of a chef's knife right on the joint of leg and thigh and feeling the pieces separate as if an orthopedic surgeon had done the work. More times than not, however, I miss the mark slightly, and I end up hitting bone or cutting into the cartilage. I don't cut up chickens very often, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. When I first met Elizabeth, my father-in-law owned a grocery store. He was a member of the third generation to own the store, and among the many duties he shared with his brother and cousins was to work behind the meat counter. When it's his turn to cut up chicken, he doesn't miss.

The word of God doesn't miss either, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us in Sunday's epistle lesson: "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow." It's a scary image--God's word piercing, cutting, dividing, separating. I don't know what it means to have a soul separated from spirit, but I can imagine what it is like to separate joints from marrow. To not only divide at the joint but to reach into the marrow one must have a sharp edge--perhaps a band saw. But that's the image the author uses as he invites us to imagine what God's word does. Unfortunately, as it is presented to us in Sunday's reading, we are left with an out-of-context quotation, a verse of scripture that sounds like it belongs on a billboard or in a preacher's wide-ranging sermon about judgment. But that's not what this author has in mind. To see the context, we need to go all the way back and read Hebrews 3 and the first half of Hebrews 4.

After making an argument in last Sunday's lesson that spanned Hebrews 1 & 2 that the Son of God is greater even than the angels and, therefore, must be obeyed, the author extends that point in Hebrews 3 to show that the Son of God is greater even than Moses, the giver of the Law, because, God speaks directly through the Son while God's word is mediated when delivered (through angels, as the tradition goes) to Moses. Using the struggle of Israel in the wilderness as a point of comparison, the author encourages his readers to cling faithfully to the witness and word of God's Son so that, unlike God's people who wandered through the desert on their way from Egypt to Canaan, we might enter directly into God's rest--his way of describing the "Promised Land." At the end of chapter 3, he writes, "For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief."

The author's wish is for the reader to enter straightaway into God's rest. Chapter 4 opens with a rejoinder to hold fast to God's word: "Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest..." The same good and godly opportunity is being presented to God's people. God has promised to bring God's people into God's rest, but, whether that happens now or after an extended period of struggle and distraction, depends on our obedience to God's word. Right before our lesson for Sunday picks up, we see that connection most clearly: "Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs. Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow..." In the ESV, verse 11 and verse 12 are set in the same paragraph as if to imply an even stronger connection between the hope of entering God's rest and the call to obedience to God's word.

That's a long way of saying that Sunday's reading from Hebrews isn't just about the sharp word of God piercing our hearts, exposing our thoughts and intentions. It's about respecting, revering, and obeying the word of God so that we might inherit the promise of rest that God has given us. If you don't respect a sharp knife, it will cut you. The word of God, delivered to Moses and spoken directly to us through God's Son, must govern our lives. It is good news. It offers promise and hope and guidance, but it is more than that, as verse 12 reminds us. It is sharp and discerning and quickening (think Highlander). The sharp power of God's word isn't designed merely to wound us, cut us, or pierce us. It's spoken to us in order that we might enter God's rest. It has the power to cut away fat and leave only what is desired. When we hear this reading on Sunday, I hope we hear the hope that they were designed to convey--not a sappy hope but the sometimes challenging hope of truth.