Yesterday, Today, Forever: Sermon on Hebrews 13

The project had been eleven years in the making – ever since that tragic night in Ford's Theater. And now the crowd in Lincoln Square was immense. President Grant and a wide array of government officials were there, and adoring masses, too, to witness the unveiling of the new Emancipation Monument on Friday, April 14, 1876 – and then Frederick Douglass took the stand to speak. Atop the pedestal, what he saw – a twelve-foot bronze of the late President Lincoln, holding his Emancipation Proclamation and welcoming a freed slave to rise – well, it meant a lot to Douglass. For far too long, Douglass and those who shared his skin color had been cast outside the camp of white American society, their rights and even their very humanity denied by unjust law. But now there was freedom, and the statue had been fully funded by those once not legally free but now free indeed. 

“In view, then,” Douglass said, “of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.” He refused to gloss over Abraham Lincoln's personal shortcomings (“preeminently the white man's president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men”), but insisted that in spite of those (and perhaps, in a way, through them), Lincoln had been used mightily by Infinite Wisdom. And now Douglass' people were “newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom,” so they wished, by erecting this memorial, to share a message with “those of after-coming generations.” Saying that “the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation” they felt “can never die while the Republic lives,” Frederick Douglass declared his hope that statues like this one would “endure forever.”

That was 1876.  This is 2020.  And this month, amidst the general iconoclastic purge engulfing the nation, threats have been made to frustrate Frederick Douglass's hope. Activists demanded its removal and announced plans to tear down the original; and in Boston, where a copy has stood since 1879, after a widespread petition for its removal, the city is discussing whether to keep theirs.  The artistic choices in the design are perceived by some today as showing the freed slave in too weak a posture, and allegedly Douglass himself was not terribly fond of the design. The events of the past month have reminded us that, in the sea of cultural change, no legacy is destined to stand as a constant yesterday and today and forever. Monuments are not likely to endure forever – certainly not with the same meaning they had when first dedicated. As history flows, finding someone who can be the same yesterday and today and forever has proven to be an impossible task.

But the author of Hebrews, whoever he was, has a candidate to submit for our consideration – and, more than our consideration, for our adoration. “Jesus Christ,” he proclaims with a voice like a trumpet, “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8)! Yesterday and today the same, and even to all eternity, when monuments to the legacies of mortal men are raised and toppled, Christ cannot be canceled.

Let's take these three times into consideration. We begin with yesterday. The yesterday of Jesus stretches back far, far beyond the pages of history. The yesterday of Jesus is anchored firmly in the uncreated simplicity of God. When God alone existed, Jesus Christ was there. Before matter, before energy, before space, before time, Jesus Christ was there. When the order was given to let creation roll forth, Jesus Christ was that word. When human beings were installed as the living images of God in God's own garden-temple, Jesus Christ was who they pointed to. And when, after a long time of wayward wandering, a nation was formed to bless the other nations, Jesus Christ was the Lord of their Law. In the fullness of time, he stepped into our flesh and blood, took on a name, lived a life, and then was crucified. But our author here connects it to the rituals of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In the Law, on that great day, the high priest would slaughter a sin offering, present the blood in the Holy of Holies, and then “the bull for the sin offering and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried outside the camp: their skin and their flesh and their dung shall be burned with fire, and he who burns them shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward he may come into the camp” (Leviticus 16:27-28; cf. Hebrews 13:11).

And just the same, Jesus was crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem, outside the camp, in the place where the bodies of those animals were destroyed. It's because he was a sacrifice that he was sent outside: “Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood” (Hebrews 13:12). His own blood, the “blood of the eternal covenant,” bought freedom and emancipated everyday people like you and me into the world of holiness. “For if the blood of goats and bulls... sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:13-14)! Jesus Christ “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:12). And then “the God of peace... brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the sheep” (Hebrews 13:20).

And the risen Jesus, in history's yesterday, sent out his apostles to speak the word of God. The people to whom Hebrews is written had heard them, or other missionaries who worked with them. And those prior preachers, the preachers of yesterday, became their leaders in the gospel. The author wants people to “remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). Last Sunday, if you were here with us, we did exactly that by recalling the Church Fathers, those to whom the entire church can look in exactly this way. And here in our congregation we have had past pastors to whom this verse applies. Scripture commands you to remember them well. That may now be countercultural – to remember and imitate someone from the past! But in this instance, we have a thus-saith-the-Lord.

Such was yesterday. Now we stand in today, and we find that Jesus Christ has not changed, his meaning has not changed, because he is alive; and though we who live have to go through development and repentance, Christ is divinely constant. Like the first audience of Hebrews, we at times may be tempted to go back to old ways, to live as if the cross and the resurrection never happened, to go about business as usual. But the author wants us to see that the aspirations of that old world are beneath us. For in the sacrifice he offered at his cross, Jesus made that cross the altar of heaven. Those who live the world's ways, who worship the legacies of changing mortals and the ideologies of one or another age – let them eat what their systems feed them. But as for us, “we have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (Hebrews 13:10). We eat grace, not the outdated diets of the fashions of a past century. We eat grace, not the fads of the present, not the delicacies of utopias never built, not the “diverse and strange teachings” of a world in flux (Hebrews 13:9). We eat from the altar, we eat from the cross and from the nail-scarred hand of Jesus our High Priest. Our food is beyond the law's power to provide and beyond people's power to steal.

The sacrifice made yesterday changes our lives today. We have been made exiles in the world (oh, we've tried to manipulate the culture, make ourselves comfortable, and deny we're in exile, but the veil is being torn from our eyes, and we're seeing our exile anew), and yet our path of exile outside the camp has been sanctified. For if “Jesus... suffered outside the gate..., let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured” (Hebrews 13:12-13). Outside with the lepers and slaves of society, outside with the judged and condemned, outside with the misfits – outside at the cross, outside to Jesus. That's where holiness comes from: from the outside. Not where the world respects – for that will change – but where the world neglects. In the midst of the turbulence in our society today, these words need to be emblazoned in our vision, tattooed inside our eyelids: “Here we have no lasting city” (Hebrews 13:14a). Washington DC cannot be our lasting city. We don't have one. We will not build one, though we can build a better temporary city, a more just temporary city. Yet our inspiration comes from the one we wait for, the city from heaven, the New Jerusalem (Hebrews 13:14b). And its Architect is God (Hebrews 11:10). But we have no lasting city here. Not today.

Which is why today is the time to seek salvation! “Exhort one another every day, as long as it's called 'Today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin; for we have come to share in Christ,” to eat from his altar, “if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:13-14). Today is the time to live by what Jesus Christ teaches – for what he teaches doesn't change. He tells us not to neglect hospitality, he tells us to place ourselves for the imprisoned and mistreated – have we lived by that, remembered the mistreated and imprisoned in our society (Hebrews 13:2-3)? He also tells us to cling to a high standard of sexual ethics, to “let marriage be held in honor among all, let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4) – certainly something that, should we take it seriously, would set us apart from modern culture. He tells us to release ourselves into financial contentment, grounded in God's promise to never forsake us, but to instead be a helper who frees us from fear of worldly circumstances, “so we can confidently say: 'The Lord is my helper, I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5-6). A certitude needed for the living of these days!

And, equally counterculturally, he tells us today, in the church, that just as we remember, consider, and imitate the pastors of our past, so he has called the pastor of our present. “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you” (Hebrews 13:17). The author of Hebrews, and God speaking through him, orders obedience and submission to the pastor of the church, warning that if the people frustrate their pastor, the consequences could be spiritually dangerous. Instead, he says, make the pastor's task joyful by cooperating with the pastor, by putting his teaching into practice, by giving him a reason to celebrate as he watches your life and your soul. And, the author writes from afar, “Greet all your leaders and all the saints” – literally, embrace your pastor and each other, give them all a hug on the author's behalf (Hebrews 13:24). Strive to cultivate that sort of affectionate church atmosphere, a place of obedient joy – because that's what points to Jesus.

The reason for all this is that Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday! He's presently ascended, he's exalted at his Father's right hand, he's interceding and saving. The same Jesus who sacrificed his own blood for our sin yesterday is the Jesus who doesn't want to see us tripped up by the deceitfulness of sin today. The same Jesus who opened an altar yesterday is the Jesus who wants to see us scarfing down grace today. The same Jesus who sent out apostles yesterday is the Jesus who works through their successors today. The same Jesus who was outside the gate yesterday is the Jesus who calls us today to worry less about cities that won't last and more about what will – the strangers needing shelter, the abused needing defenders, the imprisoned needing comforters, the honor of marriage, the contentment of our hearts that outlasts the circumstances of our bank accounts. These things last. These things will endure after the fading city and its monuments have fallen. So through Jesus Christ, while it's still called today, “let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God – that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13:15-16). Our praises, our good, our sharing – we lay them on the altar of Christ's cross, and at these sacrifices placed there, God smiles.

Some day, this today will fade. Perhaps a fresh today will take its place, as it has many times in the past – the today of a different city, a different civilization, a different cultural atmosphere, that will also be as temporary as the last. It's happened many times before. It will happen again. But one day, what will replace one fading city will not be another fading city, but the lasting city sent down from heaven. That will be, not just a tomorrow, but the ultimate tomorrow of forever. And Jesus Christ, the same today as yesterday, will be the same forever – which means he's the same for each and every tomorrow. Cities rise and fall, monuments are built up and are torn down, meanings roll and change and are reinterpreted, legacies shine and burn, faults are found (justly and unjustly) with our designs and our doings, but Jesus Christ is perfectly the same. He will never fade away into history to make way for the resurgence of some old thing or the emergence of some new thing beyond him. (Unlike us and so much of what we've done and what we commemorate, Jesus Christ will not deserve to fade; our legacies may, but he will not.) His throne is forever (Hebrews 1:8). His priesthood is forever (Hebrews 5:6; 6:20; 7:24). His glory is forever (Hebrews 13:21). Whatever changes, he doesn't.

Jesus Christ is yesterday and today the same, and so shall he be to all ages, to every era, to all eternity. And so whatever shape the twists and turns of culture takes, whatever comes from the events we read about in the news, Jesus Christ is our anchor, “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19). For every successive today and tomorrow, God is ready to “equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever” (Hebrews 13:21). In American culture as it was in the 1950s, God could equip people with everything they needed to do his will then and there. In American culture as it was in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, God could equip people with everything they needed to do his will then and there – which may have been a somewhat different set of equipment. And in American culture as it is in June 2020, or as it will be by this time next year, God can equip us with everything good we'll need in order to do his will for that time and place. And in each and every case, he equips us through Jesus – the same yesterday and today and forever. Jesus will never be insufficient. Jesus will never be outdated. Jesus will never be obsolete or behind the times. Jesus has been ahead of the times since before time began (and it doesn't get more up-to-date than that).

And Jesus Christ has more than proven to us who he is. He sacrificed himself as a permanent sin-offering for us. It was sheer love that did that. He aims to make us holy. It's sheer love that aims for that. He prays for us every moment. It's sheer love that's doing that. And he will bring to completion all he's ever dreamt of for our lives. It's sheer love that will do that. Jesus Christ is our Great Emancipator, never bogged down or burdened by prejudices or fads. “Rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom,” may our “sentiment of gratitude … never die.” Whatever else can change, Jesus Christ won't. No fading city can topple him, though other heroes may justly fall. No temporary shifting of cultural winds can take him away from us. Let us journey beyond the fading cities that litter history and dream alike; let us join him outside the camp, in the no-man's land sanctified by divine blood and holy flame, keeping memory alive and bearing his reproach until he comes with a lasting city. And as we lay our praises and our obedience of faith as sacrifices on his altar, let us eat the grace beyond what the whims of any age can know. Amen.