I. The End of Summer 00:00
…And we just pray that as we move and live and have our being, Lord, it would always be from you, our source. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Well, it feels like summer is ending. A lot of the school students have already felt that way for about a week and a half, as they went back to school. And the rhythms of life change. There’s something built into these seasons. I love the fact that we have this liturgical calendar that we follow, because it has this ebb and this flow, and it really follows the reality of our life.
And as we’re at the end of summer, you may notice Father Lewis and Debbie and Deacon Phil and Kelly are not here. They’re actually on some diocesan business. Some of you know, some of you may not: both Father Powell and Deacon Johnson have been given diocesan offices. Deacon Johnson is the archdeacon of the Diocese of the West now, and so he’ll be traveling more often, doing those duties in our diocese. And Father Powell is a canon missioner, and so he has particular duties to encourage and counsel the churches in our Western Diocese. And so he and Deacon Phil and their wives are meeting up with our bishop in Santa Clarita this morning. It’s a really fascinating moment, because of course for a long time Bishop Kessler was here, and he was the bishop of the Western Diocese, and so we were the cathedral. And then that moved, and Bishop Chris is at the cathedral in Henderson. But it has opened us up, I feel, to be more connected with our diocese as we’ve made this transition. And I just want all of us to be aware that we’re not just some church out in the middle of nowhere, unconnected, doing our own thing. We’re actually a part of such a movement of God, and you’re going to see more and more of that as we move forward.
II. Hard Words and the Cross 02:00
Okay. This past few weeks we’ve had an interesting turn in our lectionary, where we’ve had some really challenging readings. Jesus has not been messing around lately. In the Gospel lessons he said some things like, “Enter through the narrow gate.” Somebody says, “Will many people be saved?” He goes, “You enter through the narrow gate.” Don’t play with this “both and,” this idea of heaven as something that you shouldn’t take seriously, that doesn’t demand all of you. There’s this tone through that reading.
And then he also talked about serving Christ and eschewing our earthly attachments, which is hard, because, believe it or not, we’re some of the wealthiest people who have ever walked the face of the planet. So when Jesus said it’s harder for a rich man to enter the eye of a needle, he was talking about everyone in this room. All of us have wealth that was unheard of in centuries and millennia past.
And so these passages have kind of built up. Maybe the most intense one was when he said, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” That’s pretty intense. I do want to make one note: it has never been a Christian tradition to take that literally. So we’re doing well. We were able to see that there’s some figurative language going on here. Maybe some hyperbole, but some emphasis on this.
And if you just listen to those readings and you lose track of who Jesus is, you might fall into a trap: a trap of puritanical tyranny, of legalism and moralism, where everything is about whether you’re good enough, whether you can fit through the narrow gate, whether you don’t step aside, whether you keep all your members from causing you to sin. You can fall into this without the context of who Jesus is. The contrast in Jesus’ life between condemnation and invitation is found on the cross. If you ever lose yourself in the admittedly hard words of Jesus (he was even told that by his followers: “These words are hard. Who can follow?”), remember that the answer to that is, “It’s impossible with man, but with God all things are possible” (Matt 19.26). And he made that true on the cross. He took all the condemnation, and all we now have is an invitation to transformation.
So when you hear Jesus say these hard things, remember that the reason he said, “Enter through the narrow gate,” is because he knows that there’s a vast chasm on either side that you could fall into. And like a loving father, he’s saying, “No, no, no. Walk right here. This is where life, goodness, love, joy is.” Or when he says to get rid of all of your earthly attachments, he’s saying, “I’ve got heavenly gifts for you. Why are you treasuring things that pass away? I’ve got so much more for you.” And finally, when he says, “Pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin,” the invitation is to take seriously the true life and to ignore those things that lead us to death.
III. Take the Lowest Place 05:05
All of that leads to our Gospel today, where once again Jesus is giving some hard words. Imagine you invite this teacher to your house, and he is really famous. He’s doing miracles left and right, but you’re not sure about this guy. And so you invite him over to your party, and you’re watching him closely, and then he starts telling a story about how you and all your friends are more concerned with where you sit at the table than with your obligation of love.
Because, of course, he gives this whole example that’s, let’s say, common sense. If you go to a party and you’re not sure where you’d fit, why don’t you sit at the back? And if you need to go forward, you’ll be brought forward, and that would be great. Because what if you sit at the front and somebody has to move you? That would be embarrassing. It almost sounds like the type of thing that you might tell your kid when he’s going to a party and he’s unsure what to do. It’s just common sense. Why risk being put down? But then he follows it up with this encouragement: when you throw a party, you should invite the poor, the lame, the maimed, those who can’t repay you (Luke 14.13–14). And all of a sudden the context is not just common sense. It’s not about protecting your dignity when he says, “Take the place in the back.” It’s actually about what we’re told in the New Testament: prefer others above yourself (Rom 12.10).
IV. Our God Is a Consuming Fire 06:37
So, with all of that in mind, I want to go through our Hebrews passage today, because the writer of Hebrews really spells out this idea of preferring others above yourself. We’re going to start a couple of verses earlier than we read today. The title of my message today is “Our God Is a Consuming Fire,” and that comes from Hebrews 12:28, when the writer of Hebrews says:
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire. Heb 12.28–29
I want to pause there for a moment. You have this great picture that is developed through all of Scripture of God as this consuming fire. And we start there: a revelation of God’s power, his gift. And we talk about acceptable worship, living our lives for him. But the question is, what do we mean when we call God a consuming fire, over and over again throughout Scripture? I’ll go to Proverbs 17:3. It’s not going to show up there, but it says:
3 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts. Prov 17.3
If you’re thinking about all these readings that have led up to this point, as Jesus has given these instructions, his goal is to transform our hearts. And when we talk about God as a consuming fire, we mean the type of fire that you actually throw yourself into, the fire that you’re invited to be consumed by. And what happens in that moment is like in a crucible. It’s like in a furnace. You are smelted, and all that is unworthy is burned away. In fact, in Isaiah 1:25, God says, “I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross” (that’s the imperfections) “as with lye and remove all your alloy” (Isa 1.25).
What’s an alloy? An alloy is a mixed metal. We have been called to be sons and daughters of God, but we’ve got a lot of baggage that we bring with us, and God’s effort is to rid us of that, that we might be more truly who we are: that all that stuff that tries to mix with us, our fears, our anxieties, our wrongful desires, our sin, would all be burned away, that we might have the best and be the best.
We don’t like that, though. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like God’s consuming fire. Sometimes it hurts. It burns. It’s truly painful, sometimes, when God lovingly brings us through times where you have to let go of you, have to let go of your ideas, your inventions, your desires. I told you a couple of weeks ago about this podcast that I put all this effort into, and I got it looking so good. People were telling me, “Wow, this is so great.” And I was like, “I know. I’m amazing.” I was so excited. And God said, “No. I didn’t call you to do this.” And he made it very clear in my life that I had to give that up. Did it feel good? No. Do I still look at the equipment and the setup and feel a pang of, “Oh, what could have been. I had this great idea”? Yeah, of course. But I trust him. And that was part of the whole point, if for no other reason than that I would trust him instead of my own power. How worth it is that?
We think in terms of what we can acquire, of what we can do, of what we can accomplish. But God thinks in terms of who we are, because what will be eternal? You, not your stuff. You are the eternal, beautiful thing that God is after, and he will work to transform you as you let him. And so he makes this great allusion to all of Scripture, where there are several passages where God’s called this consuming fire, and he says, “You’ve been given a kingdom that shall not be shaken; our God is a consuming fire.”
V. Let Brotherly Love Continue 11:03
And then he seemingly changes tack, in chapter 13, verse 1. He says:
1 Let brotherly love continue. Heb 13.1
But I see this as a subpoint, because you have the kingdom that will never be shaken, and because God is a consuming fire, he’s going to make it so that you can actually let brotherly love continue. And let’s be honest: some of us need to let brotherly love start, right? I don’t know about you, but “let brotherly love continue” assumes too much of me. I try. But seriously, God’s fire not only burns away that which is unworthy, but it actually gives us love for others. It empowers us. It fills us. It is our source. So when you say, “How can I love that person?”, it doesn’t matter how you can. It matters that he does. And that fire will fill you, and you will become the person who can love what God loves, love who God loves.
And then in verse 2 he continues to expand on what love looks like:
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Heb 13.2
I love that, because it seems so odd to us in the modern world to think of angels: “Did I entertain an angel?” I love it because it puts the proper amount of respect towards strangers. We often treat strangers as, “I either don’t want to interact with you, because you’ll inconvenience me, or I suspect that you’re not worth engaging with at all.” We’re so formed by our consumerist, materialist, efficiency, expediency society, where every interaction is, “What can I get from you without giving anything? How quickly can I get out of this Starbucks drive-thru? How quickly can I stop this interaction, so that I get what I want and you don’t have to take anything more than is absolutely necessary?”
Let me just ask you this: how many of you have welcomed a stranger into your home as a matter of hospitality? I cannot think of a single time where I invited a stranger to dine at my house. Now, maybe somebody I met at church, and they were part of another group, and so they had a claim on me of some kind. Yeah, that’s normal. But that’s not what he’s saying: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” That is a hard word, especially for us, who are so… our home is our sanctuary. It’s our place. It’s our “stay out.” “I have my privacy, and I’m busy. This is my private place, and I’m too busy for you.” Now, I’m not saying everyone here has to go do this, and if you don’t have strangers coming into your house, you’re not a Christian. But yes, you can show hospitality to strangers everywhere you go. You can talk differently to the people you encounter in the world. In fact, we had a great session with Jane and Michelle at 3SI, where they talked about hospitality, and they talked about the coffee bar that they’ve been doing at church. That was just a small way of showing care and entertainment and refreshment for those here. But you can bring that everywhere you go.
But this idea, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”: that means when you encounter a stranger, you can’t be sure that it’s not an angel, a messenger of God. Now, I mean that both spiritually and figuratively. Maybe God sent that person into your path for a reason. What did we sing today? “You can use anything, and anyone.” Okay. Open our eyes to the love of Jesus for everyone. If you watch Jesus, every time somebody comes to him, he encounters them, he sees them, he notices them, and he speaks truth and love and life to them.
VI. Remember Those in Prison 14:31
Verse 3:
3 Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Heb 13.3
Now, our politics have trained us to not remember the inconvenienced, the poor, the downtrodden, but to fight for what we can get. I’m making this claim because I can see it happening in my own heart. Maybe you’re like Mother Teresa and you’re wonderful, and I love it. Awesome. But in my heart, I get calloused to the needs of the prisoner, the broken, the outcast, because everywhere I go, people are saying, “You need to care about this. You need to care about that.” And it’s too much. I get overwhelmed. I deafen my heart to those pleas. You know, the commercial where Sarah McLachlan is singing about the dog, and then the starving child in Africa… it’s just so much. I can’t. But he can. He actually cares about every suffering person. And so we need to be more like him.
Now, I’m not saying that you have to go looking for things to feel upset about. That’s not the point here. But we need to remember the outcast. We need to remember the prisoner. How do we do that? Well, maybe in your daily prayer you say, “God, remind me of the prisoner that I need to pray for,” or, “Remind me of the outcasts, the oppressed, the person that I wouldn’t normally engage with because they’re outside of my view, outside of my radar. My life is comfortable. Make me more uncomfortable with the suffering of the world.” God is a good God. He will do that in a way that is good for you. And he’ll probably lead you to an opportunity to bless someone or to do something about it. Sitting around and feeling the emotions is not the point. Love is active. It moves. That’s why it kept saying of Jesus, “And he looked on them and had compassion.” And what did he do when he had compassion? He moved. He didn’t just sit with it.
Okay. “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them.” That’s a really high bar. “And those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” We don’t get to just pretend that the poor, the unfortunate, the mistreated, the prisoners, are not a part of us.
VII. Let Marriage Be Held in Honor 17:50
Okay, verse 4. I like this one:
4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Heb 13.4
Ah, judgment. What’s the point here? Again, remember Jesus: he took the judgment on himself. And so even when you see this, “God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous,” you don’t read it as, “We get to be the judge with God, and we get to throw all of our condemnation on those people.” No, no, no. That’s not it at all. It’s the same thing as the father saying, “That stove is hot. Don’t touch it. You’re going to burn yourself.” Don’t play with sexual immorality. It will ruin something. It will break something. It will hurt. You will feel the consequence of sin.
Okay. When we look at this and you think about “Let marriage be held in honor among all,” of course everyone in this room is immediately thinking of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. I know that was the first thing that came to mind for everyone here. I do want to bring them up. Okay, you’re like, “I thought I’d escaped. I was in church. I didn’t have to hear about them.” But give me one minute to think about this. There is something going on in our culture and in our world where the true, the good, and the beautiful, which have been sidelined in favor of the displaced and the outcast and the twisted, are being put back at the center. The true, the good, and the beautiful. And people love the idea of an honorable marriage. Again: “It’s just stuffy and outdated. It’s just a piece of paper.” All those arguments have fallen so hollow in recent years. And I think there’s actually something happening in our culture where they’re remembering that there’s something true and meaningful in honoring marriage. I don’t think I’m saying too much to say that this is actually a symptom, Travis and Taylor, of a larger phenomenon that’s going on. And praise God. We need more examples of honorable marriage. And I pray that they do have an honorable marriage. I really do. The whole idea that we need to tear down people because they are celebrities or whatever: that is also wrong. We would love for there to be more examples of goodness in the world.
Okay. When you think about this, and you think about family and traditional marriage, there is study after study that says that societies and cultures that honor man and woman, marriage together, do better on every scale: health, mental health, stability of families, incarceration numbers. Every number is better when you have marriage between a man and a woman, and it’s held up in honor in a community and in a culture. The only problem, the only downside, is that the husbands, specifically the husbands, have a greater likelihood in these cultures to be fat. Sounds good to me. I’m okay with that. Happy and well-fed. I don’t even know if I can count that as a downside. Think about this: the only thing wrong with marriage is that the husbands tend to be a little fatter, well taken care of. Like I said, in centuries previous they would have seen that as a good thing, because food was hard to get. It’s only now that we think that fat is bad. I mean, I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just saying: how blessed are we to have a war against obesity instead of hunger? Yeah. Okay. All right. Let’s move on.
VIII. Free From the Love of Money 21:41
Okay, verse 5:
5 Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” Heb 13.5–6
So what is a love of money? A love of money is a desire for control. Simply put, you want to be stable and in control of your life, and you think money is going to get you there. You want what you want, and you think money is going to provide it. It’s the opposite of trusting God. Love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6.10), because everything we’re told is, “Trust me. Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” And when you love money, you sacrifice that trust in God for a trust in that which rots and perishes, that which cannot save. It says in the Psalms, “A horse is a vain hope for salvation” (Ps 33.17). Well, so is your really big 401(k). There’s nothing that you can do. There’s no amount you can earn that will save you. Trust in God. And then guess what? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50.10), whatever that means. He owns everything.
Okay? If you’re struggling with love of money, then go to God about your trust. Ask him to help you to trust him. Look at your anxieties, your fears, because that’s what’s driving it. Love, when rightly directed, leads to confidence. When you love God well and you love your neighbor well, you are secure, because you love God and he is your security. And then, out of your love, you can bless others. You can love others. You can be generous, because you’re secure. Love of something wrong breeds insecurity and anxiety, even if you don’t know it. Even if you’re just like, “Man, I just really love money. I love seeing my bank accounts grow. I love having this,” underneath all of that is a fear. Underneath all of that is a misplaced trust. And so, because you put your trust over here, you’re necessarily standing on shaky ground, and you know that in your spirit. And so ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” And then go to God with it, because if God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8.31).
IX. Remember Your Leaders 24:04
Okay, verse 7. So all of this is “Let brotherly love continue.” Here’s how. He’s given us all these examples of how you can let your brotherly love continue. Now he’s continuing in this role: how else can you, in the church, let your brotherly love continue? Well, you can remember your leaders:
7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Heb 13.7
Now, I could stop there, but I shouldn’t, because I think it’s necessarily linked to verse 8:
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb 13.8
Now, the whole “Remember your leaders and imitate their faith” is completely empty without the second half: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” What do I mean by that? I mean you can look to leaders like Bishop Chris, Bishop Jones, Father Powell, Father Ed. You can look to these leaders and imitate their faith because they are looking to Jesus. And insofar as they’re not looking to Jesus, you can actually trust Jesus to work that out.
So when you think about this, there’s this problem that we can fall into in our culture, where we idolize celebrities or athletes or influencers or your pastor or a guru that you found online. You put them in the place where you want to be just like them, and it’s all empty, except when you imitate somebody imitating Christ, where the foundation of your admiration, the foundation of your perspective, is to look to Jesus. So even when (and when is the right word) your leaders fail to live up, because we’re all human and we all will fail, your trust is in Jesus. Does that make sense?
And so we can actually trust, especially in the structure of the church and the authority of the church, that God actually moves through those he’s placed over you. Did you know that Father Powell’s the rector here because God made him the rector here? We truly believe that God directs us. And so you can look to him and trust and imitate because of Jesus, not because of Father Lewis. You can look to Bishop Jones, one of our favorite people, for those of you who know him. To know him is to love him. He’s just so awesome, as a bishop and as a man of faith and as an encourager, because he looks to Jesus, not because he, as wonderful as he is, is worthy of imitation. It’s only Christ shining through him that is worthy of that honor. So when he says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God,” it’s not the ones who spoke their own words; it’s the ones who spoke God’s words to you. That’s the important part.
X. Not About You 26:56
And as we talk about this whole wrestling with how to love, how to let brotherly love continue, when we talk about hospitality and all these various things, I just want to end with what Jesus said in his Gospel, where he says, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14.11). Because truly, if you get this, every other part of this becomes easier: if you are humble, and it’s not about you, it’s about him, which is the proper order. If you had a calculator that was like, “How do we calculate value?”, it’s him: infinity. You and your opinions: nothing. We don’t add to Christ. He has it all. He has given us all. But guess what? He is so good that he wants you to be a part of what he’s doing, to be in his story, so that actually the body of Christ is better because you are a part of it. So he has all the value, and he gives it liberally. So you have value.
So why do we say all life is sacred? Because every single person was endowed by their Creator with value, because they’re made in his image. So when we talk about humility, it’s not thinking less of yourself. It’s not devaluing yourself. It’s just thinking of yourself less. It’s not about you. It’s about him and what he is doing in you and through you. And guess what? It’s so much better that way. When I live for me, I quickly become miserable, and so does everyone around me. It’s so obvious. When I do it for me, it crumbles. When I do it for him, no matter what happens, I still have this security. He will never leave me nor forsake me, and he wills all things for my good. That’s a pretty big promise: all things.
So when we talk about all of this stuff, and you’re thinking and you’re being challenged, and you’re like, “Man, Travis and Taylor meant more than I thought it did,” when you’re thinking about all these things and you’re unpacking this as you go forward, just remember this: it’s not about you. It’s about him. And when it’s about him, then you have the freedom to love without fear. You can just love on people. You can just serve people. You can just be hospitable. You can just let brotherly love continue, because it’s about him anyway, and that’s what he would do. You know those bracelets? WWJD: What would Jesus do? Just live that. Just be what he is, because he lives in you. Okay. And the consuming fire of God will burn it all away, and you will continue to look more and more like him. Because what are we told? When we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he really is (1 John 3.2). That’s what the consuming fire of God’s all about. Amen.