St Wilfrid, Haywards Heath talk on perseverance 3.2.21

I think the letter to the Hebrews is a Godsend at this time. We’ve been reading it as first lesson at the eucharist for the last month. It was written to help Jewish Christians make sense of a time of tumult that included the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70AD [sculpture from Titus Arch in Rome]. 

This brought to climax the divisions between Christianity and Judaism with the loss of the sacrificial cult. The author of Hebrews explains the coming of the Messiah as being not that of a ruler but that of a priest, fulfilling Temple worship, whose rule will come later. As Jews turned to synagogues in place of the Temple there was a parting of the ways between the first Christians, who continued to worship in the Temple until its destruction but were rejected from synagogues by fellow Jews. This division occurred parallel to the mission to the Gentiles initiated by God from Jerusalem across the world through Saint Paul.

In today’s passage we have wisdom about making something of suffering linked to the first believers' sense of loss at the destruction of the Temple and the hardship of being shunned by fellow Jews. ‘Suffering is part of your training; God is treating you as his sons. Has there ever been any son whose father did not train him?.... hold up your limp arms and steady your trembling knees and smooth out the path you tread… always be wanting peace with all people, and the holiness without which no one can ever see the Lord. Be careful… that no root of bitterness should begin to grow and make trouble; this can poison a whole community’ (Hebrews 12)

What wisdom and implications for us! Our lives have a lot of suffering at present as the coronavirus pandemic locks us down, weighs us with concern for those we love and the heavy media preoccupation with it dampens our spirits. According to Hebrews we are to see these privations as a spiritual discipline allowed by our loving Heavenly Father. ‘The Lord trains the ones that he loves and he punishes all those he acknowledges as his sons’. The letter to the Hebrews encourages us to see Our Lord alongside us in our sufferings, working things for good, inasmuch as we put faith in God. Here is the rub. Are we able to see life’s circumstances, however hard they may be, as willed by God. Just as Our Lord saw his crucifixion, wrong as it was at a human and legal and moral level, as a saving event.

To accept the hand of God in suffering is not fatalism. In the case of coronavirus we are minimising our sufferings and the sufferings of others by costly precautions and vaccination. One day we will look back at the pandemic, as our parents looked back at the World War, or those first Jewish Christians looked back at the Temple’s destruction. We will look back like them and see the good that grew out of the hardship. For us in February 2021 the letter to the Hebrews resonates with a perspective that sees God at work. Protecting that work in us is our prime concern, less the business of interpreting his hand working through coronavirus, though that will one day be made clear to us. Seeing our trials as part of building patience in us, precious gift from a Father patient beyond limit, seeking to build peace, uprooting bitterness - all of this is the gift of Christian faith which will bring its reward.

To accept the hand of God in suffering is not fatalism. In the case of coronavirus we are minimising our sufferings and the sufferings of others by costly precautions and vaccination. One day we will look back at the pandemic, as our parents looked back at the World War, or the first Jewish Christians looked back at the Temple’s destruction. We will look back like them and see the good that grew out of the hardship. For us in February 2021 the letter to the Hebrews (12:4-7, 11-15) resonates with a perspective that sees God at work. Protecting that work in us is our prime concern, less the business of interpreting his hand working through coronavirus overall. Seeing our trials as part of building patience in us, gift from a Father patient beyond limit, seeking to build peace, uprooting bitterness - all of this is the gift of Christian faith which will bring its reward.