Reading Hebrews for God’s Mission

What are the questions that Jesus answers for you? What are the questions that Jesus answers for your neighborhood? This is what the book of Hebrew is all about. This is how the book of Hebrews shapes our lives for God’s mission in the world.

Our story is the story of the Church. And the story of the Church is the story of Jesus. And the story of Jesus is the story of Israel. And the story of Israel is the story of the God who made the world and is re-making it amidst all the pain and suffering in the world. The book of Hebrews contributes to the story of the Church and God’s ongoing mission by illustrating just how the story of Israel fits with Jesus.

Is Jesus enough? Is Jesus really God’s best answer to all the suffering and pain in the world?This is the question that undergirds the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is all about Jesus.

My favorite story of Jesus in the Gospels is found in Luke 24. Two disciples, shellshocked from the events of Holy Week, make their way from Jerusalem to the neighboring village of Emmaus. A stranger joins them on the walk, and we the readers are told it’s the risen Jesus, but for some reason, the disciples don’t recognize him.

As Jesus gets them talking, they share in their own words what they’ve seen. And this is the part that gets me. Jesus scolds them. Then he takes all the pieces of the story they just told and rearranges them in such a way that the resurrection makes perfect sense. Luke doesn’t give us specifics of what Jesus said, just that he started with Moses and the prophets, “explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

I really want to know how Jesus told this story. Maybe Luke doesn’t say because it’s the way he’s told his whole story up to this point. But I wonder, does Jesus sketch out the arguments presented in Hebrews?

Does Jesus tell them he’s better than the angels, better than Moses, better than Joshua, better than the high priest, even the legendary Melchizedek? Does he share the true definition of faith? Does he encourage them with the communion of saints?

Could be. Maybe not. Regardless, what Hebrews shows us is that the story of Jesus makes sense. It made sense in the first century. It makes sense now. The writer of Hebrews takes a variety of Old Testament images and arranges them in such a way that the story of Jesus makes perfect sense. It’s the plot twist we never saw coming. But how did we not because now it seems so obvious?

Because if there’s a thesis question driving the letter of Hebrews it’s this: How is the story of Jesus compatible with the story of Israel in the Old Testament? Maybe that’s a question you don’t lose a lot of sleep over or perhaps it’s a question you take for granted. But for many communities in the first century, this is a burning question. Does the story of Jesus really include us? If the story of Jesus is truly for Gentiles (as letters like Romans and Galatians communicate), can it still be for Jews, too?

And the writer’s answer to this driving question is that the story of Jesus is not only compatible with Israel, it’s continuous with the story of Israel. What happens in the life and crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is the icing on the cake of something God has been doing for generations and generations. God has been playing the long-game and Jesus has been one more piece in the plan.

So what are we to make of Hebrews? The thought world of ethnic Jewish Christians is completely foreign to modern North Americans. Reading Hebrews is a cross-cultural experience.

Here are a few of the key images and ideas to keep in mind as you read the book of Hebrews:

Genesis 14 in Hebrews

There’s an obscure story about Abraham in Genesis 14, where after a great battle, Abraham pays tribute to a character named Melchizedek (a name that means “Righteous King”). Precious little is said about Melchizedek. We’re told he is the king of Salem (which means “peace”). He is a priest of El-Elyon (literally, “God Most High,” a name nowhere else in the Old Testament associated with Yahweh).

He brings Abraham bread and wine and blesses Abraham after Abraham’s battle. And that’s all we get. In part due to the lack of any more details, Jewish tradition spins Melchizedek into a mysterious allegorical and metaphorical idea (see Psalm 95). So the writer of Hebrews adds Jesus to this tradition. In suggesting that Jesus is more than the priesthood started with Moses and Aaron and the tribe of Levi, the writer goes so far as to associate Jesus’ priesthood with “the order of Melchizedek,” a priestly order older than Moses, older than even Abraham.

The book of Leviticus in Hebrews

While never directly cited, the book of Leviticus looms large over the text of Hebrews. Leviticus is a book about worship and how a community rightly orients itself with God in its center, much like Hebrews. Particularly, the system of priests and ritual of sacrifices that make the community right with God that are outlined in Leviticus are addressed at length in Hebrews.

The writer is a harsh critic of this system, calling out a flaw in its design that sacrifices had to be made over and over and over. The writer argues that Jesus on the cross once-for-all solves this problem. The reason that Christians don’t practice the rituals in Leviticus is because of this argument in Hebrews. Jesus is enough where the priests and sacrifices were not enough.

The book of Psalms in Hebrews

The writer of Hebrews makes ample use of three Psalms especially—2, 95, and 110. A common theme in each of these is king and royalty, and the writer makes explicit connection to Jesus as this king. Psalm 110 again calls back to Melchizedek, while Psalm 95 references a story in Exodus 17 where the people rebel against God in the wilderness. In that story, “rest” is understood to be the Promised Land, but the writer of Hebrews insinuates that Jesus himself is the “rest.”

Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews

Among the prophets, Jeremiah is the harshest critic of institutional religion—priests, sacrifices, the temple—which is pretty fascinating given the subject matter of Hebrews. Jeremiah lives during the time of Judah’s greatest political upheaval and uncertainty. He witnesses the exile and destruction of the temple. Those first reading Hebrews would have much in common as the Romans again destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in A.D. 70. (As there’s no reference to this significant event in the letter, so it was probably written in the years just prior to it.)

In chapter 31 (quoted in Hebrews 8), Jeremiah talks about hope and restoration and a new covenant, subversive and controversial ideas to his cynical and despairing audience, to be sure. Further, Yahweh promises a “new covenant,” that will be better, more effective than the one given in the wilderness. For the writer of Hebrews, Jesus is this new covenant.

Every context, every community and neighborhood, in every generation, gets to do the hard work of wrestling with the question, what difference does the resurrection of Jesus make in this place and time. The writer of the book of Hebrews gives us a model of dealing with questions like this. Hebrews shows us how we might contextualize the story of Jesus in our own place and time and neighborhood.

Is Jesus enough? Is Jesus God’s best answer? If Hebrews is any indication, the answer is a resounding yes.

If you want to go deeper, be sure to check out:
Hebrews for Everyone by N.T. Wright
Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James and Jude by Ben Witherington