Change, No Change
Pentecost 12, Proper 17
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
This passage from Hebrews says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” What does that actually mean?
Let’s take a moment to think about how much has changed since the time Abraham settled in the Land of Canaan. In Abraham’s time, about 1900 BC, the bronze age, the region had large families or tribes that were mostly herdsmen and semi-nomadic, moving their flocks around in the region. There was some agriculture and there were a few cities, but they were small. Damascus, Syria for example, was around 1,000 to 2,000 people. They had no written language, no written law, and only basic tools and weapons. The chariot was the technological edge.
Ancient Israel’s high point was under King Solomon, a monarchy during the Iron Age around 900 BC. At that time, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia were not a threat, and Israel thrived. They were a much more agricultural society and prospered from international trade. The biggest city was Hazor, just north of Galilee and it had up to 30,000 people. They had paper, writing, law and big buildings like the Temple.
By Jesus’s time, Israel had been overrun repeatedly by the empires that surrounded them, most recently Rome. People were generally multi-lingual, speaking Aramaic and Greek. Latin was used for legal and scholarly writing. Hebrew primarily for worship and scripture. They had many major building projects: Herod’s Temple Mount complex, Caesarea Maritima, and Masada, plus Roman roads and aqueducts. Global trade and money were greatly increased, as were taxes. (They had to pay for the Roman soldiers to occupy them.)
Today, the modern nation of Israel is no different than here. While you can still see Bedouin tribes tending their herds much as Abraham did, Israel is at the cutting edge of our digital and technological age. It is also populated by Jews who have emigrated from all over the world, and is 20% Arab Muslims. It is very cosmopolitan and multi lingual, although they have revived Hebrew as a spoken language.
So much has changed so dramatically, yet “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Shouldn’t he be keeping up with the times? No. While so much has changed, so much needs to change and hasn’t. We can see that illustrated in the very brief reading we had from Proverbs, which says simply not to put yourself forward, rather it is better to be told, “Come up here” than to be moved to a lower place.
The proverb was written down by Solomon, 3,000 years ago. But that doesn’t mean he was the first to think of it. Maybe, but we don’t know how old it could be. The idea of humbling yourself and trusting God’s appointment is a constant theme that goes back to Adam and Eve. It was true then. It was true when Jesus taught the same lesson in our Gospel today. It’s true today. People don’t like self-promotion. I know! I’ve tried it!
And the problems implicit in our passage from Hebrews are as old as time: fidelity in marriage, the love of money and power, the harsh reality of people suffering, the responsibility to show hospitality to strangers.
Despite all of our technological advances, despite our global reach with information and translation, despite our crazily interconnected economies, and despite our having had these words of wisdom for thousands of years, underscored by Jesus, we still struggle with them. At least, I do.
Maybe it’s just me, but I strive to be a guy who knows things, which is very helpful a lot of the time. But sometimes it’s just my need to be right, which is a power play to assert myself. It’s like the way I don’t like getting caught by red lights, but I do like being the first car at the light, and I certainly don’t want to be behind a big semi or dump truck. I want to know things. I’m tempted to go on at some length, but this isn’t my confessional.
These problems that persist in us as individuals and communities are ancient. But so is Jesus. How did they know these were problems way back when? They said, “God said so.” That doesn’t mean they all agreed. They didn’t. They were describing the external source of the wisdom. How do we know they remain problems today? Not everyone agrees. In fact, many people would laugh in your face if you tried to tell them not to assert themselves into seats of authority, and it is a completely foreign idea in many cultures in the world today.
But it has taken root in our culture as wisdom. And if you love God, if you love Jesus, you know it’s true. (Maybe that’s why the church loads up from the back.) Whether or not we agree, whether or not we like it, whether or not we feel we even have the capacity to try it, it has always been true and will always be true, long after we are gone. It just is.
A more dramatic example is slavery. It was prevalent around the world and we cringe where we see it tolerated as just part of life in the Bible. Yet, we know in our bones how wrong it was and is. But why? It was everywhere for all of history.
Ultimately it conflicts with, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which is in Leviticus 18:19, which God told Moses, a Hebrew on a mountain in a desert 3400 years ago. It conflicts with Paul’s assertion “in Christ there is no slave or free” 2000 years ago. Now we get it, but it took how many years and how many millions of lives? Even so, it’s because God fulfilled the Law in Jesus and through him shined his truth to all nations. In this case it was the British and United States who led the world to reject slavery. Yes, it still exists but it is illegal everywhere.
The eternal wisdom of Jesus Christ, true yesterday, today and tomorrow, is inextricably bound to his person as Son of God. Our job is to listen to him, follow him and do our level best to represent and serve him here and now. His truth will reign in the end, may it reign in our hearts today and forever.
AMEN