A Long Letter About Something Better

This letter has no name at the top. It begins with God.

It does not begin like a letter, either. It begins like a man standing up to speak, and only at the end does it turn into a letter. It went to Jews who had come to trust Jesus, and it had cost them. They were tired now, and thinking of going back — to the temple and the priests they grew up inside. So the letter says one word to them, over and over. The word is better.

“In many parts and in many ways God spoke long ago to the fathers through the prophets,” it starts. “At the last of these days he has spoken to us in a Son.” He is the shining out of God’s glory and the exact stamp of what God is; and when he had made a cleansing of sins he sat down at God’s right hand.

Better than the messengers, then. To which messenger did God ever say, “You are my son”? Messengers are serving spirits, sent to help the people who will inherit rescue. The Son is a son. “So we must pay much closer attention to what we heard, or drift away from it.”

And a strange thing next. He was crowned because he suffered death. He had blood and flesh like the children, so that by dying he could finish off the Accuser, who holds the power of death, and free the people who spent their lives afraid of it.

“So then, holy brothers, you who share in a call from heaven — think about Jesus, the chief priest of what we say we believe.” Better than Moses, too, and that was hard for them to hear. Moses was faithful in God’s house as a servant; the Son was faithful over it as a son. The man who builds a house gets more honor than the house.

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, the way they did in the wilderness.” Those were the ones who came out of Egypt and would not go into the good land; their bodies fell in the desert. “Watch out, brothers, that there is not in any one of you a bad heart that will not trust, turning away from the living God. Keep urging each other on, every day, as long as it is still called Today.”

What they missed the letter calls his rest, and the promise of it still stands. “Be afraid, then, that any one of you should come up short of it. Let us work hard to come into that rest, so that nobody falls the way they did.”

Then he writes at length about priests: a man set in front of God for the people, carrying in the offerings for sins, and one for himself each time.

“We have a great chief priest who has gone right through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. So hold on to what you have said. He is not a chief priest who cannot feel our weak places; he has been tested in every way we are. So walk up to the throne, and walk up boldly, and be given mercy and find help when you need it.”

There is one more priest in it. Long before there was a nation or a law or a tent, a king met Abraham on the road home from the fight for his nephew Lot: Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High. He blessed Abraham, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. No father, no mother, no family line, no first day and no last. God swore about a priest like him: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” The old priests kept dying, hundreds in a line; this one does not die, and he made his offering once — and what he brought was himself.

Somewhere in the middle the writer gets short with them. “By now you ought to be teaching. Instead you are back on milk. Milk is for babies. Solid food is for grown people who have practiced till they can tell good from bad. So leave the first lessons and be carried on toward being finished. Do not go laying the foundation all over again.”

It says a hard thing here: people once given light who fall away cannot be begun again. “But we are sure of better things about you. God will not forget your work, or the love you showed his name in looking after his people. Do not go slack. Keep at it to the end, and be like the ones who through trusting and being patient are inheriting what was promised.”

Then the curtain: the heavy curtain in the tent in the desert, the lampstand and the table of bread in front of it, and behind it the golden chest, the stone tablets, the jar of manna, Aaron’s budded staff. Into the room behind that curtain one man went, one day a year, and never without blood.

“And that,” says the letter, “was God showing you the way in was not open yet.” The tent was a copy, built by a pattern Moses was shown on the mountain. Its offerings could make a body clean, not the inside of a person; they had to be done again next year.

So he went in — not into a room made with hands but into heaven itself, and not with the blood of bulls and goats, which can never take sins away, but with his own. He went in once, to carry the sins of many, and that was the end of it; he will appear a second time. Every priest they had ever watched stood, all day, every day, at the same offerings over and over. This one made one offering and sat down.

“So then, brothers — come in. The way is open, through the curtain. Come with a true heart, the whole way. Hold on to the hope you said out loud and do not wobble, because the one who promised keeps his word. Think how to prod one another along into loving people and doing good. Do not stop meeting together, the way some have got into the habit of doing. Keep cheering each other up, all the more as you see the Day coming closer.” For people who keep sinning on purpose after knowing the truth, it says, no offering is left. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Then, kindly: “Remember the early days. After you were given light you stood up under a hard fight of suffering. You stood next to the prisoners, and when they took your things you let them go gladly, because you had something better, and something that stays. So do not throw away your boldness — it has a great reward. You need staying-power, so that when you have done what God wants you will get back what was promised.”

“Faith is the substance of the things we hope for. It is the proof of the things we cannot see.”

Then the list. By faith Abel brought God a better gift than Cain; he died, and is still speaking. By faith Enoch was taken away without dying. By faith Noah, warned of what nobody could see, built a boat and saved his household.

By faith Abraham obeyed and went out to a place he was going to be given, without knowing where he was going. He lived in the land he was promised like a stranger, in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, waiting for the city that has foundations under it, which God built. Out of one man, as good as dead, came a family like the stars and the sand.

“They all died still trusting, and none of them got what they were promised. They saw it a long way off and waved to it. They said out loud that they were strangers here, only passing through — people who talk like that are looking for a country of their own. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God: he had a city ready.”

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, the son the promise was fastened to, because he worked out that God can raise the dead; and he got him back. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. By faith Jacob, dying, blessed Joseph’s sons, bowed low over his staff. By faith Joseph gave orders about his bones.

By faith Moses was hidden three months when he was born, because his mother and father were not frightened of the king’s order. Grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose being badly treated with God’s people over a good time that would not last, and counted being shamed for the Christ worth more than Egypt’s treasure. By faith he kept the Passover, and the destroyer passed them by.

By faith they walked through the Red Sea as though it were dry ground, and the Egyptians tried it and were swallowed. By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after seven days of walking round them. By faith Rahab, who hid the spies and sent them home another way, did not go down with the city.

“And what more am I to say? I will run out of time if I start on Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and David and Samuel and the prophets.” They fought kingdoms down. They shut the mouths of lions. They put fires out. They got away from the sword. They were weak and were made strong. Women were given their dead back.

Then the list turns over. Others were beaten to death and would not take the way out they were offered, because they were after a better rising. Others took their turn at mocking and whipping, then chains and prison. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were killed with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, with nothing — the world was not good enough for them — living in caves and holes in the ground. “Not one of them got what was promised while they lived. God had seen something better, and it takes us in too.”

“So then,” says the letter, turning to the tired people in front of him. “Look at the crowd — all of them, round about us, filling the seats. Put down every heavy thing you carry, and the sin that gets round your legs, and run the race marked out for you. Keep your eyes on nothing but Jesus, who began this trusting and finishes it, who put up with a cross and thought nothing of the shame. Think about the one who put up with all that from sinners, so that you do not get tired and give up inside.”

“You have not had to fight as far as blood yet.” The hard time itself, he says, is a father teaching them; nobody enjoys it while it happens. “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s correction, and do not lose heart when he puts you right; the Lord corrects the one he loves. Our own fathers corrected us and we respected them for it. How much more should we be under the Father of spirits, and live?” “So straighten up those slack hands and those wobbling knees. Make the path level under your feet, so the one who is limping does not go over but gets better. Go after peace with everybody, and after being holy. Watch that nobody falls short of the favor of God. Watch that no bitter root comes up and poisons a great many. Watch that nobody is sexually immoral or common, like Esau, who sold what was his as the eldest son for one meal, and afterward could not have the blessing back, and hunted for it with tears.”

“See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking. You have not come to a mountain you can put your hand on, burning with fire and dark with storm, where even Moses said, I am terrified and I am shaking. You have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, and tens of thousands of messengers keeping a festival; and to God the judge of everybody, and to Jesus. You are handed a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Serve God with reverence and awe, because our God is also a fire that eats things up.”

And then, quite suddenly, it turns into a letter after all — a last run of short things. “Keep on loving each other like brothers. Do not forget to be kind to strangers — some people have had messengers of God in the house without knowing it. Remember the ones in prison as though you were chained beside them, and the ones badly treated, because you have a body yourself. Marriage is to be held in honor by everybody, and the bed kept clean, because God will judge the sexually immoral. Keep your life clear of the love of money and be content with what you have, because he himself has said: I will never let you go, and I will never leave you. So take courage and say: the Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid. What can a person do to me?”

“Remember the men who led you and spoke the word of God to you. Look how their lives came out, and trust the way they trusted. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not let strange teachings carry you off; it is good for the heart to be made firm by favor, and not by foods. Obey the ones who lead you and give way to them, because they lie awake over you — let them do it gladly and not groaning.”

The animals whose blood went in behind the curtain were burned outside the camp, where the rubbish went. That is where Jesus went: outside the gate. “So let us go out to him, outside the camp, and carry what people say about him. We have no city here that stays. Through him let us keep bringing God an offering of praise, the fruit of lips that say his name. And do not forget to do good and to share; those are the offerings God likes. Pray for us. Our brother Timothy is let out; if he comes soon enough I will bring him. Greet all your leaders, and all the holy ones.”

Then greetings — the ones from Italy send theirs — and a last line: favor be with all of you. And this: “Put up with what I have said. I have written you only a short letter.”