Text: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Why be good?
Why be good? And why do good? Why let that guy nose into your lane from his driveway? Maybe he’ll let someone else do the same some day, but probably not. He’s clearly a jerk. Why pick up trash that someone else dropped? Why listen to your crabby friend complain once again? Why risk your job to defend a colleague? Why help those who are sick and poor? Why support infrastructure projects in Honduras, as some New England Lutherans are doing right now? Why fight for peace and justice? Why do anything good? Why should Christians, who are saved by grace apart from works, bother to do any good work?
The book of Hebrews is a strange book. Titled a letter in most Bibles, it is more like a long sermon. The language of Hebrews is very highfalutin, difficult in Greek and difficult even when translated into English. Hebrews is a book of high Christology, a theologians’ phrase for emphasizing the divinity of Christ at the expense of his humanity. Hebrews is big on the sacrifice of Christ and his priestly nature.
So it is odd to come across the final thirteenth chapter of Hebrews. Odd because all of a sudden the author begins to give down-to-earth advice about how to live as a Christian here in this world, in everyday life. It is so odd that some scholars think the last chapter was written by someone else, or tacked on later. But the final chapter tells us how to be good, and the book as a whole tells us why.
The advice is clear, specific, and short. There are four rules of conduct: Show hospitality to strangers. Be mindful of those in prison and who are being tortured. Be faithful in relationships. And stay free of the love of money. On the face of it, four seemingly unrelated exhortations. But they are sewn together by a common thread.
First: Show hospitality to strangers. The rule is first in the list. And it is the most emphatic: do not neglect to do this, it says. Strangers here means “people not like us.” The word means more literally “aliens.” Foreigners, people who look weird, talk weird, do weird things that we don’t do. And by weird, I mean different. People who admire things we don’t admire. People who believe things we don’t believe. People who don’t know the people we know.
The reason for this rule, Hebrews says, is that we might entertain angels without knowing it. Even those who seem strange to us might be angels. Not knowing them, we don’t know. Or they might just be good people just like us and our friends. People who have aspirations and fears just like ours. People whose reasons for doing things are just as complicated as ours.
The word for hospitality here means more than “tolerate” strangers. It means love the strangers. Love the strangers as you would your brother or sister. Go out of your way to give them the same break you’d give a friend. Forgive them a little. Help them before they ask for help. Be mindful of them. Do not keep them out. Invite them in.
Second: Remember those in prison. Remember those being tortured. We turn our backs on prisons and prison camps. Prisons are designed that way, to make it hard for people outside to imagine fully the people inside. As in our dealings with strangers, we imagine prisoners to be something other than us. We call them prisoners, but in Hebrews, in the Greek, it says “those who are in prison.” There are not humans outside and prisoners inside. There are people, some outside and some inside.
Think of those inside, Hebrews says, as if you were in prison with them. Bound up with them, it says. Imagine yourself in prison. Imagine yourself there for, say, five years. A short sentence by today’s standards. Imagine just a minimum security prison. Where you share a small cell with another person, where you hardly ever see your family or parents or children or partner. Where whatever you do is observed. Where your time is not your own at all. When you are subject to arbitrary rules and decisions. Where you have no liberty—which is the purpose of prisons. Imagine, say, starting next week and living like that for five years. Be mindful of those in prison, Hebrews says.
Imagine even more, if you can—which I’m not sure I can— being in a place where you are tortured. The word means “a place where you are held while evil things happen.” Imagine that, and be mindful of those who are being tortured.
Third: Be faithful in relationships. Honor marriage is what it really says, and don’t mess around with sex. In a time when the Roman oppressors mocked the Christians because they abstained from adultery, and where sex was an avenue to power and honor, the advice defended faithfulness against an unsympathetic culture. But the general is as true as the specific. Honor relationships. Don’t be tempted to betray your friends, or your partner, for other, sweeter rewards. Don’t use relationships as means to some other end.
And fourth: Keep your lives free from the love of money. Be content with what you have. Don’t put your trust in riches. Money is untrustworthy. It is great, but it can’t be counted on. It is addictive. It seems like a indicator of admiration and esteem when it is not. It is the love of money that is the issue in this passage. Money becomes an idol. We are tempted to turn to money for healing and peace when we could be turning to God.
Aliens, people in prison, marriage and sex, and the love of money. A motley crew. What makes these four rules a matched set is what Hebrews calls “mutual love.” We are exhorted to love others for what they are. Not what they represent—immigrants and criminals. And not with expectation of reward—affection and riches. Relationships with people are not based on transactions. People—other people—are not tokens, or counts, or aggregates, or means to an end. Not illegals, nor insurgents, nor gays, nor troops, nor reactionaries, nor liberals, nor “the homeless,” nor fat cat CEOs, nor anything that, though perhaps true but incomplete, lets us think of some people as something different in kind, character, and nature from you and me.
Mutual love in us is planted by our love for God and nourished by our imaginations. Imagining being the other person. Imagine you were the foreigner, imagine you were the prisoner, imagine you were the spouse, imagine you were the one who suffered because someone loved money more than you. Act as if you were.
When we are scared of people, we do crazy things. When we are tempted by idols, we do crazy things. We don’t do good. What makes the admonitions in Hebrews possible to follow is that first, God is with us. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” God says. And second, that God will help and protect us. “The Lord is my helper,” quotes Hebrews, “I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”
The book of Hebrews is a love story. It is the story of God’s love for us and our love for God. It is the same story that is the story of the whole Bible. The mutual love is shaped and shown by Christ, both priest and sacrifice in the language of Hebrews. Christ who is and always was divine (“the same yesterday and today and forever,” it says) was able to be something else, was able to be us.
“Do not neglect to do good,” Hebrews says, “and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
We do good not because we have to, or because it earns us points, with God or anyone else. Not to get into heaven or to avoid God’s anger. We do good not because we get paid off in some way, emotional or actual, but because we are in mutual love with God and it pleases us, therefore, to do so, as it would please us to please someone we loved.
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