Canter Bridge

The writer to the Hebrew finds himself and his compatriots—citizenship is not marginal detail for him—momentarily caught between two worlds. This one, that is to say the undeniable environment in which we move about and suffer an intermittently painful quotient of distress, is a mere shadow of the one for which we long and to which we are destined. It is not unreal, yet it is less real than the enduring world whose gates we aspire to enter when we have served out our vocation in this landscape of shadows and perplexing mystery.

Jesus is, for this writer, the priestly figure who participates in both worlds. He summons his readers to strenuous exertion so that they might cling to this Jesus and so anchor their hopes for arrival in the very present person who is their guarantor that God has written each of them into his story.

In this world all possibility of conventional, smoky, Jerusalemite temple sacrifice has been barred off. It is inaccessible to the readers of this allegory-saturated homily. Yet sacrifice has not for this reason been relegated to the past. The writer reconfigures sacrifice in terms of praise and good deeds, each of which seem to replace the offering of animals but are no less pleasing to God than the old liturgy:

Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

In the absence of temple cult, both Judaism and Christianity discern new forms of offering sacrifice. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews assures his readers that the fruit of lips that confess his name and the audacious sharing of resources in the context of an afflicted community place the same smile upon the Lord’s face as the storied burnt offerings of yore.