Hebrews 10: 1-25 (links validated 3/6/24)

A book in my library includes a humorous tale about a man who refused to attend church. When a pastor asked him why, he answered, “I don’t go to church because every time I do they throw something at me.” “What do you mean?” the preacher inquired. The man went on to explain. “When I was just a baby and my parents took me to church, the minister threw water on me. When I got married, the wedding ceremony took place in a church, and they threw rice at me.” Hearing this the pastor quickly responded, “And if you don’t start going to church soon, the next time you do I’m afraid they’ll throw DIRT on you!”...

In the Newberry Award winning book by Ruth White entitled Belle Prater's Boy, there is a character who is an old blind man named Blind Benny. He lived above the hardware store and Gypsy and Woodrow, the main characters of the book, would sometimes hear him at night singing as he walked around town. One night Woodrow and Gypsy joined Blind Benny, and he told them his story. He was born blind in a small town in the hills of Kentucky. When he was twelve both parents died and he had nobody to care for him. That's how he became the town's "sin eater." There was an unusual tradition in his small town. When a person died, people brought food and spread out it out as a banquet on top of the casket during the wake. They believed that all the dead person's sins went into the food. Then they picked someone in town, usually someone pretty desperate, to be the sin eater. Whenever there was a death they called the sin eater to the wake to eat the food. It was the sin eater's job to eat the food and take the person's sins into himself so that the dead person could go to heaven clean and free. For fifteen years Blind Benny was the sin eater of that town. He was shunned and scorned by the townspeople because he had all those sins inside him which he had eaten. But Blind Benny then began to worry. What would happen when he died? Who would eat his sins? Nobody. Because nobody would take the chance of eating all the sin eater's sins. One day Amos Leemaster, Gypsy's dad, met Blind Benny and told him that this was all superstitious nonsense. Then he offered him a way out. He gave him a room over his hardware store where Blind Benny would have plenty to eat. "You won't ever have to eat sins again!" he told him. And Blind Benny was given a new life...

As I noted in my previous commentary on Hebrews 10, whenever I hear Jesus say, “I have come to do your will, O God,” I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple on April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He addressed it to sanitation workers and others who were continuing to protest the unjust treatment of those workers. Near the end of his speech, Dr. King said, “I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop. “And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will (italics added). And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”...

Whenever I hear Jesus say, “I have come to do your will, O God,” I think of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple on April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He addressed it to sanitation workers and others who were continuing to protest the unjust treatment of those workers. Near the end of his speech, Dr. King said, “I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. “And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will...

I once heard about a story that Fred Craddock told about an older man named Will. It speaks well to the nature of the worship to which Hebrews 10 summons God’s people. Craddock told of how when he was a boy, his parents would make his siblings and him dress up every Saturday night. Neighbors would then sit in Craddock’s living room to read the Bible and sing songs like “Bringing in the Sheaves” from old hymnals. When Craddock asked his mother why they had to do this, she said, “We don’t live close enough to a church actually to attend. But some day we might live close enough to a real church and so for now we’re practicing.” Will was a neighbor who attended those “services” every week...

Fred Craddock told about an older man named Will. I no longer remember how I heard the story or in what context Craddock told it. But I recount it here because it speaks so well to the eschatological nature of the worship to which Hebrews 10 summons God’s people. Craddock told of how when he was a boy, his parents would make his siblings and him dress up every Saturday night. Neighbors would then sit in Craddock’s living room to read the Bible and sing songs like “Bringing in the Sheaves” from old hymnals. When Craddock asked his mother why they had to do this, she said, “We don’t live close enough to a church actually to attend. But some day we might live close enough to a real church and so for now we’re practicing.” One neighbor who came every week was a man named Will. Craddock once asked him, “Have you ever been in a real church?” “Hundreds,” was Will’s reply. “What’s it like?” “Well, I’ll tell you,” Will answered. “First off, don’t go by appearances. ‘Cuz sometimes you’ll see some little old white clapboard church up on cinderblocks out in the middle of nowhere and maybe the shutters are sagging a bit and all. But don’t go by that. Because sometimes God disguises his goodness — he hides his best stuff in little old no-account places like that. But you just go inside one of those and you’ll see.”...

It wasn’t like Scott Kregel to give up. He was a battler, a dedicated athlete who spent hour after hour perfecting his three throw and jump shot during the hot summer months of 1987. But just before fall practice everything changed. A serious car accident left Scott in a coma for several days. When he awoke, a long rehabilitation process lay ahead. Like most patients with closed head injuries, Scott balked at doing the slow, tedious work that was required to get him back to normal—things such as stringing beads. What high school junior would enjoy that' Tom Martin, Scott’s basketball coach at the Christian school he attended, had an idea. Coach Martin told Scott that he would reserve a spot on the varsity for him—if he would cooperate with his therapist and show progress in the tasks he was asked to do. And Tom’s wife Cindy spent many hours with Scott, encouraging him to keep going. Within 2 months, Scott was riding off the basketball court on his teammates’ shoulders. He had made nine straight free throws to clinch a triple-overtime league victory. It was a remarkable testimony of the power of encouragement...

Fred Shaw was a young student pastor in 1969, appointed to the Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church in Tatman’s Gap, Ohio when he was just 19 years old. He was so excited on his first Sunday. He had gone over his sermon several times, even practiced grand sweeping gestures for the congregation to see from the back of the sanctuary. On that day, he walked into the whiteboard church and found three old people waiting. They were circled around a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room. It was summer and the stove was lit. (I’m guessing that is a clue that maybe he didn’t need the heat, but they did.) The three church members were siblings, close together in age with the oldest pushing 90. He said “Did I mention that these were OLD people? Especially to a 19-year-old.” These folks were well acquainted with the ways of church. The brother took up the offering from the two sisters. Then one of the sisters counted it while the other sister dutifully witnessed it. Somehow the gestures he had planned for the sermon shrunk. The ringing words he had prepared came limply from his tongue. They sang a song, but the piano-playing sister had cataracts so he was never certain what notes she was hitting. He offered a perfunctory benediction and walked across the gravel parking lot to his car. The brother caught up with him, put his hand on his shoulder and said, “Well, son, you see what we have here. Millie has rheumatism so bad she can’t get out much anymore. John has a heart problem. Wilber is just plain old. We’re about all that’s left, and I suppose the church will die when we do.” Fred thought the man was right and he chafed about wasting his time there...

This past Sunday was the day for Stewardship emphasis in the New Jersey-shore congregation of one of my good friends. The preacher that day told of the show business beginning of the late George Burns - in case you did not know, it was in a Presbyterian church. It seems that, when little George was seven years old, growing up in New York City, he and three friends had a singing group they called the Peewee Quartet. Each year, a department store in the city would sponsor a talent contest as part of their annual picnic; local churches were invited to send one act each, to compete in the contest. There was one particular church in George's neighborhood that had no one to send, so the pastor asked young George if he could arrange for the Peewee Quartet to enter the contest on behalf of that congregation. The boys agreed, and not only did they enter, they won first prize. The church received an elegant purple communion-table cloth, and each of the boys received a new watch, each one costing the (then-) princely sum of 85 cents. George ran home to his mother, who happened to be hanging laundry up on the rooftop. "I don't want to be a Jew any more," he announced. "And why not?" she responded, without seeming flustered in any way. "I want to be a Presbyterian," George went on. "I've been a Jew for seven years, and I've never gotten anything. I've been a Presbyterian for fifteen minutes, and already they gave me this watch." "Fine. You can go off and join the Presbyterians," said his mother, wise in the ways of the world, and not especially concerned at the request. "But first help me hang up this wash."...

I close with a story from my work at the hospital. I had bumped into my friend Rabbi David and he told be about a dear lady that I just had to visit. I told him I’d be glad to visit. He told she was in her eighties and on a feeding tube. When I walked in and introduced myself and said that my friend Rabbi David asked me to see her, she grinned largely and her shining eyes lit up the room. She had two young women visitors who told me that she volunteers with young children. I said to her, “that must be what keeps you so young.” She grinned. “I’m starving,” she said. The feeding tube gave her the nutrition she needs but she said, “I can’t taste a feeding tube.” Her story unfolded. She had survived Hitler’s death camps. She was relocating to another city to be near her son. She’d had a stroke. The aides came to put her to bed. “May I say a quick prayer,” I asked. “I practiced my Hebrew for you.”...

Thomas Heafey, an undertaker, doesn’t know who was more surprised—himself or the young boy he caught. Heafey, owner of Heafey and Heafey Mortuaries, returned from a hospital call to what should have been a darkened storage building behind the funeral home. Deciding to find out why a light was coming from the building where racks of coffins are stored, he opened the front door and two boys bolted out the back. Heafey gave chase but the nimble boys cleared a brick wall and made their escape. Heafey returned to the building and noticed a coffin sitting in the middle of the floor. Its lid was closed. “All of a sudden the lid popped open and a kid popped out. I think I was more surprised than he was,” Heafey said. “I’d never had one open on me like that.” He held the startled 12-year-old youth until police arrived. “He just said one of his friends said they could come in there,” Heafey said. “They must have been playing dead, just having a lot of fun.”...

("Tony Campolo tells a wonderful story about a friend of his who had to take a bus trip across central India. He was in one of those old-model buses that should have been retired a decade ago. it was seemingly held together with string and glue. As is often the case with buses in Third World countries, this bus was packed, not only with people, but with packages, furniture, and just about every kind of domesticated animal..." and other illustrations)