This Is Our Hope

In the first Century, ships were the fastest means of transportation, so many cities were by rivers or seas. But, water travel was dangerous. When they set sail, they didn’t have the navigational tools and weather warnings we have today. In fact, they didn’t even have a motor, no propeller. When they set sail, they were subject to the currents and the winds and could easily be carried or blown off course, unless they dropped anchor, deep, to the solid earth beneath the sea, so that they would be held in place. In a world where the sea represented evil and chaos, an anchor came to represent hope.

The writer of Hebrews is writing to early Jewish converts to following the Way of Jesus to encourage them. It was likely written somewhere around 30-35 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection – Jesus died and rose around 33 – Hebrews seems to have been written somewhere between 64-69 before Rome destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 70. They needed encouragement that God’s promises were sure, that even though everything around them was in turmoil, the storm winds were blowing, God’s purposes were not in danger of being blown off course. The message of this passage, says Presbyterian pastor and NT Scholar Dr. Frances Taylor Gench, is that “God’s saving purpose for the world, begun in Abraham and brought to fulfilment in Jesus Christ, is sure and unchanging.”

So, says the writer of Hebrews, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf.”

What does that mean? What is this hope that we have?

It helps us understand if we try to listen and hear what the letter is saying the way the first recipients of the letter would have heard it. Hebrews is addressed to Hebrew believers in Jesus…people who grew up Jewish. The rhythms of Jewish life, the Sabbath and the Festivals, the role of the Priests and the Temple, were all not just familiar to them…they were part of who they were. Each year, there was a very special day, the holiest day on the calendar, the Day of Atonement, at-one-ment.

It was the only day of the year that the Holy of Holies, the inner-most area of the Temple, separated by a curtain from the holy place where only the priests were allowed, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest went beyond the curtain and entered the Holy of Holies, as close to God as possible on earth, and sprinkled blood of sacrificed animals on the horns of the ark and symbolically cast the sins of Israel onto a scapegoat that was then led into the wilderness. It was a fearsome and awesome thing to be the priest who was chosen to perform the rituals of the Day of Atonement, to be in the place of God’s presence on earth. This is the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf, the presence of God on earth.

The firm and secure hope that we have is that Jesus has prepared the way for us into the presence of God where we are able to stand atoned, at-one, with God, with our sins cast off. In the midst of the evil and chaos of this world, Jesus is our anchor – that’s what the writer of Hebrews is saying to these Jewish Jesus followers who are feeling threatened by the winds of persecution and oppression. And our anchor hasn’t changed.

Jesus is still our anchor, and we need an anchor. There are forces and currents in life that threaten to move us off course. We face winds that toss and turn our lives, and sometimes we take on water. There are storms in every life. And it is in those times that we are thankful to have an anchor onboard, whose love is weighty enough to hold us, firm and secure grounded in God’s presence.

As I told the children and youth, discipleship is tending the chain. It is developing the links of the mind of Christ, as our affirmation from Philippians says, a mind that thinks not of self, but of sacrifice. It is developing the links of the chain by having the heart of Christ, who when he saw people in need couldn’t help but respond because he was moved by compassion…even when he needed to rest and was worn out and worn down and felt empty…his heart wouldn’t let him look away. It is strengthening the links of the chain by offering our hands, our abilities, to do the work of Christ in the world now. It’s not the great big, links that are the strongest. It’s the small ones, all bundled together, that are unbreakable. Thanks be to God for our hope that in Christ Jesus, our anchor, we are embedded deep, grounded in the presence of God.