What to Do When Everybody's Hair is on Fire...

Everyone seems to have set their hair on fire. The word “unprecedented” has been used so often in the past 8 months as to cause a great deal of confusion about what “precedented” is supposed to be. We have an “unprecedented” pandemic (it increasingly looks like it follows several other historic precedents- but I get it.) We have an “unprecedented” election (that one may be true). We have unprecedented social unrest. We had an unprecedented dinner the other night when a friend made some sort of sourdough pancake/bread/English muffin magical item which I didn’t know existed. When everything is unprecedented, Christians might be tempted to just float through the chaos, being tossed by every rapid, slamming into every rock, but there is supposed to be something steadying about what we say we believe. There is supposed to be something rock-like in what we sing and pray and confess.  

When everything is unprecedented, what is the church to do? 

The author of Hebrews is writing to Christians surrounded by chaos and groaning and very serious times. These Christians were being tempted to turn back from their faith in Jesus in order to avoid persecution. Some were simply avoiding the gathering of God’s people in order to keep up appearances. But there were all sorts of questions about when and how to worship in the light of the coming of Jesus and in the midst of societal chaos and difficulties. In chapter 10:19-25 the author says this:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

- Hebrews 10:19-25

Now this little passage is chalk full of wonderful reminders and encouragement. But I want to focus on the exhorting at the end: 

Hold fast the confession 

Stir one another to love and good works

Do not neglect to gather together

Encourage one another. 

The book of Hebrews is very concerned with the worship of the Church- how the liturgy of the church has replaced the worship of the tabernacle and temple. In other words, Hebrews is about the life and worship of the church as much, if not more than it is concerned about mere individuals. This is a book concerned with the question of What is the church to do? The church is to hold fast our confession - our hope. Here is a hope anchored somewhere outside electoral results. Here is a confession about Jesus and his work that is unshaken by viruses and doesn’t depend on the magistrate for salvation or for freedom. Here are clean bodies and purified consciences - not made clean by distances, masks, lots of hand sanitizer or anything of the like, but made clean by God. I hope you caught that because there are a lot of people doing a lot of things to try and make their consciences clean. Rushdoony (in Politics of Guilt and Shame) believed it explained most of our political disagreements. Your body and your conscience can only be washed clean by God…. by God.

So what is the church to do in these days?: 

Gather for worship. Hold to our confession in hope. Stir one another up to fulfill the vocations God has given us towards love and fruitfulness. Encourage one another. In other words, the church is to do what the church is always supposed to do. 

We are not to do unprecedented things. We are to do precedented things. Things that the church has always done, has always been called to do. We do not react, we persevere in the works that God has called us to - calling all men and women to come, to repent of their sins, to eat bread and to drink wine, and to hope in God.