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Hebrews 9:24-28
Proper 27B
This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson addresses an issue that western citizens of the 21st century would prefer not to talk about: death. We are, Hebrews 9:27 announces, “destined [apokeitai*] to die [apothanein] once [hapax].” In other words, from the moment our parents conceive us, each one of us is on a one-way road to death that…
Hebrews 9:11-14
Proper 26B
This week’s Epistolary Lesson is a bloody one. In fact, it’s so bloody that citizens of the already figuratively blood-soaked 21st century may be uncomfortable with it. Even its preachers and teachers may wonder how to apply Hebrews 9’s truths to a world that’s already in some ways soaked in the blood of war, ethnic…
Hebrews 9:24-28
Proper 27B
Hebrews’ proclaimers as well as our hearers may by now feel a little burned out by Hebrews. That’s the way my colleague Len Vander Zee begins his thoughtful and insightful 2018 commentary on this week’s Epistolary Lesson. Hebrews’ preachers and teachers may feel a bit like investigators at a crime scene that’s so covered with…
Hebrews 9:11-14
Proper 26B
As I noted in a 2018 commentary on this week’s Epistolary Lesson, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is “bloody.” In fact, it’s so bloody that citizens of the already figuratively blood-soaked 21st century may be uncomfortable with it. But perhaps humanity needed such a radical solution because its problem was so deeply-ingrained. Few pieces of baggage…
Hebrews 9:24-28 [10:11-18]
Proper 27B
Digging Into the Text: I imagine that by this time, you preachers out there might be getting a little burned out with Hebrews and its priests and sacrifices and temples, and worried the congregation may feel the same way. Some commentators think that Hebrews is not so much an epistle in the usual sense, but…
Hebrews 9:11-14
Proper 26B
This week’s Epistolary Lesson is a bloody one. In fact, it’s so bloody that citizens of the already figuratively blood-soaked 21st century may be uncomfortable with it. Even its preachers and teachers may wonder how to apply Hebrews 9’s truths to a world that’s already in some ways soaked in the blood of war, ethnic…
Hebrews 9:24-28
Proper 27B
Comments and Observations The lectionary reading for this Sunday is the high point of the argument of the letter to the Hebrews, but for many people today, including many Christians, it is the low point. Way back in 1926 Harry Emerson Fosdick preached a now famous sermon in which he labeled the whole idea of…
Hebrews 9:11-14
Proper 26B
Comments and Observations Many modern congregants will want to run from this text, and not just because of the strange old priest-haunted world to which it is addressed. More than the unfamiliarity of its cultural background, our text for today is hard for our congregations to hear because it reeks with blood. And we are…
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