Hebrews 9:24-28 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson addresses an issue that western citizens of the 21^st 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 has no “off-ramps” – unless Christ returns first. Sooner or later, our hearts will cease to beat, and our brains will stop working once and for all.

However, few of our western contemporaries wish to hear or think about this. Many of us spend our lives trying to postpone our death for as long as possible. We naturally try to act, look and think as though we were younger than we are. People do everything we can to live as long as we’re able. One prominent American morning television show for many years celebrated people who’d reached their 100^th birthdays — at least in part, I suspect, to silence the sound of its viewers’ death’s approach.

What’s more, we do all we can to hide death from our eyes. While many people traditionally sickened and died at home, most citizens of the West now banish dying people to our hospitals and care facilities. We naturally avoid people who are “actively” dying. We talk more about “celebrations of life” than funerals or even memorial services. I sometimes even wonder if some small part of cremation’s growing popularity is our deep reluctance to look death in its generally hideous face.

There are some appropriate things about this reticence. Physical and mental wellness are good gifts to be cultivated and celebrated. On top of that, people of my parents’ generation talked about some of the scars they bore from watching people die at an age before children were able to understand it. It’s understandable that death is an ugly enemy about which we’d rather not think and at which we prefer not to look too closely.

But as Hebrews 9:27 reminds anyone who has ears to ear, each of us is destined to die one time. Physical death literally awaits all human beings. Some biblical translations (i.e. NRSV, ASV) report that it’s “appointed unto” or “for” people to die. The Message bluntly paraphrases verse 27 as “Everyone has to die once.”

But wait, Hebrews basically says. There’s even more. It’s not just death that’s in the future of all of us – unless Christ returns first. Judgment is in our future as well – regardless of whether we die before Christ returns. People aren’t just destined to die once. We’re also destined to “face judgment [krisis]” (27b). After we die, we will be judged.

Our society – at least its members who have power and benefit from society’s judgments — views this as bad news. We prefer to think of ourselves as our own judges. What’s more, we do almost anything we can to escape others’ judgment. And on top of all that, even some Christians don’t like to think of God as Judge.

But this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson makes it crystal clear that no human being can escape God’s judgment any more than we can escape death. From the moment of our conception on, we are on a one-way street to not just physical death, but also divine judgment. And that road has no exit ramps.

Preachers want to be very careful about how we talk about this – especially in the presence of younger children. If they’re listening, what they hear may terrify them. So preachers may wish to talk to the church’s elders and the parents of children who listen to us preach before we preach about death and judgment’s inevitability.

But Hebrews won’t let the challenges of proclaiming the message about death and judgment completely silence preachers’ communication of it. After all, not just our culture but also God’s dearly beloved people need to hear and consider how “Everyone has to die once, and then face the consequences” (The Message).

When, in fact, we neglect this message, the gospel of Jesus Christ easily devolves into good spiritual advice. When Christians forget that the Son of God became incarnate to live, die and rise again for our sins it’s tempting to think of him as someone whom we didn’t need to be anything more than just another good role model or teacher.

Thanks be to God, then, that this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers even more gospel than bad news. There is, in fact, gospel even in what seems like its bad news. After all, God could have chosen to just let us live (and die) in our ignorance. God might have simply let us live as though we’d never die, be judged for how we’ve lived and then face the consequences of our multiple failures to love God and each other.

Yet God didn’t just remind us that we’re mortals who will someday die and give account for how we’ve lived. God also graciously gave us God’s Son Jesus Christ whose Spirit helps us live, die and face God’s judgment. That Son, reports verse 26b, “has appeared [pephanerotai] once [hapax] for all at the culmination of the ages [epi synteleia ton aionon] to do away with sin [athetesin tes hamartias] by the sacrifice of himself [thysias autou].”

All of us will physically die – unless Christ returns first. Every one of us will also eventually face God’s judgment. But no one who has received God’s amazing grace with their faith need fear either death or judgment. At history’s high point, Jesus Christ came to literally cancel [athetesin] his adopted brothers and sisters’ sin, sins and sinfulness. God’s dearly beloved people need not be afraid of that judgment or its arbiter. The One who will judge us will, after all, be the same One who lived, died and rose again to save us.

Of course, Christ did not make his adopted siblings perfect. He, instead, rendered us acceptable to God. And so as a result, even though God knows our sins better than we do, God views and treats us not as sinful people, but as God’s dearly beloved adopted children.

However, talk of Christ’s sacrificial death makes at least some 21^st century Christians queasy. Some of Jesus’ followers talk (and sing!), after all, almost endlessly about the atonement’s blood. Some of us have in fact, emphasized the atonement to the neglect of all the other ways the Bible talks about how Christ redeemed us. What’s more, in a world whose 20^th century was soaked in the blood and sacrifice of both military personnel and civilians, all that talk about blood can seem a bit tone-deaf.

Yet even as preachers remain sensitive to such a violent context, we do our hearers no favors when we simply ignore the Bible’s talk about Christ’s atonement. Christ’s redemption of us cost him everything, including his blood, sweat, tears and life. Of course, the effects of his death also includes his ransom of us from the evil one’s clutches and defeat of the evil one’s power over us. But the Bible spends much time talking about how Jesus rescued us by his sacrificial life and death. So preachers talk about Jesus’ work that included the payment of his life and death so that his friends might live, die and face God’s judgment without fear.

The Epistolary Lesson ends with a reminder to which the Church perhaps especially pays attention in the upcoming season of Advent. In verse 28 we read, Christ “will appear [ophthesetai] a second time [deuterou], not to bear sin, but to bring salvation [soterian] to those who are waiting [apekdechomenois] for him.”

During Advent God’s dearly beloved people remember and perhaps especially focus on how Jesus came the first time to rescue his followers by his life and death. During that season, however, the Church also remembers how when Christ comes a second time, it will be to give those who faithfully await him the full experience of that salvation. In that comfort, Jesus’ friends can live, die and even anticipate the final judgment.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. entitled, King, Jonathan Eig tells the story of the Kings’ reaction to a spate of violence in 1963 America. 68 days after a bomber killed four young girls in a Birmingham, AL church, a sniper shot President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, TX.

When Dr. King heard the news on television, Mrs. King and he prayed for Kennedy’s survival. When he learned Kennedy was dead, he sat silently for a long time. “That is what is going to happen to me also,” King eventually said. Eig then recounts how “Coretta held her husband’s hand for a long time. She wanted to say something to comfort him but couldn’t find the words. ‘I could not say, “It won’t happen to you”,’ she later recalled. ‘I felt he was right’.”

What Mrs. King said to Dr. King referred to his death by violence. Hebrews 9:27 implies, however, she could have just as well been talking about death in general. “Death is going to happen to” all of us “also.”