August 24, 2025 – The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Hebrews and the Reimagining of Sacrifice
At the beginning of our reading this morning, we get a rather strange sentence. To be fair, Hebrews is the most complex book in Greek in the whole New Testament.
You have not come to something that can be touched—a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given: "If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.") Somehow those things can be touched.
Well, it was not the darkness or the gloom itself that the author was speaking of, but Mount Sinai—specifically the moment when Moses had gone up Mount Sinai to be in the presence of the Lord.
Exodus 19: On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17 Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. 18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln while the whole mountain shook violently. 19 As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak, and God would answer him in thunder.
In the next chapter, God would give Moses the Ten Commandments!
Now it is important at this moment to say that the preacher “is not, as commentator James Thompson puts it, ‘to engage in a polemic with Judaism or to denigrate Israel’s sacred institutions but, like the ancient orators, to use the contrast to demonstrate the greatness of the Christian experience.’”
The tangible thing is the giving of the Law—when God laid out the law in the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai and in the rest of the Torah. God gave them something that they could look at and say: yes, the parts of life—my spiritual life, material, my relationships—are in good standing; my moral integrity is in tip-top shape; and I am indeed living a just life. All of these things are, at least, in some kind of order.
Ok, a short but really interesting history lesson here.
Israel’s worship was not just a random smattering of rules and offerings. It took the shape of everyday life. Five offerings were given, and together they helped to write the way that God would use them as a blessing to the world onto their hearts.
The first offering was the burnt offering, which was the first of the offerings; they were made to express thanks, worship, devotion, and commitment to God. But it was also an atonement for an unintentional sin. A bull, a ram, even a dove was placed on the altar and consumed entirely by fire. The hide went to the Levites, but the rest was turned to smoke. The burnt offering was devotion—life given wholly to God.
For the grain offering, the Israelites brought cakes or baked bread from the harvest of their fields, mixed with oil, and poured out a drink offering of wine. This was a thanksgiving for the blessing not only of the food that God provided for them but for all things material. Really, it was a reminder that food, shelter, clothing, and everything else beautiful on this earth come from God.
Then the peace offering. This one was different. An unblemished animal was sacrificed, along with grain and bread; it also emphasized fellowship, as a shared meal followed it. Priests received their portion, but the worshipers and family also shared at the table. This was both thanksgiving and fellowship, a symbol that peace with one another truly becomes possible when we have made peace with God. God's peace spills out on the table and is shared by all.
There were other kinds of offerings they needed to make as well when things were not so peaceful. There was also the sin offering, required when defilement or guilt entered into play. A bull for the whole congregation, a goat for the ordinary person, fine flour for the poor. It was God’s way of cleansing what was broken or unclean.
And finally, the trespass offering. Always a ram. This sacrifice named the ways we wound our neighbour, the debts we owe, and the harm that demands restitution. It was forgiveness that required repair.
Right—so how, Andrew, did we get from this letter to the Hebrews to this history lesson on all of the different sacrifices that we find in the Law? Because all of those offerings were things you could touch.
You can hold them in your hand, you can tally them up, check them off a list.
That checklist, however, ended up being the point for many—but not all.
These rituals and offerings evolved into checklists, serving as a way to demonstrate that one was living a good life.
But that is not really what God was looking for when God gave us the gift of the Law. God was giving us a way to engage with him, to get back to some semblance of walking with God in the Garden. All God ever wanted was to walk and talk with us in the Garden of our own free will.
That is really what these offerings were about—they gave us the tools to give thanks and to heal the broken parts of our lives, because it's hard to live fully when we have something we're feeling guilty about in the backs of our minds. They were ways to clean all of that up so we could live fully in touch with God and God's work in the world.
That is a better-case scenario—the worst case is that others would use the offerings as gatekeepers or as scorecards or religious traps. That is exactly what we see in today's Gospel when, just after Jesus healed a woman who had been disabled for 18 years, the religious leaders respond:
"There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the Sabbath day." But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?"
Anyways, back to Hebrews. The author is there to help his people to know the Good News of Jesus Christ!
He starts with: “You have not come to what may be touched—this utterly divine mountain covered by the awe-full (as in full of awe in so many ways) presence of the Lord in darkness… no, you have not come to that mountain, but you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God.”
The contrast is striking. No longer a mountain fenced off with warnings, no longer the fire and gloom that held the people at a distance. Instead, there is a dinner party with angels in joyful assembly, the communion of all the saints.
This doesn’t erase Sinai. It’s important to remember that Israel’s offerings and practices were genuine responses to God, who is holy and near. The fire and thunder were not mistakes; they were revelations of divine majesty. The sacrifices were not mistakes; they were gifts offered in faith, given in response to the majesty and saving work of God bringing them out of Egypt.
You see, the author of Hebrews does not dismiss those offerings, but reframes them.
The burnt offering’s total devotion finds its echo in Christ’s self-offering “once for all.”
The grain offering’s daily bread points toward Christ, the bread of life, who feeds us at the table.
The peace offering’s fellowship meal resonates with the Eucharist, the shared feast of reconciliation.
The sin offering’s cleansing is accomplished not in repetition, but in Jesus’ blood that purifies fully.
The trespass offering’s restitution is taken up as Christ bears our debt and reconciles us not only to God by his saving work on the cross.
All of a sudden, not only have all of the tasks on the lists been taken care of for us, but they have actually become things that we can look forward to and model—and when we do that, they end up being good for the whole of creation.
But more importantly, when we have a bad day, and we drop the ball, and we don’t live the perfect Christ-centered life—no sin offering is required. Christ did that for us.
All we are invited to do is to turn around and come back to the table. It is for those who have much faith, and it is for those who are trying to figure out what faith even means. It is for those of us who tried to follow as best we can and then failed despite our very best efforts.
Yes, the divine majesty can be seen in a mountain cloaked in cloud and darkness—but it can also be found around a table, where we are, where we all are most welcome to meet Jesus himself.
