Shaking Things Up

Hebrews 12:18-29

Have you ever been shaken up? We use that term to describe being emotionally upset by a physical shock, or deeply troubled by a sudden tragedy: as in “she was shaken up by the accident” or “ever since his fall, he’s been pretty shaken up”. But we also use that term to describe a drastic rearrangement or reorganization: as in “the new management was set on shaking things up in the company” or, “Yet once more I will shake up not only the earth but also the heaven.” Our passage today speaks of God’s desire to drastically rearrange things: the way we worship, the way we serve, the way we love, the way we are in relationship with one another, and the way we are in relationship with God.

See, ever since the fall, humankind has been pretty shaken up. Adam and Eve were pretty shaken up after their disobedience. They heard the sound of God in the garden and hid because they were afraid. Cain was pretty shaken up when God refused to accept his offering, but was pleased with his brother Abel’s. Cain murdered his brother, and violence entered into human relationships. The violence got so bad that God saw that every inclination of human hearts was only evil continually. So God decided to shake things up. Remember the flood? Then God issued a new covenant: that’s not how I’m going to go about shaking things up, anymore. How many generations went by before things started falling apart again? Skip ahead a few, and we find the Israelites oppressed and enslaved in Egypt. God says to Moses: “hey you’re going to help me shake things up!” And Moses does, eventually. And to mark this new order of life for God’s people, God issues a new covenant. The scene opens with a mountain covered in blazing fire, and yet shrouded in darkness, an atmosphere of gloom despite the loud blaring of a trumpet blast. The author of Hebrews is directly referencing the terms used to describe Mount Horeb/Sinai when the ten commandments were given, in Deuteronomy 4:11 and Exodus 19:16. Just as an aside, did you know that the Scriptural account of the giving of the commandments is recorded as having happened at both locations? That’s not important to the author of Hebrews, who clearly references both accounts to paint an image of a frightening mountain and a frightening God. So scary was this God, in fact, that the people couldn’t bear to hear God’s voice, “Don’t let God speak to us, or we’ll die” they begged Moses. These people are still pretty shaken up by the fall.

Sin shakes things up and we fall. God shakes things up and puts us back on our feet. That’s the story of God and God’s people. God shakes things up to reconcile relationships. And every time God shakes things up, he issues a new covenant to guide life and worship in the newly reconciled community. But there’s this fear, terrible fear, such that leads Adam and Eve, the Israelites, even us perhaps? to turn from or hide from God. I’ve talked about this before in describing how I understand sin. See, sin shakes us up too. But whereas God shakes things up in a way that reconciles relationships, sin shakes things up in a way that tears them apart. The story of God is a story of shake ups: fear and forgiveness, rebellion and reconciliation. The recurring conflict of this story involves a shaken humankind reacting to God’s will to reconcile earth and heaven to God’s original vision with fear and resistance, as if they expect God’s shake up to have the results of sin’s shake up.

The results of sin? Alienation, guilt, fear, violence, death. We spoke last week about the “storm” brewing in our world and country. We see extreme polarization, anger, violence, intolerance, bigotry, pride. We’ve turned those with whom we disagree into enemies. There’s so much fear. We are deeply entrenched in sin, and deeply in need of reconciliation. Things need to get shaken up. But we need to let God do the shaking up, not sin. Richard Rohr reminds us, “no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it in the first place.”

The author of Hebrews describes a new covenant put in place after God shook things up once-and-for-all. This is the new covenant in Jesus Christ, a covenant that governs and orders our relationship with God and with one another. A new covenant established in the blood of Christ, which speaks of reconciliation, whereas the spilled blood of Abel cried out for revenge. Through the blood of Christ we are made righteous, in other words our relationships with God and neighbor are reordered into right relationships.

Things need to get shaken up, but we need to let God’s new covenant govern this shake up. And God shakes things up for the purpose of reconciliation. So I’m going to risk saying something that might shake things up. Please don’t hear this as speaking out against one person or speaking in favor of another, because I cannot do that. I refuse to do that. From the pulpit I can only speak in favor of God, God’s will, and God’s kingdom. And I cannot find any justification within the reconciling will of God for our country to EVER build a wall or institute extreme vetting practices to keep people out. In Deuteronomy, God encourages the Israelites to remember that they to were slaves in a foreign land, and to let this memory inspire them to kindness towards foreigners.

At the table, we are asked to remember the new covenant sealed in Christ’s blood. Blood he shed for our forgiveness, and for our reconciliation with God and neighbor. When asked, “who is my neighbor” Jesus refused to draw any line or build any wall around the limiting our compassion to others. And yes, such a radical way of living and loving has its challenges. When God shakes, sin shakes back, harder and harder. When things start to fall apart, sin points to God. That’s what ultimately happened to Jesus, right? He shook things up, healed the “wrong people” at the “wrong time”, shook the foundations of power and politics, restored the broken to fullness of live. Sin shook back, got hold of the people’s growing fear, told them to blame God, told them that they could get rid of their fear, stop the shaker and you’ll stop the shaking. And the cross did stop the shaking, but not in the way that sin expected it to.

Here’s how Matthew describes the scene, “Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.” In his book, Falling Upward Richard Rohr describes how “the cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime.” And yet, at the scene of this crime, at the foot of the cross, where we sin-shaken people would expect to find shame, guilt, and punishment, we find…grace, forgiveness, the sign of a new covenant to guide us in reconciled relationship with God and neighbor. “A new commandment I give you: that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Too much of our shaking has been because of sin: whether our chins quiver in sadness, we tremble in fear, or our fists shake in fury. We have been responding to the blood that cries out for revenge. It is time to respond to the blood that calls us to reconciliation. It is time to let God shake things up, not sin. It is time for our chins quiver in song, for our bodies to be shaken by dance, for our fists to unfurl and become helping hands in a world that is ordered by a new covenant of compassion. That is the worship and the reverence and the awe that God desires, and deserves. Let everything else be shaken off, consumed as if by a fire, so that all that’s left is love.

But how do we do that? for, like the Israelites, we tremble with fear when we approach the mountain of God. We approach the throne of God through Jesus Christ, through whom God takes our fear and trembling and shakes it up, once and for all. Through Christ, we are given a new way to approach God, the curtain between God and the people is torn, and there is a new mountain, Mt. Zion. Whereas we stood before Sinai in fear, we can stand before Mt. Zion with joy. “Mount Sinai is transformed into Mt. Zion—if we go there with Jesus.” Tom Long describes this shaking “under the new covenant” as “an antique collector shak[ing] the dust off an old marble statue: to get rid of everything that hides and defaces the beauty that was intended by the sculptor.”

Have you ever been shaken up? Of course you have. Let God hold you, trembling, broken, and restore you to new life. Let this reconciliation empower you to live into a kingdom that cannot be shaken, where sin and death have no power. Thanks be to God who is worthy of our reverence, awe, and worship! Amen.