Sermon for Passion Sunday
“For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant”
For what cause? Meaning for what reason or on account of what? The reason or cause is redemption or atonement which can only be accomplished by a Mediator; indeed, as Hebrews insists, “the Mediator.” The Christian understanding of redemption hangs on the idea of Christ as the Mediator between God and Man.
Passion Sunday marks the beginning of deep Lent, a time of great seriousness and contemplation about the human condition of sin, suffering, and death, on the one hand, and about how that condition is addressed and dealt with by God, on the other hand. We are thrown into the deep waters of theology.
The lesson from Hebrews lays out the Scriptural doctrine of human redemption. “Christ is the High Priest of good things to come,” the Epistle reading begins, hinting at something greater and better and more efficacious than the sacrificial “blood of goats and calves,” and yet it is by blood, “by his own blood,” that this is accomplished. That “blood” belongs to the truth of Christ’s humanity as derived from Mary whose Annunciation fell just this week past, marking the conception of Christ in her womb without which this greater sacrifice would not be possible. He is “immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,” by which “salvation to all that will is nigh,” as John Donne’s sonnet, ‘Annunciation’, so beautifully puts it.
“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place.” The references to “High Priest” and “the holy place” speak to the sacrificial rituals of the Temple in Jerusalem that recapitulate the forms of Israel’s deliverance and dedication to God, but the point of Hebrews is about something greater. It is signified by Christ “enter[ing] in once,” and once for all, we might add, “having obtained eternal redemption for us.” The contrast is between the Old or First Covenant and the New or Second Covenant; the turning point is the nature of the Mediator who gathers our humanity into the life of God.
The word redemption is used twice in this passage. Christ “enter[ing] in once into the holy place” obtains “eternal redemption for us.” “He is the Mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death for the redemptionof the transgressions that were under the first covenant,” meaning the Old Covenant of the Torah, the Law, “they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.” The end or purpose of our humanity is to be found in God and not simply in our own projects and designs.
For our own projects and designs are invariably but “the devices and desires of our own hearts,” as the General Confession so clearly puts it (BCP, p. 4), such things, which we admit, “we have followed too much.” For “we have offended against thy holy laws.” ”We have left undone, the things which we ought to have done.” “We have done the things which we ought not to have done.” Would we really want to protest this? Is there any wonder, then, about acknowledging that “there is no health in us”? The phrase in the context of this honest appraisal of the human condition is that “we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves” (Collect for Lent II). We are not self-complete nor are we self-sufficient, as the events of our world more than amply suggest.
