We Have Come to the City of the Living God (22.C)

When I got back from two peaceful weeks at Mount Angel Abbey, I was delighted to find new lighting in the church, with energy-efficient, long-lasting bulbs. It’s a project we started before the pandemic, so it’s long overdue.

But this morning what we really need is a spotlight—like the ones that focus attention in a darkened theatre. Because our second reading deserves center stage and real concentration from every one of us in church this morning.

Before we look at it, let me read the passage to you again, in the old Jerusalem Bible translation. It’s less literal, but more poetic. And it was in the days when we heard the Jerusalem Bible at Mass that I first came to love this text.

Here it is: 

What you have come to is nothing known to the senses; not a blazing fire, or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm; or trumpeting thunder or the great voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them. 

But what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with the spirits of saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant.

The first paragraph of this abbreviated reading just sets the stage; no spotlight needed. It tells us that the letter is talking about what happened on Mount Sinai when the Lord gave the Ten Commandments to Moses amidst fire and cloud and thunder. The old covenant was accompanied by shock and awe as God showed his power and might. It was terrifying.

With that backdrop, the letter shifts the scene to the present, to the life of those reading and hearing its words.

Your experience, it says, is something quite different. What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God. You are not quaking at Mount Sinai out in desert. No, you stand without fear at Mount Zion, the holy hill at Jerusalem.

The change from one mountain to the other overflows with meaning. Mount Zion is a synonym for Jerusalem, while Jerusalem points to heaven, as the text reminds us.

When the author takes us from past to present, it seems as if he also shifts to the future. He writes as if we are in heaven already, united with the angels and saints. Isn’t that a ways off?

Not for the Christian. Five chapters earlier, Hebrews says that in baptism we have “been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come.” (6:4-5)

The “them” in the first part of the reading is the Chosen People, but the “you” in the second part is not just the readers of the letter. You is us—here at Mass this morning. We are the ones gathered as an assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.

The Jerusalem Bible translation takes this a step further: we are “gathered for the festival, with the whole Church.” Scholars tell us that those who first heard the letter would have understood “assembly” as church.

And so should we.

Coming to church can become routine, but these magnificent words remind us what’s really happening, in all its wonder and excitement, and what’s going to happen, more wonderful still.

We are gathered as women and men whose baptismal birthright is the heavenly Jerusalem. As St. Paul says to the Philippians, “our citizenship is in heaven.”

We are “enrolled” in heaven—we have a place reserved for us there. Jesus says to the disciples in Luke’s Gospel “rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (10:20)

But we do not only approach the city of God: we approach God, here and now.

The Revised Standard Version translation we hear at Mass uses a run-on sentence, but the Jerusalem translation puts it simply: “You have come to God himself.”

This is not a future verb. It’s happened. It happened in baptism and it’s happening now.

We have come to “the supreme Judge,” before whom we stood at the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass. We have “been placed with the spirits of saints,” whom we invoked during the “I confess” of the penitential rite, and on whom we call in each of the Eucharistic prayers.

And we have come “to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant.” At every Mass, the priest consecrates the wine as “the Blood of the new and eternal covenant” poured out for the forgiveness of sins.

The late Albert Vanhoye, an eminent scholar on Hebrews, points out that the letter does not just say “new covenant. ” It uses a special Greek word meaning “brand new covenant,” which expresses the newness of a covenant that “has all the freshness of youth.”

“The covenant established by Jesus,” Cardinal Vanhoye writes. “is not only of a new kind; it is at the same time radiant with youth, bursting out like a spring of fresh water.” (The Letter to the Hebrews: A New Commentary, p. 214)

This is what we are here for this morning— to celebrate a “beauty ever ancient, ever new,” to use the words of St. Augustine, whose feast we celebrate today.

Which takes us to this very moment, here in church. As the pandemic fades, some of us are still adjusting to regular Sunday worship. So we might ask ourselves whether we are experiencing the Mass with the freshness and richness that the Letter to the Hebrews presents.

Do we recognize that angels and saints gather with us around the altar? Are we lifting up our hearts and minds to the heavenly Jerusalem, which St. Paul calls “our mother” (Gal. 4:26) and which tradition has understood as the Church of Christ?

We gather this morning at the intersection of past, present, and future. The promises of the past are fulfilled, the one sacrifice of Christ is made present, and future glory is anticipated and promised.

Let’s spend a few moments now shining a spotlight on our hearts, preparing to approach the Lord’s table this Sunday as people who are enrolled in heaven, joyfully claiming our birthright as brothers and sisters of Christ, “the firstborn of all creation.” (Col. 1:15)

The beautiful stained glass window at the top is from the Chapel of the New Jerusalem in the Anglican cathedral, Christ Church, in Victoria, BC.