There is a story about New College, Oxford, that I’ve come across here and there; I really like it, and I’ve retold it a few times. According to this story, it was discovered in the 1860s that the long oak beams holding up the roof of the ancient dining hall were in bad shape and needed replacing. Nobody knew where they might find such huge timbers, though, and back then they didn’t call it supply chain issues. Then the college woodsman reminded the building committee that when the hall was built in the fourteenth century, the college’s founder William of Wykeham had a grove of oaks planted that were expressly reserved for one day replacing the beams. And so, thanks to Bishop Wykeham’s wise stewardship, 500 years later the college had the timbers it needed for the job, and the fellows and students have been happily dining under the replacement beams ever since.
“It’s a wonderful story,” writes Roman Krznaric in his latest book. “The only problem is that it isn’t true.” He talked with Jennifer Thorp, who oversees the New College archives, and he learned that the oaks for the beams came from a woodland that wasn’t purchased by the college until decades after the original hall had been built, and they had never been kept in reserve for roof restoration. Bishop William of Wykeham had not been so far-sighted after all.
My heart broke a little when I read that. But then the author goes on to point out that “the popularity of this story shows just how much we want to believe in the human capacity for long-term planning. A tale about planting trees for the benefit of people half a millennium in the future feels like the perfect antidote to our age of pathological short-termism.”[1]
We want to believe in our capacity to care about our neighbors not only in distant lands, but also in distant centuries. We want to believe in our capacity to extend the reach of the command to love our neighbor like ourselves to generations far into the future.
Jonas Salk wrote in 1992, “We have so altered the conditions of life on the planet, human and non-human, as to become the co-authors of our destiny. … Will we have the wisdom to perceive the long as well as short-term advantages in the choices we make?” The title of his article is a question, “Are we being good ancestors?”[2] It’s a terrific question. Hard to answer, yes, hard to live with, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep asking it. Robert Macfarlane said, “To be a good ancestor is to bear responsibility for a future you will never know, for people you will never know, even for species you will never know. To extend care forwards in deep time to what Rebecca Solnit has memorably called the ‘ghostly billions.’”[3]
This week the UN climate conference in Glasgow, COP 26, went into overtime to finish work on a final draft document, and there was plenty of last-minute watering-down. It was a step, not the leap forward many hoped for. The governments of the world’s nations are trying to hammer out a difficult agreement with tremendous impact on this generation and generations to come, human and non-human. We want to believe in our capacity to cooperate, to compromise, and to co-author a better path forward. But we’re not certain. We’re not so sure of ourselves, not so sure about each other’s motives and dependability.
In today’s passage from Hebrews, we encounter a very different voice. It’s a voice brimming with confidence, confidence in what God has done in Jesus Christ. Christ has effected forgiveness of sin, once and for all. The affirmation is strong, because the audience is uncertain. One commentator suggests that “the entire sermon addresses a particular congregation’s exhaustion” and “weariness.”[4] There has been a noticeable decline in attendance at its assemblies. The reasons aren’t stated, but the context suggests fear of public ridicule and persecution, leadership tensions, and discouragement over the delay of Christ’s return. In the verses following our passage, the preacher tells the congregation,
Recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion for those who were in prison, and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting. Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward.[5]
“Confidence” is the keynote here. In Greek, the word connotes frankness, openness to public scrutiny, courage, boldness, fearlessness, and joy. It is a characteristic of free citizens who may hold their heads up without shame or fear, looking others directly in the eye. In Roman society, it belonged to the free members of the household, but not to slaves. In Hebrews, it characterizes all members of the household of God, in their relationship with God as well as in all their relationships with each other and the community at large.[6]
Confident in God’s forgiveness, we follow Christ into the heart of holiness, the very presence of God. “We have this hope,” says the preacher, “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered.”[7] Because of him, we may “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”[8] Grace to be honest with ourselves about the burdens of guilt and shame we bear—and to let God take them. Grace to be kind to each other, knowing that we all carry such burdens. And grace to be bold in our witness, particularly in the face of hostility.
Through forgiveness we are drawn into a transformative relationship with God, a relationship that frees us to love, to live fully in the love of God. We become conduits through which God’s unceasing love flows to revive the parched places in the lives of others. We become who we were made to be.
Many generations ago, the preacher of Hebrews addressed the weariness and exhaustion of a particular congregation, but his or her words and the Spirit who inspired them continue to move us closer to God, closer to each other, closer to our own true selves. Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us embrace this moment of freedom and new beginning, and since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.[9]
When we ask ourselves, “Are we being good ancestors?” we remember those who have been good ancestors to us, who chose the path of love when the highway of convenience was wide open, who chose faithfulness over fear, and hope for the sake of the hopeless. So let us hold fast to the confession of our hope, let us hold fast to the sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, not because our track record of not wavering is so impressive, but because the one who has promised is faithful.
The preacher of Hebrews walks us all the way into the holy of holies where in the company of Jesus our whole being becomes praise, and then we follow the stream of words back to Monday morning when lofty phrases have little chance of being ruminated, but another work week begins, another school week, another week of daily routines. And that, of course, is when the holding fast and the running with perseverance become complicated and challenging and urgent. Now the preacher of Hebrews speaks with rare simplicity: Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds. And let us not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some. We can’t provoke one another to love and good deeds with a bunch of unread emails piling up in our inboxes. We can’t encourage one another to move from apathy and fear to love with inspirational memes endlessly shared on social media. And we can’t ask ourselves if we are being good ancestors without getting on each other’s nerves with our half-baked ideas and our tired clichés and our wildest dreams—and loving each other anyway. We can’t be who we are without each other, from the 93-year-olds and up to the 3-year-olds and down, to the saints who have gone before. Let us not neglect to meet together, because the challenges we face demand the best we have to offer.
What would it take for us to love life, not as a commodity to be consumed, but as a gift we share with all generations of creation? Let us meet together. Let us bring our imagination, wisdom, and creativity, and let us consider how to provoke one another to love, to the glory of God.
[1] Roman Krznaric, The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription For Long-term Thinking (New York: The Experiment, 2020), 92.
[2] Jonas Salk, “Are We Being Good Ancestors?” World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues 1, no. 2 (1992): 16–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45064193.
[3] https://lafayettestudentnews.com/114337/arts/robert-macfarlane/
[4] Elizabeth Felicetti, Connections, 482.
[5] Hebrews 10:32-35
[6] See Susan Eastman https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33-2/commentary-on-hebrews-1011-14-15-18-19-25-2
[7] Hebrews 6:19-20
[8] Hebrews 4:16
[9] Hebrews 12:1-2