Hebrews 13: Jesus is

The Unmanageable Parts of our Lives:

How would you define “wild”? Maybe that you have a “wild” side or things that you drive a bit “wild?” Maybe your spouse is the “wild” driver and you are just along for the ride.

Maybe you have a wild kid or you were the wild kid. Maybe you have been to the wilds. That you have left civilization and have entered into the wild areas. A national forest or a remote trail or jungle? Maybe you’ve come across a wild animal

A friend of mine a number of years ago was camping. He didn’t have a lot of experience camping but thought he would try it. And he went with a friend and they were sleeping in the middle of the night and all of the sudden they were woken up by a snorting kind of sound, like the muffling of a nose. And they listened, making sure they didn’t say anything, unsure of what it was.

They then saw what was the muzzle of a bear press a little into the tent wall. He was sniffing around trying to figure out what that thing was that was in the middle of the woods.

They were terrified as the bear sniffed around their tent and then, eventually went on his merry way. This was a interaction with something definitely wild.

What do you consider wild in your life?

For something to be wild, it has to be left up for it’s own agency and work. It is something that you cannot control (or feel like you can’t control). It is the areas of our lives and our world that are unmanageable.

And we are in constant negotiation with these parts of our lives. We can take four basic forms to relate to the world.

contemplation to the world,

adaptation to the world or

withdrawal from the world.

Domination of the world,

We work toward a certain aim based on our approach (Rosa 2019, 130).

In the unmanageable parts we either withdraw or dominate them.

Often they are areas that we avoid, or that we work on making them manageable. And for the areas or people that we ultimately cannot manage, we avoid. There are unmanageable parts of our lives and there are unmanageable areas of our lives that we do everything in our lives to do one thing: avoid.

Avoiding or Dominating the Unmanageable Parts:

And we avoid by trying to make the unmanageable manageable. And so we build and construct and shift and change. We are good at bringing solutions to problems. And that is honestly wonderful.

We want to manage what we feel is unmanageable. We are doing that with sickness and with cancer. We are attempting to do that with poverty and with mental health. But here is the real problem of whatever it is we find most unmaneagable. Is that we sometimes, by bringing a solution to the problem, we are attempting to really avoid it.

And that is one thing when it comes to sickness and disease, poverty and so one. But it is another thing when we find areas of our lives unmanageable or wild. Or when we classify people in that way. We find solutions that avoid them, or just remove them from our personal horizon.

Sometimes we define the unmanageable areas of our lives by ignoring them. The depression will just go away on it’s own. Or we define the unmanageable areas of our world by removing them or ignoring them. “Well we don’t go into that area of town.”

We try to manage ourselves and our world, but sometimes do that through ignoring areas or parts or people of our world that we consider unmanageable or wild.

We begin to act with what Simone Weil calls “force” where we turn people into things. We treat flesh like plastic, thinking we can dominate or ignore it and the problem will be dealt with. But that isn’t how the unmanageable things in our lives work.

And The last chapter of Hebrews does something really interesting with it’s closing remarks.

For about half of the chapter we are given some ethical and moral teaching. We will get to those toward the end. But we are told that we are to abide by those teachings because Christ has said,

in Hebrews 13:5 that “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” It is because that is true that we can live different lives. That we can act differently in the world. It is because of the activity and action of God through Christ that this is possible.

In fact we are told that Christ does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. And because of that we do not have to be led away by “strange and diverse teachings” and to remain with Christ is to be strengthened by grace.

I mean, don’t you want to be strengthened by Grace this morning?

Hebrews 13:8–9 ESV

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

This passage then shows us where Christ is. That He is not always in the places where we find manageable or make the most manageable. He is found, it turns out, in the unmanageable areas of our lives.

Christ Comes to the Wilds:

#Christ comes into the wilds, to outside the camp.

Christ has not left us, Christ is the same. But where do we find Him? The Scriptures show that Christ is found “outside the camp”

Let’s look at the passage:

Hebrews 13:11–16 ESV

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

This passage is rich with Old Testament allusion. Again, everything that we understand from Jesus is reflected in the work of the priests in the Old Testament. They worked on behalf of God in order to keep people right with God.

They worked to mediate a relationship between God and God’s people. But the way that the sacrificial system worked was that they would sacrifice the animal, a bull, and then perform the ritual to make the people clean. That happened in the city walls, in the tabernacle or the temple. This happened in the manageable parts of the city. What the Scriptures would call the “clean” areas.

But then the bodies of the sacrificed animals would have to go “outside the camp” to be dealt with. The author makes the connection that Christ was not crucified inside the city walls, but rather, outside the camp, like the discarded animals.

The most significant act in the history of human civilization did not happen in the manageable parts of human functioning. It did not happen at the height of civilization, it did not happen at the center of the city square. It did not happen at the height of political power, or any power.

The work of Christ happened in the unmanageable part of the city, “outside the camp.” Christ didn’t come to make our good parts better. He isn’t some plan of efficiency, (10 days to a better prayer life).

He came to those wild and unmanageable parts of our lives. The very things that we haven’t felt we could control He came to respond to

Christ enters into the wild places and we know that if he enters into the wild places, then he is certainly Lord of the tame ones.

In Christ himself has beaten death, the most wild experience we could entertain. Nothing is more wild than death it’s the last frontier the one thing that we don’t know how to fix. So price himself has beaten the most wild thing that we face, then we can trust that he is Lord of the same places. If he is the Lord of death and beating it at the Cross, he is the Lord of life.

The City Crushes Us, Christ is Crushed for Us:

The point that this passage is trying to make is that we are not here for the “lasting city” the manageable parts. We are here for the new life and the new city that God gives. Whatever the city walls promise will ultimately dissolve, they will ultimately fall apart.

And honestly, the promises of the city walls, the center of our manageable and efficient live, will ultimately turn against us. The Scripture is right in telling us that “we have no lasting city.”

As I said earlier, we often either attempt to avoid or dominate the unmanageable parts of our lives. So we work and work and work and work to make presentable what we think we can’t present.

Whatever we make most efficient in our lives eventually becomes our master. We end up serving it. Let me explain

We have unmanageable problems in our lives. A solution comes forth to solve it. And it solves a part of it. But it ends up demanding that we call it master. We see this with technology. We are mastered by the technology we created in order to solve human problems. We see this with the state. A governed people can be problematic and a solution rises to deal with the problem: look at the third reich, or Pinochet in Chile or Maduro in Venezuala or Mussolini in Italy. Mussolini took from the playbook of Machiavelli’s the Prince, a treatise on totalitarian leadership. The point that Machiavelli makes is that people are pawns and pawns are to be made use of.

These efficient solutions are in the name of making things better. And in that vein, the city crushes us. We become second fiddle to a larger machine. Name it as a technology, an occupation, consumerism, a political machine. In the name of making things better, will ultimately crush.

The city, in the name of efficiency (bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=EB5026F6-B800-497C-85AA-0EE6F26D9D59), in the name of better and better technique, makes things out of people (bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=FDF926B0-6C7A-47BA-A1B3-B4DFDD677507-608-0000022B7C82FC55) we will often become second fiddle to a larger machine. The city ends up, in the name of trying to make things better, crushing us.

That is the difference that going outside the camp makes. The city tries to solve the unmanageable parts of our lives but eventually must decide that all things and all people and all the parts of people are unmanageable. And so, the way that it fixes the issue is by crushing us.

The city always crushes us.

But Christ leaves the ways and means of the city, and He goes outside the camp. to the unmanageable parts, and doesn’t crush us.

Christ is crushed for us.

We will not find what we are looking for in managing better or solving better., We need someone who not avoid the wilds but comes into them.

This is the truth that comes to us at the end of the book

Hebrews 13:20–21 ESV

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

This is the reality of the passage. That because of Christ, the great Shepherd, by His work of providing a new and eternal promise (His eternal covenant).

And because of that the Scripture states that we are equipped with everything to do His will.

What does that look like?

Run to the Wilds in Following Christ:

Let’s go back to the beginning of the passage. To do what it is that Christ has equipped us to do, every good thing

We want to be a people who can constantly say, along with the passage:

Hebrews 13:6 ESV

So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

That means knowing Christ comes to the unmanageable parts of our lives, we don’t have to hide from them.

WE follow Christ into them

And when when we find Him in the wilds we realize that nothing is unmanaged. All things come under the taming of Christ.

We are being equipped by God. We trust Him to form and shape us. We don’t have to rush and run ahead. We don’t have to build and construct what won’t ultimately work.

We can live differently. Following Christ in the wilds, who comes to us,

Hebrews 13:1–5 ESV

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

The way we do this is by going into the wilds. The wilds of our lives and the wilds that we consider unmanageable around us.

The wilds are not unmanageable to God. In fact, is is the place where Christ is.

We either avoid or try to dominate what is wild in our lives. But we are called to run with Jesus into the unmanageable parts of our lives and our culture.

Christ is in the wilds and we are called to represent Him in whatever it is you have called unmanageable.

The culture calls us to live with suspicion and hate those not like us. The passage tells us

“not to neglect to show hospitality to strangers”

Run with Christ to the wilds of the stranger

The culture tells us to forget the forgotten, the imprisoned, the immigrant, the homeless, the hurting.

The passage tells us to “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them”

Run with Christ to the places you would rather forget.

The culture tells us to follow our passions and avoid or dominate others in sexual exploit.

The passage tells us “Let marriage be held in honor among all”

Run with Christ to the wilds of your marriage

The culture tells us to build build build and gather gather gather. Greed is not just functional it is celebrated.

the passage tells us “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have”

Run with Christ to the wilds of generous living.

There are wild areas in your life you face every day, every week. Ones deep in your soul, ones right across the street.

It is everything for the Christian to follow Christ where He goes. And Christ goes outside the camp. He is in the wilds. He comes for the unmanageable areas in our lives. We cannot ignore our own wilds and we cannot ignore the wilds of the stranger.

Christ will call you into unmanageable areas in our lives. That is how we come to salvation. He keeps us for eternity because we cannot solve the unmanageable things in our lives.

And then we act in the world as Christ followers, running to those unmanageable things in each others lives. Christ runs to our wilds, we are called to run to others.