Page 40 - Presbyterian Connection – Spring 2021

Connection
REFLECTIONS
Anchored to Jesus in an Uncertain World
40
PRESBYTERIAN
SPRING 2021
presbyterian.ca
By The Rev. Dr. Clyde Ervine, retired minister from Knox Presbyterian Church in St. Catharines, Ont., and adjunct professor at Knox College in Toronto
“We have an anchor that keeps the soul; steadfast and sure while the bil- lows roll; fastened to the rock which cannot move, grounded firm and deep in the Saviours’ love.”
My brother Ian, recuperating from COVID-19, continues to cope with cancer. Similar grim situations are currently being endured across the globe, accompanied, at least in Canada, with an increasingly darker mood. In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, we heard various politicians say, “we’re all in this together”; but since, in spite of guidelines discouraging non-essen- tial travel, some of our politicians enjoyed international vacations over the Christmas holidays, we’re clearly not “all in this together.” It’s thus no surprise that it’s proving difficult for politicians to keep on convincing the public to follow guidelines that limit freedom of movement.
To make matters worse, though vaccines to combat COVID-19 are now available, the pace of vaccina- tion across Canada seems slow, even as daily COVID-19 cases con- tinue, leading in this second year of pandemic to a troubling loss of cer- tainty about the future. Of course, the future has always been and always will be uncertain; as the apostle Paul noted long ago, “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Yet true as that is, most people, most of the time, approach the future they can’t yet see with a good deal of con- fidence. Not in 2021!
Though we hope that global and national economies will survive the coronavirus tsunami and that new vaccines will protect us from the virus’s many mutations, we’re not
quite certain, sensing that outcomes aren’t as reliable as we once thought them to be. Meanwhile, most folk can’t go to work, go to school, op- erate their business, eat out, go to a concert, attend public worship or meet with friends. More than any- thing, I feel sad that I can’t visit my brother in England.
If I sound negative, let me coun- teract that by celebrating the massive commitment undertaken by all those working to alleviate our uncertain- ties—researchers who have swiftly developed new vaccines, the un- ceasing dedication of frontline health workers, the huge efforts of govern- ments to mitigate financial hardship, the adaptivity and orderliness of food supply chains, and the sacrificial way in which the vast majority of people continue to respect and endure re- strictions. Compassion and concern for others has made the pandemic more bearable than it would other- wise be. Yet we’re haunted by the gnawing fear that life may not soon, or ever, return to normal.
In view of how untethered and un- predictable life now feels, Christians rightly seek a word from God that will be a lamp to our uncertain feet and a light to our unprecedented path. I confess, however, that the first bib- lical words that come to mind rein- force rather than remove my fears for the future. I think of the repeated cry, “vanity of vanities! All is vanity,” from a seemingly skeptical preacher (Ecclesiastes 1:2), or Jesus calling the man foolish, who, having built his house on sand, later saw it destroyed by floods and winds (Matthew 7:26).
Then there’s the bleak word “wil- derness,” used in the four gospel accounts of John the Baptist warning his generation of its need to repent. Matthew 3:1, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:2 and John 1:23 all report that to hear John, people had to leave their com- fort, convenience and certainties be- hind, and head into the wilderness, a fierce, forbidding location that Jews tried hard to avoid. And yet it must also be said that the wilderness had often been a place where God met the people of Israel and renewed Is- rael. It proved to be so again in the days of John the Baptist, for in the Judean wilderness, people, removed from their normal, everyday lives, heard God’s Word from John. If so, maybe our fear that all our vaunted human resources may not be able to rid us of the coronavirus will lead us
to find ultimate hope for the future, not in human resources, beneficial though they certainly are, but in God.
Biblical words like “vanity,” “fool- ish” and “wilderness” suggest the need for us to re-evaluate our lives. But I also believe strongly that the God whom we delight to name as Shepherd and as Father has more encouraging words to give us in this moment—the Bible is full of them.
One such word that’s been in my mind in recent days is the word, “anchor,” even though it appears in the New Testament once only. It’s a positive word that symbolized hope in ancient times and was used visu- ally as such by Christians in the early centuries of the church; today, it isn’t as popularly used. I, however, was introduced to the word “anchor” when I joined the Boys’ Brigade at age eight! The Boys’ Brigade, an organization with roots in the mus- cular Christianity of late Victorian Britain, has now faded in Canada, but not in Ulster where I grew up. Its emblem is an anchor, and its motto, “steadfast and sure,” comes from the hymn, “Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?”—a hymn that, as boys, we sang lustily. That hymn, the chorus of which I quoted to open this reflection, is based on the New Testament’s sole use of the word “anchor,” in Hebrews 6:19–20: “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the cur tain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our be- half, has entered.”
The word “anchor” that the Boys’ Brigade and so many generations of Christians have found meaningful, seems so applicable, appropriate and appealing in the face of our cur- rent pandemic. Its striking use in He- brews 6:19–20 makes the point that if a ship can be saved, protected and preserved from storms so long as it’s tethered to the massive weight of an anchor, so can those who face the storms of life (including a pandemic) who are tethered to Jesus.
Among the lessons that the coro- navirus pandemic is teaching us is that human life is less certain than we’d like it to be. Ours is, we proudly imagine, an advanced technologi- cal world; yet it’s a world with lim- its—limited health resources, limited financial resources, limited scientific and epidemiological knowledge, lim- ited time and, I might add, limited hope. But in forcing us to acknowl-
Jesus Christ, our great high priest, an- chor and forerunner, who has redeemed us and is in the midst of restoring us, tethers us to a God without limits. In him we’re forever secure and safe.
edge life’s uncertainty and limits, the current pandemic offers us the op- portunity to discover that Jesus is, as Hebrews 6:19–20 claims and the Boys’ Brigade hymn celebrates, an immovable anchor whom no storm or pandemic can dislodge or destroy.
Throughout his short life, Jesus endured terrible temptation and trials, was abandoned by both the justice system of his day and his closest disciples, and finally endured the suf- fering and shame of the cross. How- ever, and this is the claim that under- pins Christian scripture, sacraments and song, “God raised him up, hav- ing freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24). This stagger- ing claim so seized the disciples who abandoned Jesus that they were to- tally transformed by it, ready to die in order to witness to Jesus, the Lord of life. The same staggering claim about Jesus led Hebrews 6:19 to liken him to an anchor who tethers us to God.
At least two points flow from the above assertion. First: Christians need an anchor because we’re not spared life’s storms. This point may seem obvious; yet some Christians keep hoping for the sort of divine preferential treatment that will enable them to escape the storms that trou- ble the rest of humanity: “Our faith,” they say, “will save us from having to endure trouble.” In response to such thinking, I simply note that there’s little in the Bible to support it and much to contradict it. After all, what prompted the author of Hebrews 6:19–20 to apply the image of the anchor to Jesus was surely the fact that Christians at that time, suffer- ing severe hostility from the Roman Empire, needed to know that in un- certain, insecure times, they were anchored to God through Jesus.
Second, Hebrews 6:19–20 points those living in uncertain, insecure
times, not to general doctrines of God’s love or sovereignty, vital though such doctrines are, but spe- cifically to the accomplished, ongo- ing ministry of Jesus. This is what the Book of Hebrews articulates. As God’s incarnate Son, through whom God has spoken to us, Jesus is “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very be- ing” (1:3) who was made “like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest” (2:17), who “in every respect has been tested as we are” (4:15), and who “offered him- self” for our sins (7:27). Hebrews then goes on to celebrate what the crucified, risen and exalted Jesus means to us in these words: he’s our “sure and steadfast anchor,” having entered “the inner shrine behind the curtain...a forerunner on our behalf” (6:19–20).
The words, “the inner shrine be- hind the cur tain” sound obscure, but not to those who know that the Old Testament identifies the inner shrine of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem as the Holy of Holies. On the Day of Atonement, held annually, the Jewish High Priest was permitted to enter and make a sin-offering in that shrine, a separated place “behind the cur tain” understood to be God’s ear thly dwell- ing place. But why does Hebrews mention such details? Because its author sees the Jewish sacrificial sys- tem as preparatory for the infinitely superior, sacrificial ministry of Jesus, who sacrificed not animal blood, but his own (9:12), whose sacrifice for sin obtained “eternal redemption” such that no other sacrifices for sin would ever be needed (9:12), and
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