What makes me feel ashamed? What makes me feel afraid? What makes me feel angry? What makes me feel envious and jealous?

We are at the conclusion of the Letter to the Hebrews, which as you might recall was written to a community facing the temptation to want to go back to the Old Covenant way of worshiping as they encountered difficulties adjusting to the New. To those who may want to go back to the past, Hebrews gives the reasons why going forward into the future is the only option.

It begins by making reference to the experience of Moses on top of to Mount Sinai “you have not approached that which could be touched and a blazing fire and gloomy darkness.” That is where Moses first received the old covenant law, a blazing fire and storm, the voice of God that was too much for people to hear. “No, you have approached Mount Zion” Hebrews says, that is where we in the new covenant go, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.

What is saying to us is that a change of relationship with God has opened up to us. We can move from fear of God to confidence in God. We can move from feeling unworthy to approach God to intimacy with God.

Earlier in chapter 10, verse 22 it says “Since we have Jesus, our great High Priest over the House of God, let us approach God with a sincere heart and absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” Meaning, the way into this new relationship is baptism, it frees us from fear. No matter what our lives may have been before, God invites us into intimate relationship in which God’s power will work for us in love. This is a monumental shift in the history of religion. Never before has there been this confidence and trust in any god that any person had ever imagined existed.

The Gospel tells us that the leading Pharisees were observing Jesus carefully. They were not happy with Jesus teaching this way of intimacy with God because it would mean loss of their power over people. If people found out that Jesus could free them from fear of judgment, then people would no longer need the Pharisees to protect them from God’s judgment, they’d be out of a job. Think about the implication… our human nature is such that the image and relationship we have with God will dictate the image and relationship we have with one another.

To that Hebrews says: “We have come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than the blood of Abel.”

The story of Abel is found in Genesis, so let’s take a quick detour there since that is where Hebrews is taking us. Genesis gives us a picture of the human condition, written in poetic story form meant to speak to all people across history. God created Adam and Eve in a relationship of intimate trust and partnership and care for the creation, and they were told: “All you have to do is receive the blessings that you have been given.”

Then there was a warning for them: “Do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil or you will surely die.” That is not a threat of death as punishment. Adam and Eve actually don’t die immediately after eating the fruit of the tree. In the original Hebrew context, God’s words to Adam and Eve are a statement about what the human condition will be outside of the power of God.

Outside of the power of God, if we try to go it alone, we will live always with the awareness of the fragility of life. Nothing will be lasting. It will seem that everything is simply dying or moving toward death. We will be aware of death as something that will come upon us to reveal that there is nothing of permanent value in the world. (This is the same sense of life that is also expressed in the Book of Ecclesiastes, which was written shortly after Genesis, which is often read at funerals… “there is a time for everything under the sun, a time to be born and a time to die…”) Well Adam and Eve decide to try to go it alone anyway. They thought God was trying to limit them, so they decided to try and figure out good and evil on their own.

And what was the consequence for this choice? Though they themselves do not die, their first experience with someone dying is murder. The first time someone dies in the Bible is when their son Cain kills Abel. Why does he do that? Cain brought an offering of grain to the Lord, and Abel brought an offering of a lamb. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not.

That might seem like an insignificant thing to us… all that just because of grain? But in the world of primitive religion, if a god did not accept an offering you presented, then you were in big trouble. Cain felt ashamed and angry. Where would Cain have learned to feel that? Where would he have learned that he needed to compete with his brother for God’s favor.

From his parents. Adam and Eve, after they decided to experiment with the knowledge of good and evil, immediately they were filled with this sense of the uncertainty of life. Adam suddenly feels ashamed and fearful. He starts hiding from God in the garden. Adam and Eve start feeling angry and resentful of each other. They try to blame each other and the serpent, and this is what they passed on to their children. They did not teach Cain about God’s love; they taught him to be afraid of God. Think about that, dear parents.

When we lose touch with our intimacy with God, we no longer have confidence in our own value, and someone who is not confident is bound to hurt others out of fear. We can feel resentful of others who expect something from us that we cannot give. We can feel envious of others who have something that we do not have, and we feel like we have to compete with them. The possible result of this is death, just at Cain killed Abel, or just as it happened recently at Immaculate Conception Parish School.  

When the Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother?” Cain answered, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Abel is the voice of everyone who has suffered in human relationships because of shame and fear and anger and jealousy. That is why Hebrews says: “We have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than the blood of Abel.”

After that important detour we turn to the gospel again: The Pharisees, in collaboration with the Romans, would murder Jesus out of fear and anger and jealousy. But the blood of Jesus is not like the blood of Abel.

The blood of Jesus breaks the power of sin that has dominated human life throughout the course of our evolution. And what the people who murdered Jesus did not yet know is that Jesus is God, God who has entered human life to reconnect us with an intimate relationship with the source of all life.

Jesus allowed himself to be killed to give us the most powerful reminder of God’s love that we could possibly want or need. Jesus died for us. So how are we going to respond to this? Well, we come to worship, to the Eucharist, where we’re reminded of what Jesus has done. We offer each other the sign of peace as a sign that we want to move beyond shame and fear and anger and jealousy in our relationships with one another. This relationship is nourished by the Eucharist and then it must be cultivated through prayer and growing in our knowledge of the word of God. Those are the only ways: through prayer and through listening to God’s word in the Bible.

The more you are immersed in scripture, the more you will have words of healing, love and truth to speak to negative emotions growing in your life. The more equipped will you be to reflect those words with others, especially those who might have been damaged by anger and jealousy and now live in fear, reduced to feeling ashamed and inadequate.

What is the antidote to shame and fear and anger and envy? Humility. It is the most insecure person who needs to dominate other people. It is the most insecure person who needs to defend their own rights all the time against others. It is the most insecure person who needs to put themselves on display to show their superiority. “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus makes it clear: Your attempt to be superior to others because of your own insecurity will eventually fail. It is inevitable.

Jesus teaches us a basic principle of the spiritual life in the Gospel today: the principle of humility. The person who lives in intimacy with God and serves the power of God through humility will transform the lives of others. The world is transformed from the bottom up.

Family, we are invited today to deepen our intimacy with God. If I could offer you a little exercise for your own prayer: take an hour this week away from distractions, go to your favorite place of prayer and reflect on the following questions:

• What makes me feel ashamed? Then give that feeling over to God and let the love of Jesus change shame into confidence in God’s love for you.
• What makes me feel afraid? And give that feeling over to God and let the love of Jesus change fear into peace and the knowledge that the power of God can work for you in love.
• What makes me feel angry? Then give that feeling over to God and let the love of Jesus change anger into forgiveness and understanding and a desire to work for justice.
• What makes me feel envious and jealous? Then give that feeling over to God and let the love of God assure you of your unique value and give you a desire to share your gifts with others.

We can be confident to approach God in all honesty with what we find because we have approached Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where we find Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant who has revealed to us that God is Abba, loving father. There lies the beginning of new and restored relationships, a radical trust confidence in God’s love.