My hometown is Atlanta and the Coca-Cola company reigns supreme. Why, any self-respecting Atlantan wouldn’t be caught with a Pepsi in his hand! But we all had to cringe a bit during the “New Coke” craze. Frankly, it was embarrassing. Thank God it didn’t last too long and the tried and true “Original Formula” was trotted back into the marketplace! Whew, that was a close call.
A lot of marketing of consumer products in this country is just so much bluster all meant to separate you from your money. It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors and sharp advertising that really doesn’t deliver on the promises the marketing makes. No wonder the old saying is “Buyer beware!” The truth is companies spend millions and millions of dollars on advertising for one, simple, reason: It works.
We, humans, want what is “better” “new and improved” or “one sale.” Our behaviors are shaped to “desire” and our desires are never really satisfied, so more is always nagging at us.
While this usually leads us to addictions to our desires, let’s stop and ask a very fundamental question: Why do we want what is better? There is something innate within us that longs for the perfect, the better. And I’m convinced, at the very center of this human longing is the foundational longing for God. Because we are made in His Image to become Like Him, we long for God, and anything that tells us “This is Better” we grasp in hopes of finding God. We want what is Better. We seek it and usually, we discover the advertisement was all hype. But no matter how many times we are disappointed, we still want what is better.
Sometimes better really is better.
Look at our Lesson today in Hebrews 8:1-6:
Brethren, we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; hence it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary; for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.” But as it is, he has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.
This is why we Christians still hold on to and cherish the Hebrew scriptures of our Jewish past! The scriptures, wisdom, beauty, and massive icon of God’s love that is the Hebrew scriptures are such a treasure house of insight, beauty, and wisdom that to remain ignorant of these holy scriptures is tantamount to choosing slavery over freedom. The main reason for this is that these holy scriptures reveal to us the lengths that our loving God goes to to bring us back to Himself. Being ignorant of the Hebrew Scriptures means you won’t recognize how much better the revelation of Jesus really is.
The crushing and cosmic tragedy of the Garden of Eden when our first parents misused their hunger and their desire for truth to sell creation into slavery, was so thoroughly pervasive that we really needed, no, actually Required, the whole Old Testament system of Temple, Commandments, Sacrifices, and Levitical Priesthood, times of slavery, and times of freedom, stories of heroes and heroines, prophets, priests, kings, wars, murder, mayhem, shame, sin and repentance, to show us just how cosmically tragic this “fall” in the Garden really was. We need this story to show us and bring us to the fulfillment of all those promises in the Old Testament by the time we get to an Archangel visiting a Young Woman in the Temple.
Let’s face it, some mistakes require severe remedial training!
Those who lived before Christ came, look forward to the time Christ came. Those of us who live after Christ came, look back to the time Christ came. Regardless of when we are, we look to Christ. Because Christ makes real the promise of all those Old Testament lessons and shows us the true meaning of all that gracious and God-inspired wisdom that finally brought Christ to our world. Jesus is the Fulfillment of what was only shadow and signpost in the Old Testament. And that is exactly what St. Paul means when he writes what he writes to these Hebrew Christians who were thinking about going back to what they came from. Why would you trade what is better for what was only meant to bring you to the better?
We will never fully appreciate the “better” covenant Jesus gives us, and the “better” promises He makes to and for us, if we ignore and dismiss the wonders, wisdom, and beauty of His “First” Testament to us. The whole of the Early Church, their preaching, their ministry, their evangelism, all turned the world upside down with those very scriptures!
A perfect example of why our desire for “better” has to be informed and shaped by truth and the love for God is the painful time in the history of the Church when the heresy of Arianism was spreading like wildfire through the Roman Empire. The Church was sorely tested during this time by the false teaching that Jesus wasn’t equal to the Father and that the Holy Spirit wasn’t a divine Person as swell. This heretical teaching saw a very good and beloved hierarch exiled and even killed by the Arians because he wanted to hold to the better teaching of the Orthodox Faith. St. Paul, the Confessor, was a very holy bishop who held fast and true to the Orthodox Faith in the early 4th Century. Because of his piety and virtue, he was chosen to be Patriarch in the capital city of Constantinople. But the emperor at that time was an Arian named Constantius and he exiled St. Paul. But Paul would return to Constantinople to regain his ministry there in the capital through the support of the Church in Rome, the old capital. But the fight against this evil heresy raged on and St. Paul was again exiled. During his last exile, the Arians found him celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the house where he was imprisoned, and they strangled him to death with his own robes. They so feared St. Paul’s powerful witness to the true Faith that they couldn’t allow him to live.
Today, if you are really ever going to have the spiritual foundation to persevere in living a purposeful Orthodox Christian life, you are going to need the spiritual nourishment of the Old Testament and this abundant spiritual wisdom so that you know what is truly better. Take a moment and make it a habit to read and contemplate the scriptures in the front of your Bible. You will never fully appreciate how much “better” the Good News of Jesus really is without a strong familiarity with this timeless wisdom meant to help you live a Normal Orthodox Life!
P.S. Your confession of the one divine Faith showed you to the Church to be a new Paul and a zealot among priests, O holy one. The righteous blood both of Abel and Zachary with you do cry out together unto the Lord. Righteous Father, intercede with Christ God on our behalf that His great mercy may be granted unto us.
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