Hebrews 3: 5-19

Maybe it’s the fact that our anniversary’s just passed, or maybe it’s that summer is the season of weddings, but I often find myself remembering this wee story with a smile at this time of year….

Old man and women, sitting in their wee flat in Glasgow and reminiscing about the life they had together.

Agnes, I remember us getting together – back in the 30’s. The days of the great depression. We had to struggle for everything. But you were with me, every step of the way.

And then I got called up. Dodging Gerry bullets in the trenches for king and country; and you were with me, every step of the way.

Came back from the war and had tae take whatever work I could find just to keep food on the table for you and the bairns. But you were with me, every step of the way.

Got work in the shipyards just as all of that started to disappear fae the Clyde. But you were with me, every step of the way.

And here we are now, huddled round our wee two bar fire, and we still havnae got a penny to our name. And you’ve been with me, every step of the way.

You know, I’ve been thinking, Agnes – you’re a flippin jinx!

Every step of the way.

It takes a lot to keep a couple together for a lifetime, not least a good sense of humour.

And although they know it in their heads as they stand at the front of the church, that young couple getting married, it’s one thing knowing it in your head and another knowing it in your heart, through your lived experience.

And that’s why a lot of my wedding sermons focus on the difference between falling in love and being in love.

Any idiot can fall in love – that’s the easy part. Those early weeks and months when your love’s so new and strong that you’re totally consumed by it. And everything else pales into insignificance.

But it changes as time goes on. With time you begin to notice the things you’d overlooked when you were staring at them adoringly through those rose-coloured spectacles. The differences in attitude and practice that can so easily come to grate if they’re not acknowledged and talked through. Because laundry baskets don’t empty themselves. Bins need taken out. Money has to be managed. Relatives have to be welcomed and accommodated.

And working all of that stuff out takes effort. Especially when you both approach life quite differently.

Our friends Matt and Julie have a wonderfully strong marriage, but they are very different people in many ways. I’m not sure whether their parents sensed this from the get-go, but one of their wedding presents from Julie’s parents was a voucher for six sessions with a marriage counsellor! Not to put things right, but to get them off on a good footing.

One of Matt’s favourite T-shirts kind of sums up their marriage. It shows a cactus trying to hug a balloon and the caption just says ‘impossible love’!

Of course, it’s not impossible. But the T-shirt’s making a good point. Our love has to be worked out in the middle of real life, as the people we are.

Any fool can fall in love; but being in love – actually knuckling down and learning to love a real person – takes time and effort and sacrifice on the parts of both people in a marriage.

It’s far from easy.

And I begin there this morning because it seems to me that in some ways marriage is a good analogy for the life of faith.

Last week we described our relationship with God in terms of the parent-child dynamic; but the metaphor of marriage in Scripture is just as prevalent and just as strong.

We are the beloved, God is the lover. The church is the bride, Christ is the bridegroom. God is faithful; too often the people of God are unfaithful. And that’s when the relationship finds itself under strain.

And that’s what the writer of Hebrews is highlighting today. This passage, as I’m sure you’ll have picked up, is a warning. The people he’s writing to have come to faith in Christ; but now a few weeks or months or years in, things are starting to get difficult; very difficult at times. And in quiet corners in whispered conversations some are wondering if they should just pack it in and go back to the way things were.

They’re being tempted to break faith with Christ because they think that would make things easier.

And that’s why the writer takes us back into the Old Testament for a history lesson. Because if Israel’s history teaches us anything, it’s that turning away from God doesn’t solve our problems. It actually makes them worse.

So there’s Moses, standing on the edge of the Red Sea, looking back to Egypt and watching the chaos as Pharaoh and his charioteers desperately try to save themselves from a watery grave.

The people have seen what God can do – first hand! Plagues, pillars of fire and cloud, the parting of the waters. Leaving Egypt with their arms full of plunder. What more did they need to believe?!

But three days after their deliverance – three days! – they’re already starting to grumble. There’s no water. So God provides water. And then there’s no food, so God provides food. And then they get tired of the food. And then they get tired of waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain, so they make themselves an idol to worship. And when they finally reach the promised land, they lose heart. They don’t think God can help them overcome the nations who are already there, even after all he’s already done for them. They even talk about stoning Moses and Aaron and Joshua for bringing them to this place.

And it seems that even God’s infinite patience was tested. Moses asks him to forgive the people, and he does, but he vows that none of the adults who had grumbled against him would ever enter the promised land. Because of their attitude, they would never experience rest in the place God was leading them to.

And so the people of Israel ended up wandering in the desert, unnecessarily, for 40 years until all but a couple of that generation had passed away.

Why did God’s anger burn against them?

Well verse 10 of today’s reading spells it out for us:

“Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.”

And those, I think, are the key words we need to hear, by way of warning, this morning.

Their hearts are always going astray.

Which assumes, I have to say, that there was a point in time when our hearts were in the right place with God. That at some point in time we felt ourselves drawn to him, called by him into a larger life – the life of faith. That at some point we bowed the knee and accepted his Lordship in our lives because we were coming to understand, however hazily, that he is the ground of our being and the goal of all our travelling. The horizon of life and everything that lies beyond.

Have you known that first love, felt that desire? Have you realised that God is laying his hand upon your life and calling you to respond? Is he doing that even now with some of you? Will you listen to him, or are you hardening your heart to those words even as I speak them?

John says we love because he first loved us. And if we do not love him yet, then maybe we don’t yet understand the measure of what he has been doing for us, in Christ,  from the beginning of time to its uttermost end.

We love, because he first loved us. And the cross shows us the measure of his love.

So if we get that; if we’re starting to get a handle on the immensity of God’s love, why would we ever stray?

That’s a good question, and maybe the marriage analogy helps us here again.

Most of married life isn’t spent swooning over each other, at least once you get past the honeymoon stage! Now there’s still time to swoon, but it has to fit around the practicalities of life! Another day at work, another meal to prepare, another weekly shop, another bill to pay. This is much of life with another person.

And the life of faith comes with its practicalities too – we try to get to church, we take our turn on the rota, we bake the cakes or make the soup, we give our time, talents and money to help keep things ticking over.

But the problem comes when the practicalities take over so much that we forget what’s behind them. We forget to laugh and love and play. When the love that took you into a marriage doesn’t get the attention it needs, all that’s left is the weary negotiation of responsibility. And when we neglect prayer and companionship with God, the joy and the energy in that relationship goes – and all that’s left is the weary discharge of our various duties in church life.

When we lose sight of that which is central, the spark and the love that took us into a relationship - with God or with another person - that’s when we start to stray. Because we know in our gut that we were made for more than this. We have desires and passions that run deep within us – and that’s a good thing. But when they aren’t fulfilled, instead of trying to sort out the issues where we are, which is painful, we opt for the quick fix. We go astray.

Israel turned to idols. Someone lonely in a marriage looks for a no-strings attached relationship; posts their information on Tinder. The less daring turn to porn. Resentment and distance grows in the relationship. Communication dies.

Some decide that church doesn’t meet their needs, though if you asked them what their needs are they probably couldn’t vocalise them.  So they hop off to another church; or they opt out of church altogether and head off somewhere where they hope to find what they want. Never once realising that what they want and what they need might be two very different things.

Do you see the point? When we’re dissatisfied we always find ourselves lifting our eyes and craving the the thing we don’t have.

As I was thinking about this, I remembered a scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He’s trying to find the Holy Grail, and ends up discovering the cave where it rests. But the cave’s  filled with hundreds of beautiful ornate goblets – all of them very attractive and alluring. But if drinking from the grail gives life, drinking from the wrong goblet will bring death.

Finally, among the golden-red glow, Dr Jones spots a single plain, pottery goblet off to the side, almost hidden behind the others.  And he smiles as he lifts it up. “That’s the cup of a carpenter” he says.

What if the real thing we’re looking for isn’t to be found in the glamour of somewhere else or something else, or someone else, but right here in the ordinary everyday-ness of where we already are?

When our hearts are tempted to stray, what if the best course of action isn’t to follow our hearts, but to delve deeper into them and ask ‘why am I feeling like this?’. ‘What is it about this present situation that needs to change?’ And maybe sometimes it can change, and maybe it can’t. But we do well to ask the question before we rush to dull the pain or find a quick fix for it.

‘Their hearts are always going astray’ says the Lord.

‘and they have not known my ways.’

And isn’t that the nub of it? ‘They have not known my ways’.

We were made for intimacy with God and with one another. It seems to be part of how we’re made that we need a few people we can be genuinely close with.

When people take the time and make the effort to get to know us, it tells us that we have value in their eyes. It builds us up. But when they overlook us or start taking us for granted as though there’s nothing more to know or learn, it has the opposite effect.

Nothing hurts in a relationship like feeling the other one’s not really listening or trying to understand. You hear it all the time in the things people say – we just don’t talk anymore. He never tells me anything. She just doesn’t understand.

How could Israel have been with God and seen all that had happened, and still not know God’s ways?

I guess because they took him for granted. He just became a part of the scenery.

And there’s our warning; because it’s so easy for you and me to make the same mistake. We were made to know God, not just fill a pew. And if that hasn’t grabbed your whole life by the lapels yet, then you’re still missing the point, no matter how many years you’ve been coming to church.

Because one day all the other stuff we strive for and play with and accumulate, all the stuff we mistakenly try to build a life around

will fall away, and the only ground we’ll have to stand on then is the foundation of our relationship with God.

Don’t be found wanting in that day.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, says the Christ, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.

Several of you told me how moving you found the children’s address last week. Holding those wee ones by the shoulders, looking them in the eye and reminding them, that they are beloved children of God. Maybe some of the grown ups needed to hear that too!

But do you know why you were moved?

I believe it’s because you know, deep in your hearts, that we were made for that kind of intimacy with God. Heart to heart, face to face, eye to eye.

We were made to know his companionship through life, every step of the way.

Don’t settle for anything less.

Amen and thanks be to God for his word.