THE MARKS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE – Hebrews 13:1-8

If someone were to ask you what makes you a Christian, what would you say? What about you shows the world that you are a believer? The author of the letter to the Hebrews by no means gives an exhaustive list of the characteristics of a Christian but he does seek to highlight to the people five qualities which he sees as essential to anyone who would mark themselves as Christian.

The first quality is brotherly love or friendship. My grandmother was fond of saying: “You can’t choose your relatives; thank God you can choose your friends.” My grandmother knew that there would always be challenges with family because you could not really choose whether or not to love them or to live with them. Your friends you can choose, people who have similar interests to you and with whom you can socialize in a relaxed and open way, feeling secure in their presence.

In a real way, the church is a strange mix of the two worlds for those with whom we share this Christian community are to be considered as family – brothers and sisters in the faith. In the Gospel of John, we are reminded that we have been adopted by God into His family and therefore we have become related to one another. But at the same time as we are family, we are also to be friends of one another.  One of the greatest challenges we face as a community is how to be supportive of one another in our individual and collective faith journey. No one of us is perfect and we will no doubt cause each other grief at one time or another. Our challenge is how to forgive one another, work through our differences and failings and reveal to one another that we truly care about one another.  Will we always do what we know to be right? Will we always say the best thing? No, but will we be able to love each other in spite of it and encourage each other to do better the next time? That is our challenge!

The second quality is hospitality. Some of us find it easier than others to open our homes to strangers. But the simple act of inviting anyone in our circle to join us for a cup of coffee or a meal is a sign that we wish to have them be a part of our life. Why do I find it important to visit with you in your home? It is not for the coffee or tea or the biscuits or anything else you may offer.  It is because it gives us the time to get to know one another in a place where you are most comfortable and can feel safe.  Providing hospitality to others, whatever the setting, is about sharing of our time and space with another. It is about allowing another person to share our life with us and gives us the opportunity to get to know one another on a deeper level.

The third quality is that of sympathy or compassion. In the early days of the church, this quality was exercised in ways that we can only imagine today for we live in a society where we can exercise our faith without fear of death or imprisonment. But in the early days of the church, it was not uncommon for believers to be sent to work camps, mines or imprisoned or tortured. It was critical for the others in the community to be very conscious of the sufferings of these people and to be prepared to minister to them in whatever way they could. To give you an idea of how serious this was it is recorded that at the beginning of the 4^th century, the Emperor Licinius passed legislation that “no one was to show kindness to sufferers in prison by supplying them with food, and that no one was to show mercy to those starving in prison.” It was added that those who were discovered so doing would be compelled to suffer the same sentence and fate as those they tried to help.  Today for us this element of sympathy is most clearly expressed in visiting the sick, the shut-in, and the senior. But the original intent remains the same. We who are together part of this community bear a responsibility to attend to the physical, mental and spiritual needs of all in the community to the best of our ability.

The fourth quality is that of purity. Respect for each other physically, emotionally and spiritually is to be the mark of the community.  While specifically the marriage bond is mentioned, it should be noted that the community was to maintain among its members a keen desire to live lives in accordance with the commandments of God.  Living a life that honoured God was the goal.  Members of the community were to strive for purity in their thoughts and actions not as a sign of superiority but as a mark of genuine faith in the common life to which they had been called in Christ and as a sign of their respect and love for one another.

The last quality the author says is essential is that of contentment. The Christian must be free from the love of money. Money has been a part of societies for a long time. It appears in every civilization at the time where the population becomes too large for simple trading of goods to take place. And so money is given and received as goods and services are exchanged. No different today than in the time of the writing of the letter to the Hebrews, money makes things happen. We all know that we need to have money to buy the things needed to sustain life.  Money in and of itself is neither good nor bad. Money is a commodity. It is our attitude to money that is always spoken of in the Bible. It is being content with what we have. It is not making money the be all and end all of our existence. It is being responsible with what we have in our lives and revealing that we live our lives not out of our wealth or our poverty, but out of our relationship with God.

I have told you the story of my youngest son who when he found out that I worked for a non-profit said that now he understood why I didn’t have a big income. In his mind, success was judged by how much money you made. I asked him if he ever had gone hungry or been cold or denied something that he needed. His answer was that none of those things had happened. So, I said, you really lacked nothing.  He learned that day that the pursuit of money in and of itself was no guarantee of happiness. The issue of contentment comes down to our heart which is what Jesus spoke of so many times. Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. Wealth is not the issue; it is our relationship to it. As Christians, we pray that our heart and soul are filled with God.  When God is at the centre, we know that all things will be in their place.

But let us not fool ourselves into believing that I have just presented a neat and simple prescription for a perfect life. These are qualities in the Christian life for which we need to be aware of daily and seek to practice. The sooner we are willing to see ourselves as works in progress, the sooner we will be able to see those we share this community with as works in progress as well. It is only in Christ that we become perfect and that only in the life to come. Our goal now is to commit ourselves to those who share this community seeking to build each other up and encourage one another to grow in God in mind, body and spirit.

To close, I would like to use the words of Paul from Philippians 2 where he writes:

So if there is any encouragement from your being in union with Christ, any comfort flowing from love, any fellowship in the Spirit, or any compassion and sympathy, then complete my joy by having a common purpose and a common love, by being one in heart and mind.  Do nothing out of rivalry or vanity; but, in humility, regard each other as better than yourselves – look out for each other’s interests and not just for your own.

AMEN