“But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Hebrews 9:26b

“The grace of God is dangerous. It’s lavish, excessive, outrageous, and scandalous. God’s grace is ridiculously inclusive. Apparently God doesn’t care who He loves. He is not very careful about the people He calls His friends or the people He calls His church. Exactly. One of my favorite parables of Jesus is found in Luke 14, the parable of the great banquet. A very wealthy man had prepared a lavish banquet and invited many guests. The day of the event, a servant is sent to tell people the feast is ready. But everyone begins to make excuses—weddings, business purchases, land deals—all legitimate reasons, and all canceling their places at the banquet. The host is furious and makes a most preposterous decision. “Go out quickly,” he says to the servant, “into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” The servant obeys. Upon his return, he sheepishly says to the host, “Uh, I did what you ordered, but there’s still more room.” So the master tells his servant, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.” Can you imagine what a zoo the banquet became? Crippled, blind, lame, whores, criminals, losers, homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts, penniless, poor. A large table full of mangy, filthy, uncouth, uncivilized social rejects, none of whom was supposed to be there. And this, we’re told, is a parable of the church! A bunch of losers and rejects? A ragtag group of malcontents and failures? Jesus was making it very clear that there was not one iota of room in the church for arrogance because none of us belongs in it! (Michael Yaconelli. Dangerous Wonder: The Adventure of Childlike Faith p. 143, Kindle Edition)

The Greek word translated as “once for all” is the word “Hapax”. The literal translation is “once for all, never needing repetition”. The implication is clear, Christ has appeared, one time, for all people, for all time, to act definitively and purposely to remove sin from the world through his death and resurrection. It is a firm statement on the salvific work of Jesus for all people, for all time. He has come into this age, to usher in a new age, but this age must be brought to completion. That is where you and I come into the picture. We are the ones who are to be part of the ministry and mission plan to assist Christ in doing the work necessary to bring to completion the work of this age. And, according to the parable listed above, we all are part of the plan.

The question you may ask is “What is the work that needs to be done?” The answer is multi-layered, like an onion. The more we strip away the façade of the quick fixes by government and see the inner reality of our communities, we come to realize that many of our people are broken, and our communities are broken as well. We cannot fix them alone – we need the assistance of other people, and of course we need the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Christ has come, once for all time, to take upon himself the sins of the world. Christ will come again to take us all to the place he has prepared for each one of us (John 14). Just look around every day – look for all of the people hurting because of this virus, and the overarching impact of this virus. People need food. People need jobs. As we look around our community, we will see where our presence is needed – as co-workers with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Dave