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The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves (Hebrews 10:1).

It’s Monday, and we begin this third week of our journeying together towards Easter.  A sermon series entitled Jesus the Radiance of God’s Glory is going to dive into some very deep waters.  And you may be finding the Letter to the Hebrews, our trail guide for this journey, a somewhat daunting read.  Especially since we’re only going to have time to explore four of its thirteen chapters!

Today, let’s spend some time with the word shadow.  

The author of Hebrews is working to help his audience enter the vastness, the enormity, the beauty and the glory and the goodness of what God has done in Christ.  The Law, the sacrifices, the Temple were all good, all given by God … but there was an incompleteness about them, they were pointing towards something.  We don’t, can’t, keep the Law … so we have to offer the same sacrifices over and over.  Will this sacrificing ever end?  And we understand that God doesn’t really “live” inside a building we have built, fixed to a particular place on the planet.  Will the day ever come when God will be worshipped everywhere?

Hebrews 10 opens with the image of shadow: “the law is a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.”

A shadow points to a reality.  My shadow helps you locate me.  When you’re working outside and a sudden, unexpected shadow moves across your field of vision, it’s normal to look up, to look for the reality that has just cast its shadow over you.

Shadows are caused by light.  Shadows indicate that there is a source of light somewhere.  Strange as it might sound, shadows are designed to help us seek light, the absence of light (the shadow) pointing to light’s presence (the reality).

Hebrews puts the question to us: Are we still dancing with shadows, still walking in the shadows instead of in the realities?  Are we serving the shadow, or the reality that created it?

It’s easier to stay in the shadows: the light can’t fully reach you, illuminate you.  It’s easier to measure and “explain” a shadow than the reality causing the shadow.  Compared to the reality, the shadow is smaller, flatter, colorless, not alive.  Easier to manage and to explain, especially when we have been living deeply-shadowed lives for years, decades … centuries.

Hebrews is inviting us out of the shadows and into the radiant glory that created the shadows.  The shadows are God’s gift to lead us into the Light.

The shadow: the “curtain” in the Temple.  God’s Temple in Jerusalem was a spectacularly beautiful place.  It was designed as a representation of all of Creation, with God’s “residence” at the very center, in the Holy of Holies.  However, the Holy of Holies was “curtained off” from the rest of the Temple.  Only one person could ever enter, the high priest.  And only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  And only if bearing the blood of the lamb sacrificed for the priest’s sins as well as the sins of the people.

The reality in Jesus: Among the most arresting images in Hebrews (following the Gospels of Matthew and Mark) is the curtain that guarded the way into the Holy of Holies being rent asunder, from top to bottom, upon Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus is the Great High Priest foreshadowed by all the previous high priests.  The way into God’s presence, into communion with God, into fellowship and friendship with God, is now open to all through the once-for-all sacrifice of the Lamb foreshadowed by every lamb ever offered in sacrifice.

The shadow: the one Temple in Jerusalem.

The reality in Jesus: The building was the shadow of the Person.  The Holy of Holies, the place of God’s presence, is now wherever worshippers gather in the name of Jesus to worship the Lord in Spirit and in truth.  The Temple has now been distributed everywhere.  It is no longer a structure built by human hands but of human beings.

The shadow: only the religiously elite, the spiritually qualified, are allowed into the Holy of Holies.

The reality in Jesus: the sinful and the suffering, the down and out, the littlest, the least, the last and the lost –they are welcomed in.  In Christ, through Christ, because of Christ, “whosoever will may come!” out of the shadows and into the radiant, glorious Light!

Let’s pray together about this.  We no longer worry about sacrificing lambs or who’s a high priest.  But religiosity and mere religious activity can be one way to remain in the shadows.  Take a moment now to consider with God the extent to which you may be living a shadowed life, rather than enjoying the bright reality of the radiance of God’s glory.

Reality has to be, you know, real.  Are there any points of disconnect with what you know and believe about Jesus and how you live your life?  Let’s pray together.

What is one way you’d like to see our church grow in our ability to lead people out of the shadows of modern life and into the real life Christ offers to “whosoever”?  Pray for our church now.