The Epistle to the Hebrews offers a different way of dreaming about Jesus.

Hebrews is a book for dreamers. As we all know, there are good and bad dreams. And when I say bad dreams, I don’t mean nightmares; I mean delusions. There are dreams that make us forget our everyday lives as we soar the heights in our imaginations with closed eyes, oblivious to our world—retreating into our solitude, where we don’t have to worry about anyone or anything else, just me and the Jesus in my head. These delusional dreams blind us from everyday discipleship.

The Epistle to the Hebrews offers a different way of dreaming about Jesus. A singular dream is at the heart of Hebrews, a singular vision of Jesus. But for Hebrews, when we center our lives on Christ we are de-centered and destabilized. The gospel teaches us to receive our world as a site of discovery, the place where Jesus beckons us into strange new worlds beyond our dreams.

What is this dream? It’s the hopeful vision of Psalm 8:4-6. The author of Hebrews quotes this glorious dream in 2:7-8: “You made him [i.e., the son of man] for a little while lower than the angels, you crowned him with glory and honor, you placed all things in subjection under his feet.” The Son of Man, Jesus Christ, “the heir of all things … the radiance of God’s glory” (1:3), is king—Christ the king, enthroned above all worldly powers, with “all things under his feet.” Nothing is above Christ’s lordship; there is “nothing that is not subject to him.”

Suddenly Hebrews turns us from these heavenly heights to the harsh reality of this world, the world of our experience, a world plagued by violence and suffering, evil and pain. All is not well: “At present we do not yet see all things subjected to him; but we do see Jesus, who was for a little while made lower than the angels, is crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death” (2:8-9).

With these words the vision falls apart. We wake up from the dream of Psalm 8 to where Jesus reigns victoriously over all. “At present we do not yet see all things subjected to him.” Reality is too harsh. When we open our eyes, we see peoples ruled by the chaotic forces of evil. When we wake up from the dream, we see a world that is far from the one described in Psalm 8. Alex Sider, a Mennonite theologian at Bluffton (Ohio) University, offers this reading of the triumphal dream of Psalm 8: “It was a broken vision, and it would not be easily repaired” (To See History Doxologically; forthcoming).

But in the brokenness we catch a glimpse of something else: “But we do see Jesus” (2:9). Where exactly is the author of Hebrews looking when he makes this claim? How do we see Jesus? Many people ask the church this same question. “Where is this Jesus you say so much about?”

The end of Hebrews opens our eyes to how we may wrestle with these questions. In chapter 13, we find that the tortured and crucified Jesus waits for us on the margins. “Let us go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured” (13:13). Jesus is there right now, presently suffering, disgraced, marginalized and abused. And what are we supposed to do? We must go to him and bear the burdens of his abuse and disgrace. Hebrews calls us to solidarity with the Jesus who suffers among the reproachable and unclean. To see Jesus involves wandering into odious environments. Sider captures this exhortation with an epitaph from Gillian Rose’s book Love’s Work: “Keep your mind in hell and despair not.”

For many, hell is a place on earth. I remember a conversation with a friend who grew up in hell. We were studying the parables in Luke 13. After reading Jesus’ description of a place where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” my friend looked up at me and said, “I’ve been there.” He went on to describe growing up in a house of prostitution in the middle of an urban slum. He remembers waking up next to the recently dead, victims of drug overdose. “That’s hell,” he said.

No one should grow up in living hell. But people do. Will we help them endure—“bear” as Hebrews says—their abuse? Walking with people like my friend is hard going. Returning to hellish places isn’t comfortable for me or him. I would rather take a detour, change the subject, go elsewhere.

When Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes and center our lives on Jesus, we are radically de-centered, destabilized and end up where we don’t want to go. As the title of Ernst Käsemann’s landmark book on Hebrews puts it, we become The Wandering People of God.

If we want to fix our eyes on Jesus, we must wander in the wastelands, lose ourselves in a wilderness of slums and linger in abandoned places. The nomadic people of God set up their tents where no one else wants to live. We wander into relationships of solidarity where we bear one another’s burdens and hope to encounter the living presence of Jesus among the disfigured, disordered and disheveled. Can we see Jesus? Depends on where we go and with whom we linger.

When we go, when we wander, we must learn that we have just as much to receive as to give. We are nomads with open hands, ready to receive someone else’s leading hand, because with that hand comes Christ’s body. The spirituality of Hebrews adds a critical edge to our talk about evangelism and mission. There are streams of contemporary spirituality that turn Jesus into a possession, something we can own. We can put him in our pocket or tuck him away in our hearts for safekeeping. We treat Jesus as a deposit in our spiritual bank accounts, a fund to draw upon later when we need it and lend to others if we feel generous.

Sometimes our descriptions of evangelism and the missional church fall into the same temptation. We talk as if we own Jesus. Since we have God’s presence—the reasoning goes—we must transform our communities into missional churches that share what we already possess. Thus giving only goes in one direction: Jesus is ours to give away. We own the patent on God’s presence; the church owns the exclusive rights of Jesus.

But Phil Kniss, pastor of Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., helps us see a different kind of missional encounter, one that resonates with Hebrews. In a sermon on Feb. 4, 2007, Kniss said that a missional church wanders into the world and “asks what God is up to around here.” Through wandering, this kind of church “lets go of itself,” surrenders agendas and strategies and instead cultivates virtues of receptivity. This is a church that “listens and looks,” because “the reign of God is trying to be born somewhere.” Therefore, Kniss said, “we go [into the world] as willing to receive as to give.”

Too often we consider ourselves the agent of God’s call; we are the people who already heard God’s call and now must offer that call to the world. But Kniss describes a missional church that is “as willing to receive as to give.” Hospitality is the name of this missional posture. We wander beyond the walls of our community because Jesus is there, calling out to us, awaiting our reception. That’s why the author of Hebrews closes his sermon by telling the church to welcome the stranger: “Do not neglect caring for strangers/foreigners, for through this some have cared for messengers/angels without knowing” (13:2, my translation).

At this point the author of Hebrews reminds us of the story of Abraham and Sarah showing hospitality to the three messengers of God, who turn out to be the Lord: “The Lord appeared to Abraham … when he was sitting at the entrance to his tent. … Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground” (Genesis 18:1-2).

In Genesis 18, foreign migrants turn out to be the Lord. Foreigners may be God in our midst, divine messengers who bring the Word from God. Therefore, Hebrews tells us, we should practice hospitality if we want to receive the gift of God’s presence. The messenger of God, Jesus, the Lord, comes to us through strangers and foreigners—dare I say the immigrant? They are God’s mission to save us from ourselves. Will we serve them as Abraham and Sarah shared a meal with the Lord?

For Hebrews, the missional church is one that learns how to receive the agents of God’s call: the strangers and prisoners and the mistreated. Our task is to open ourselves to receive what only they can give: their very presence, which may turn out to be our Lord. As Sider puts it, “for the author of Hebrews, [the gospel] is continually given as an ecstatic mission that takes the shape of mutual love and hospitality.” We wander into the good news of Christ’s presence when our mission of love takes us into unfamiliar places where we can share a stranger’s burdens.

The message of Hebrews can echo back to us from unexpected places, like a rock star. In February 2006, the lead singer from U2 preached a sermon to president George Bush and his friends. Bono gives Hebrews an unforgettable context: “God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war.

God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”
God is with us if we are with them. According to Hebrews (and Bono), suffering strangers and wandering foreigners are the messengers through whom we see Jesus. They are just as much the agents of God’s call as we are. They have much to give, if we are willing to receive the gifts of their presence. Will we receive them as God’s mission to save us from ourselves?

If our American churches want a future, we need to wander into the places everyone else abandons. That’s where we belong, on the margins. Our people are the ones who look like Jesus, suffering in cardboard boxes, under the rubble of war, among the debris. Our people are the ones everyone else has cast out, the unclean, the abandoned, the strange.

Every Wednesday at noon, friends and strangers set up a table and chairs on the side of highway 15/501 between Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C. (see “Roadside Jesus,” Feb. 17, page 8). A few people drive up in cars; the rest wander out from the forests where they live in tents. Carolyn gathers everyone around the table—they call it “The Open Table.” They hold hands. Heads are bowed. In unison they pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.” As cars speed by, they commune around the table and enjoy this bread from God. They share news about the week: a broken rib, a robbery, chiggers, harassment from Chapel Hill police, someone in the hospital, no more food stamps, hitching a ride to Montana.

“Let us then escape to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we don’t have a lasting city around here, but we search for the coming one” (13:13-14, my translation). Hebrews tells me that my home is elsewhere. I join the strangers on Wednesday during my lunch hour because I’m homeless, too, or at least I need to learn what it means to be homeless. They are my teachers; I am a disciple with much to learn. Hebrews tells me to expect to find Jesus out there on the side of the road. I can’t say that I recognize him. That’s why I’ll go again.

I wonder: If I pray “thy kingdom come” with them every week, at some point will I discover that the coming kingdom is already at hand? I believe the kingdom happens at the table, when we break bread and bear each other’s burdens. And if that’s the case, then this kingdom is not something I possess. It’s not a kingdom I can build if I work hard enough on the mission. Rather it’s an episodic kingdom that happens whether I’m there or not. I can receive it only if I return to their portable table next week and take my seat and patiently await another advent of God’s presence.

“But we do see Jesus.” Maybe he will come to me as in a dream, when I sit and pray and eat on the margins of highway 15/501.

Isaac Villegas is pastor of Chapel Hill (N.C.) Mennonite Fellowship.