Waffles (Easter - Day 48)

(Based on Hebrews 8:1-13)

A few nights ago, I went to Waffle House with a few of my coworkers. We all crammed around a table and started sharing stories over coffee and waffles. I hadn't laughed in a long time as hard as I did that night. After that, I went to my friend Caleb's house in Houston and played video games until about three in the morning. When I woke up, I stumbled outside. It was one o' clock in the afternoon but I felt like it was five in the morning. He has a couch sitting right outside the house, so I plopped down and lit a cigarette. The next door neighbor came outside to shut her gate, and I tried to say Good Morning, but I guess I was still so sleepy that the words didn't actually have the strength to come out. It felt kind of awkward because I probably looked like a bum sitting on that couch outside with my bed hair and no shoes on. 

I've found lately that hanging with my coworkers gives me life that I haven't experienced before. There's always a lot of laughter, the kind that comes from the soul. Although we're a bunch of ragamuffins who are simply trying to figure out how to make sense of this life, we have fun together. I see something in them that I find in myself, and that's what draws me to spending time with them. 

The author of Hebrews contrasts this "old plan" with a "new plan." The old plan looks like offerings, sacrifices, high priests, guilt, asking for forgiveness, and worshiping in temples made with human hands. That is what the old plan looked like for people all the way up until Christ arrived. It was written on paper and chiseled on stone. In order to know what the system was, one would have to read it or be told about it. Then, one would be responsible for living in a way that resembled what that plan said. It was a system based on human effort to please a God who apparently seemed impossible to please. Why? Because people just couldn't get it right. This plan was supposed to be the spearhead of a movement that would bless the nations and transform the world. However, it ended up proving that humans could not avoid their own tendencies to make selfish decisions. The offerings ended up not being enough. The sacrifices were inadequate. The high priests were being bad examples because they too were not keeping the law. The guilt that came from breaking the law was much too heavy of a burden for anybody to carry. Asking for forgiveness was rote and habitual, and it soon lost any meaning at all. Temples became banks instead of spaces to worship. A new plan was mandatory, and God knew. According to the author, he turned a blind eye and let the people do what they wanted. He had enough compassion on them to understand that it wasn't that they didn't want to be a part of transforming the world. The problem was they couldn't get past their own setbacks in order to do so. 

Then came Jesus - the new plan. The old plan was put on a shelf to collect dust. No longer was the plan to be chiseled in stone or written on paper, but it would be written on the lining of the heart. Everyone would be in on this new plan because it would be as obvious as feeling a heartbeat. What was the new plan? Since the old plan of offerings, sacrifices, guilt, asking for forgiveness, and worshiping in temples was not working, it had to be replaced with something extraordinary. Jesus would become the one who gave the offerings. He would give the sacrifice. He would replace guilt with grace. He would forgive once and for all and would make the people His temple. He would move to where the people were instead of waiting for the people to come to him. 

The author of Hebrews says the new plan is written on the linings of our hearts, and it's this: we know God because we've been kindly forgiven. Because the need to offer up wordy prayers and good deeds and perfect belief and perfect church attendance is no longer necessary, we have the freedom to follow our deepest desires - our hearts. We live in a constant state of forgiveness. We have been reconciled with the longings of our hearts, with a God who wants us to pay attention to our desires and passions and to follow their lead. 

No longer is guilt the gauge by which we work and play, but grace. We have become the temple, the sanctuary of God through the new plan. Church attendance doesn't matter anymore because we are the church. Our very livelihoods are full of the new plan weaving its way throughout the people and events around us. From the simplest hello to the most complex struggles of seeing a loved one move on, we are awakening moment by moment to the presence of this plan written on our hearts. We are awakening to a forgiveness that is not ushered in by human language, but has been there before we were born. This forgiveness has been written on our hearts all along, and it was only a matter of time before we woke up to it. The game of who's right and who's wrong between the atheist and the religious is now a game of semantics. 

The belief is simple. God is or isn't. We can acknowledge that there are things inside of us that we didn't put there, or we can conjure up a story of how we created them. Everything we need to know is already within us, and we just have to wake up to it. If someone tells us that we have to do anything to receive forgiveness, then we simply need to take a step back and remember the new plan. Doing things for forgiveness was exactly what the old plan was all about. We are all forgiven and have been given the opportunity to pay attention to the literature of our hearts to move forward, bring life to the world around us, and to receive life even more abundantly.

This is why I go to Waffle House with my coworkers. I see a group of friends who have the new plan written on their hearts. My mind isn't constantly drilling the thought of how I can get them to know God. I'm confident that everyone who has a beating heart and knows how to laugh and follow their passions has already tasted the divine. When I can sit with a group around coffee and food, and laugh until it hurts, I am experiencing the church. I am experiencing what it looks like to be the temple of God.