We had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness.

Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed (Hebrews 12:9-15).

Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled.

Once upon a time, on the southern coast of what is now Turkey, there was a small fishing village named Bari. It was there, in the year 270 AD – that’s a long time ago, isn’t it? – a baby boy was born, and his parents named him Niklaus. No one today is sure of the names of his parents: in one account they are identified as Epiphanius and Joanna, but in another account they are called Theophanes and Nonna. So there’s some uncertainty in this story, even before the boy was baptized. It is just possible that both accounts are correct: Nonna could be a shortened form of Joanna, and Theophanes and Epiphanius don’t really have similar pronunciations, but their meaning is quite close. Theophanes is the root of our English word theophany, a term that is mostly known only by theologians: it means the shining forth of God. In Epiphanius you probably recognize the English term Epiphany, which if you parse the Greek means shining forth, but in the Christian world it comes to mean specifically the shining forth of the baby Jesus to the nations, revealed to the non-Jewish wise men after his birth. So Theophanes means the shining forth of God, while Epiphanius means the shining forth of Jesus, and so – just possibly – one of them was the given name and one of them was the nickname of the father of Niklaus. Probably not; probably one of the sources was mistaken. Perhaps the main thing to see from this is that we are sure that baby Niklaus had parents, but in the earliest records we have no assurance that we know their names.

It is said that young Niklaus’s uncle was the bishop of Myra, a somewhat larger city farther east along the Turkish coast. And this uncle recognized the call of God on the lad, and when he was old enough, the uncle ordained him as a priest. Some years later, the uncle had died, and another man became the next bishop; later, when that man had also died, Niklaus was called to become the bishop of Myra.

The biography of Niklaus of Myra was written many years later by a man named Michael the Archimandrite. Because he wrote his book about 500 years after Niklaus’s death, many people are skeptical about the information he provides: maybe he was making it up, or maybe he was just writing down legends that had grown over the course of five centuries. But many scholars take seriously the work of Michael the Archimandrite. He appears to have been a careful scholar himself, drawing his material from a number of earlier written works. These source documents have not come down to us. Modern paper is easy to damage, by fire, by dirt, by mold, by dampness, by bugs, by spilled coffee: but modern paper is in fact much more robust than ancient papyrus. Most ancient documents have been lost in the sands of time. But that doesn’t mean those sources weren’t real. I myself think that Michael the Archimandrite was probably mostly accurate in his account. But one of the things you need to know is that not everyone believes that what Michael the Archimandrite wrote regarding Niklaus of Myra was correct. So it’s okay if you want to say that it all happened a long time ago and we’re not entirely sure about many of the details.

Today’s scripture text comes from one of the letters of the New Testament. The New Testament includes 27 documents, each of which is called a ‘book,’ although they are all much shorter than what we normally think of as a book. There are five narrative books: the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that tell about the actions and teachings of Jesus, plus the book of the Acts of the Apostles, which mostly follows the careers of two of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. The final book of the New Testament is the Revelation, full of end-of-the-world imagery. In between we find twenty-one letters. Thirteen of these come under the byline of the Apostle Paul; two identify themselves as having been written by Peter; three appear to have come from the Apostle John; and two are considered to have come from brothers of Jesus, one from James and one from Jude.

That accounts for 26 of the 27 books of the New Testament. The last one does not include any name as its author. Where the letters of Paul all immediately identify the sender of the letter – Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ; or sometimes he writes it as Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ – but the letter to the Hebrews never says who wrote it. That, plus its location way toward the back of the New Testament, plus its style as it quotes and comments on passages from the Old Testament, means that most people never quite get around to reading it.

This portion of Hebrews is about Christian discipline. It is about the reality that life isn’t always easy: we have to learn to deal with hard things. Some of those hard things are illnesses, lack of resources, bereavement, and death: they come to all of us, and even though we know that, they often catch us by surprise.

As we look at this text, perhaps the first thing to consider is that even many of the fun things in life require the discipline of learning to do hard things. For example, succeeding as a runner is hard. If you want to run fast you must do the discipline of running many miles, building stamina and speed, and developing the mental toughness to push even harder when it’d be so much easier just to quit. That discipline is hard: it isn’t fun: but setting a personal best in a race is fun.

Succeeding as a ball player is hard. If you want to learn to hit a curve ball, it takes hours in the batting cage; plus there are hours of fielding drills and lots of laps in the outfield. That discipline is hard: it isn’t fun: but hitting the game winning home run is great fun.

Succeeding as a parent is hard. There are lots of times when your child whines that you’re such a mean parent, when you insist that chores must be done and homework must be finished, when you have to endure tantrums and screaming. That discipline is hard: it isn’t fun: but watching your child walk across the stage to get that diploma is some of the richest fun there is.

And so the book of Hebrews admonishes us to accept Christian discipline: a discipline from God, to train us to be people of righteousness. Not self-righteousness, which is just another way of putting other people down so that you can feel like you’re better than they are. But the ability to do what’s right, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it’s a challenge: even when it’s hard. You could even define the Christian life as the discipline of learning to do the right thing, even when it would be much easier to skip it.

Verse 10 says that our parents “disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness.” There’s a subtle admission right there that our parents didn’t always get it right when they were disciplining us, just like we don’t always get it right, when we are trying to follow the disciplines that we have set for ourselves. And then it contrasts that with God, who uses discipline to discipline us, with the specific purpose that we might become godly, people of holiness.

Maybe you’re not sure that you want to be holy. I’m not always sure that I want to be holy. Sometimes I’d rather be stubborn about getting my own way. Sometimes I’d rather be lazy. Sometimes I’d rather be sarcastic. Sometimes I’d rather hold a grudge. I can see that it would be a very fine thing, to be a person of holiness, someone who had established a character of being perceptive and prayerful, devoted to my Lord and compassionate to my neighbors. But as fine as that might be, I can see that it would take discipline. It would be hard.

Let me tell you the best-known story about Bishop Niklaus, and you can decide for yourself. There was a family in Myra, and the father in this family was a well-to-do merchant. By ill fortune the family had lost nearly all their money – I suppose that their ship might have been lost at sea, but the account by Michael the Archimandrite does not say exactly how it happened. There were three daughters in the family. Although they had seemed very marriageable, now they had no dowry, and so when their father died they would be in poverty, and would end up sold into prostitution in order to avoid starvation. This bothered Bishop Niklaus, and he wanted to help. But he wanted to do it secretly, to avoid drawing any credit to himself, and to avoid humiliating the family. And so, in the dark of the night, he walked quietly down the street, and tossed a small bag of gold coins through the window of the family’s house. Then he scurried on his way. That became the dowry for the eldest daughter.

Not long after, he did it again, with a bag of gold coins that became the dowry for the middle daughter, moving silently away in the dark.

The whole family was so grateful for this astonishing blessing that had befallen them, although they had no idea who could have done this thing. But the father took to sleeping in a chair in the front room, and some time later, when a third bag of gold coins came through the window, the father sprang awake and stuck his head out the window, and saw a man hurrying quietly away in the dark street. It was the middle of the night, and there were no streetlights, but something about the man seemed so familiar: and then the father realized that he knew who it was, because of the many times he had seen the bishop walk across the chancel of the church. It was Niklaus, bishop of Myra!

So today’s passage from the letter to the Hebrews urges us to take on Christian discipline, to learn to do hard things, to get better at doing the right thing when the right thing is hard to do: and then it rounds off with these two verses:

Pursue peace with everyone, and the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled.

Pursue peace with everyone. You’re not always going to catch up with it; sometimes peace is pretty elusive, and despite your best efforts somehow it gets away from you. But pursue it. Make the effort. Reach out, take the initiative, and so far as it has to do with you, do your best to restore peace and forgiveness, with a healed relationship.

It’s a compound object here: pursue peace, and also pursue holiness. And then it says this strange thing: pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

Our doctrine as Presbyterians is that the saving grace of Jesus comes to us as grace: it’s not something that you can earn through your good behavior. And that’s a good thing, because so often our good behavior is not all that good. We cut corners, we hold grudges, we speak sarcastic cutting words. If salvation depends on us being perfect people, we are all in a heap of trouble. But as we say so often in our Assurance of Pardon, Jesus Christ the Righteous is the atoning sacrifice for our sins – and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world. The heart of the gospel is about how the grace of Jesus saves a world full of sinners.

And yet here comes this verse that urges us to pursue holiness, because without holiness no one will see the Lord.

If holiness is the standard, very few will qualify to see the Lord. If the requirement is for us to be holy, then you know, and I know, as we search our hearts in honesty this day, we know that we do not measure up.

And that makes it very interesting that the very next verse offers this mandate:

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled.

Notice what’s happening here. In verse 14 the text offers the expectation that most of us are not going to make it, because without holiness no one will see the Lord. Wait! If without holiness no one will see the Lord, doesn’t that mean that when we all get to heaven it will turn out that there were a lot of people who did not get to heaven? The text immediately contrasts that with the expectation, in verse 15, that we will not allow anyone to fail to obtain God’s grace. Wait! If no one fails to obtain God’s grace, doesn’t that mean that when we all get to heaven we will discover that indeed we all got to heaven?

Quite often in the Bible this happens: one verse says something, and it seems pretty clear, and then within just a few verses, sometimes in the very next verse, it says something that offers a sharp contrast to what we just read. Perhaps the most famous example is John 3:16 and 3:17. We all know John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.

If you memorized only one Bible verse, back in Vacation Bible School, this is the one. It seems quite clear: there’s an option to perish, and there’s an option to have eternal life, and it is your personal decision of faith that makes the difference: some people believe in Jesus, and some do not, and that decides your eternal destiny.

But the very next verse, John 3:17, says this:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order to save the world through him.

Here we see the purpose of God clearly spelled out for us: to save the world through Jesus. That’s the intention of Almighty God. And if Almighty God wants to save the world, who among us will stand up and say, “Sorry, Lord, but No. That’s something you can’t do.”

Wait. One verse implies that everyone is saved, and the other implies that only the believers are saved. So, preacher: which one is it?

I want to go on record here: sometimes Scripture gives us one verse that says one thing, and right near by, and sometimes immediately adjacent, you get a verse that says something quite different. Often the combination poses a problem that is not easy to resolve. And here’s the thing that I want to go on record with: I like it when that happens.

These two verses in Hebrews are not nearly as famous as John 3:16 and 17, but these two adjacent lines also exemplify this situation where the first verse implies one idea, and the second one implies something very different. When this happens, I call them “high contrast verses.” And I like it, when I run across them.

I like it because it presses me to be humble. When you have high contrast verses, almost always one of them seems resonant and right, and the other seems awkward and wrong. Your neighbor has the same experience, but he or she likes the wrong one! – and thinks that because you like the other one, you’re the person who likes the wrong one. What I need to learn is that neither of us has both verses on our side. And so I need to be humble: recognizing that the other person’s insight could be a little clearer than my own.

The other reason I like it when I run into high contrast verses is this: so very often this is where I hear the voice of the Lord. Many of us, including me, want the Word of the Lord to be simple, easy to understand, impossible to make a mistake about. But life is usually not that simple. The Word of God is usually not that simple.

The Scriptures often give us examples, without specifically saying whether they are good examples or bad examples. We have to read the narrative, ponder on the action, and discern whether this is a good example we should follow, or a bad example we should avoid. The friends of Job, for example, spout off with a lot of conventional wisdom that seems to be pretty reasonable: but it is only at the very end of the book that we find out that their basic premise was entirely mistaken.

So I said that the father of the three girls recognized that it was Bishop Niklaus who had tossed the bag of coins through the window: but I wonder if we can be quite certain of that. After all, it was the middle of the night, and there were no streetlights in those days. Although it is true that you can find your way down the street with nothing more than starlight, you probably can’t recognize someone by starlight if you can only see their back from, say, a distance of forty or fifty feet as they walk away from you. Someone tossed a gift through the window: but was it really the Bishop?

And there were other stories as well, stories of how Bishop Niklaus provided such helpful gifts, always anonymously, always refusing to take any credit. All these stories participate in this same uncertainty: we’ve mentioned the uncertainty about the names of the parents of Niklaus, plus the uncertainty as to how good a historian was Michael the Archimandrite, plus the uncertainty of identifying someone you can barely see at all in the dark of night: these stories of how the bishop gave people unexpected gifts, gifts that changed their lives, there is uncertainty about these stories, too. Maybe Michael the Archimandrite got it mostly right. Maybe not: maybe he made up some of the stories, or maybe he wrote down legends that other people had made up. Once again, then: it’s okay if you want to say that it all happened a long time ago and we’re not entirely sure about many of the details.

So it came to pass that Bishop Niklaus grew old and died. But the stories of his generous gifts did not die. And people began calling the main character in those stories Saint Niklaus, which became pronounced as Saint Nicholas in some regions, and as Sinter Klaas in other regions, and as Santa Claus here in America.

Sometimes children have asked me if I really believe in Santa Claus. And I tell them that I do, but I don’t believe all the stories that people tell about him, because over the centuries people have made up a lot of stories about him, about the north pole and reindeer and the chimney, about elves and grinches, about the Polar Express and the Miracle on 34^th Street, about who’s naughty and who’s nice. And I think that those are all fun and enjoyable stories, but they are stories that people made up. I don’t believe that those stories are true.

And yet, I tell the children when they ask me, I do believe the stories about Niklaus of Myra are true. I admit that it all happened a long time ago and we’re not entirely sure about many of the details: but I believe that the heart of the story is true: that Niklaus brought secret gifts to people in need, that he did it in the middle of the night, and that he always tried to do it without letting anyone know that he did it. And so one of the ways we can express our belief in Santa Claus is to do the same thing that Niklaus did: giving gifts to people in need, without taking any credit for ourselves, without even letting anyone know we did it.

It’s almost Christmas, and this morning’s text gives us two early presents. Hebrews 12:14 tells us to pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. The word for holiness in Latin is sanctus, which comes into Spanish as santo or santa, and which then comes into English mostly in place names: Santo Domingo, Santa Monica, and so on. You can see what comes next: the phrase in the text which talks about holiness would be: the Santa Clause. Which is to say, the line that talks about holiness. The Santa Clause urges us to pursue holiness in our lives: to take on the Christian discipline of learning to do the right thing even when it is hard to do. That’s the first early present.

And the second gift is this: the expectation that God wants us all to make it. See to it, it says, that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. That certainly seems to imply that some people might fail to obtain the grace of God: but it especially indicates our Lord’s desire for no one to miss out. And the text instructs us to see to it: to do our part to make it happen.

So, because we want to set a good example for the children, let’s be bold to emulate Saint Niklaus: making sure those who are hungry get food, making sure those who are poor receive the resources they need. We’ll see to it that no one misses out. We’ll do it without blowing a trumpet to announce to everyone how generous we are; instead, we’ll do it secretly, anonymously. That will be hard, I think. But Christian discipline is the practice of learning to do hard things. Like living in holiness, instead of holding grudges or feeling envious or greedy.

Pursue peace with everyone, and pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.