Hebrews 13:7
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith.
The ancient Greeks said, “The love of wisdom is the practice of death.” It is a measure of how far we’ve fallen in modern times that we don’t know what to make of this proverb. For a huge number of people, the response to it is, “In that case, I would just as soon be unwise.” But, of course, as Ecclesiastes points out, the fate of the wise and the unwise is identical: nobody gets out of here alive. The author of Hebrews is acutely aware of that fact and points us to the “outcome” of the lives of those who led the early Church. From an earthly perspective, it’s not an appealing picture: crucifixion, beheading, being burned alive. And all this in addition to the rehearsal Hebrews has just given us of the fate of those who prophesied the coming of Messiah: “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.” What does the author of Hebrews find so admirable about all this? In a word, faith. The wisdom of the Saints is not that they can keep themselves from dying (no one can do that), but that they are ready for it when they do and pass through it, not as through a hole into nothing, but as through a door into God. In the end, that is the only wise thing we can do about death.
