The Bible Lesson: Hebrews 5:1-10
One of my favorite passages in Scripture, First Peter 2:9-10, says of we believers in Jesus Christ: “...you are...a royal priesthood...in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
Beautiful language, but what exactly does it mean for you and me to be part of “a royal priesthood”?
Before his retirement, William Harkey worked in marketing by day. But his real job, as is true of all believers, was to be a priest. In a wonderful book called How to Share Good News Without Being Obnoxious About It, written nearly twenty years ago, Harkey tells about a time when he was living in the Chicago suburbs. Two doors away was a neighbor who, he said, “was icy. I was friendly. A curt ‘Hi’ was all I could ever get out of him. One day, I noticed him in his backyard, practicing his golf swing. It was almost professional. It was beautiful.”
Harkey says that he himself had always been a terrible golfer. Here was a chance to connect with his neighbor! He strolled toward his fence and asked if the neighbor could give him a few tips on his swing. “In a matter of minutes,” Harkey says, “he was coaching me like a club pro. Within weeks, we were teeing off together. Around Christmas time [they had become such good friends, Harkey says, that]...we were sharing our Christian concepts.”
Harkey was acting as a priest. He genuinely, authentically befriended someone and that friendship led he and his friend to genuinely, authentically share their ideas of and experiences with God together. Harkey was even able to talk with his friend about Christ. Are you living out your call to be a priest in your everyday life?
Our skit, based on today’s Bible lesson, reminds us of what makes a priest a priest. A priest, first of all has a purpose. Our Bible lesson says that, “Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”
Back in Old Testament times, priests at the temple in Jerusalem offered sacrifices for the people’s sins. They recognized, as Paul would put it in the New Testament, that "the wages of sin is death." Knowing that sin deserves death, the priests would offer stand-ins--sheep for those who could afford them, doves or even cereal offerings for those who were poor. These stand-ins took the punishment for the sins of people who wanted to renounce their sins and turn back to God.
Today, we don’t need such sacrifices, of course. Jesus was, as His relative John the Baptist described Him, the sacrificial “Lamb Who takes away the sin of the world.” And the book of Hebrews from which our lesson makes a big point of repeatedly reminding us, Jesus Christ gained the ability to be our high priest and advocate by killing the power of sin and death over our lives “once and for all” through His own death on a cross. [See here, here, here, here, here, and here.]
All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ have forgiveness of sin, along with God’s presence and power in their lives today and life that lasts forever with God.
Our priesthood involves representing God to others and representing others to God. That’s why we’re involved in so many of the ministries of service and love that happen within Friendship:
- collecting coats for the homeless
- gathering food and toiletries for the needy
- providing snacks for children at our local Boys and Girls Clubs
- collecting the items for and then assembling duffel bags for children taken into foster care in our community
- providing care packages for the elderly in our local nursing homes
- sending Christmas shoe boxes to children in far-off countries
- enabling World Vision to provide clean drinking water, milk cows, farming help, education, and Biblical instruction to little Sinankosi Moyo’s village in Zimbabwe
- sending money to the victims of disasters from New Orleans to Indonesia and
- making our building facilities available to all sorts of groups, from the Clermont County Counseling Center to cheerleading teams, among other things.
A second thing that makes a priest a priest is sympathy. A priest, our lesson tells us, “is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.”
That phrase, deal gently, translates a single word from the New Testament Greek, metriopatheo. It has the idea of laying aside our own emotions in order to feel what other people, to put ourselves in the other person's shoes. This is what Jesus does for us. It's what He calls us to do for others. And Hebrews mentions two groups of people for whom we are especially make the effort to deal gently: the ignorant, those are folks who wander haplessly into sin, and the wayward, those who deliberately sin.
The point is that priests of God are not in the condemning business.
We can’t mince words about what God calls righteousness and what God calls sin, of course. But priests know, as Paul writes in the New Testament, that it’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance. We ollow a Savior of Whom this same book of Hebrews says, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus went to a cross for us because of His sympathy for us. We’re to display that same sympathy for others.
Alcohol abuse may not be our personal sin of choice. But if we’ve ever eaten too many pieces of cake or skipped taking that walk we needed in order to shake off our lethargy, we know about the impulse to abuse our bodies. We can be sympathetic.
Homosexuality may not be our sin of preference. But if we’ve ever looked at another person as though they were an object or considered using our sexuality in ways other than those honored by God, we can be sympathetic, not high and mighty.
Pastor Gerald Mann says that sometimes the mission of the Church is to clean up the rotten reputation given to God by Christians. I don't know why it is that Christians so readily fall into self-righteousness, looking down their noses on others. But it's wrong. One of the few bumper stickers I would ever consider putting on my car is the one that says, "Christians Aren't Perfect; Just Forgiven."
Christ endured the cross so that He could sit at the right hand of the Father and when our prayer requests come to heaven, He can turn to Him and say, "It's okay, Father. She's with Me. He's one of My own." Christ, our high priest, shows us sympathy.
I had totally bungled things. A member of another pastor’s congregation, a person I’d experienced as credible and levelheaded, approached me with complaints about the pastor. He said that his opinions were widely held by others.
I was just out of seminary and didn’t have any sense. (As opposed to my status today: twenty-two years out of seminary and still no sense.) I went to the pastor to tell him what this person had said, not divulging the person’s name.
Without intending it, I conveyed the idea that there was widespread disaffection among the people of that church. Yes, I was trying to be helpful. But I think that I was also feeding my ego, playing the role of Superman.
Within hours, the pastor had composed a letter asking the congregation to tell him, since there was widespread unhappiness with his ministry, if it were time for him to go. I was shocked! When he read this letter to me over the phone, I put down the receiver and ran to his office. I asked him, “Would it help you to know who was saying all of these things about you?” He said that it would and when he learned the person’s identity, he laughed and said, “He was born with a lemon in his mouth and a list of grievances as long as your arm.”
He tore up the letter. Then, he and I went to talk with his wife. You see, he had called her immediately after speaking with me and she was furious with me, sure that I was part of some cabal to run her husband out of the ministry. I apologized profusely (and genuinely) for the heartbreak I’d caused them both.
You might rightly have expected them to keep me at arm’s length forevermore. But they completely forgave me. They remain good friends. They have sympathetic spirits. They know all about what it’s like to be human and so they don’t hold grudges. Just like Jesus, our great high priest, who knows exactly what it’s like to be human and is willing to be the advocate and Savior for all who turn from sin and turn to Him.
A third thing that makes a priest a priest is call. Our lesson tells us that a priest “does not presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God” and points out, “Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’” You and I are called, just like Jesus was called, to use our lives to glorify God. People who dedicate themselves to this call lead useful lives, lives that point others to God for help and hope, lives through which God gives help and hope to people.
Back when I was in seminary, one of our professors read a letter he’d received from a recent graduate, just beginning his service as a pastor. I objected to one thing he wrote back then. But as the years have rolled by, I’ve realized how right he was. He said that the reason God had conferred the stole of the pastor on him was that he didn’t really want it.
At first, I thought that this was somewhat insulting to the pastoral office. But now I realize what he meant: Being a pastor isn’t an honor to be sought. You don’t try to become a pastor so that you can stand up in front of people and wow them with your erudition or be the authority figure. Being a pastor--being a Christian of any kind--is about willingly submitting to God, committing yourself to service, and telling God, “Your will be done.”
Over the past several weeks we’ve been talking about what it means to be good stewards, or managers, of all the gifts God has given to us. Good stewardship, we pointed out, begins with awe in the presence of the God Who made us and the entire universe. That leads to the management of our time, talents, treasures, and the earth with a sense of gratitude and awe toward God. It includes making God, and not our finances, the focal point of our lives. It also includes being a priest.
The motto of our congregation points us all to the priesthood that you and I share. You can see it on our sign at Appomatox and White Oak: “Joining hands with God and neighbor.”
Next week brings Friend Day. Make it your business this week to invite a spiritually-disconnected friend to be with us next Sunday morning.
And let’s all resolve to make it our aim to be priests, people:
- who have a purpose,
- are sympathetic to others, and
- respond to God’s call to love our neighbors, making friends with them and allowing them to experience God’s love through us each and every day.
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