Jesus: High Priest, King of Kings (AUDIO)

Here.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Jesus: High Priest and King

[This was shared today during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Hebrews 5:1-10
The name of Melchizedek isn’t often mentioned among Christians. And there’s no mystery about that. Melchizedek makes only one actual appearance in the Bible, in Genesis 14:18-20.

After Israel’s patriarch Abraham, then called Abram, alongside allies, fought and won a battle, we’re told: “Then Melchizedek king of Salem [Salem means “peace.” The city bearing that name later became the site of Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Melchizedek] brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’ Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.”

[Portrayed here is a the scene from Genesis 14:18-20. Melchizedek brings bread and wine to Abraham.]

Think about this. Before God had begun to fulfill His first covenant (or first testament) by making Abraham and Sarah the parents of Isaac, the foundation on which God would build His people Israel, there already was, at Jerusalem, a king and priest of God.

Now, this is interesting. Among the descendants of Abraham, there were priests and then there were kings. While Israel’s kings were called to be submissive and trusting toward God and to honor the priests, except in the case of pretenders later in ancient Israel’s history, Israel never had people who were priests and kings.

Such a combination of eternal and earthly power could only be handled by someone who, because of their humble trust in God, would resist the temptation to be an autocrat, a dictator, or self-glorifying conqueror. Melchizedek apparently was the kind of person who could resist those temptations.

When Abraham met Melchizedek, he clearly understood himself to be in the presence of someone who was a priest of the very God Who had called him from the comforts of his home in Ur, willing to wander to the new home that God promised to show to him.

That’s why he humbly received bread and wine from this priest and king and, in response to God’s grace, gave Melchizedek a tithe, ten percent “of everything” he owned.

This is the last known appearance by Melchizedek on the earth.

So, what happened to his royal house?

What happened to his priesthood?

And what difference does it make for you and me?

Our second lesson for this morning, Hebrews 5:1-10, provides some answers.

Hebrews, you'll remember, is a book of unknown authorship. We do know that it’s a sermon by a Jewish-Christian to a congregation of Jewish-Christians who are being tempted, under pressure of Roman persecution, to renounce Christ.

The preacher of Hebrews encourages his fellow Jewish-Christians to not desert the hope they have in Christ. Christ, he says, is the culmination of all of God’s promises of forgiveness and new life given to their ancestors and through them, to the world.

Let’s take a look at what he has to say today.

Verse 1 (He's talking about priesthood.): “Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people. And no one takes this honor on himself, but he receives it when called by God, just as Aaron [the brother of Moses] was.”

The high priest of Israel, who had been at the temple in Jerusalem before the temple was destroyed and the priesthood decimated in 70 AD, several decades before this sermon was given, acted as a mediator between God and God’s people.

The high priest was called to make sacrifices for their sins and to gently counsel people with God’s Word. He was able to do this because, as a human being himself, he understood the pressures, joys, and temptations that we human beings face.

But the high priest could only do this because he acknowledged his own sins before God and offered sacrifices for them.

The preacher in Hebrews says that anyone who would presume to take the office of high priest would not be qualified for it; it had to be conferred on them by God.

I think that even today, there’s a principle for us: Anyone who wants to have a position of authority or power in the Church--be it pastor, bishop, church council president, congregational officer, church council officer--ought to be viewed with a certain amount of skepticism. When the people of the Church, after a season of prayer, felt led to ask an often reluctant but faithful person to respond to God’s call, that’s the person God is likely calling.

One of the things I love about this congregation is that we don’t ask any elected person to serve in positions of responsibility unless there has been prayer and a discernment of their call from God. We don’t use the spaghetti method to recruit candidates for church council, for example: We don’t just throw up a name and see which one sticks. Like the high priests, those who hold responsibility in today’s Church need to be believers who live in daily repentance and renewal, who have no notion that they’re anything other than sinners made saints by God’s grace through their faith in Christ. We are blessed to have elected leaders like that at Living Water. And it’s my observation that we take the same care in selecting people for appointment to positions in the congregation.

The preacher goes on to say that Jesus Christ’s claim to be our great High Priest, King, and Lord is not contingent on His taking the reins of ultimate power by force. Jesus too was called by His Father in heaven. Verses 5 and 6: “In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ [This is from Psalm 2. More on that in a second. And he says in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’”

Here, the preacher of Hebrews cites two different psalms. There are different kinds of psalms. Psalm 35, for example, is an imprecatory psalm in which the psalmist asks God to go after his tormentors. In Psalm 51, David confesses his sin and asks God to give him a clean heart. In our lesson from Hebrews, two psalms, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, are cited. These are both royal psalms. They were written to celebrate the anointing of God's king in Israel. royal pslams. A king of Israel was referred to as the Anointed One, in the Hebrew, Meshiah, Messiah and in the Greek in which the New Testament was written, Christos, Christ.

So, what’s the point? Jesus isn’t a successor to the priesthood of the Levites in the temple, who were descendants of Aaron. Instead, Jesus is, like Melchizedek, anointed directly by God the Father. And like Melchizedek

Jesus is also a king, the King of kings.

God has made Jesus both our High Priest, able to understand our weaknesses because He’s withstood every test and temptation that we have in life, and our King, Who has conquered death, darkness, and the devil to give all who let Him be their Priest and King, life with God that never ends.

And how has Jesus achieved this for us? Verse 7: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death [Remember Jesus in Gethsemane, Who prayed in submission to the Father’s will that He become the perfect sacrifice for our sins even as He asked if there might be a way for Him to avoid the cup of wrath for human evil that He was about to drink full-up on the cross?], and he was heard because of his reverent submission. [He was heard even though the Father didn’t take away the cross. He was heard because God gave Christ the strength to endure the cross for us, the greatest act of love in the history of the universe. And He was heard too because, having faithfully endured the cross, the Father raised Him on the third day, allowing Christ to exert an eternal priesthood and an eternal kingship for you and me.] Son though [Jesus] was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect [The word in the original Greek doesn’t mean perfect, but complete. Jesus uses a form of the same word when, with His dying breath on the cross, He says, “It is fulfilled,” more literally, ‘It is completion. Having completed His mission], [Jesus] became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”

[A portrayal of Jesus, high priest and King of Kings.]

All of this Jesus did for you and me so that, even now, at this very moment, sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is able to be our understanding priest and the King Who has conquered our darkness and death by giving His life for us.

What does Jesus ask of us in return?

What can we do?

What should we do?

"The work of God is this,” Jesus tells us, “to believe in the one he has sent." (John 6:29) 

Everything you and I might be tempted to put our trust in in this world--kings and presidents, money, security, and possessions, health and success, the power of every bit of it will give out at the grave. 

Jesus, our High Priest and King of kings, Who comes to us amid the battles of our lives with bread and wine, His body and blood, has conquered this dying world and its futile ambitions for us. 

He and those who trust in Him and His high priesthood of love are all that will survive and thrive for all eternity. 

May we always be counted among those who trust in Christ alone.

Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Called to Be a Priest...Yeah, You!

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday.]

Hebrews 5:1-10
One of my favorite passages in Scripture, on which Martin Luther used prominently in the development of our Lutheran tradition's "priesthood of all believers," is First Peter 2:9-10. It says of we believers in 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 in Jesus Christ, was to be a priest. In a wonderful book called How to Share Good News Without Being Obnoxious About It, 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, they were talking about faith issues and his belief in Christ.

Bill 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 second lesson for today, from Hebrews, which points us to Jesus as our great high priest, 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 poorer. These stand-ins took the punishment for the sins of people who wanted to renounce their sins and turn back to God.

These days, as I mentioned last Sunday, we don’t need such sacrifices. Jesus was our stand-in when He died on the cross. All who turn from sin and believe in Jesus Christ have forgiveness of sin, God’s presence and power in their lives today, and life 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 here at Saint Matthew.

Being priests may also entail taking the time to befriend and value crabby neighbors, allowing them, through us, to experience the friendship and love of God. We do all this because we’re priests with a purpose. Our purpose is to connect God and people in the Name of Jesus.

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 feel, 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 with whom we are especially to make the effort to deal gently: the ignorant, those are folks who wander haplessly into sin, and the wayward, those who sin despite knowing better.

Of course, as Christians we can’t mince words about what God calls righteousness and what God calls sin. Jesus tells us that we have a sacred obligation to exercise what’s called “the office of the keys,” conferring God’s forgiveness on the repentant, withholding if from those who don’t repent. “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says, “and God in heaven will allow whatever you allow on earth. But he will not allow anything that you don't allow.”*

Priests know though, as Paul writes in the New Testament, that it’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance. We follow 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.

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, had spoken to me with complaints about the pastor. He said that his opinions were also those of others. I was just out of seminary and didn’t have any sense. (As opposed to my status today: twenty-five 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. Their demenor reflects 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’”

In gratitude to our Lord, you and I are 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. That’s why the leadership provided by our servanthood team this year has been so important. They’ve held up the central importance of our call to be priests of Jesus Christ!

At our last Church Council meeting, we set a new date for our congregational Friend Day. It’s a time when you and I will bring the non-churchgoing neighbors and friends we’ve invited to be with us to worship God and hear the Good News that we all can be made new when we turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ.

Friend Day will be on May 2. It’s not too early to begin praying about who you will invite to be with us on that day.

And it’s never too early to claim your role in Christ’s priesthood of all believers. We can claim that role because, in Christ, we have a purpose, because we have sympathy for other sinners who need the forgiveness and grace of Christ as much as we do, and because we have a call from God. Amen

*This rendering of the passage is from the Contemporary English Version (CEV).