Jesus as Priest

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Genesis 14:17-20 and Hebrews 7:11-28:

Immediately after Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, the people, who have seen the thunder and lightning and the mountain smoking, basically said to Moses “Don’t let God talk to us anymore because that scares us. Instead you talk to God and then tell us what God says, and then you can tell God what we say.” Basically they wanted Moses to be an intermediary, an intercessor, between them and God. Now last week I said that Moses was considered the greatest of the Israelite prophets, even though we don’t normally think of him that way, because he served as God’s spokesperson delivering God’s message to the people, which was one of the primary roles of a prophet. But, what we also see in Moses, at least at this point is also the role of a priest, someone who serves as a mediator between God and the people, communicating information both ways. And that is the historic role of a priest in ancient Israel. To be an intercessor between God and the people.

And yet, as the society grew and became more complex, the role of the priest also increased and could no longer be done by someone in the family as Abraham and Jacob had also done. Instead there was a need for more centralization to provide stability and continuity as the 12 tribes of Israel grew. And so it isn’t much longer after the people ask Moses to be an intermediary, a priest for them, that we actually get the call of the Levites to become the priestly class, and of course this happens after the failure of Aaron in the story of the golden calf while Moses is away. It becomes clear that the people need more than what Moses can provide, and so new priests are called to lead the people and be responsible for the people in this way, and Aaron, Moses’ brother becomes the high priest.

Besides for their role as mediator, eventually, the priests serve several different roles for the people and for the rulers. They acted as diviners of God’s will. So, for example, the king might come to a priest and ask if they should go make war on some other tribe, and the priest would seek God’s guidance and then say “yes, your efforts will be successful,” or “no, God will not be with you and you will be defeated if you do that.” They act as teachers, and this is especially true after the exile and the rise of what we know as the rabbinic class of teachers. A third role was overseeing and participating in the sacrificial rights. There are long lists of rules about what is sacrificed and when these sacrifices are to be made, in order to restore purity for people, and to celebrate or to make other offerings to God, and all of these are done by the priests at the temple. But, before they could make an offering for anyone else, the priests would also make an offering on their own behalf for the sake of their own sins. Ritual purity became a major part of the priestly role as a way of reminding people of God’s purity and holiness. These sacrifices and these acts helped the priests to maintain and mediate the covenantal relationship between God and the people, and it is in this intercessory role that priests had their greatest function, especially in the sacrificial model of seeking forgiveness.

But, by the time of Jesus’ birth, the High Priest was not one someone who was called by God, but instead they were appointed based on political ramifications and importance. In fact, it was an argument over who would be the Head Priest that got the Romans involved in a governmental role in Israel. Two brothers were squabbling over the position and the Romans recognized that religious turmoil could cause political turmoil and so they stepped in and ended the Hasmonean dynasty. Over the next 107 years, there would be at least 60 different High Priests, and for those not good at math, that’s a new High priest every year and a half or so, all of them owing their allegiance not to God, or to the people, but to the people in power who put them there. So there was a definite desire amongst the people for something and someone different to be leading the Temple and the religion. There were many different things that people meant when they talked about the Messiah and one of those expectations was that the Messiah would be a great religious leader who would restore everything back to God’s chosen order.

And so after Jesus’ resurrection the early church was seeking to explain who Christ was and what they had witnessed, or heard about, meant, especially because Jesus did match the then understanding of the Messiah, especially the idea of a suffering servant. All the things they expected the Messiah to do didn’t happen with Jesus, and so how could the disciples and apostles possibly claim that Jesus was the Messiah? And while there were lots of answers to that, one of the ways the church sought to explain Christ was through three offices that were ascribed to him, that of prophet, priest and king, three offices that were marked by someone being anointed either by oil or the Holy Spirit, remembering that Messiah literally means the anointed one.

Last week we talked about Jesus’ role as a prophet, and if you didn’t hear that message, I would encourage you to go back and watch or listen to it, because the church said that Jesus was not just a prophet, but he was the prophet. The one who came to proclaim the ultimate call to repentance and not just to announce that the Kingdom of God had come near, but to bring in that reign of God, and now this week as we look at Jesus as the high priest, we begin to see not only considerable overlaps between the roles of prophet and priest, but also how God’s saving grace is enacted through Christ’s sacrificial activity in his role then as the high priest.

As I already said, the role of the priest was to act as the mediator between God and the people, and one of the primary ways that did that was through sacrificial activities. You would bring an animal to be sacrificed to the temple, and present it to the priest who would then make the offering on your behalf. But, before the priest could make the sacrifice for you in order to seek forgiveness, he would first have to make an offering on his own behalf to seek purification of his own sins. The same thing happens today. When we say the prayer of confession before communion, I offer you pardon for your sins, and you in turn offer me pardon for my sins. I fall just as short as you, and therefore I cannot bring perfection or wholeness to the system, because I too am broken. And therein lays the problem, at least according the author of Hebrews. The system can never be perfected because there is always the problem of us not being perfect. It’s a constant loop of seeking forgiveness, falling again, and seeking forgiveness over and over, and because the priest is in that same loop, the sacrificial process can never lead to true forgiveness or true reconciliation. Instead, something, or someone, needs to be able to break that cycle; to make an offering once that will be good for all time. And, according to the author of Hebrews, and then the church, that person is Jesus through his role as the high priest who not only makes the offering but is the offering.

And breaking the cycle of the old priests begins with the fact that he does not come from the lineage of Aaron or the Levites. Because, as Hebrews says, if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood then there would not be need for another priest to bring perfection. But perfection could not be achieved, because of the reasons already stated. And just as and FYI, perfection as being used here, or when Jesus says be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect, can be perfection, but it can also have a meaning of completeness or wholeness. Be complete as your father in heaven is complete. But the Levites could not bring perfection, and the author is saying that since the Levites couldn’t do this, of course then we need a priest from outside of that line to complete it. And so the fact that Jesus was from the line of Judah, not Levi, is not a count against him, it’s in fact a count for him. But even more, his priesthood comes not from his family line, but instead he resembles Melchizedek, and that makes total sense to us all right? We all know exactly what the author is talking about?

Well if you don’t know Melchizedek, besides for just hearing about him in our call to worship and the Genesis reading you heard today, you can be forgiven, and not just through Christ. His name occurs in scripture 12 times, and 10 of those times are found in the letter to the Hebrews. But we heard his first appearance today in our genesis passage as he appears before Abram in the Valley of the Kings. We are told that Melchizedek is the king of Salem, the priest of God most high who greets Abram with bread and wine and gives him a blessing and in return Abram gives him a tenth of everything he owns, a tithe, and then Melchizedek disappears from the story. So some crucial points, Salem means peace, or also wholeness, completeness, so the King of Peace, the King of wholeness, or might we even say the King of Perfection, meets Abram with bread and wine and blesses him. Does that figure possibly remind you of anyone? Yes, there is lots of speculation that this person could be Christ, or at least it is the promise of Christ, because the next time he appears is in Psalm 110, which happens to be the most referenced Hebrew scripture found in the New Testament. Jesus himself quotes it about sitting at the right hand of God, and the psalm says that God says that God’s High Priest, the one who sits at the right hand, is “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” And so Hebrews wants to make a clear reference that Jesus is this priest.

And, you may ask, why is this important? Good question, and here is the answer. If you remember back to last week when we talked about the prophets, what the early church argued was that Jesus was not just a prophet, but the prophet and he was greater than all the prophets who had come before. The same thing is being done here. The Levites may have been good, and Aaron good guy, the best, loved his work, but he simply doesn’t measure up. Why? Because first of all the priests all die, and so they are replaced by someone else. And second they have to make offerings for their own sins. But after Jesus died he was then resurrected, and lives forever, and so his priestly office is forever, but even more importantly, Jesus was tempted, but didn’t give in. This is a very important piece of the puzzle, because in order to be able to understand us, in order to be able to be a mediator for humanity, Jesus had to understand what it was like to be tempted, to truly know that feeling. But then, Hebrews says, if he had given into that temptation, like Moses and Aaron did, then he would not be able to bring about the fulfillment of the law, he could not bring about a perfected order, he could not give us the example of what perfection and righteousness truly looked like.

But, as we read in Hebrews chapter 4, “For 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.” And because he was tempted, like we are, but without having given in, as we do, as the priests did, Jesus is able to offer sacrifices for the people, but does not have to first make a sacrifice for himself, and because of that his sacrifice is good for all time, all other sacrificial practices go away because one sacrifice is all that’s needed and Jesus offered himself. One sacrifice to unify us with God, to bring us into right relationship with God and right relationship with each other. One sacrifice that gives forgiveness forever. One sacrifice that not only changes the law, but fulfills the law and eliminates the law because it institutes a new covenant and makes Jesus the mediator, the priest for all time, because he sits at the right hand of God the Father.

There is an old saying that says a good lawyer knows the law, a great lawyer knows the judge. Every time that we pray and we say something like “in Jesus’ name we pray” we are invoking Jesus as High Priest. See you’ve been using Jesus as the High Priest all the time and you didn’t even know. Whatever it is that we are praying for, we are saying to Jesus, please make my desires and needs known to God the Father, be an advocate on my behalf, and it is also to recognize that we can make such an appeal for ourselves. You don’t need me, or anyone else to take your concerns to God, to be your mediator. When Jesus dies, we are told that the curtain in the Temple, the Holy of Holies, was torn in two, meaning the role the priests had played has been eliminated, that barrier has been removed, and now Jesus plays that role for us.

But more importantly for us is the sacrificial role that Jesus has played and continues to play. As I have said several times already, the problem with human priests is that they must make sacrifices for themselves first before they can make sacrifices for others, and seek forgiveness for others, and these offerings must be made again and again because the atonement is only temporary. But Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, by giving of himself, not just once but for all time, no other sacrifice is ever necessary. Which means that not only are the sins we have already committed been forgiven, but the sins we have yet to commit have also been forgiven when we seek that forgiveness. It is also in Hebrews that we read that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb 13:8) Part of what this statement means is about the eternal nature of Christ’s sacrifice and the eternal nature of Christ’s mediation on our behalf, and this is all possible because Jesus is “holy, blameless, undefiled… and exalted above the heavens.” (Heb 7:26) And acts eternally on our behalf.

What the author of Hebrews also says is that because we have a great high priest who can sympathize with our life, our reality, because he was God made flesh, but remained without sin, that we can, in his words, “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” That is we shouldn’t be timid or unsure before God, or before the throne of Christ the King, who we will move onto next week, but instead approach the throne of grace with boldness, because an offering has been made on our behalf by and it is good for all time. Jesus both made the offering and was the offering, and in doing so fulfilled the law and replaced the law. So approach the throne of grace with boldness, seek to be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect, because the offering has been made for us and we have been given grace and mercy and forgiveness, we have been given the reality of true reconciliation because of Christ our high priest who has been made perfect forever. I pray that it is so my brothers and sisters. Amen.