Jesus our great high priest

 

Sunday 21^st March – The fifth Sunday of Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34. Jeremiah looks forward to a new covenant (an agreement between God and his people) that is better than the agreement that the Israelites broke. This law would be written on our hearts and all would know God. But in the cold light of day have we really been any better at following the law of love than the Israelites were? This is more like a precious hope that all mankind will love what God commands and desire what he promises, a state of union only really ever fulfilled in Jesus Christ himself

Hebrews 5: 5-10. Any high priest has to be chosen and anointed, be able to empathise with human weakness and represent humanity before God and his role is to offer sacrifice. This is all based on the original model of priesthood of Aaron. The once for all nature of a more perfect priesthood is derived from the example of Melchizadek, who is superior because he blesses Abraham the progenitor of all God’s people. Because he is chosen and anointed by God, fully identified with those he represents through suffering, He is able to offer the one perfect sacrifice for the salvation of all.

John 12:20-33. The hour of confrontation with the world has come. Only those who are willing to give everything up can see eternal life. Unselfish sacrificial living isn’t about denying or destroying yourself, it is about discovering your true self – the part that looks like God and living out of that consciousness. I take this to mean that people closest to the divine in this life see the truth much more clearly than others. This passage ends with Jesus proclaiming that when he rises from the dead he will draw “all people” to himself.

 

 What do we mean when we say, as Hebrews says, that Jesus is our great High Priest?

The high priest in Jewish religion is the man chosen and appointed by God to make sacrifices to God on behalf of the all the people to atone for their sins and make us "one with God".

Of course, there were many high priests and they had to make repeated sacrifices but in Jesus Christ we have one eternal high priest who made one once for all sacrifice and of course that one sacrifice was of himself.

So after Jesus Christ there is no more need for the Temple or the high priest or a sacrificial cult any more. Jesus is both the high priest and the sacrificial offering all in one. But Hebrews adds another ingredient to the mix to supplement the picture taken from the Jerusalem Temple

And so, we again see our old friend Melchizadek, priest king of Salem, from Genesis 14, given as an example of the mysterious eternal nature of Christ.

Melchizadek steps out of the pages of Genesis and disappears again just as suddenly with no genealogy or back story. From this the Jews considered him eternal. He is the King of Salem which means “peace”. The king of peace appears from no-where bearing gifts of bread and wine and blesses Abram.  

Abram in return gives him a tithe of all that he had. This is the first mention of tithes in the Bible and tithing is what you give to God.

Put all this together and you can see why the early church made such a big deal of Melchizadek, even though he only appears for four verses in Genesis.

Jesus can represent all humanity because he is human and his humanity was made perfect through suffering and he fulfils this role eternally.

This is what is meant by the verse that says that Jesus is a high priest according to the order of Melchizadek.

When we come to what our great high priest says in John’s gospel about loving and hating our life we have to be so careful that this is read and understood in the whole context of scripture that life is God given and human lives are very good.

The essential spiritual difference between, as Jesus says using typical Semitic hyperbole, is between complete self-centredness “loving your life” – believing that you are the crown and focus of all creation and everything and everyone only exists for our personal benefit and “losing your life” which is a lack of this egocentric worldview and seeing the truth of life which has God as the unifying source and centre of life and we learn a proper humility in the face of this truth.

This can be hard work. Of course, there has to be a reasonable amount of self-interest and natural ego to live at all.

But at the same time we all recognise people when it goes too far and they become unbearable.

The Love principle leads us to see the divine spark in all things and that self-centredness and self-sufficiency have very narrow limits. Love always draws us outward to embrace things and people outside our need for them on a purely utilitarian basis.

As we all know, love, in Christ’s own estimation is to embrace even our enemies which has to be the hardest commandment to follow or even think possible to follow. But that is the direction of travel. We see all people as part of the whole, as collaborators and teachers, not just as competitors or opponents.  

This is how we are to live our lives in the Christian tradition. But what about people who don’t do any of that or can’t see the point or never heard it in the first place. Well, it is hugely important that Jesus also says that “in the end I will draw all people to myself”.  

All People. Whenever that happens, presumably after death then the lessons of love will have to learned quickly by everybody but to participate in the life of Christ now while we are very much alive, we are bound to start embodying it now.

The church is the vehicle for exploring and encouraging that journey and we are all on a different point on that journey towards the truth. But this is a marathon, not a sprint and we are all just by being here showing that we are all off the blocks and wanting to walk in the same direction.

I want to encourage anything that helps in that journey and once the restrictions are hopefully behind us I fully intend starting and encouraging  sustainable spiritual practices and prayer as a way of life for all of us to help us on that journey.