Our Suffering Great High Priest
When my kids were very young, I recall finishing up dressing for work. One of them walked into the room as I was snapping on my clergy collar. Little Emily watched and said, “You wear that because you are a priest at the church, don’t you? I said yes, feeling proud that such a little one was so deductive, and proud somehow of the recognition she was giving me. Then came humility as she followed it up with, “Well Jesus is the priest of the whole world.” Out of the mouth of babes…eh? Isn’t it amazing what you learn from children, witnessing their astounding intuition?
She was a long way yet from reading but somehow, she knew what was behind words from the Epistle to the Hebrews:
And one does not presume to take this honor, but takes it only when called by God, just as Aaron was. So also 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”;
as he says also in another place,
“You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:4-10)
This odd name, Melchizedek, is the mysterious figure, the priestly king of Salem, who in Genesis (14:18-20) brings out food and wine and pronounces a blessing on Abram and offers blessing and praise to God Most High, El Elyon. The writer of the Letter of the Hebrews, two millennia later, identifies Jesus with this most original mediator, Melchizedek, and this priestly order which is consummated in Jesus. The Savior, Jesus assumes and fulfills the role of High Priest once and for all.
The gist of the scriptures for Sunday, overall, is we desperately need this mediation and we are connected intrinsically to the saving work Jesus brings. It is work that is wrought in the suffering endured by Jesus, and when we connect with Jesus, we are pulled into the risk and vulnerability at the heart of the human experience.
Our biblical tradition is built this way. Abram, two thousand years before Christ, far from his nomadic people, is given the promise of a family and a new name, Abraham. More than 600 years after that, Moses leads the children into the dangerous wilderness trek. They encounter terror at the Red Sea and later meet up with serpents, hunger, and thirst. Yet, within it, their promise of a family and a place to be is formed. Six hundred years before Christ, the brightest and best of the northern kingdom of Israel is carted off in exile to Babylon. They are tried by the fire of this captivity, yet the promise of the remnant and the return to Jerusalem is forged.
So, it is not surprising the author of Hebrews presents Jesus as the Savior who endured suffering in his self-revelation as the source of salvation for all who are obedient to him. It can be developed in the next article, but briefly here, in our gospel lesson this week, James and John learn Jesus will not give them a place at his right and left in his kingdom. What he does grant them is to partake of the suffering-based ministry of spreading the Gospel. None of us gets Christ’s promise of glory the way the world defines glory. We are, however, drawn in as a priestly people to the self-giving nature of Christ’s good news—God’s forgiveness and love.
When you and I suffer, our experience is a sharing in the suffering Christ endured. God incarnate is connected by experience to the lightest and harshest suffering you endure. Jesus, the eternally begotten, mediates between our human frailty, and God’s infinite potency. Emily was right at age four: Jesus is the priest of the whole world. In him we have our Mediator and Advocate, our Priest forever.