Sermons

Over the last week our Old Testament lessons at morning prayer have covered the opening chapters of Ezra and Nehemiah, which, if you pray the Office (which I commend to you) you might have found a bit dry, but which I find extremely interesting. The Jews have returned to the land and get to work, with the help of their liberators the Achaemenid–or First Persian–Empire. Two things that struck me as interesting, the first really a curious point but worth noting and the second particularly relevant.

So, first, if any of you saw Zack Snyder’s exceedingly silly movie about the Battle of Thermopylae 300, which came out fifteen years ago, you’d have gotten precisely the wrong idea about the Persians. In short, they should have been the good guys and the Spartans should have been the baddies. Starting with Cyrus the Great, the one who founded the Empire and liberated the Jews, the Persians established an order which respected and fostered religious and cultural diversity, established good government with an essentially federal system 2,000 years before America, and (perhaps most significantly) largely eschewed slavery, the life-blood of societies like that of the Spartans. In our readings from Ezra this week, we learn how much assistance Darius I assisted in helping the Jews restore the temple in Jerusalem and reestablish the sacrificial system there. Then of course you have the movie’s big-baddie, Xerxes I, who in the film is portrayed as a sort of tyrant and target of the audience’s supposed homophobia because of his flamboyance. In the biblical Book of Esther, on the other hand, Xerxes (called by his Hebrew name, Ahasuerus) is shown saving the Jews in the Imperial city of Susa from the wicked designs of his viceroy, Haman, and eventually making Esther his queen. This, by the way, is the origin of the festival of Purim, which is observed today as a sort of Jewish Hallowe’en (complete with costumes and baskets of candy) so how appropriate we are reminded of that today.

More importantly for our purposes today, one is reminded in these lessons from Ezra and Nehemiah the great complexity of the temple’s ritual system and the enormity of the construction required to house it. The nature of the sacrificial vessels are outlined in some detail as well as the particular sacrifices to be made on appointed days. In chapters omitted from our course of reading, after Nehemiah inspects the temple walls, we are treated to details of how that work proceeded and given a sense of just how great the scope of restoring the buildings of the temple complex must have been. And that the Jews would seek help from their new imperial overlords (relatively benevolent though they may have been) suggests just how important the project was considered by those newly returned to their land.

Interesting, then, that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews draws not upon the image of the second temple, nor even of Solomon’s temple before it, when drawing his parallel to Christ’s sacrifice:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

“The greater and more perfect tent.” The Greek here is σκηνης. It does not say temple or building, but “tent.” The verses prior to our Epistle’s opening makes it plain, here, that he is speaking not of either of the grand building complexes of the Jerusalem temples with their thousands of gold and silver vessels, but the relatively simple tabernacle toted around the desert by Moses and the Israelites recently freed from Egypt. There is, here, an earthiness in the image Hebrews chooses, a simplicity, but arguably even more importantly, a mobility–a sort of geographic and temporal limitlessness not permitted by a system bound to a single place and time to which one must travel thousands of miles to approach or hope that the geopolitical reality of any given era allows that place to stand and be entered.

I cannot remember whom I heard put it this way, but I think he was right, as non-pluralistic as it might strike the ears of a contemporary person. One genius of our faith is that it is not bound to a particular place. One needn’t go to Jerusalem to make the appointed sacrifices in precisely the point God told the Israelites to do. One needn’t make the hajj to Mecca because Muhammed said so. Christ, though born in Bethlehem, is truly born in the hearts of all believers. The heavenly tent, the Holy of Holies into which Christ entered once for all, is not a place we must go, because it comes down to earth upon hundreds of thousands of altars in the sight of hundreds of millions of Christians throughout time and space. This is not to say we’ve always appreciated this fact; the Crusades stand as perhaps the greatest historical example of our getting this all wrong. Nevertheless, here Christ is [on our altar] and here he is, too [in our hearts].

I, for one, am grateful that we have a lovely and well-maintained church. It is, first and foremost, a temple in which the Body of Christ is given a home, just as the temple in Jerusalem was, first and foremost, a temple in which the Spirit of God, resting upon the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant, is given a home. It should, therefore, be respected and maintained and made beautiful. That said, our Lord is just as capable of being present anywhere anytime, in a beautiful cathedral or on a card table set in the midst of a homeless encampment or on a little stand in the hospital room of a believer about to meet our him face to face. How appropriate that the Apostle Paul–whom I’m comfortable claiming wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, though I’m in the minority camp–literally made tents for a living. So whether one goes forth into the world carrying the Blessed Sacrament (as I often do on my calls) or just with the Christ who is present in each of our hearts, we can be certain that he is there with us, and wishes to make himself known to all whom we meet. For he has entered the Holy of Holies, he has become our Advocate, and he promises to give us the victory over sin and death wherever he may call us to spread his presence.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I am in the process of both helping a friend with some severe mental difficulties get an apartment and of becoming his “payee” (that is, managing his social security benefits so that he doesn’t run out of money before paying rent and utilities). My friend has an excellent advocate through a nonprofit, and she and I have been on the phone with each other pretty frequently during this whole process. Anyway, we were talking the other day about my friend’s soon-to-be landlord, and she said “his heart is in the right place, but he can be difficult so call me if you have any problems with him.” I responded, “well, I can probably hold my own with him” to which she replied “I know, you’re a godly man.” That is not what I meant, and she gives me too much credit. I meant that I can be a difficult jerk, too, if I have to be.

Something occurred to me after this conversation which had not before. Namely, I realized that a lot of Christians are functionally donatists. Donatism was an ancient heresy which arose following the persecutions of Christians under the Emperor Diocletian in the early-fourth century. Many clergy had buckled under this last concerted effort to stamp out Christianity in the Roman Empire. One of their greatest crimes in the eyes of the church was handing over holy objects, particularly Gospel books which were usually the most valuable thing a church had at the time, to the Roman soldiers. In fact they were given a name which literally means “the ones handing [things] over”–traditores, from which we get the English word traitor. When Christianity was finally legalized under the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, many of these traitors did their penance and rejoined the college of clergy, but the Donatists claimed that their sin made the sacraments they administered invalid and they’d have to be reordained.

At first, this might strike us as reasonable. Ought not there be consequences for wicked behavior? Well, yes, but it suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the priesthood. Ordination is an irrevocable, ontological change, which is to say that it fundamentally alters a person’s nature in the same way as baptism. One cannot simply cease being a priest any more than one can simply cease being a baptized Christian. One may break one’s vows and be under discipline. A public and notorious sinner may for a time be excommunicated, unable to receive the Sacrament until reconciliation is effected, but he doesn’t stop being a Christian. A priest may be inhibited or even defrocked, but that doesn’t mean she ceases to be a priest. She is still perfectly capable of confecting the sacraments, she is simply forbidden from doing so, at least publicly.

In purely practical terms this is very good news for you. It is like your insurance; no matter how wicked I might be, you’re still receiving the grace of the Sacraments. And anyway, where is the line to be drawn? Should any sin render one unable to function as a priest? There is a fair distance between a cross-word to someone who cuts you off in traffic and committing murder. They’re both sins, but gravity matters.

In any event, my friend’s advocate assuming I could handle something because I’m “a godly man” probably (like I said) stems from a bit of functional donatism. Now, she is definitely from a more evangelical background, and I do wonder to what extent that might have influenced that assumption. Not to be too hard on evangelicalism (I really don’t think it’s a good look when mainline clergy do that, because it often comes from a place of assumed superiority), but just to tell it like it is, the understanding of ordination in that context usually assumes a degree of subjective, personal faithfulness (and maybe even charisma) that is different from our understanding–namely, I think, that ordination is not at all about me and my personal qualities, it’s simply a gift for the church effected by nothing more than the bishop praying over me and laying his hands on my head a dozen years ago. But none of this is to say that we are not affected by the same problem. There are a very few priests in our church from whose hands I’d have trouble receiving the Body of Christ (and that being my spiritual state when given the opportunity I probably shouldn’t do), but I have to remind myself that the Body of Christ is still there, regardless.

All of this is a rather lengthy introduction to a single point about today’s lesson from Hebrews, and you may call to mind my disclaimer about substitutionary atonement and supercessionism from three weeks ago, that on these issues I am considered by some a theological troglodyte, though I’m not especially sorry.

The ordained priesthood and the priesthood of all believers, whereby baptism allows us to approach the altar of God, are secondary to the perfect priesthood of Christ himself. I mentioned last week that, like Melchizedek, we continue to offer the unbloody sacrifice of Bread and Wine rather than goats and sheep and oxen and the like, but I didn’t make it explicit why. It is because, as we hear in this week’s Epistle, Christ offered it once for all. He was the sacrificial lamb, and his perfection (not mine nor yours) made this possible.

Thank God, because like those priests of the Old Covenant, I’d have to be constantly making sacrifices to atone for my own manifold sins and wickedness, and you’d never be certain whether the sacrifices I made on your behalf were efficacious. But now we have a guarantee of God’s Grace if we but desire it. The verse immediately before this morning’s Epistle opens makes it explicit: “This makes Jesus the surety of a better covenant.”

We have two more weeks of lessons from the Epistle to the Hebrews–it would be three, but as ever we will avail ourselves of the prayerbook’s permission to observe All Saints’ on the Sunday following the feast–and I pray this series of sermons hasn’t become too pedantic (though, you know, pedantry is my spiritual gift). There is so much comfort here, but even more than that I find reason for tremendous joy, as we are drawn further into contemplation of Christ’s victory over sin and death. Most of all, I am reminded this week of how powerful it is to realize that when we are praying together here at this altar in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ remains standing before the throne of the Father interceding for us, as our priest in this life and our king for ever.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the pieces of advice lectors often receive is to look at the lessons they’ll be reading ahead of time to see if there are any strange names and look up how to pronounce them. Failing that, at least read with enough confidence that nobody will realize that you have mispronounced it. I was reminded of this at my last parish when today’s Epistle was read there once (it must have been six or nine years ago, I can’t remember which, since our lectionary is a three-year-cycle). The fellow reading that morning, who normally came very prepared must have either forgotten to review the readings or got nervous in the moment. Anyway, that day our Epistle ended thusly: “being designated by God a high priest after the order of… Melcheeziak?” and a fairly mumbled “the Word of the Lord.”

Melchizedek is undoubtedly a weird name, but that’s appropriate because he was a weird dude. Or at least his story is very strange. He shows up in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis. Shortly after Abraham’s initial call where God told him to leave the land of his birth (Ur of the Chaldeans in what is today Iraq) and a brief sojourn in Egypt, he and his nephew, Lot, part ways, and Lot is taken captive by Chederlaomer, the King of Elam. Abraham mounts an army which defeats the king and rescues Lot. It is then that this strange figure, Melchizedek appears, seemingly out of nowhere.

And here is all we have of that incident, just four verses:

After his return from the defeat of Ched-or-lao′mer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchiz′edek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

After this, Melchizedek simply disappears. He is mentioned only once more in the Old Testament, namely in the fourth verse of Psalm 110 to which our lesson from Hebrews refers: “The Lord has sworn and he will not recant: ‘you are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”

So, what do we learn from such scant evidence? More than you might think. Melchizedek is both a king and a priest. He is the King of Salem, and this is significant for two reasons. First, Sa-lem means “peace” (you might have guessed that, because you are familiar with the modern Hebrew “shalom” and the Arabic “salaam.” Second, it is traditionally understood to refer to the holy city itself, Jesuralem (Jeru-salem).

Melchizeck is also a priest, and specifically a priest of “the Most High God”- El-Elyon. This raises the question as to whether this is meant to refer to the God of Israel, who goes by many names throughout the Old Testament including this one, or if it is, rather, some Canaanite God worshiped in Salem in the Second-Millennium B.C. I don’t usually get my theology from gifs (you know, the little seconds-long videos you sometimes see online with a caption), but I immediately thought of the popular one with the little girl shrugging her shoulders with the caption “porque no los todos?” Why not both? It seems to me entirely possible that the ancient, pre-Hebrew people of Salem could easily have been given some spiritual insight, even unconsciously, which led them to worship the one, true God under some other name to prepare them for the nation of Israel which was to come. That is just speculation of course, and speculation about what might have happened four thousand years ago, so take it with a grain of salt, but if my suspicions which we’ll get to soon are correct, it could make a lot of sense of what’s going on here.

We also see this peculiar offering Melchizedek brings. Bread and wine. Now this may strike us as quite ordinary, since we sacrifice bread and wine on our altar every week. I don’t think it would have been usual in the period in question, though. I am no expert on pre-Israelite ritual culture in the Ancient Near East, but I think I’m right in saying that ancient gods were generally thought to require a bit more than bread and wine. They were carnivores, you might say. Even as the children of Israel became established in their sacrificial system after the Exodus, one might be required to offer grain and wine at the same time, but it was always in addition and secondary to the sacrifice of some animal (see, for example, the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, which I won’t bore you by reading).

Finally, Melchizedek blesses Abraham and Abraham, in return, gives him a tenth of his possessions. This is really tangential to the point I’m winding up to. I only mention it because stewardship season is coming up in November, you’ll be getting your annual pledge cards soon, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention that tithing is a biblical principle. So that’s all I have to say about that.

Anyway, we now have a lot of data points- the king of the city of peace, the priest of the most high God, a bloodless sacrifice of bread and wine, the blessing of one who simply followed in faith where God had called him. Even without the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews making it explicit, I would imagine that reading these four verses about this strange figure in a Christian context would make one suspect what this is about.

I mentioned typology last week, almost in passing. It is understanding something in the Old Testament as being a substantive though sometimes imperfect pre-figuring (more than a simple foreshadowing) of something in the New Testament. So, to use some of the classical examples, Moses holding up the bronze serpent to heal the poisoned Israelites in the desert is the type and the Cross of Christ is the antitype. Jonah’s three days in the belly of the fish is the type, and Christ’s three days in the tomb is the antitype. Here, it should now be obvious, we have Melchizedek the type and Jesus himself the antitype.

But is there even more here? Perhaps. As I started writing this sermon, the very question I intended to pose in here was beginning to be debated (in, of course, a friendly, collegial manner) by some of my fellow-priests on the social media. Is Melchizedek more than a type. Is he, in fact, an example of what theologians call a “Christophany”, that is an appearance of the second-person of the Trinity, God the Son who became Incarnate in Christ Jesus, before his Incarnation. This is the realm of suspicion and speculation, but I assure you it is not wacky or heretical.

As early as the Second Century, Christian thinkers like Justin Martyr have been asking if the Angel of the Lord who appears so often in the Old Testament–instructing Hagar, speaking to Moses in flame, blocking Balaam and everyone’s favorite talking donkey on their way to Moab (if you’re unfamiliar with that story, it’s in the twenty-second chapter of Numbers, and you need to read it), taking away the sins of the high priest in Zechariah 3, and so many other times–was indeed the Christ come before his Incarnation. So too might not Melchizedek be an appearance of the one who was to come and who now reigns as King of Peace and Eternal High Priest.

So, this is all a bit more abstract and rarefied than my ordinary sermon, and one may well ask, “what’s the point?” Well, it’s interesting, but that may not be a very compelling answer to some. I guess it’s this. I get into a rut of trying to find the practical call to action or word of comfort or whatever to conclude a sermon, and I don’t have that this time. But somebody reminded me that meditating on the mystery of the Trinity is a good in itself, and that at least in our Western Christian tradition intellectual exercise about divine reality is itself a devotional act. And it’s fun, too!

Don’t worry, I’ll probably be back to my ordinary, hortatory crank ways next week. For now, let us give thanks that God has given us minds to ponder the sometimes seemingly ineffable, and that, as one of our hymns puts it “there’s still more light and truth to break forth from his holy word.”

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.