“The Son Becomes a Priest”

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Almighty God, help us to listen, not to ourselves, but to your quiet voice. May your voice be heard in this place, in this time. Grant unto us now the ability to go beyond our limits, so that we might experience you more fully. Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Hebrews. Listen. Hebrews 5.5-10.

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.

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

I like the title of this sermon, which for me, is rare. I usually hate having to come up with a sermon title, for if I could summarize the sermon in one line, why should I preach it, and why would you listen to it. But I like this one because I am a pastor, and I am the son of a pastor. In fact, my standard joke for that is that I have gone into the family business. Which I think is a fun play on words, since anyone who does any kind of ministry has gone into the family business.

Imagine, if you possibly can, a regular family business. I know, it is a stretch, but go with me here. The business and the children are simultaneously groomed so that, when they graduate from college, the kids can be integrated into management, and soon enough after that, the parents can retire with the kids taking over. It sounds nice enough, the fresh graduate comes in from excellent schooling to sit in a choice office, between the office of the father and the office of the mother, and learns how to enjoy the lifestyle of business lunches, golf outings, foreign trips, you know, the whole 9.

But, this family business wasn’t like that. The timing and nature of the business were such that there wasn’t any spare cash for even the occasional lavish lunch, let alone trips and outings. Further, the parents made their graduate children learn the business from the ground up. They had to work in the shops along with hardened mechanics. They had to visit the suppliers to see where the raw material came from, and find out for themselves how hard it was to get them at the right price. And they shared the work of the financial department as they spent day after day crunching the complicated numbers that told the story of this quarter’s success or failure. Only when each child had thoroughly understood every aspect of how the business worked were they given an office of their own. And that was only the beginning. Next they both had to learn how to lead and how to manage a workforce, as well as to represent the business in the wider world of local and national life and politics. They had to learn what it meant to be the offspring of their parents, and heirs to the business. Nature had put them in the frame for this, but a good deal of nurture was needed as well.

Perhaps this gives an understanding to the phrase in verse 8 about Jesus. Although Jesus was God’s son, he ‘learned the nature of obedience through what he suffered’. It might have been easy, had the writer of Hebrews not spelled this out, for people to think that being God’s son would simply be a matter of sharing God’s rule of the world, living in glory and bliss. Not so. God the father of Jesus is God who with Jesus, the Word, made the world in the first place, and the trinity God remains deeply committed to creation, even though it has fallen from the garden. For Jesus to be son, and for God to be father, for the trinity to remain intact with integrity, there must be first hand interaction with creation, and close personal relationship to rescue creation from the mess it has got itself into. For the Triune to be God, and to have relationship with creation, it is necessary that the Son experience life with creation, its depths and its heights. Jesus must be the obedient son, if the triune is to be God of creation, and that will mean suffering. This is not because God is cruel and simply wants to see his son have a rough time. But the world God made with the Word, and loves through the Holy Spirit, is a dark place and the son must suffer its sorrow and pain in order to rescue it.

That’s what it means in verse nine when it reads that Jesus was ‘made complete and perfect’, which is just one word in the Greek, s. It doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t perfect before, that he might have been sinful, but that the triune God needed for Jesus to experience the suffering so that God could be connected to the world on that level, that the relationship between God and the world could be full. Jesus became truly and fully what in his nature he already was, and by so doing, completed something in the nature of the trinity, making the trinity what in its nature it already was, God omnipresent.

The purpose of this passage is to get the reader to focus on Jesus Christ, especially in relationship to God. The writer of Hebrews has used Melchizedek, a mysterious figure who came before Moses’ brother Aaron, and was a contemporary of Abraham. He is the first mentioned priest in the Bible. What the writer of Hebrews has done in the chapters previous is noted the similarities between Jesus Christ and a notable character from the Old Testament and then illustrated and argued for the superiority of Christ over the figure. Aaron in the first 4 verses of this chapter, and Melchizedek in these verses are shown as a paradigm for Christ, but only human reflections of the perfect Christ. The angels even, have been shown to worship Jesus. Moses in chapter 3 is compared and contrasted to Jesus to demonstrate Christ’s supremacy. It would be like someone saying, “You know, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and whoever else you got on Mount Rushmore can’t hold a candle to this year’s candidate. So, let me introduce you to…” and then the candidate is brought out. That’s what the writer of Hebrews does with Jesus Christ. Angels, Moses, Aaron, even Melchizedek, these were the biggies. The dynamics of this logic serve two purposes. (1) The negative purpose is that it dampens enthusiasm for anyone or anything other than Christ. And (2) the positive purpose is that it generates confidence in and devotion to Christ.

The point being made is that Christ’s office and work are the results of God’s work. This is not separation of the trinity, but unity of it, and the work of the whole. The Passion of Christ functioned as a priestly intercession. We’re Presbyterian, we don’t know from priests, and we certainly don’t do priestly intercession. What it means is that Christ did something that we as humans could not do for ourselves. Godly work, Trinitarian work, Christocentric work.

Therefore, we understand that turning to God and fully trusting God is the substance of obedience. Christ’s full reliance upon God unto salvation shows a severe level of trust. Obedience is not to be reduced to “God wanted Jesus to suffer; he suffered; that’s obedience.” Rather, in suffering, Christ was completely trusting of God alone. That is obedience, trusting in God alone. In doing so, he not only modeled faith, but he also blazed the path of faith now open to others.

The question for each of us is this: are you ready to be obedient to God no matter what? Are you willing to change your life, your convictions about issues, how you handle the gifts God has given you? Are you willing to listen to God, continually, and to be ready to be obedient to where God will lead you? Think before you answer, because you know where it got Jesus. It didn’t get him the comfort and the following that you would expect for the creator to get. It cost him. And, if you and I do it right, obedience and faith will cost us too.

Amen.