I would like to begin by thanking you all so much for all the messages of support I have received this past week. I, along with Benj, and all our colleagues across the Synod are so very, very sad because of the loss of our dear friend and colleague Michelle.
But even though I have been away I have felt held by your prayers. Please continue to pray for the Synod and Nungalinya College where Michelle worked and for Michelle’s family. This tragic and shock loss is unbearable for them.
Some of you knew Michelle as well. She has been here at the ASUC a couple of times. Most memorably for me she was here for my ordination service. She was the Presbytery Minister at the time and so it was her job to officiate that service. I feel so grateful to have been able to experience some her wisdom at that time. She really was an extraordinary minister and such a natural leader.
And so as I read this description of a high priest from Hebrews this week it felt apt. In the Uniting Church of course we do not use titles like high priest but as a leader in our church Michelle took her call by God very seriously. She loved the church and its people so very much especially those on the edge of the church, those suffering and grieving, who she treated gently and with great respect. She served humbly and with efficiency wherever she was asked.
But for Michelle this was always and only, in the name and for the glory of Jesus Christ, the great high priest who “became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” In this One Michelle lived and in this One, Michelle died, and in this One we believe Michelle lives again. This is our great hope.
Jesus is also the great high priest, who offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears, who was made perfect through suffering. That we may know that in all the suffering and grief of our lives and the world, God is with us. We are not alone. And in our prayers we claim that especially for Michelle’s family, for Laurel, for Mel and her father and for everyone struggling with election results or their own loss and grief.
And Jesus is the great high priest in the order of Melchizedek. But who is this mysterious man? And what does it mean that Jesus is a high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Hebrews tells us that he was a King of Salem, (which will later become Jerusalem), who met Abraham as he was returning from defeating the Kings and blessed him. Abraham then gives Melchizedek one tenth of everything.
The author is referring to the story in Genesis 14. Abraham, then Abram, is returning from a military victory and the King of Sodom comes out to meet him. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, King Melchizedek, king of Salem and “priest of God Most High” brings out bread and wine and blesses Abram. Abram then gives him one tenth of everything. Melchizedek then disappears from the story as abruptly as he arrives.
There is a lot that is not explained in this reading.
How did this man, king of the Canaanite city of Salem, outsider to the Abrahamic line, not only know the God Most High, the same God as Abram, but come to be considered His royal priest?
Why does he bring bread and wine?
Why he is considered able to pronounce a blessing on the great Abraham. And why does Abraham not only recognise the authority of the blessing but give him a tenth of everything?
He appears again in psalm 110: 4 which says, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
This so called Davidic psalm is believed to anticipate the Messiah.
Again, there is a lot that is not explained here.
How does the order of Melchizedek, an order outside the the Levitical priestly order become the order from which the Messiah will come?
This reference in Hebrews, is the third and final reference. Here the author tells us his name means king of righteousness, king of peace. For her this name anticipates Jesus, the king of righteousness and peace. Also, for her Melchizedek’s linage – or rather lack there of – means that he had no beginning nor end. In this she anticipates Jesus eternal nature.
Rev. Dr. Denise Champion says this story has been significant to Aboriginal people, she says,
“Uncle Bill Hollingsworth, the first chair of National Congress, would talk about us as a royal priesthood, a holy nation after the order of Melchizedek. I never quite understood why. But that’s one story that is ‘other.’ It’s the first reference to an indigenous person in the land of Caanan and he is the king, who ‘was priest of God most High. When Abraham comes into the land he is met by this mystery man from another culture who blesses him in the name of God.
There’s something important about why he has been included. He holds knowledge that is older than Abraham’s story.
And then I could never figure out why the story of Melchizedek figures in the Jesus story. Of course it’s a much older order. Its not of the Levitical priesthood, the chosen priesthood of the children of Israel. I have a sense that it is the priesthood of all Creation.”
I, Emily now, also think there is something really important about all this.
The story of the so called Old Testament, tells the story of the Hebrew people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah.
The New Testament opens with the genealogy of Jesus that follows this line.
The story of these people and how God works with and through them is absolutely crucial to our understanding of God.
And yet there is a tension between particularity and universality within this. Two affirmations are kept in tension.
On the one hand, God deals with a particular people and his love is focused on a particular community; on the other hand, God’s love is universal and his presence is to be found within every nation and among every people.
On the one hand, the love of God is focused on a particular person, Jesus, yet on the other hand the same love is present throughout all creation. He is from the order of Melchizedek.
This paradox is clearly present in the assertion that the God of all humankind is disclosed through the history of a particular people, even a particular family, but their calling will find its fulfilment only as Abraham becomes ancestor of a multitude of nations.
The choice of this family does not deny God’s covenant with all creation; rather it is this family who will bear witness to the universal reach of God’s purposes.
Is this why Melchizedek was there. To remind Abram (and us) that right from the beginning God is also working within and through others, outside his line?
We cannot escape this tension between the universal and the particular, and we are not free to ignore one pole or the other without doing damage to the biblical witness. We cannot glibly proclaim that all beliefs and religions are true and equal and lead to the exact same God. Nor can we victoriously proclaim that there is one very narrow path and it is the one we are on.
This is why the Uniting Church is committed to interfaith relationships and why we believe that in engaging with other faiths, our understanding of God is enlarged.”
This is also why we are able to say in the preamble to the Constitution, “The First Peoples had already encountered the Creator God before the arrival of the colonisers; the Spirit was already in the land revealing God to the people through law, custom and ceremony. The same love and grace that was finally and fully revealed in Jesus Christ sustained the First Peoples and gave them particular insights into God’s ways.”
The last time I saw Michelle, we went for a walk along Darwin’s coast as we always did when I was there. She told me she didn’t really like Hebrews, it was a bit airy fairy she said. She was usually pretty direct about what she thought about things. And though I doubt I would have changed her mind, I would have like to have debated these ideas further with her.
Perhaps there are parts of Hebrews that are a bit airy, fairy but as I have reflected this morning I think it also has very practical implications for the way we live together with the so called “Other.”
They have also been helpful as I ride the waves of grief.
There has been some conversation of God’s will this week. The truth is when I look at the world I find it impossible to know what God wants to happens, allows to happen, makes happen etc. But what I do know is God’s character, because as Hebrews continues to affirm, it has been revealed in Jesus who is sovereign and yet also suffers with and for us.
When terrible things happen we of course grieve and lament and cry out to God. But we do not grieve as those without hope because our hope is not in our circumstances, it is not in a particular political party or election result, but in Christ who will come and make all things new. We believe the moral arc of the universe does bend towards justice but the universe is big and the arc is indeed long.
And so let us finish with Hebrews 6: 17-20.
“Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
