Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen.  “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 6:8, ESV).[1]  Last week in our sermon series we learned that the Hebrew word messiah (and its Greek equivalent christ) both mean “anointed one.”  We understand there are three types of “anointed ones,” or “messiahs,” in the Old Testament: prophets, priests, and kings.  Last week I spoke about the prophetic office of Jesus as The Prophet like Moses and yet greater than Moses.  Today we peek behind the veil of his priestly office.

God established his priesthood in Israel during the Exodus.  One of the very first things he did after giving Moses the Ten Commandments was to consecrate Aaron and his sons (and their sons after them) to be priests.  Their duties would center around offering various kinds of sacrifices for sin and thank offerings in the Tabernacle (and later the Temple).  Priests served as the mediators between God and man, the link between heaven and earth.  And the priesthood belonged only to Aaron and his descendants.  Nobody from any other tribe or clan of Israel was permitted to serve as a priest—under penalty of death.  At various times, kings like Saul and Uzziah would try to perform priestly functions, but the Lord punished them dearly for it.

Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin, and all the kings of the Davidic dynasty were from the tribe of Judah.  They were not descendants of Aaron.  They were not even Levites (Aaron’s cousins who assisted the priests in their duties).  And so for a man to hold both the office of priest and king in Israel would have been forbidden.

This is one of the ways that Israel was supposed to be different from the other nations around them.  In most pagan cultures, the priesthood and kingship went together hand in hand.  Church and state were united in their rule of the people.  Some kings, such as the Pharaohs of Egypt, were worshiped as gods.  Among the Canaanites and other Near Eastern civilizations, the king was often the high priest of the cult for the local idol—or at least he would carry out some priestly functions, such as offering sacrifice or making prayers to the idol, on high holy days.  This carried over even among the Romans, who called Caesar, among other things, Pontifex Maximus, the High Priest (literally, “Greatest Priest”).

But not so in Israel!  Yahweh told them that they were to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6).  The word holy means “different” and “set apart for a special purpose.”  The Jewish people were not supposed to be like the nations around them.  They were called to be different.  They were to be a light unto the gentiles!  And so kingship and priesthood were kept separate in Israel—until the coming of Christ.[2]

All this makes the priesthood of Jesus Christ even more improbable.  After all, Jesus was a descendant of David.  He was from the tribe of Judah, not Levi.  Jesus was not a descendant of Aaron and did not belong to a priestly family.  As such, he never should have become a priest.  And he never could have become a priest in the regular Jewish fashion.  Remember: royalty and priesthood did not go together in Israel.

And yet the entire New Testament book of Hebrews is one long meditation on the priesthood of Christ—and its impact upon us, his people.  “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:14-15).  There you have it!  Jesus is a priest—and not just any priest.  He is our great high priest, our very own Pontifex Maximus.

How can this be?  Because Jesus wasn’t a Levitical priest.  He was a priest after the order of Melchizedek, as prophesied in Psalm 110 and proclaimed repeatedly in Hebrews (in fact, Melchizedek is mentioned 8 times in Hebrews.)  But who are what is Melchizedek?  Or perhaps we should turn the phrasing to a Jeopardy question:

“Alex, I’ll take Old Testament heroes for $400.”

“This mystery man was the king of Salem and a priest to whom the Jewish patriarch Abraham paid tithes.”

Beep!  Beep!  Beep!

         “Pastor Chris!”

“Who is Melchizedek?”

“Correct!  And back to you, PC.”

Genesis 14 records this brief, bizarre incident in the life of Abraham that you have no idea what to do with it.  During a local skirmish between city-states in Canaan, Abraham’s nephew Lot was captured and carried off as a P.O.W.  So Abraham rounded up some commandoes and went on a rescue mission.  He and his little band of 318 men were very successful in battle and brought in a lot of booty—in addition to Lot.

And as Abraham journeyed home after the battle, a strange man named Melchizedek came out to meet him.  We don’t know much about Melchizedek other than the fact that he was the king of Salem (later Jerusalem) and a priest of God Most High (El Shaddai).  His name in Hebrew means “king of righteousness.”  Melchizedek was both priest and king, but that was okay because he wasn’t Jewish.  Besides all that, this was long before God instituted the Aaronic priesthood.

So Melchizedek comes out to have dinner with Abraham—just a little bread and wine.  And then he blessed him.  And in return, Abraham gave a tenth of his booty to Melchizedek.  (The author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes a big deal out of this point in chapter 7).  But otherwise, that was the end of it.  Melchizedek blessed Abraham and dined with him, and then he disappeared from the historical record.  Not until nearly 1,000 years later did a brief mention of him arise in the Psalms.  And then another 1,000 years passed before the New Testament mentions him.

From a certain standpoint, Melchizedek seems like a minor character in the greater story of Israel’s patriarch, Abraham, the man of faith.  And yet Melchizedek was a major deal.  For it was in the manner of his priesthood—not Aaron’s—that our Lord Jesus was able to carry the anointing of both priest and king at the same time.  Listen to Psalm 110: “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’” (Ps. 110:4).

Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek.  So here’s what that means for us.  Unlike the Aaronic priests, who died and passed on their office to their sons, Christ’s priesthood remains forever because yes, Jesus died, but then he rose again and lives forever.  So his priesthood is without end.  And Jesus does for us the same things that priests did in the ancient world: he offers up sacrifice and intercedes for us.  For on the altar of the cross, our great high priest offered up not just an animal sacrifice, but his own body and blood for our salvation.  From the cross, Jesus also prayed for us: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  And because Jesus prayed the prayer, our heavenly Father heard it and answered it.  We are forgiven!  Yet Christ’s intercession for us continues even now, “since he always lives to make intercession for us” (Heb. 7:25).  And in Romans we read, “Christ Jesus… is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34).

Through the miracle of the Incarnation, God and man became one in the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and our great high priest.  Jesus is the connection between us and God.  Jesus is the link between heaven and earth.  “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

So now you no longer need to go through a priest or pastor to pray to God or receive his forgiveness.  You have direct access to God (Rom. 5:1-2).  Everything is already yours in Christ.

And what is more, you yourselves have become priests—not pastors, but priests (that distinction is for another occasion).  In the New Testament, the apostle Peter writes: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).  The priesthood of all believers is one of the hallmarks of Lutheran theology.  Every Christian is a priest with full access to God’s throne of grace because of the blood Jesus shed on the cross.  For Christ “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12).  Therefore, “let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).  For when we draw near to Jesus, he draws near to us and gives us grace.  And that is why we need the priesthood of Christ.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

[2] Of historic interest is the brief period during which the priesthood tried to seize the crown, when the Maccabees rebelled against Antiochus Epiphanes IV and drop the Seleucid Greeks out of Palestine.  Then they setup the Hasmonean Dynasty for a brief 100 years or so.  That ended in disaster.  The Hasmoneans feuded between themselves and engaged in bloody civil wars that prompted one side to petition the Romans to come and settle their dispute.  General Pompey conquered Jerusalem in 64 B.C. and came up with a simple solution: Rome would be in charge from now on.