You probably don't know Melchizedek

Hebrews 4:14-5:10

You know how you’re reading through your Bible and come to some reference you don’t understand, but you keep on reading because, honestly, if you stopped for every reference you didn’t understand you’d only ever be reading a Bible encyclopedia? Does this sound familiar to anyone? Have you ever stood up and read the Bible in front of people and felt like a bit of a fraud, because even though you are reading the words you don’t know what they mean?

            I’m guessing a lot of parents don’t read the Bible to their kids for exactly this reason. At least when this happens with Harry Potter we can be like, “It’s a wizard thing, kid. Don’t worry about it.” But the Bible? It feels too important to not understand everything, and yet we don’t, because there’s a lot going on. And we don’t get it. And that makes us feel shame.

            So it is with this guy named Melchizedek. Honest moment from me right now. I know I stand up here and have a week to prep on things, so I can say some smart-sounding stuff about people in the Bible, but I’m really glad nobody came up to me last week and asked, “So, what do you know about Melchizedek?” Because I had no clue. Zero. And if I spent a serious amount of time studying this stuff—undergrad plus four years of seminary plus seven-and-a-half in the parish—then how can you possibly be expected to know any of this?

            Answer: You aren’t.

This feels like a good reminder that if you don’t know everything you should about a person, then how can you ever assume you know everything about God?

That was a long, rambling way to get to a simple point. You don’t have God figured out. Ironically (or not so ironically), Melchizedek turns out to be one of these characters in the Bible who demonstrates that for us.

            When we turn to Hebrews 5 and read that Jesus is “a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek” it sounds very important, but a lot of things sound important. Why should we care about Melchizedek?

Great question! (You are all so good at asking questions!)

Melchizedek is not on the multiple-choice test to get into heaven (Also, there is no multiple-choice test to get into heaven). However, Melchizedek does represent the order of priests to which Jesus belongs, and that is no small point, because firstly, I didn’t know Jesus belonged to an order of priests and that sounds really important. Since, to ask ‘Who is Melchizedek?’ seems to really be asking “Who is Jesus following after?” Now that’s something worth wondering, because we are supposed to be following after Jesus, and if Jesus is following after Melchizedek then holy cow, who on earth is Melchizedek?

Well, here’s the funny part: We don’t know. OK, maybe that’s less funny for you and more terrifying, I don’t know. Melchizedek appears only once in scripture. He meets Abram (before he was Abraham) after Abram has defeated an enemy army and rescued his nephew, Lot, from the clutches of the big-bad foreign tribes. Melchizedek shows up out of nowhere, offering bread and wine and a blessing Abram on the road. Sound familiar to anybody? Smells like Jesus!

You can start to see where the 1% of Christians who know about Melchizedek get excited about Melchizedek. He offers bread, wine, and blessing to the father-figure of our faith!

The other thing that is fascinating about Melchizedek (and, frankly, the only other thing we know about him) is that Genesis 14 refers to him as both a priest and a king. That is not normal. In fact, there is only one other person in all the Bible who is both a priest and a king and his name starts with a JEE and ends with a SUS. Tradition says that Jesus is a descendent of the tribe of Aaron, who were priests, and David, who were the kings of Israel. Jesus is really important, but not the first of this sort, apparently, because there once was a shadowy figure called Melchizedek.

This is why the book of Hebrews refers to Jesus as a priest after the order of Melchizedek: Melchizedek is our only real example of a priest-king. Yet, he does nothing in history (that we know of) besides offering a blessing, calling to mind the communion ritual that Jesus gave us and we still practice today.

So, that’s the sermon.

There’s only one thing that Melchizedek does, and that is something Jesus does; and there is one thing that Melchizedek is, and that is something that Jesus is. So, why should we care about Melchizedek? Because we still don’t have a clue about anything about Melchizedek.

And you know what? That’s sort of the point. You don’t need to know a thing about Melchizedek. You don’t even need to know the things about Melchizedek that I’ve just talked about for the last few minutes. What you need to know—the only thing you need to know—is that when Abram met Melchizedek on the road he didn’t know Melchizedek either, and Melchizedek came nonetheless. And when you meet Jesus in your daily lives you probably won’t recognize Jesus either, but Jesus comes nonetheless.

Jesus is a priest after the order of Melchizedek who comes to us like Melchizedek. Unexpectedly. Mysteriously. In a form we won’t understand. We make rules. We create boundaries. We decide what Jesus looks like, and we decide what it means to be a Christian, or a sinner, or a saint. But we don’t know a thing. Jesus meets us like Melchizedek, as a person we don’t recognize, and he does the same thing he always does: He offers a meal and a blessing.

This is why I wish we did communion every week, because at least when my sermon stinks you might find Jesus in something tangible. There’s way more pressure on me when there is no communion, because it feels like Jesus should somehow make himself known through me when the truth is that Jesus shows up, like Melchizedek, in strange forms and unexpected places.

If you told me Jesus came back today, the one place I would least expect him to find him was in church. Or maybe it’s better to say that Jesus might show up at the church, but I don’t think we’d recognize him. He would be Melchizedek to us.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the gatekeepers. I’m tired of people confusing their dogma for their God. I’m tired of people who think that Jesus lives behind walls or that heaven is a gated community. The book of Revelation talks about the New Jerusalem with its twelve gates—all open. Not a single closed gate in the image of the end times. Not a single St. Peter reading his list and checking it twice like Santa Claus.

I’m tired of all this, because we are so good at wall-building that we wouldn’t see Jesus if he was offering us bread and wine face-to-face.

So, I’m glad today is a communion Sunday, because this sermon is about a guy named Melchizedek, who you won’t remember three hours from now, and it’s about a person named Jesus, who came to save you but who you will experience most viscerally in places and times when you’ll least expect it. A priest of the order of Melchizedek, they say. One who shows himself in unexpected places, offering a blessing we feel we don’t deserve.