"Mystery Man"

03-Apr-2011

“Mystery Man”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

Jesus is better than Christianity.

Hebrews 7:1-10
April 3, 2011

What we don’t know

Have you ever had one of those experiences where a stranger came up to you right after something really good happened to you, bringing a feast and praying a blessing on you from God? You were so overwhelmed that you offered him one tenth of everything you have.

Me either.

But that’s what happened to Abram in the early chapters of the Bible. His name was later changed to Abraham, but he is the physical or spiritual ancestor of roughly half the world’s population (Christians, Muslims, and Jews) four thousand years after he lived. Major character. Much of his story has been preserved for us.

In Genesis 14 we learn that Abram’s nephew Lot had been captured in a raid by warring tribesmen. Abram retaliated with his own army and rescued Lot, regaining material possessions and also other people who had been captured with Lot. Presumably Abram’s military victory gave him an additional bounty of humans and things he had not previously possessed.

At that point in the story a mystery man appears. We learn about him from Genesis 14:18-20, and this is what we learn about him –

His name – Melchizedek, which means “king of justice,”
His title – King of Salem (Salem means “peace” and could just mean he was a peace-loving king or it could have been a place, possibly the same city later called Jerusalem),
His action – he brought bread and wine, presumably for a feast to celebrate Abram’s victory (sort of like cutting down the nets after a basketball championships),
His description – he is “priest of God Most High,”
His blessing – a pretty solid piece of theology, acknowledging that God Most High created (or possesses; the word is uncertain) heaven and earth and is to be credited for what happened in Abram’s victory, and
Abram’s response – he gave him a tithe of everything.

You may think that sounds like a lot we know about Melchizedek, but there’s more we don’t know. We don’t know what country he came from. We don’t know who his parents were. We don’t know how he became a priest. We don’t know much about his faith or religion. (He certainly wasn’t “Jewish.”) We don’t know how he knew Abram deserved this kind of unusual blessing. We don’t know what happened to him after this story.

What we don’t know seems to exceed what we know, both in content and in importance. Genesis is full of genealogies of its important characters – there’s nothing about the family history of Melchizedek. Genesis is all about the beginnings of faith in the one true God – monotheism, we call it. We don’t even know if Melchizedek was a monotheist or if he just thought “God Most High” was first among many gods. Genesis is a book about the origins of the Hebrew people and the Jewish faith, but this Melchizedek seems to stand outside both.

He’s a mystery man in the story of Abram. He just sort of appears for about three verses, and then disappears from the record.

My job in the next few minutes is to explain why Melchizedek matters.

The legend grows

It’s possible that Melchizedek would have faded in importance in the Bible had it not been for a song ascribed to King David about a thousand years after Abraham’s time. The great poet and songwriter of Israel wrote Psalm 110 about a priest-king who would exceed his own glory, something hard to imagine for most of his contemporaries.

David was one of those unique figures of history who towered above his own generation in expanding his territory and influence. He was the Alexander the Great of his time. A modern equivalent might be Bill Gates. He came along at the right time and took advantage of his opportunities to leave a lasting legacy unmatched in his own generation or among those who followed.

But David was also keenly aware of his own mortality, and that his kingdom, however large, was still limited in size and duration. He wrote Psalm 110 about a future king who would extend the kingdom over all nations and, more importantly, rule permanently. In addition to his political control, this future king would connect God to his people in the role of a priest. That’s what a priest does – connect God and humans.

In that context David says something quite remarkable in Psalm 110:4. Speaking directly to this future king, the Messiah of Israel, David says, “The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind. ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’”

That is a remarkable statement, and there is no further explanation. Between the time of Abraham and David the Jewish identity and faith have been firmly established by Moses. The law has been given, and included in the law is a fairly well-defined set of rules for priests – what family they are part of, how they are selected, how the hierarchy works, what the priests do and when, and on and on. The word “priest” in Latin literally means “bridge-builder.” Even though Latin came along much later, that captures what a priest does – he connects God and humans. From a Jewish perspective, that connection needs to happen by the right person with the right theology in the right way.

You would think David’s highest compliment to the coming King is that he would be a priest in the order of Aaron. Not so. David picks Mystery Man as his prototype for the Messiah, and he doesn’t even offer any explanation for doing so.

This statement by David prompts deep reflection by an anonymous writer of a New Testament book. The author of Hebrews is trying to prevent Jewish Christians from abandoning Jesus. He begins to ponder Mystery Man – not only David’s surprising statement but the original story in Genesis 14.

So much better

It would be easy to skip over Melchizedek as unimportant for Christians if it weren’t for the attention given to him in Hebrews. His name having appeared in the Old Testament only two times and nowhere else in the New Testament, Melchizedek is mentioned nine times in Hebrews 5-7, including five times saying that Jesus was a priest “in the order of Melchizedek.” Even if I’m not sure Melchizedek matters to me, I at least want to understand why he matters so much to this author.

He matters precisely because of contrast. The theme of Hebrews is that Jesus is better. Specifically, he’s saying that Jesus is better than Judaism, even though he emerges from Jewish lineage and everything about Jesus is built on the foundation of Judaism.

I realize in an age of tolerance some of you squirm when I say that Jesus is better than Judaism. Hold on for a moment. I would also assert that Jesus is better than Islam or Buddhism or New Ageism. But perhaps you can only get my real point if I say it this way: Jesus is better than Christianity. He is better than all the world’s religious systems we create, including the one you and I have bought into.

Linda and I heard Paul Young, author of The Shack, speak a few weeks ago at the National Prayer Breakfast. He responded to criticism he received from the section of his book where Jesus says, “I am not a Christian.” Jesus goes on to say, “I have no desire to make (people) Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons of daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved” (182).

The author of Hebrews wasn’t arguing with what we call the Old Testament, per se. His was deeply aware of the foundational truths of the Bible and quoted liberally and approvingly from all parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. He was saying two things –

Jesus is better because he fulfills and completes all that the Old Testament looks forward to.
Jesus is better because we humans are so prone to misunderstand and misuse what God tells us. Jews distort the Bible, and Jesus is better.

As I will show in a moment, Christians distort the Bible as well, and Jesus is better than what we have turned him into.

But this is what Melchizedek is all about in Hebrews. The writer of Hebrews can hardly believe his readers want to return to a system where a succession of human priests, appointed to office based on their genealogy, slaughter goats and lambs and birds day after day to atone not only for the sins of others but for their own sins! Those sins are defined as failure to keep a burdensome set of rituals and regulations – some biblical but most expanded on and enforced by those very priests for their own job security, perpetuating a system that no human being could possibly live up to, keeping everyone who buys into the system in an endless cycle of guilt and sacrifice to a God you can never please.

Jesus is SO much better, he argues.

Jesus became human to empathize with us (4:15).
Jesus was appointed by God, not men (5:1,4).
Jesus had no sin of his own to atone for (4:15; 5;3; 7:26).
Jesus gives us a firm and secure anchor for our souls (6:19).
Jesus’ priesthood is not based on regulations and ancestry, but “on the basis of the power of an indestructible life” (7:16).
The new covenant is better because it is permanent, eternal (7:20-22).
Jesus saves us completely and lives to intercede for us (7:25).
Jesus’ sacrifice was once for all and does not need to be repeated (7:27).

Just to show his readers that he is not arguing against the Bible, he refers back to Genesis and Psalms – to the story of a Mystery Man named Melchizedek. Because Melchizedek appears without genealogy, without a history or a future recorded in the text, because he preceded even Aaron as a priest and because he was greater than Abraham who paid him a tithe after Melchizedek blessed him, this Mystery Man was a prototype for the Son of God who would make permanent and irrevocable the bridge between God and humans.

The whole reason Melchizedek appears in the Bible, the writer of Hebrews insists, is to foreshadow Jesus – to show us that there is a priest better than the system you have bought into and to which you are pondering a return. Why would you ever consider going back to the bondage of the tangible, the ritual, the repetitive, when a living relationship with Jesus is so much better? In one great act of love and sacrifice, he did everything necessary to build that bridge to God that can never be destroyed. Isn’t he enough?

Lies from Hell

Last Sunday afternoon, Linda and I had the privilege of attending a theatrical production in Charlotte based on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. Lewis’ masterpiece is about a senior member of Satan’s staff giving instructions to a junior devil about how to tempt a particular human (“the patient”) and keep him from God (“the Enemy”) to preserve his soul for the devil (“Our Father Below”).

Lewis’ brilliance is in naming those lies from Hell that divert us from what draws us to God and keeps us in eternal relationship with him. The devil’s primary tactic is distortion. He doesn’t invent anything; he twists and ruins what God creates.

I came home from the play determined to re-read The Screwtape Letters, and did so on Monday night. Written more than a half-century ago in another country by someone whose life was so different than mine, I was amazed at Lewis’ relevance. His awareness of what Paul called Satan’s schemes (2 Corinthians 2:11) is remarkable. See if any of these sound familiar.

Screwtape is not against prayer, as long as it can be twisted: “Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling.” (17)
Screwtape is particularly pleased at the distortion of Puritanism, by which, he says, “we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.” (51)
Screwtape encourages church-shopping by the Patient: “The search for a ‘suitable’ church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.” (82)
Screwtape boasts that poets and novelists have succeeded in convincing humans that “a curious, and usually shortlived, experience which they call ‘being in love’ is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding.” (93)
Screwtape says he detests both music and silence. No square inch of hell “has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise.” (120)
Screwtape concedes that God has blessed humans with the pleasure of eating and a natural rhythm of change, but “Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist in into a demand for absolute novelty.” (136)

And so on. You get the point. The devil loves to take that which is good and manipulate it – and us – so that the same starting point instead of pointing us to God turns our feet toward hell.

Thus it was with the priests and their sacrifices in the Old Testament. The rituals that should have resulted in joyful worship, humility, and holiness, were intercepted by the devil and distorted into grounds for self-righteousness, complacency, and even immorality. If you have a human priest who can’t keep the rules any better than you can, and you can come to that priest at any time for a visible and bloody sacrifice that will cover your transgressions, why not just sin some more?

We like religious rituals we can smell, and hear, and taste, and touch – things we can do to make us feel closer to God. In his mercy, God has given us some of those very rituals – we call them communion, baptism, music, tithing, going to church, serving with our hands. But they are never the point, and collectively under the umbrella of Christianity they may become just as distracting to a relationship with God through Jesus as Judaism – or paganism, for that matter.

Rituals are never the point. They only point toward something real, to the One who alone gives meaning. If our religion excuses our misbehavior, if it substitutes for loving God and loving our neighbor, if it puts our focus on the tangible and distracts us from the One who is the eternal Mystery Man, it is from the pit of hell.

Amen.