A Biblical Deep Cut--June 22, 2021

A Biblical Deep Cut--June 22, 2021

"This 'King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham as he was returning from defeating the kings and blessed him;' and to him Abraham apportioned 'one-tenth of everything.' His name, in the first place, means 'king of righteousness;' next he is also king of Salem, that is, 'king of peace.' Without father or mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever." [Hebrews 7:1-3]

Sometimes the lesser-known things have a beauty and a power all their own.

In the world of popular music, they call it a "deep cut"--the tracks on an album that weren't released as radio singles and maybe didn't top the Billboard charts, but are known and loved by a band's biggest fans.  So while an awful lot of people know the Beatles for "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "Hey Jude," deep cuts like "I Will" or "Julia" or "Oh! Darling" reward completist listeners.  The thing about a deep cut on the back-half on an album is that you're probably hearing a musician be more creative, maybe a little less studio-polished and re-packaged or over-produced to sound "like a hit," and more like the sort of artist they actually are.  It may take a little more work to get into those songs, because they're less likely to be three-chord bubble-gum pop, and maybe a little more complicated, but they reward you with repeated listenings and a little bit of patience.

So with that in mind, allow me to offer a bit of a biblical deep cut in the opening of the seventh chapter of what we call the letter to the Hebrews.  Our writer gave a nod back in the last verse of chapter six to Jesus being a "high priest according to the order of Melchizedek," and he seemed to think that was a helpful illustration of who Jesus is.  The trouble is, for most Christians I know, Jesus is the obvious chart-topping name, but the name Melchizedek leaves us scratching our heads.  Jesus is a high priest according to what now?  Who is this Melchizedek person, and why do I need to know about him in order to know more about Jesus?

Okay, buckle up for a crash course introduction to this deep cut of the Bible.  Way back in the book of Genesis, we get some episodes where dear old father Abraham is gallivanting across the land of Canaan to rescue his nephew who had been captured by some neighboring rulers.  After Abraham's side wins the victory, Genesis 14 says that Abraham's allies are sort of taking a victory lap and deciding how to divide the spoils from their battle, and a mysterious figure appears out of nowhere, introduced to us only as "King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of God Most High."  This previously unknown figure comes out with a celebratory meal of bread and wine (Christians go "Wink, wink" at this point), and pronounces a blessing on Abraham.  In response, Abraham gives one-tenth of all the spoils to Melchizedek, and refuses to take any of the rest for himself.  And that's it.  That's all we get of this seemingly random obscure figure named Melchizedek.  It's the only story he's in for the whole Bible, with only one or two other places in the Bible where he is referenced to at all--and even those are only on the basis of this one story, this deep cut of the Bible.

The writer of Hebrews, however, sees something important in this strange figure who is somehow both a priest and a king.  In particular, our author sees some important foreshadowing of the person of Jesus in Melchizedek.  For starters, it's his name and his title:  the name "Melchizedek," as our verses here note, means, "King of Righteousness," and the city over which he is king, Salem, (later Jerusalem), means "peace."  So here you have this person, many centuries before Jesus, who is supposed to be a "king of peace" and "king of righteousness"--and the writer of Hebrews is setting up the pieces to be able to say that Jesus really fully embodies what this Melchizedek person could only have hinted at.  Also curious for his purposes is that we get no other mention of a family line for Melchizedek, not ancestors, and not descendants.  We get no record of his birth or of his death--it's almost like he's eternal.  Again, the writer of Hebrews is just sketching out that this obscure biblical figure sure seems to foreshadow and hint at what Jesus eventually fulfills.  Jesus, the Scriptures attest, really is the eternal Son of God.  And Jesus really is the King of Peace, and the Ruler of true Justice and Righteousness, where Melchizedek could only point forward to those realities in the one story he makes a cameo appearance in.

Our author is going to build on all of this, especially because he is going to answer a question that really would have been an issue for fellow Jewish readers and listeners back in the first century.  They would have been asking how Jesus can be a priest for us--to intercede for us with the Father--if he wasn't from the tribe and family ancestry where the priests came from in ancient Israel (namely, the tribe of Levi).  We'll have to give this deep cut another listen as he goes further in the coming verses to see where he goes with this, but you can see him laying out the pieces of the puzzle now.  Like a good attorney building a case in the opening statement, laying out the issues and beginning to make the logical connections that he'll rely upon as he goes along, the writer of Hebrews is setting the table, so to speak, for the rest of the argument he's making.  But it starts with just calling to mind a lesser-known figure, Melchizedek, and helping us to remember (or to learn for the first time if you'd never heard this story) that the Bible has precedents for other priestly figures who have the authority and blessing of God, and who might just have been placed in those ancient stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs to point ahead to the One in whom we have come to know real peace and genuine justice--even Jesus.

And maybe we can come to a deeper understanding of the power and beauty of who Jesus is from a further look at this mysterious figure from the mists of Israel's ancient storytelling.  If it is worth knowing Jesus more deeply, then it will be worth it to take a deeper dive here into the story and meaning of Melchizedek.

So... more tomorrow, then.

Lord God, help us to know you, not only through the stories we have heard a million times before, but through the lesser-known faces and names of our family history as your people.