🦁 Lent 5 👑

Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 119:9-16;Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

Reflection

Hi, and welcome to first forward Advanced Scriptural Insight for Christian Soldiers. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. A readings for Lent five. The fifth Sunday of Lent come from Jeremiah 31, Psalm 51 or 191, Hebrews five and John 12, specifically Jeremiah 3131 through 34, where it talks about replacing the stone tablets that that has written on them, the law and the love of God replacing them with writing it directly on their own hearts, and a much more personal accessibility between God and humanity. 

And I'm always I used to read that and or hear it and think, Oh, you know, Israel is kind of screwing up. They're getting something taken away. But it's kind of a weird framework to situate that in because God's active before Moses, before Abraham really even all the way back to Noah and Seth and Cain and Abel. So it's not they aren't the center of the story. The center of the story in the Bible is I used to teach my students at Methodist University, God is the protagonist of the story. It's not the individual people. It's not you know what they do. It's it's the story of how God, how people find meaning through understanding God better. And so it's not like, yeah, in that sense, it's weird to, you know, put someone else in the middle of the story and say, well, they're, you know, they're having something taken from them. 

But I still felt it. And it's coupled with the readings from Hebrews five and Hebrews is a letter that a lot of people thought for a long time may have been Paul. The earliest Christians didn't really think it was him. It didn't seem like him, and it doesn't have you know, it doesn't assert a name. People think maybe it's one of Saul students like Apollo or somebody who knows, but they're clearly very well versed in Israelite traditions and Hebrew culture, etc.. And I always I also have a weird relationship with Jesus and the idea of him as the high priest because he was not the high priest of Caiaphas. And I don't even know that he was the direct descendant of Zadok through Joshua, the son of Joseph, Eric and the rest. So he literally is not the high priest. That isn't to say, I think it was the right high priest, Caiaphas. It was a corrupted. It was a political appointment. By the time Jesus was on the scene. And few devout Jews, certainly not rural Galilean and folks who kind of weren't already in the centers of power, they didn't see that it was legitimate at all. They knew it. They knew it wasn't. There was an appointment by Herod with the backing of the Roman Empire. 

So Jesus is not the high priest. But in order to make him out to be the fulfillment of the high priesthood, the writer of Hebrews says, Oh, well, you know, God has made Jesus, whose name is Joshua, a priest. According to the Order of Melchizedek and Hebrews five, it says this in verse six and again in verse ten, and this comes out of another section of Scripture actually two, the first one being Psalm 110, and Psalm 110 is the song of David, where he's like, or the Psalm is God saying to David and David's descendants, You know, I have begotten you. And all the way back to Melchizedek, who was the king of Jerusalem, who was also the priest of God in the highest or alien and alien and Greek is the same divinity or divine name that Jesus is said to be the son of the Son of the of God. Most high one of the demons actually says this. I want to say in Mark five the demonic. And so like John is another word for Yahweh, one of the titles that Yahweh he assumes, and Melchizedek is the very first priest who worships Leon. And before Psalm 110 in Genesis 14, we have the battle of Citium kind of appears out of nowhere, but essentially lot, who's Abraham's cousin or nephew, is living in on the outskirts of Sodom, and there's this big war between the Macedonian kings and the kings and the lower areas, and it's basically rebellion. The lower kind of kings are saying, Look, we're not going to pay tribute. They've been together, but they lose. And then Abraham, who's not even Abraham yet, gets together 318 trained men or Hamas. And they, you know, basically win this battle on behalf of all the the lower kings in order to save lot who is a subject of the king of Sodom, who's one of the lower kings, you know, that has been overtaken by these larger Macedonian rulers. Anyway, he saves them, saves a lot, saves all, you know, saves the day. And then out of nowhere comes this dude whose name means righteous King Malik Zadok. Righteous or king who is righteous or king of righteousness? So out of kind of the deep blue yonder comes this King priest from Salem that most scholars agree is kind of this euphemism or early version of Jerusalem. And kings and priests are supposed to be satirical parallels in the Hebraic imagination. Kings are hereditary. They are permanent positions, you know, until you die. Right. And that's the only position in Israel that was similar. Those hereditary was always the firstborn son, and it was an appointment for life. And yet these were the people who were anointed Messiah as in Messiah King. Some of the kings were anointed, but very few of them. But the priests, especially the high priest, is always anointed. So this anointment of righteousness, king, priest, all comes together in this figure of Melchizedek. And I've always kind of lamented that whoever wrote Hebrews didn't notice or care. Or maybe it's something that I don't understand about the culture in first century Palestine, but Jesus already has a claim to the high priesthood. It's not reaching all the way back beyond Jacob and Isaac and Abraham to Melchizedek. It's right there. And Mary. Mary is of one blood. Sister Janice, a blood relative of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is called the daughter of Aaron. That means Mary, the only person who supplied biological genetic information to the Messiah, is a Levite in the house and a chronic Levite, which is to say, a an inheritor of the high priesthood. He doesn't serve as high priest, but he is legitimate, more legitimate than Caiaphas. So on the one hand, it's unfortunate. I in my mind, it's too bad that we that that's the move that the writer of Hebrews makes, draws on Psalm 110, which itself draws on Genesis 14, which is a battlefield experience. Melchizedek is a king, which which carries political power to do violence, but is also a priest. And so how could a priest, you know, shed blood? And of course, Melchizedek doesn't he's not a member of any of these nations that come out in Genesis 14. He just again, appears magically, right, almost as if it's a pre figure of, you know, one of the angels of God or something. And so we have to be honest with the fact that Jesus was not the high priest. But that doesn't mean he's illegitimate. That doesn't mean he shouldn't have been, but that he is not the high priest, that there's something that we do in saying that Jesus embodies the what the high priesthood was supposed to be is a legitimate heir to the high priesthood. But he is not in the same way. He is not a judge right. He saves the people. That was the purpose of his name, according to Luke one. But he's never said to judge Israel or the whole world, even though we get kind of a hint of that in this in this reading especially, I want to say in in John John 12. 

And so if we read the Bible through the lens of soldiers and soldiering, you might notice or you're more likely to notice that this Melchizedek is a product of war in Genesis 14, after Abraham is successful, then we see Melchizedek. Melchizedek then gets carried through to David, who reads Genesis 14 and has this really prophetic thing to say about, you know, kind of himself but kind of his son. And also God, if you read of Psalm 110. And so I don't want to say that Hebrews is wrong. I do want to say that Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews, just like Saul, just like the Apostles, just like everybody wrote letters, they are equal conversation partners with us in this thing we call Christianity. Don't be intimidated by the fact that they're old. They've certainly stood the test of time, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't interact with them. That doesn't mean we have to agree whole cloth with everything they say. That's not what Jesus. That's not the system or the the community that Jesus established. 

And it's not the one that I see being built up and idealized in the Hebrew scriptures either. I think we're encouraged, rather. And one of the things that Abraham is known to do is he argues with God when later God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their in built on in hospitality, according to Ezekiel, not to say sexual immorality. It's like they they were horrible people to the poor. When God is going to do that Abraham's Abraham's like, No, no, that's not the kind of God you want to be right? And God entertains it. And God does not find a righteous person other than lot. And so God ends up being right and Abraham wrong. But that doesn't mean or that specifically means suggests that God does not sit up on God's throne and just expect us to do everything God says. God invites and even models active engagement with people you think, or things that you think are out of your control or over your control. Control is corruption, right? I think if anything, that's one of the ultimate messages of the Bible is I read that as someone who has been controlled, who is expected to obey orders and not give them. That's how I come to the text. And that's something that I think has value, not necessarily saying like the high priesthood is wrong or, you know, you know, Melchizedek, you know, I don't know, fill in the blank. But that this kind of engagement, looking into it, loving it so much that you want to unlock everything that a text can let you unlock. That is the kind of engagement that I think we participate in as people who follow Christ. Not that some of us, because they've been doing this a long time or whatever, like are better than us. No, engage with the texts, engage with prominent thinkers before us. That's the point. Just as Abraham engaged with God and God did not look down at Abraham and say, No, you know what? I'm in control. I'm God, I'm just going to do this thing. Christianity's an invitation to mutuality. I think it begins, and you could even say ends with God incarnate. And the work that God has been doing from the beginning of the world.