It's not exactly an Easter message and yet... it wouldn't even exist without Easter. What is written on our hearts? Offered at St. Philip Lutheran Church on Sunday, March 21, in both services. Cath The Crossing here (message starts at about 26:300 and the 11 am service here (message starts at about 16:30).
Texts of the day:
Do you know who Melchizedek was? Well, Melchizedek was a priest.
He first shows up in Genesis 14, in a passage that is not in the lectionary. And then again in Psalm 110, and finally in the today's text from Hebrews. Not a major character.
In the Genesis story, Abram’s nephew Lot was kidnapped and carried off. Abram was not yet Abraham, and Sarai was not yet Sarah, but it is the same guy. And Lot was his nephew.
Abram and his people went and completely overwhelmed the kidnappers, rescued Lot, and returned back to the coalition of kings that was sponsoring him with all the spoils of war – SO MUCH STUFF!
When he got back he was met by the priest - Melchizedek - who is called “priest of God Most High.”
Not just any ordinary god, but the God that Abram worshipped. The HIGHEST God. Abram’s God.
Melchizedek is fairly mysterious but after Jesus has lived, died, and been Resurrected he shows up in the letter to the Hebrews. But we do know that he was not from the line of Aaron, living way, way before Moses and Aaron came on the scene.
Melchizedek is fairly mysterious but after Jesus has lived, died, and been Resurrected he shows up in the letter to the Hebrews. But we do know that he was not from the line of Aaron, living way, way before Moses and Aaron came on the scene.
Melchizedek was a priest, and he did not come from a lineage in which priesthood is granted by virtue of birth. No, Melchizedek was a priest before there were such lineages and apparently was made a priest
by God’s own self.
Or at least that’s what is being implied in Hebrews, in which Melchizedek is mentioned as being DESIGNATED BY GOD.
Not a priest because of who his earthly parents were. Not some kind of earthly royalty. But a priest who was in that role because God put him there.
OF COURSE there is nothing wrong with earthly lines of royalty. Here in the United States we sometimes sniff about royalty as a bad thing, preferring our more democratic systems. But if you put Harry and Megan on tv with Oprah, Americans are glued to their sets and endlessly discussing what they had to say.
And OF COURSE we have our own types of royalty in the United States, where birth will give you all sorts of prestige and power: Kennedys, Bushes, Vanderbilts, Carnegies… I’m sure you can think of plenty of others.
Why, if you had a mind to map out how many teachers come from families of teachers, or pastors from families of pastors, or farmers come from families of farmers, you would almost certainly find that while it might not be a requirement, having family members in a field makes it much easier for succeeding generations to break into that field.
There are all sorts of reasons for that, but my point today is that Melchizedek as not that kind of a priest, not a priest by human inheritance. And neither was Jesus.
This fact – this naming of Melchizedek as a priest named by God, and naming Jesus as that same kind of priest – is very important to me as a mission developer whose family was made up of farmers and ranchers, carpenters, seamstresses, merchants, and blue collar workers. God’s call on my life was as surprising to me as it was to my family.
It is clear to me that many pastors did not have the same upstream journey that I did. Being young, being the children of people well known in Synod ministry circles, being male… all those things lead to placement and being embraced in a way that I have not always felt.
But I like to think that South Durham Connections is a “ministry in the order of Melchizedek.” Not because either the ministry or I are so much like Jesus, but because it seems to be a placement that does not match the more traditional, historical lines.
Melchizedek and I were certainly never going to be like Jesus. We are both, after all, only human. But in mapping Jesus to a priest whose call could only have come from God, I am encouraged that sometimes God does come and call those of us who don’t have any of the advantages or trappings of ministerial lineage.
It has not always easy to remember what my actual calling is – especially when people are gracious and loving and enthusiastic and so very clear that I would do well in a traditional ministerial position.
But it is even harder to resist this compelling call of the Holy Spirit to something else. To something so far outside of traditional parish ministry that even the Synod sometimes has to just watch and squint and wait with me to see what will happen.
But it is even harder to resist this compelling call of the Holy Spirit to something else. To something so far outside of traditional parish ministry that even the Synod sometimes has to just watch and squint and wait with me to see what will happen.
In those difficult moments, it is a joy and relief and delight and game-changer to read about Melchizedek, and Jesus being “in the order of Melchizedek.”
Because being outside of the traditional order has all kind of ramifications. For example, in this call I am living and working with people who are all over the place in terms of their faith and belief systems.
* There are the pagans who came on Ash Wednesday and declined ashes – apparently images of burning did nothing for them – but also BEGGED for a blessing, even when I was abundantly clear that it was going to be a blessing in the name of Jesus, and that I believe that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
* The atheist who gives of her time, calls donating blood her “tithe” but is just as comfortable explaining that in her teen years she read the Bible and she searched on Google, and Google was more helpful. She has also wondered aloud if things might have been different if someone had been there to answer her teenaged questions instead of just sending her, unguided, to the Bible.
* Then there are the women who have attended church faithfully for years as a members of a local choir but never joined any church because the “mysticism” of it all was troubling. Or the people who belong to a church and are endlessly frustrated because the politics and business of church do not seem to match the word written on their hearts.
* Or the couple who never goes to church but struggles that only one of their children was baptized as a child because nobody explained what baptism means and when the child’s father saw his little one being immersed he thought she was being drowned and said NEVER AGAIN. They worry: are the kids too old? How can they make a choice like that? Why did that church want to hurt their babies?
* There are the pagans who came on Ash Wednesday and declined ashes – apparently images of burning did nothing for them – but also BEGGED for a blessing, even when I was abundantly clear that it was going to be a blessing in the name of Jesus, and that I believe that Jesus was the divine Son of God.
* The atheist who gives of her time, calls donating blood her “tithe” but is just as comfortable explaining that in her teen years she read the Bible and she searched on Google, and Google was more helpful. She has also wondered aloud if things might have been different if someone had been there to answer her teenaged questions instead of just sending her, unguided, to the Bible.
* Then there are the women who have attended church faithfully for years as a members of a local choir but never joined any church because the “mysticism” of it all was troubling. Or the people who belong to a church and are endlessly frustrated because the politics and business of church do not seem to match the word written on their hearts.
* Or the couple who never goes to church but struggles that only one of their children was baptized as a child because nobody explained what baptism means and when the child’s father saw his little one being immersed he thought she was being drowned and said NEVER AGAIN. They worry: are the kids too old? How can they make a choice like that? Why did that church want to hurt their babies?
I could go on and on. These people are as different from one another as they are from the people who first taught me about faith but they all share at least two things:
1. they are deeply distrustful of “church” as they perceive it and
2. they are deeply committed to doing things that have a remarkable behavioral and ethical similarity to the things that Jesus preached and demonstrated in his life.
1. they are deeply distrustful of “church” as they perceive it and
2. they are deeply committed to doing things that have a remarkable behavioral and ethical similarity to the things that Jesus preached and demonstrated in his life.
What if… what if these behaviors of following Jesus – often consciously so – make them Christians in God’s eyes and we just don’t know it? What if they are HEART Christians even as their minds insist on something else?
That very question brings me to… Jeremiah.
In today’s reading Jeremiah is relaying a prophecy from God that someday the law would be “written on their hearts.”
Since I was quite young I have puzzled over that but as I have aged I have come to a sneaking suspicion that maybe God meant exactly what it says:
Written on ALL HEARTS
Mainline Christian and evangelical Christian
Jew and Muslim and Sikh
Atheist, pagan, agnostic
Even people of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Mainline Christian and evangelical Christian
Jew and Muslim and Sikh
Atheist, pagan, agnostic
Even people of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Because God says
For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more
Not “then my followers will whip everybody into shape and make sure I’m defended.” God doesn’t include God’s followers in there at all… except as forgiven.
GOD will forgive iniquity and remember sin no more. Not us.
Which is good, because we do not really want all the iniquity and sin forgiven, at least not that radically completely. That might make us less special before God, right?
Oh sure, we want God to forgive US… but we just aren’t so sure about others.
Christians all over say it but then we get really uneasy at the thought that God might actually forgive everyone.
Now, to be clear, I do not know what God is going to do.
I do not know if absolutely everyone will eventually be forgiven and fully redeemed and taken to live with God for all eternity.
I do not know if (in the prophet Micah’s words)
Acting justly
Loving mercy
Walking humbly with God
Acting justly
Loving mercy
Walking humbly with God
Or in my words
Caring for neighbors
Sharing food
Working for just housing and employment
Fighting racism and white supremacy
Working that all life is kept sacred…
I do not know if that is enough. I do not even know what it might or might not be enough FOR.
But I do know that I preach and Christians proclaim that forgiveness in the Resurrection is for everyone.
Everyone.
I preach and we proclaim that in Jesus we are all forgiven and separated from our sin “as far as the East is from the West.”
I know that there are questions about translations of the Bible: does it mean to say that WE have to believe in JESUS? Or that JESUS believes enough for all of us?
But I do know that it is in Jesus, only in Jesus, that our sin is remembered no more. However that comes about.
And if that part is true – a thing that I believe, complete with all its surprising and uncomfortable ramifications – then it means that all people really can access the only two laws that Jesus says we need to know (and follow):
LOVE GOD.
LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.
Not police each other or make sure we tell others all the things they are doing wrong, but LOVE THEM.
Not require a certain family lineage or faith tradition or gender or sexual orientation.
Not pity, or skepticism, or dismissal… but LOVE.
We can differ on how we choose to live out those two laws of loving. We can do all sorts of different things, and use all sorts of different words, but in the end, the way we recognize those two laws are about a single action: Loving.
And we don’t even get to have one single definition of love!
It is a remarkable and surprising thing, this idea that God would come to each of us and draw us to a redeemed life, a life in which we are free to love others (even the people we disagree with or do not like or even cannot ABIDE) because we do not have to be the sorters. A world in which there is no love police. Just more love.
AND WOW AM I GRATEFUL ABOUT THAT!
Because how could I love AND decide that the pagans begging for blessings – even as they also proclaim atheism and knowing full well what the words will be – should be denied that blessing?
How could I possibly love AND decide that people who have been in church far more than I have been in the past year or ten should be disregarded because they don’t think what they have seen is something they want to formally join?
How could I love AND decide that certain ideas about baptism, and confusion about baptism vs. drowning, means baptisms should be denied because the only churches they had ever known seemed so unkind?
I cannot do it. I cannot decide. I cannot turn them away – the hub would literally not run without each of the people I mentioned.
And I don’t have to.
I do not have to judge their hearts, or even their actions.
But if I do note (but not judge) their actions I would say that they all seem to be doing things a lot like Jesus did, and doing them because it just seems right.
Like maybe it’s written on their hearts.
None of us have to belong to a certain church or speak a certain language, have a certain skin color or love within certain parameters or wear a certain kind of clothes.
Jesus has taken care of it all. Jesus lived a life unbroken by sin so death could NOT hold him, and therefore he was Resurrected and opened a path to restoration of the original perfect Creation… in that example Jesus took away the burden of us being the sorters or deciders.
And here is the biggest surprise of all:
It is ENTIRELY possible that we understand God’s will, plan, and purposes all wrong.
It might be that our assumptions are off base. It might be that the people who think differently than me or you on hot topics like
Abortion
Transgender rights
Same sex marriage
Gun control
White supremacy and
All manner of governmental and political issues
Transgender rights
Same sex marriage
Gun control
White supremacy and
All manner of governmental and political issues
Are more right than I am. Or you are.
People on any side of those disagreements might somehow be getting things right that you or I are getting wrong.
How’s that for a kick in the pants? It is pretty much a certainty that every single one of us is all wrong about something. And the people we despise most have it right in some way.
SO. WHAT. IF. THAT. IS. THE. CASE???
Then we move on. We keep loving each other. It might have to be porcupine love, from a distance, because we are too infuriated, or maybe we have good moments when we decline to snipe and carp and ridicule because we have the thought “I’m supposed to love you, even now.” We keep loving each other…
And we trust God (and only God) to sort it all out.
Because God is faithful and will do that.
Because Jesus has taken care of the Law on our behalf.
Because all that is left for me – or you – or anyone else – is to do our best to love each other, and to love what or whom we see as God.
Those are the only rules.
Be like Melchizedek.
Be like Jesus.
Live the particular way God calls you to love, regardless of what anybody else thinks or does or says.
Amen.
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