And he says in another place, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” - Hebrews 5:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 4, 2018): Hebrews 5

If you have ever looked up into the sky on a summer day and watched the clouds morph into recognizable shapes, then you have experienced the power of the mind to fill in the blank spaces with what is recognizable. It is this power that allows us to see Jesus or the Virgin Mary miraculously appear in a grilled cheese sandwich or a piece of toast. It is also found in those situations when we think we know what someone is thinking. Whether we are willing to admit it or not, we are often wrong, but our mind powerfully fills in the spaces and creates order out of what is actually chaos. We do it everywhere we see an incomplete picture. Our mind is continually filling in the blank spaces.

I have to admit that sometimes I wonder about this process of filling in the blank spaces when it comes to the author of Hebrews comparison between Jesus and Melchizedek. I mean, the actual story in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) encompasses three whole verses in Genesis 14. Add in one more mention in Psalm 110, which is quoted by the author of Hebrews here, and you have the entire library of what we know about Melchizedek from the Tanakh.

For the author of Hebrews, I understand that he is trying to make the connection between Melchizedek and Jesus because they are the only two high priests that were not descended from the Aaronic priesthood. Melchizedek predated the Aaron and his priesthood by a few centuries, and Jesus was of the house of Judah instead of the house of Levi and then Aaron. This is the main argument of Judaism against the idea of Jesus being a priest. Jesus was not of the priestly house, and he carried out no priestly ministry in the temple during his time on earth. Therefore, he cannot be the high priest in any way known to Judaism. The idea that Jesus is king has better ancestral support than the idea that he was a priest.

But the author of Hebrews is tapping into some other aspects of Judaism that would have been better known at the time he wrote this letter, but much more obscure to the contemporary reader. For instance, in the Exaltation of Melchizedek, a work that was written around the time of Christ, Melchizedek is said to be born of a virgin during the time of Noah and taken to the Garden of Eden where he was protected from the great flood, without having to be on the Ark. The Dead Sea Scrolls include a text which claims that Melchizedek was divine and that Hebrew titles such as Elohim, a Hebrew word used to address God, belong to him. As Christians, we make the same claim, arguing that titles like Elohim belong to Jesus. Taken together, we can understand why the author of Hebrews decides to use the legend of Melchizedek to describe the reality of Jesus. The Hebrews connection of Melchizedek and Jesus is so much more than just a filling of the empty spaces in the story of Melchizedek with human imagination. Hebrews reads into the cultural story of Melchizedek to describe what had happened in Israel during the life and ministry of Christ. In the process, Hebrews declares that Jesus was a priest forever, not according to the Aaronic priesthood which was only a priest for a time, but according to the legend of Melchizedek who was believed in the cultural accounts to be a priest forever.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hebrews 6