But it is the lesson from Hebrews and the Gospel passage from John that I wish to reflect on today. Here both the writers are casting around with available imagery to try to make sense of the events of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, this “new thing” which had happened in their midst and which we are about to celebrate. They search the available images familiar to their readers to communicate what it was that had transformed their lives. They are like artists working with words to convey meaning.

Two weeks ago I was preaching on the Gospel passage from John about the Cleansing of the Temple and suggested that by this dramatic action and the consequent dialogue John was saying that Jesus was sweeping away the Temple and its whole apparatus of priesthood and sacrifice while at the same time becoming the new temple, the new spiritual reality which brings the believer to God. For John Jesus is the one in whom all things find their fulfillment, including Temple, Priesthood and Sacrifice.

In its own way the Letter to the Hebrews is saying a similar thing. This letter whose origins are somewhat mysterious in that its authorship and provenence are debated is by its content at least clearly directed at a community of Jewish Christians. For it takes the Jewish forms and language of sacrifice and priesthood and applies them to Christ. To return to my metaphor of the artist, the writer of Hebrews takes a palette of traditional concepts to interpret the events of Holy Week and their consequences.

In today’s passage from Hebrews the writer is using the Jewish concept of High Priest to convey this new meaning. Now this concept is not familiar to us but at least we have some idea what a priest does. He or she is one who stands before God on behalf of the people offering thanks, penitence and intercession. This is language which has influenced Christian understanding of priesthood. But the writer is attempting to link Jesus into this whole construct of priesthood; Jesus who did not fit into the Aaronic and Levitical models of priesthood familiar to his readers. So it is that the writer takes that mysterious Old Testament priestly figure of Melchizedek, that person who brought forth gifts of bread and wine to Abraham of old, and then disappeared from the pages of scripture and boldly applies it to Jesus. Jesus is a high priest appointed by God according to the order of Melchizedek. In other words Hebrews by using a certain language and concept available to him makes a similar point to John that in Jesus God is doing a new thing.

And then with one bold stroke after another the writer applies the language of priesthood and sacrifice to the person and work of Jesus. For instance in the opening lines of today’s reading he states that unlike the high priests of old whose were appointed from priestly families this Jesus is appointed by God. Here the writer takes quotes from the Psalms to underline his point. “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; words familiar from the Baptism and Transfiguration of Jesus. And furthermore “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek”; linking Jesus to an ancient but mysterious inheritance as mentioned earlier.

Having established Jesus’ qualifications as high priest the writer continues to enlarge the nature of that priesthood. He describes Jesus who “in the days of his flesh, ..offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death”. What he is saying is that Jesus in his earthly life entered fully into our human condition experiencing with us the full extent of our weaknesses and ambivalence, our sufferings and our mortality. This passage calls to mind the events of both Gethsemane and Golgotha. “Father if it be thy will let this cup pass from me.” “ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Here we are face to face with the full meaning of the Incarnation, of Jesus entering into the fullness of our humanity. But also Jesus is entering into the tradition of righteous suffering familiar to us from Isaiah and the Suffering Servant and of course from the book of Job. Jesus by being God’s chosen one does not escape or bypass this suffering but is redeemed by it and through it. Like Job of old Jesus was “heard because of his reverent submission”. “Father not my will but thine be done”. When Job was ultimately heard by God it is that dialogue with God which “banishes his loneliness” and “bridges his alienation” as one writer puts it. That being heard by God does not remove the reality of the suffering but in some way makes it more bearable. I think of the likes of Dietrich Boenhoeffer in his cell awaiting death whose faith kept him hopeful despite all that was happening to him.

The writer goes on to say that not only does Jesus identify with our sufferings and cried out to God and was heard but furthermore “he learned obedience through what he suffered.” Suffering is not pictured here as an evil to be “fought against and overcome but as a necessary ingredient in faithfulness to God.” Remember the readers of the letter themselves were enduring the suffering of persecution and they are instructed to see their sufferings as part of the discipline of faith. They are encouraged by Jesus who also suffered and identifies with their pain and thus prevents their suffering from leading to despair. The subject of suffering is always a difficult one for us to grasp. Why some people suffer so much challenges our humanity and our faith in the goodness of God. Yet at the same time and somewhat mysteriously we also know that suffering can have about it a redemptive quality, a quality we glimpse in the suffering of Jesus on the Cross and in the lives of the saints.

But in dramatic contrast to the priesthoods of old the writer takes the high priestly image with relation to Jesus a further step. Writing after the resurrection he is able to say that Jesus our High Priest has become “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”

God has achieved in Jesus something the old priesthoods could never effect and that is the redemption of the world. So it is that Hebrews takes the model of high priest and transforms it in applying it to the person and work of Jesus.

John in a different way is doing the same thing but for a different audience. He is also taken familiar imagery and applying it to Jesus in his attempt to describe the indescribable, that is the events of Holy Week. Here some Greek proselytes, that is foreigners who have adopted the Jewish faith, came to Philip, the disciple with the Greek name, and ask to “see Jesus”. The word “see” in Greek means more than get a glimpse of Jesus, but rather to recognize him. It is this moment when the world as it were recognizes Jesus that John says “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”. This “hour” which is central to John’s theology is the hour of the cross. This is the moment in which God’s glory is seen in the face of the crucified one. John uses two metaphors to describe this hour. The first is an agricultural one. “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The second image is taken from the Exodus where Moses lifts up the snake on the pole to stop the plague in the wilderness, a symbol for healing. So it becomes the symbol of the Cross: “And I when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The Cross is the ultimate sign of God’s universal healing and reconciliation.

These readings help us as we draw near to the celebration of Holy Week to focus again on the Cross of Christ and find in it none other than God’s Saving Love for us.   Amen

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