Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 21 March 2021. Fifth Sunday in Lent, by Dr. Peter Youngblood. The scripture readings that day were Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 5:5-10, John 12:20-33.

Our Gospel for today opens with what we can call a “mission moment.” Some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover decide that they want to see Jesus.

We never learn if they actually get to meet Jesus. I would like to think they do eventually, but the Scripture does not tell us the rest of their story. This is because Jesus does what he so often does—that is, he takes a small event like the arrival of some new followers and he turns it into a sign for something much more important. In this case, he declares that the time has come for the Son of Man to be “glorified.” This is where Jesus finally reveals what is going to happen to him. He gives his followers—and us—our first lesson in atonement theology: Jesus explains why and how his death his will save humankind.

In the Western tradition, the most popular atonement theory, is that in the crucifixion, Jesus basically becomes a sacrifice that atones for the sin of humankind. Another way to look at it is that Jesus’ death is a form of payment for our sins. The idea here is that it was impossible for humankind (as a whole) to ever “pay God back” for our sins, and the damage that these sins cause—damage to both ourselves, other people, and the rest of creation. So, while the sacrifice or ransom for our sin must be “paid” by a human being, only God really has the power to “pay” for such a thing. And so, to overcome this paradox we need the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, “the man who is also God.”

However, I think we focus too much on the fact that Christ will to die, and we do not focus enough on what His death will accomplish. Right now, during Lent, many of us have made sacrifices. Some of us have given up sugar or other luxuries. I have given meat, which let me say is no easy task in Hong Kong! Sometimes people give something, or do something extra, and that is very commendable as well. But I think most of us do the “sacrifice” thing—we give something up that is important to us, something that is hard for us to do without.

But the sacrifice is never the point. What we give up for Lent is the sign of something greater! Likewise, Jesus’ death will not be the point of his betrayal, trial, and execution. Rather, John makes it quite clear—more forthrightly, in my opinion, than the other Evangelists—that what is most important is what comes after the event. And what comes after, of course, is Jesus’ glorification, the time when he will be lifted up to bring judgment to the old world, and thus begin a new one.

In this new world, human beings will be forever reconciled to God. And for those choose to follow Christ, it will be more than reconciliation; it will be more than the restoration of the original Covenant. The disciples of Jesus Christ will also be “lifted up,” as “children of the light,” to be become junior partners in this very new world. A world in which peace, justice, and love reign.

It is important to realize that what Jesus does here, in John Chapter 12, is completely flip the script on death. Usually, we think of death as the end of something, right? Though Christians generally believe in an afterlife, for us death still means the ending of this life—of our life on Earth. But Christ transforms his coming death from an ending to the beginning of something new. To explain, he uses the metaphor of a grain of wheat. When the grain falls off the stem, going into the ground, it basically dies, but out from this “dead” seed blossoms a plant that can bear much more fruit.

Cleverly, Jesus’ proclamation of his own death is connected to the arrival of these new Greek potential disciples. Here death is connected to the idea of growth. Jesus predicts, quite accurately, that his coming death will lead to the growth of a movement and the birth of a Church.

But these Greeks who come to see Jesus are symbolic in another way. This is because they are ethnically Greek. They are not Greek-speaking Jews, they are gentiles. It is certainly possible, maybe even probable, that they are proselytes, or converts to the Jewish faith. But even if they were converted Jews, they would not have been seen as fully Jewish by the rest of the religious community, including some members of Jesus’ own following. But the possibility of being turned away does not stop these Greeks from wanting to meet this remarkable person they had heard of. Or perhaps it is precisely because they are converts that they really want to meet Jesus! After all, Jesus’ ministry so far has challenged the normal rules of the Jewish tradition. He has spread the message that God loves all. He loves the poor, the prostitutes, the tax collectors and—yes—even the gentiles. So those who were considered outsiders in the Jewish community would have found Jesus’ more inclusive message very attractive.

St. Paul would agree with this interpretation. Paul of Tarsus was the first great Christian cosmopolitan. He was responsible for delivering the Gospel to most of the non-Jewish world. And in our reading today from the Epistle to the Hebrews, he makes it clear that Jesus is everyone’s Messiah, not just the savior of one particular religious community. He associates Jesus with a somewhat mysterious character from all the way in the Book of Genesis. That person is Melchizedek. In Genesis, during his ramblings throughout Canaan, Abraham meets this Melchizedek who—we are told—is the King of Salem and the High Priest of the Most High God (El Elyon). Melchizedek offers bread and wine and blesses Abraham. While the Hebrew is a little unclear, most interpretations have Abraham give the priest a tithe, or offering, in return. This tithing makes it clear that Melchizedek is a very Holy figure, connected to the one, true God of Abraham.

Melchizedek does not get a lot of mention in either the Old or New Testaments, but he is important because he is first person who is explicitly named as the “High Priest of God.” A High Priest, of course, was the chief religious official in ancient Jewish religion. The High Priest and the other priests maintained the Tabernacle in the desert and the Temples later in Jerusalem. More importantly, they were responsible for the holy rituals that maintained the bonds of the Covenant between God and the Hebrews. These rituals were usually rituals of sacrifice—burnt offerings of animals or plants.

Or as Paul interprets it in the verses just before the ones we read today, the priests were responsible for offering the “gifts and sacrifices for sin.” Priests were responsible for repairing the damaged relationship between God and humankind.  But for Paul, Jesus is not just any priest, he is a true priest of the Order of the “original” priest: Melchizedek. Why does he go back that far, to the first named priest in the Torah? Why does Paul spend so much comparing Jesus to Melchizedek, a person that most would be forgiven for not even remembering? Well, for one thing, Paul does not agree with the Jewish sacrificial system that exists during his time. He is making a distinction here between Jesus and Melchizedek, on the one hand, and the traditional holders of the Priesthood, the Levites, on the other. The Levites descend from Jacob’s son, Levi, and this lineage includes Moses and Aaron. But as Paul will later point out, Jesus is of the line of Judah. The is means Jesus is descended from King David, Jesse, and Ruth the Moabite—Ruth the foreigner. So, Jesus is an outsider to the religious core of the ancient Israelite religion.

And like any ancient religion, this core was fiercely protected by laws and rituals of purity, and priestly authority came from family descent. With few exceptions, only those who descended from Aaron had spiritual power. But for Paul, this religious structure is corrupt, oppressive, and excluding. In order to break this system, the true “High Priest” cannot be a Levite, but he can be of the order of Melchizedek. Thus, the difference between Jesus Christ and traditional priests is that he is called to the priesthood not by written law or family lineage, but quite simply because God has named him as such.

And there is another reason Paul may want to make this comparison. It is notable that when we first encounter Melchizedek, he is not making an offering to God in a temple, but rather is making an offering of hospitality, food and wine to another human being, Abraham. Therefore, Melchizedek represents God’s offering to us, to humankind. Likewise, Jesus Christ is also God’s offering to us. The Levitical priests sacrificed lambs, but Jesus Christ is the lamb. He is the the God-man who will die; die not just to restore an old Covenant, but to forge a new one. This is not a Covenant based on paying God back for each and every sin, but a Covenant of mutual, self-giving love. It is a Covenant based on love, justice and peace.

And finally, this comparison tells us that Jesus Christ is the priest of all humankind. It is important not to follow Paul into his worst habits here and attack the Jewish religion. Paul uses Melchizedek as a metaphorical tool for challenging the priestly authorities of his time. He does this to convince Christians to stay committed to their beliefs, and to not leave the new Church. But today we should view it more broadly. It is not a critique of one religion, but a critique on the ancient way of doing religion, in which faith is an exclusive “club” where one must meet certain legal or ethnic requirements in order to join, and hold certain family connections to attain a high status. Quite the contrary, the Church must a be a community that welcomes all, just as it is welcoming to the Greek pilgrims we meet at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading.

So in John, Christ is not announcing his defeat, but is announcing his glory. What comes in the resurrection is not death but the glory of the birth of a new Covenant. This Covenant is not a Covenant written on paper, spelling out rules and sacrificial payments to God, but a Covenant of love written on our hearts. And it is a Covenant for all humankind, Jews and Greeks alike.

But, to conclude, we need to remember another thing that Jesus says here in John:

12:25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 12:26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

The very thing that will make Christ’s crucifixion not a death, but the birth of something greater, is our participation in it. We must be part of the glory Jesus speaks of. For us, our Lenten promises are not guilty payments to God for our sins, but our symbolic acceptance of our joining a new community. In this new community our own efforts are needed to create a new world of love, justice, and peace.

Amen.