One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors is Robert Farrar Capon’s An Offering of Uncles: The Priesthood of Adam and the Shape of the World. The second chapter is an extended reflection on the cutting and carrying home of a reed from a marsh. Capon’s notion is that carrying a ten-foot long stem with a large head on it necessarily transforms one into a figure out of story or sacred history, a knight carrying a lance, a deacon holding the bishop’s crozier, or a king or apostle with a tall walking stick. You cannot simply hold and carry it without it working some effect upon what you appear to be.
Capon’s reflection on the marsh reed is the beginning of his exposition of the idea of human priesthood, that we were created by God to receive the things of this world and give them back to God as sacred offerings. The Reformation notion of the priesthood of the believer is simply an outworking of an office designed into humanity from our beginnings.
So the epistle text for this Sunday brought Capon’s thoughts on priesthood to my mind. Hebrews 5:5-10 looks at the most enigmatic priestly figure in Scripture and compares him to Jesus. In Genesis 14:17-20, Abraham meets the king of Salem (Jerusalem), Melchizedek, priest of God Most High, and is given bread and wine in gratitude for Abraham’s defeat of their enemies. The bread and wine are especially evocative for Christians, particularly because Jesus associated himself with the kingly figure of Psalm 110, who in verse 4 of that psalm is said to be “a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” Abraham also gives a tithe of his spoils from the battle to Melchizedek, further establishing the creds of this mysterious king/priest.
With Capon and the Reformation, I would say that priesthood is fundamentally a role for all human beings. Abraham plays that role himself as he receives bread and wine and then returns a gift to Melchizedek. We are all meant to receive God’s gifts in creation and give them back as sacred offerings to the Giver. That includes each other. We are at our best in human relationships when we find ways to offer each other back to God, to bring each other to Him.
The human record is that we have utterly failed in our priesthood. We have taken both creation and human relationships as our own possessions to do with as we please, and failed to give them back to their Creator. That is why in our text Christ becomes the perfect Priest, the priest with “having neither beginning of days nor end of life” as Hebrews 7:3 reflects in a longer elucidation of the Melchizedek/Jesus connection. Jesus became a high priest in order to heal and restore human priesthood, to set us right again with God and with the gifts of His creation, to make us able to once again receive it all, hold it properly, and then offer it back to God in faith and love.