"I'LL need a priest one day," said the traffic policeman on the N11 in Co Wicklow, tearing up the speeding ticket on learning the identity of the driver who had given his radar gun a mild coronary. Protests that the fine should be paid achieved nothing, though it was a fair cop and justice should have been seen to be done. Tomorrow's epistle reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews (5:1-10), agrees with the policeman: we all need a priest - but not in some crisis yet to break, rather right now and every moment. However, the writer takes a tack which modern readers might consider esoteric, even baffling. That is doubtless why Hebrews remains a closed book to many Christians apart from a few well-known purple passages such as chapter 11 with its ode to the heroes of faith.
In a world where Jewish rituals with priests and sacrifices were evocative and powerful, Christian meetings with their focus on the scriptures expounded by a pastor/teacher such as Paul or Timothy may have seemed somewhat dull. Despite appearances, however, the Hebrews writer argues that Christians are far better off than Old Testament believers because they have "a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God" (Hebrews 4:14).
In much the same way as the Hebrew Christians, we moderns have far too small a concept of our Lord's high priesthood. We talk incessantly about priests and priesthood, but seldom does our discussion take its cue from, or find its terminus in, the fact that Jesus is "the apostle and high priest whom we confess" (3:1). Like the recent converts addressed in the epistle, we too become fixated on temporal, fallible expressions of mediation with God rather than being engrossed by the work of God's own chosen mediator, Jesus.
Prophecy had predicted that when God's King, Messiah, came, he would embody in his person three functions of Old Testament mediation. He would terminate the role of prophet in that he would be God's final word; he would be king for ever, bringing people under his rule; and, having gone through the heavens to the place of honour and glory, he would be a mediator for all time and available to all people. Christians have the ultimate prophet, king and priest in Jesus the Son of God, and the Hebrews argument is that we have all we need in Jesus.
In fact, far more is claimed for the Saviour. He is not only our priest, he is our offering, too, the sacrificial lamb "without spot or blemish". In that role he is the only sacrifice we need for sin, for in his death he took the punishment we rightly deserved. Since sacrifice can be offered only by a priest appointed by God, then Jesus is designated as the last in the line and he is eternal, whereas his predecessors were temporal. Which is why in the New Testament there is no mention of a priestly caste at all. Goodbye to all that, as the Hebrews writer would say, because it highlights so graphically the point of discontinuity with the Old Testament. In churches founded by the apostles, it is the office of pastor/teacher which emerges as essential for the spiritual oversight of God's people.
The background to Hebrews is of people tempted to go back or give up - to go back from living faith in Jesus to trust in the now outdated Old Testament ritual, or to give up under the threat of opposition and the grind of keeping going in daily Christian discipleship. The antidote to the twin perils, the writer sums up, is a continual fixing of the eyes on Jesus (12:1-3). That is, in concrete terms, to remember his status as God and man, his obedience, suffering and death, his work of atonement and redemption, and his exaltation to the right hand of the Father.
No doctrine of escapism here. In fact, Hebrews is anything but esoteric and obscure. "Fixing our eyes on Jesus" is recognition that he is the priest we need right now. As tomorrow's reading spotlights, he is "the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (v.9). Thankfully for this writer, he can also have mercy on an N11 lawbreaker because "he is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray" (v.2).
G.F.