Hebrews 5:1-10 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is so grounded in Jewish theology and praxis that 21^st century non-Jewish preachers may find it challenging to preach about in a way that’s faithful to both the text and our own context. However, given the text’s focus on the work of a high priest, preachers might ask if there are people who function in a high priestly role in our own time. We don’t even necessarily have to look for examples of religious high priests.

The trouble to which Hebrews’ author alludes in this Lesson is quite simple. Ever since our first parents believed the evil one’s lie, their descendants have been so sinful that we deliberately commit sins. This rebellion so offends and angers our holy God that it threatens our eternal well-being.

So God graciously raised up people from among God’s Israelite people to intercede for them on their behalf before God. That man was what verse 1 calls a “high priest [archiereus*].” He was, verse 1 continues, “selected [lambanomenos] from among men [ex anthropon].” However, high priests were neither self-selected nor selected by the Israelites. The office of high priest was neither a volunteer nor an elected position. God, instead, kaloumenos, selected, literally “summoned” or “invited” Israel’s high priests to their work.

While those high priests’ job description was quite lengthy, Hebrews 5 summarizes their task as representing “the people in matters related to [ta pros ton] God, to offer gifts [prosphere dora] and sacrifices [thysias] for sins [hyper hamartion]. (1)” High priests basically served as go-betweens between God’s people and God. God graciously put them in place to serve as the human bridge between an unholy people and a holy God. In offering gifts and sacrifices on behalf of people, high priests publicly acknowledged human rebellion, as well as both God’s holiness and longing to be in right relationship with God’s dearly beloved people.

But Israel’s high priests were no more perfect than the people whom they represented before God. Verse 2 reports they were, in fact, “subject [perikeitai] to weakness [astheneian].” High priests were literally “wrapped in” or “hampered” by frailty. Their moral weakness, on the one hand, helped them empathize [metriopathein] with the ignorance [agnoousin] and rebellion [planomenois] of the people for whom they interceded before God. Israel’s high priests could relate to people’s struggles to love God and their neighbor.

However, on the other hand their own sinfulness also meant that high priests had to “offer sacrifices [propherein] not just for others, but also for themselves.” They were, in other words, both sympathetic and flawed. God’s people weren’t the only people who needed God’s mercy. Even their high priests desperately needed God to be gracious to them.

So to where might we look, whether in the “religious” or “secular” realms, for what the 21^st century considers to be kinds of high priests? Within the religious sphere, some Christians still especially treasure pastors’ prayers to God on their behalf. When I served as a pastor, some people seemed to think that my prayers carried a kind of high priestly “extra weight” with God. I even sensed some of that in some people’s opposition to anyone but the pastor offering what we called our “morning prayers” during our worship services.

But, of course, most Christians also feel free to ask other Christians to pray for us. We don’t ask them to offer sacrifices on our behalf. But we believe that God grants “power” to God’s people’s prayers. God graces Christians’ prayers for the people we love and ourselves with great effectiveness. So Jesus’ adopted siblings act in some ways like high priests for each other.

But growing numbers of our contemporaries don’t just increasingly distrust preachers, Christians and their “pull” with God. Shrinking numbers of them also live as though God exists. So have many citizens of the 21^st century completely abandoned any concept of a high priest who “makes things right”? Or have they simply turned to other, sometimes non-religious figures?

Those who seek to let the Spirit guide their preaching on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson might ask ourselves (and perhaps others) whether our culture has any high priests. But I’d suggest individuals themselves or politicians as candidates for that label and role.

Our political leaders, for example, don’t fit into a religious concept of high priest in the conventional sense of the word. Yet they do sometimes serve as “fixers,” people who ask their constituents to trust that they’ll make things as right as possible. We send our political leaders to places like Washington, Ottawa, London and other capitals to help “make things right” for us.

Or think of our culture’s other high priests who promise to make things better. The financial planner who promises those who take her advice material security. The advertiser who promises its product’s users attractiveness, popularity and influence. The CEO who promises to take his employers to unprecedented heights of success.

We might add that in a sense people also serve as our own kinds of secular high priests. On what, after all, do we naturally base claims to a good life? On people’s efforts to be as kind, caring, helpful and generous as possible. If we’re somehow nice enough, some of our contemporaries assume, if there is some kind of higher power that’s in charge of doling out an afterlife, then we’ll have a decent shot at having a reasonably good one. Or if we’ve been sufficiently kind, at least we’ll have made the world a better place before we died and vanished.

Hebrews 5 offers far more hope because it offers not just a far better, but also a perfect “repairer.” It offers us Christ, who met all the criterion for being a high priest. Just like Israel’s high priest Aaron, he did not, according to verse 5, “take on himself the glory [edoxasen] of becoming [genethenai] a high priest. But God said to him, ‘You are my Son [Huios mou]; today I have become your Father [gegenneka].’ And he says in another place, ‘You are a priest forever [eis ton aiona] in the order [taxin] of Melchizedek.”

Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, preachers will need to decide how deeply to plunge into the “weeds” of this mysterious language that might seem to advocate for a Christological heresy (the assumption that Jesus somehow became or was made God’s Son). But we may need to say little more about it than this: Hebrews’ author uses language familiar to its Hebrew writers about Melchizedek as a great high priest whose greatness is exceeded by Christ’s even greater high priestliness. Christ, after all, wasn’t just our perfect high priest. He was also God’s Son.

Hebrews 5:7-10 goes on to describe the surpassing greatness of Christ’s work as his adopted siblings’ high priest. “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth [hermerais tes sarkos], he offered up [prosenenkes] prayers [deeseis] and petitions [hiketerias] with fervent cries [krauges ischyras] and tears [dacryon] to the one who could save [sozein] him from death [thanatou] and he was heard [eisakoustheis] because of his submission [eulabeias].”

This verse, of course, may prompt several questions. Just when, for example, did Jesus cry out in pain and weep as he offered up priestly prayers? This is probably an allusion to both Jesus’ high priestly prayer that the gospel of John records and Jesus’ response to his Gethsemane suffering.

What’s more, we may wonder, did the Father really answer “yes” to the Son’s high priestly prayers because of what Hebrews literally calls Jesus’ “reverence”? That’s admittedly not an easy question to answer. But preachers can at least say this about it: Hebrews testifies to Jesus’ persistent faithfulness in the face of unspeakable suffering. God the Father honored that faithfulness and affirmed the Son’s obedience by answering “yes” to his prayers on behalf of their adopted family members.

Yet both the comfort and challenges of interpreting this affirmation of Jesus’ work as high priest just keep coming. After all, in verses 8 and 9 Hebrews reports “Son [Huios] though he was, he learned [emathen] obedience [hypakoen] from what he suffered [epathen] and, once made perfect [teleiothes], he became the source [aitios] of eternal [aioniou] salvation [soterias] for all who obey [hypokouousin] him.”

Preachers can admit that it’s not entirely clear what Hebrews’ refers to as Jesus becoming teletheios. It certainly doesn’t mean that Jesus was somehow sinful before he learned perfect obedience. Hebrews’ author is likely referring to something closer to The Message’s paraphrase of teletheios as Jesus’ arrival “at the full stature of his maturity.” Or we might refer to Jesus’ “perfection” as the completion of his personal and emotional development as the incarnate Son of God.

Wise preachers, however, will let the Spirit help us focus on what Hebrews focuses on. Jesus became the source of his friends’ eternal rescue from eternal separation from God. Through his perfect obedience in the face of suffering that was far greater than any of his adopted siblings will ever suffer, he saved us for eternal life in God’s glorious presence in the new earth and heaven.

That’s a reason why this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson can end in such a gracious way in verse 10. Jesus was, Hebrews’ author professes there, “designated [prosagoreutheis] by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.” This reference to Jesus’ calling by God to be a high priest and the “order of Melchizedek” echoes verse 5.

Verse 10, in fact, in some ways, echoes what Hebrews’ author has tried to teach his readers throughout this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. Jesus shared Israel’s high priests’ empathy for and intervention on behalf of God’s people. But he did not share their sinfulness.

So in a real sense Jesus both fulfilled and surpassed those high priests’ work. As a result, his friends may imitate Israel’s high priests in interceding before God for our brothers and sisters in Christ. But we don’t need to somehow make things right with God for them or us. Jesus already graciously and completely finished that job.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

The book, The Collected Sermons of William H. Willimon, recounts the story of how Willimon preached on sin one day in April, 1995. During that sermon the homiletician repeatedly insisted that the human problem is what he called “human sin, our sin, my sin.”

Willimon concluded by recalling how “G. K. Chesterton, when asked to write a magazine article on ‘What’s Wrong with the Universe’ responded to the editor’s request, ‘What’s Wrong with the Universe?’ with one sentence, ‘I am’.”