Be little Melchizedeks

SERMON PREACHED at St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN,

ST PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN, and the COMMUNITY CHURCH, GLENORCHY

ORDINARY SUNDAY 29 (October 28^th) 2018

READINGS:

• Job 38: 1-7
• Psalm 104: 1-9, 24, 35c
• Hebrews 5: 1-10
• Mark 10: 35-45

In the powerful, often heavily ironic narrative of Job, our Lord challenges the arrogance even of a seemingly righteous human being, Job, who dares to question the actions and plans of God. This absolute right of God often becomes a flash point in theological debate. The sense that the author of Job has, and the prophet Jeremiah has, and that the apostle Paul has, that the actions and decisions of God are beyond reproach, are often deeply challenged. The response of the biblical God was  to lay down the challenge: “tell me, if you understand.” If we think we can second-guess the author of an infinitely expanding universe, biblical authors suggest, then we may just be growing a little big for our boots.

This is not a pastoral answer, nor designed as one. If we have lost a loved one, we do not need a platitudinous statement about the authority of God to do whatever God wants. Times of pastoral crisis are not the time for theological abstraction. Times of pastoral crisis are the time for the silence of love, for a smile, for a hug if the sufferer is a willing “huggee.” This is not to suggest that there are two Gods, a stern “I can do what I like God” and a caring, loving God. Times of suffering, when the bodies of refugees wash up on Mediterranean beaches, or asylum-seekers suicide in Nauruan hellcamps,  or when our loved ones dwell in city morgues, these are not the time for erudite theology. These are times for compassionate love. But as we journey through the scriptures we find an endless both/and. God is the God whose will is unfathomable, and God is the tissue silently offered to a weeping, bereaved mother.

The psalmist turns to the heavens and quivers in awe at the incomprehensibility of the author, the creator of their near-infinite vastness. Though I do not have a scientific cell in my body, I am aware of scientists’ growing glimpses of the complexity not only of vast and potentially parallel universes but of the infinitesimally small intricacies of atoms and their component parts. These complexities do not deaden but heighten  my sense of the impossible, unfathomable majesty of the Creator. When I used to stand beneath the desert skies in outback Australia I had no words for my awe. When I see the impossible beauty of a sunrise over the Remarkables I have no words for my awe. 

Yet this is the God who cares for the fall, as Jesus put it, of a sparrow. This is the God who I, for example, have experienced taken me through some incomprehensibly dark times (and mine are small league) in recent years, yet nudged me onwards to this point. This is the God who led me here to where I have found new energies and purpose, not least in the love that I have experienced in and amongst you people of this Parish of Wakatipu. The God whose hands fling stars across space, who is also the God, as Kendrick expresses it, whose hands in Christ are nailed to a cross, is the God who has brought me through my small crucible of fire and is now leading me to new challenges and ministries,. This God will one day will lead me through my own death, not necessarily a benign and pretty one, through my own dying and on to the incomprehensible realms of eternity (more, I think, than just a nitrogen cycle).

And though the author of Hebrews uses vastly complex imagery, this is, I believe, what she is beginning to tell us. She links the suffering priesthood of Jesus with the strange, shadowy priesthood of Melchizedek, then calls all of us to walk in those same warm footsteps of suffering and rising Jesus. Though her symbolism is often all but incompre­hensible to a twenty-first century believer, she is wrestling with the mystery of an infinite God who enters into the misery and grot of human life – far worse than the small darknesses I stumbled though in the past two or three years. This God enters human suffering and there breathes the magnificence of resurrection-life, however shadowy as yet. 

This is the God who renounces the glamour of the heavens, as it were, and enters into the struggling grot of being human. Perhaps I should re-emphasise: the small nastinesses I experienced over the past three years or so before I came to you are mere parentheses compared to the suffering experienced by those in the deeper darknesses of human experience, in Syria or Nauru, or trapped in cycles of chemical or economic despair. But the author of Hebrews is trying to tell us of the infinite God who cares enough to enter our small or great hell-holes and there breathe eternal hope, and will again even when our journeys lead us into the complexities of loss of life and love. For this God – whose majesty the psalmist praises to the heavens – is the God who “deals gently” with us, offers us love’s embrace in myriad forms, and leads us through doubt and despair to resurrection and its light.

And, in turn, we are called to be, however imperfectly, bearers of that light. We are called to be “little Melchizedeks,” caring for others in their need. The mysterious figure of Melchizedek, who became associated with high priesthood and with the high priesthood of Jesus, is originally encountered as a care-giver. That above all is the way by which we can breathe the mysteries of eternity in the lives of those around us. Two years ago, as some of you know, my life seemed to be crumbling around me. In the wisdom of God, the love of family and friends nudged me through those seemingly impenetrable darknesses. The God of infinity mysteriously orchestrated beacons of light for me, and I stumbled on. We  –  me too ­ –  are called to be light-bringers to others, to be blessing to those around us. May the God of infinity draw near and help us to be bearers of Christlight to all who we meet.

Amen.