TheoTrek — A Journey with God in Discipleship
After Melchizedek
Genesis 14:17-24; John 12:20-33; Hebrews 5:5-10
Rev. Chris Harbin, Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA
29 March 2009
The Jews looked to Abraham as the father of their faith. He was the one to whom Yahweh had promised the land of Canaan. It was in Abraham that they found meaning, identity, and the origin of their position before God. He was the patriarch who had begun serving the God who had brought them out of Egypt, given them the commandments through Moses, and formed them into a nation under the judges and kings David and Solomon. When they spoke of their faith, it was often in terms of Abraham as a wandering Aramean to God had spoken and promised a future, a land, and nations of descendents.
Paul calls Abraham the father of faith to believers as well. He pointed to Abraham, not only as the first of the people who would become the Hebrews, Israelites, and Jews. He speaks of Abraham's relationship with God as based on dependence and trust in the unseen. The author of Hebrews declares faith to have begun in Abraham as he trusted God enough to leave his land, home, and family to follow into a new land under the banner of God's provision.
Islam considers Abraham as the father of Islamic faith, as well. Abraham, they remember, was father to Ishmael before the birth of Isaac, through whom Israel claimed its heritage. As believers in Christ, we follow Paul's understanding that Abraham is father in regard to our own understanding of God later revealed in Christ Jesus.
Abraham is the father of faith. This we learn early on. His importance is attested by three major world religious traditions. Here in Genesis 14, however, this strange entity, Melchizedek, King of Salem, enters into the picture and messes things up. Why does the father of faith pay tithe to the king of a city in which Abraham did not live?
It is a strange image. Our religious tradition would teach us to view Abraham as priest of Yahweh, God Most High, creator of heaven and earth. Our own Scriptures, however, call us to view this Melchizedek along the same lines, as priest of Abraham's God, as well.
The image is uncomfortable. The writer of Hebrews picks up this image of Melchizedek as he weaves a rationale for understanding the existence of a priesthood greater than that of his own Jewish religious tradition. He points to Melchizedek as greater than the priesthood of Yahweh established through Moses and Aaron—one in existence before the birth of Isaac or even Ishmael. It is somehow larger than any one religious tradition, for it somehow anticipates the one we claim as father of our faith.
Melchizedek did not belong to the people of the promise. He was somehow outside the traditions of faith that developed through Abraham. Even so, he recognized God's presence and action in Abraham's life. Abraham's words to him recall the title of God Most High Melchizedek has used, yet they go on to add God's personal name, Yahweh. He identifies his own worship of Yahweh as creator of heaven and earth with Melchizedek's worship of El Elyon, God Most High, creator of heaven and earth. What may be uncomfortable to us, was seemingly no conflict for Abraham. He found Melchizedek to be in the same lineage of faith, even if only a witness to the promise of God to Abraham.
Jesus did not resolve the issue of Melchizedek. He did not speak of how we should understand the enigma of one outside the line of promise, yet included as a priest and paid a tithe by the father of faith. He does, however, understand that God is active among people outside of his own tradition, history, and heritage. It is upon the approach of some non-Jews to see Jesus that he recognizes the timing of God to face the cross and draw all peoples to himself.
This seems to be the sign Jesus was awaiting to begin his trek to the cross. He had preached and ministered among the people of Israel. He had touched the lives of many on the edges of Jewish society, even the hated Samaritans through whose land he had chosen to travel. He had shared God's grace with a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Roman centurion, tax collectors, prostitutes, blind, deaf, and lame. He had preached throughout the land, taught his disciples, and given evidence of how to apply his gospel in the course of daily living. It was only with the coming of these Greek foreigners to seek him out, however, that he sensed the fulfillment of his ministry.
The disciples did not much understand Jesus' teaching of his impending death. Doubtless his words on this occasion haunted them also, until they managed to grasp their meaning in the years ahead. He had ministered in word and deed among the people and beyond the boundaries of their society. His purpose, however, had no boundaries set by political, social, or institutional means. His larger purpose was to draw all people—people of all nations—unto himself, unto God.
His earthly ministry may have been confined mostly to the Jewish people, but the purpose in his death and resurrection would know no bounds. As in Abraham's contact with Melchizedek, he saw God working outside the borders of the chosen people, preparing others to find the reality of the gospel with the full depth of meaning he was to display on the cross.
The Jews were still seeking an internal resolution to their problems. They were still thinking in terms too small for God. They were looking to political and social realities or means of God's redemption. God's purposes were much greater. They would not be bound by the boundaries of nations or human structures, even religious ones. Yet through the structure of Jewish tradition and religious heritage, and in the line of Abraham, God was pleased to make the fullness of the gospel known once and for all to all nations, not those of Abraham's lineage alone.
As great and important a place in history and religious tradition as Abraham fills, God's plan was and is greater. Jesus' path toward the cross would not be limited by any one heritage, tradition, or box within which to confine God. Those traditional boundaries to keep people on the outside of a life of faith were to die, even as Jesus called his own disciples to follow the new example of giving up life itself to serve God and call the nations to the cross of Christ Jesus.
Abraham gave up what he did not have to in recognition of Melchizedek's blessing. Abraham placed a tithe of all the booty God had given him in the rescue of Lot. The balance, he placed in the hands of the king of Sodom, one who did not recognize God's presence and action at all. He placed it all in his hands as a statement of Sodom's rejection of God and divine judgment against Sodom. Abraham gave what was not due to one who was not worthy. Jesus did no less.
Can we truly claim Abraham as father of our faith, if our actions do not follow the example he set forth? Do we do well in calling ourselves Christians when we are unwilling to follow the example of the One we call Lord? It was, after all, in giving himself up to the cross that Jesus was glorified—revealed in his true character and essence. How do we measure up, in God's call to follow Christ with our all?
—©2009 Christopher B. Harbin