St. Michael Russian Orthodox Church

March 21, 2010

A Royal Priesthood

Great Lent is a Great Opportunity. An opportunity to do what we are all called to do as Orthodox Christians each year: to get closer to God. Note that the word is “closer,” not “close.” It’s as the English teachers say the comparative of “close.” So no matter how “close” you are to God, whether one is a nun caring for the sick or a great sinner, your job during Lent is to get closer to God. And you will have noticed that during Great Lent the prayers read by the priest during the Anaphora----(the most solemn part of the Divine Liturgy which culminates in the Holy Spirit changing the gifts of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ)---are a lot longer. Not just longer, but even more expressive, to help us to get closer to God. You hear phrases that you don’t normally hear, wonderful words such as: “The Gift of Sonship, the Pledge of Future Inheritance” and “that those who were dead in Adam might be made alive in Thy Christ Himself.” These words were written by St. Basil the Great as a part of his Liturgy that we serve on each of the five Sundays during the Great Fast.

When you couple these prayers with today’s and the last two Sunday’s readings from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, you will note a focus during these weeks of Lent on idea of Jesus Christ as the High Priest. In the Epistle reading on the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross, two weeks ago, St. Paul says:

Since we have a great High Priest who has gone through the heavens,[e] Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.

And last Sunday’s reading from Hebrews refers back to the week before saying again that Jesus has “become a High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” And finally in the Epistle reading today again St. Paul calls Christ the High Priest
“who entered the Most Holy Place, once and for all.”

Now I ask you to think of St. Paul’s words when you listen to St. Basil’s Anaphora prayer, especially this beautiful sentence that refers to Our Lord and Savior: “He obtained us for His own chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” A royal priesthood---what does that mean? It might be easy to think of Christ as a “great High Priest who has gone through the heavens” but the words get tougher to understand when the concept fo royalty suddenly appears. The key to understanding these words is that name we heard twice in the last three weeks: Melchizedek. Who is that? We also hear this name in the Divine Liturgy on Christmas Day when the priest says at the Little Entrance: “Out of the womb before the morning star have I begotten Thee! The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” That introit for Christmas comes right out of Psalm 109 and in them David is referring back to Genesis and to the story of Abraham being blessed by Melchizedek. In Genesis, Melchizedek is referred to as the King of Salem (which means Peace) as well as a priest of the God Most High. And how does Melchizedek greet Abraham? By bringing him bread and wine. Melchizedek therefore is a priest even before the priests of Judea, who began, of course, with Aaron the brother of Moses. Those priests are called the Levites, the priestly line of Israel. Even though the genealogy of Jesus (in the gospel reading before Christmas) shows that the Birthgiver of God and Ever Virgin Mary came from the priestly line----she being descended from Jesse, the father of King David----when Christ is referred to as the High Priest that is not a reference to the order of the Levites, but to the order of Melchizedek, who proceeded the Levites. And the High Priest Melchizedek’s gifts of bread and wine foreshadowed the High Priest Jesus sitting at the Last Supper with His disciples, the remembrance of which is accomplished at every Divine Liturgy. But Melchizedek was also a King, just as Jesus is both High Priest and King--- foretold as a King by Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Zechariah. In just one week, we will celebrate on Palm Sunday the entrance of Our Lord into Jerusalem, with the people hailing him with the palms as they would a King. When Jesus is crucified, the soldiers mock him “Hail, King of the Jews!” and Pilate commissions a placard to be placed over His head on the Life Giving Cross: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. So, like Melchizedek, Jesus is both Priest and King. Unlike the priests of the Levite order, who made continuing and frequent sacrifices using the blood of animals, Christ as the High Priest makes the ultimate sacrifice of His own Blood once and for all time. Whereas, the High Priest of the Levite order entered the Holy of Holies behind the curtain in the Temple of Jerusalem yearly, today’s Epistle says that Christ enters the Holy Most Holy place once and for all time. And fittingly, when Christ was crucified, remember that the gospels tell us that the veil of the Temple was torn in two, symbolizing that His voluntary sacrificial acceptance of crucifixion, His one entrance as the High Priest, forever eliminated the separation of God from man that the curtain of the Holy of Holies had represented before Christ. That’s why the curtain that the Orthodox Church keeps behind the Royal Doors is opened during the Divine Liturgy, eliminating the separation of God and man. Christ being both High Priest and King means that we, all of us baptized in Christ, have become part of “the royal priesthood and holy nation” just as God Himself spoke those words to Moses on Mt. Sinai in the Book of Exodus, Chpt. 19---the very same words St.Peter wrote to encourage the believers at the church in Antioch in the First Epistle of Peter. Brothers and Sisters, we each and every one of us a part of that royal priesthood. In these waning days of the Great Fast, as each of us tries our best to seize the opportunity to get closer to God, let us each pray that together we make ourselves worthy to carry that mantle, that we indeed can be that “holy nation” that our God so dearly and mercifully wants us to be.