Looking at Hebrews 7:1-3 seems timely. I would like to tell you this was careful planning, but it appears to be a quirk of circumstances–the first reading for the Mass this day begins with the exact verses we are looking at this morning. Perhaps it is one of those little “coincidences” for which the Holy Spirit choses to remain anonymous… .
Hebrews 7:1-3
1 This “Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High,” “met Abraham as he returned from his defeat of the kings” and “blessed him.” 2 And Abraham apportioned to him “a tenth of everything.” His name first means righteous king, and he was also “king of Salem,” that is, king of peace. 3 Without father, mother, or ancestry, without beginning of days or end of life, thus made to resemble the Son of God, he remains a priest forever.
Hebrews is referring to the incident in Genesis 14:18-20 where Abraham and his 318 men are returning to their own pasture land after a battle, and they encounter Melchizedek. Those three verses are sandwiched into a context where Abraham will have to deal with the greedy (polite, but greedy) “king of Sodom” over captives and booty. What our preacher/author has noticed is this: Genesis is all about families, genealogies, and “placing” peoples in their physical contexts in the world as the ancient Hebrews knew it. Where it all came from (Creation) and where all these various peoples/families belong in the picture, particularly any who interact with the main family line traced from Noah to Eber to Abraham-Isaac-and Jacob.
Suddenly, Melchizedek is inserted in the picture with no family line, no father or mother mentioned, and from “Salem” a place previously unmentioned. Yet he is a king with a symbolic name and a “priest of God Most High” who can be none other than the God of the Israelites who kept the record/wrote the book we call Genesis. Neither his birth (by? from?) is mentioned, nor his death–in a book that meticulously records the death of so many at such-and-such an age.
All this reminds our preacher/writer of Someone who had come, approached Jeru-Salem peacefully, offered a sacrifice, and lives now forever to intercede for us at the right hand of his Father, God Most High. He acted as a priest and “remains a priest forever.” (Commentaries say the word in Hebrews “forever” might be better translated “perpetually” –not simply for all time, but through all time).
Melchizedek was not Jesus, but he was a foreshadowing of Jesus, one that helped explain why Paul dwells so much on Abraham rather than Moses. Melchizedek was before Moses, therefore prior to the priesthood of the Levite tribe instituted in Moses’s day. Superior to the Levite priesthood as a father is superior to his children. A priesthood that “brings out bread and wine” as a communion sacrifice. A priesthood to accept tithes from the people under the covenant God gave Abraham.
Well before Moses, well before the Law, our preacher says, God had the salvation of the nations through Christ in mind. This incident with Melchizedek is a seed planted in Genesis centuries before its time to burst forth would come.
Comments and questions welcome!