Monday • 2/7/2022
Monday of 5 Epiphany, Year Two

This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 80; Genesis 25:19–34; Hebrews 13:1–16; John 7:37–52

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)

Today’s New Testament readings provide subtle but powerful insights into Christ’s identity and into his ministry among us.

In John 7, Jesus claims that he has come to fulfill the prophecies that streams of water would come gushing forth from God’s temple to bless the earth (Ezekiel 47:1–12; Joel 3:18; Zechariah 14:8). Jesus has already said that he will be building a new temple from his own body (John 2:19–22). Now, he offers a word about the life that will emanate from that new temple.

Part of the beautiful symbolism of the Feast of Tabernacles was a pouring out of water on the altar of Jerusalem’s temple each morning of the week-long festival. The symbol reminded God’s people of Zechariah’s promise that in the last days “living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea; it shall continue in summer as in winter. And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one” (Zechariah 14:8–9).

On the last day of the feast, Jesus stands up in front of everybody assembled and shouts out (yes, really, he SHOUTS it out): “IF ANYONE IS THIRSTY, LET THEM COME TO ME… (John 7:37a). Most translations (including the NRSV) treat the rest of what Jesus shouts as promising that water would then flow from believers’ hearts. However, it’s not clear how the Greek should be punctuated (there was no punctuation in the originals). Along with a number of influential commentators, I think that the rest of what Jesus shouts is: “AND LET THE ONE WHO BELIEVES IN ME DRINK. JUST AS THE SCRIPTURE SAYS, ‘FROM WITHIN HIM (by which Jesus means himself) WILL FLOW RIVERS OF LIVING WATER!” (John 7:37b–38). John explains that Jesus is talking about the Spirit that had not yet been given. On the Cross, water and blood will flow from his side (John 19:34). After his resurrection, the Spirit will flow from him to the apostles and the church (John 14:16; 20:22). In other words, first the living water flows from Jesus, King over all the earth — and then the living water flows from him into and through us, by the Spirit, to the world that he has come to reclaim, bless, and renew.

Admittedly, we are in the deep end of the pool — but what a pool!!

In Hebrews 13, the writer provides the fourth of four ways in which Jesus acts as High Priest in the line of Melchizedek and as our Worship Leader in the Heavenly Sanctuary. Hebrews has already recounted how Jesus declares the Father’s name in our worship, leads song when we assemble, and ever lives to intercede for those he has cleansed by his sacrificial death (Hebrews 8:1–2; 2:12; 7:25). Now, in Hebrews 13, the writer shows how Genesis 14’s Melchizedek forshadowed Jesus as Priest when he brought “bread and wine” to Abraham, and received, in return, a tithe of the spoils of Abraham’s victory (Genesis 14; Hebrews 7).

“We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat,” says the writer (Hebrews 13:10). As he does so, he invites us to go outside the provincial camp of the earthly temple’s rites in Jerusalem; he invites us, instead, to partake of fellowship with Jesus who “suffered outside the city gate” (Hebrews 13:12). Ancient readers of this text (and rightly I think) understood the writer to be inviting us to recall Melchizedek, Gentile priest and king of Jerusalem, the very city outside of which God’s Messiah was to be crucified. Melchizedek had come outside that city to bless Abraham and to offer him “bread and wine” (Genesis 14:18–20).

As in Paul’s writings where “promise” precedes and takes precedence over “law,” here in Hebrews the church’s “bread and wine” for everybody precedes and takes precedence over the temple’s sin offerings that were consumed by Levitical priests only (Leviticus 6:26). As our great High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, Jesus brings us bread and wine from God’s holy altar. He does so week after week; and he will do so until that time when, at the end of time, he will host us at the great feast that ushers in the age to come (Isaiah 25:6–8; Luke 12:37).

Here in Hebrews 13, instead of tithes from victorious Abraham, our Heavenly Melchizedek receives the twofold offering of: 1) “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name”; and b) the doing of good and in the living of lives of koinōnia — a rich New Testament word that denotes “intimate fellowship,” “generosity,” and “sharing with one another” (see Acts 2:42; Romans 12:13; 15:26–27, and elsewhere).

The first part of Hebrews 13 offers a beautiful catalog of what such a life of koinonia looks like: hospitality, care for prisoners, honoring marital and sexual boundaries, freedom from a greed that would inhibit generosity, the sharing of community-building sound teaching rather than community-destroying “strange” teaching (Hebrews 13:1–9).

Praise be! The New Melchizedek leads us in worship services (that is, what we come in from the world to do on Sundays), and in service that is worship (that is, what we go out into the world do on Monday through Saturday).

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+

Image: "Melchizedek" by Nick in exsilio is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0