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Welcome to branches! No matter who you are, you belong! We are a new Christian community in the city of Houston, TX and hope to see you on a Sunday morning at 11am!
Lent and Holy Week and Easter vocabulary is much harder than Christmas. Christmas is like baby, manger, shepherd, got it, you know, very, very simple. When we come here, and as we've heard in the readings tonight, there's a lot to remember. I mean, it takes everything in me, a modern American person, to not say Pilates instead of Pilate when we get to Pontius Pilate. Cross, crucifixion, Rome, Caesar, Sanhedrin.
Colin:What's a Sanhedrin? Propitiation. That's a good one. It was like band name, called it. Looked it up, Ardia Pan made, because it's rad.
Colin:Propitiation. There's big words and big concepts and big ideas and heaviness, of course, when we come to the cross on Good Friday. And, of course, you yourself bring to this story and bring to this week and bring to Good Friday and then you'll bring to Easter your own ideas and concepts about what this day and what this weekend means and what this story means, what the sacrifice, what the cross means. The words you heap up on to define it or to give theological meaning to or to say what it means for you and what it's done for you. Good, great, wonderful.
Colin:I want to give us one more word to add to our Holy Week, in particular, our Good Friday vocabulary and that word is priest. Let me think about what it means as we look at this cross, as we hear these stories about what Jesus did for his disciples and what he does for us and what he does for the world, that Jesus is a priest. So hear these words from Hebrews in the New Testament in chapter four and in chapter five. It says this, since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are.
Colin:Yet without sin, let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Then a little further ahead in chapter five, it says, in the days of his flesh, when Jesus was in a body, in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Colin:Jesus is a priest. When you hear the word priest, again, a word that we bring our own baggage to. Tab collar, last rites, lifting up communion bread and the cup. Your own religious tradition, priest of the Judas variety, if you're a music listener. Priest has baggage and when we say it, we think of our own sort of religious ideas about what a priest means, but the short biblical definition of priest is one who stands between.
Colin:A priest, a pastor even, serves a priestly function, that they're somehow in between what God's doing over here and what people are doing over here. Particular, the priest lifts up to God what the people are saying and feeling and thinking. When we pray a prayer, our prayers have a priestly function. We say, this is going on in my community. This is going on in my family.
Colin:This is going on in my world. God, look at this. That's what a priest does. Prophets talk to God, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus. God speaks to them and they come back to the people and they say, most of the time, God says this, it's not great, you know.
Colin:Be warned, this is what's happening. A prophet has this downward messaging from God to the to the prophet, to the people. A priest is in the middle of the people and feels with them. As Hebrews just said, doesn't have a sort of far away understanding of what's going on, is in the middle of their feeling, in the middle of their experience, in the middle of their story, and then lifts it up to God and says, God, look what your people are dealing with. Jesus is a priest and that makes us then see Jesus in a different light.
Colin:Jesus as our priest is with us and then shares with God what we are, who we are, what we're feeling, thinking, believing. But Hebrews doesn't just say Jesus is any old priest. Jesus is a high priest, the high priest. If you read the Old Testament and read about the priests, Aaron, Moses' brother, was a high priest, they serve a very particular function In temple worship, in the kind of spatial worship of the early Jewish people, there was some rooms that all the priests could go into, these holy spaces, and then there was the holiest space and only the high priest could enter under certain circumstances, given certain conditions that he was in a certain place, that he had performed certain rituals, that he was ready as the high priest to enter. He was obedient as Hebrews says of Jesus.
Colin:One special role, he goes where no one else can. The way Hebrews puts it is, since then we have a great high priest who's passed through the heavens. Doesn't just go in them and come back and say what it's like. He's passed through the holiest place possible. Numbers in the Old Testament doesn't get a lot of attention, and frankly, I understand why.
Colin:There's a lot of weird stuff in here, But to give you a picture of what these priests did, what their function was, in Numbers sixteen forty eight, it says this of Aaron, Moses' brother, voiced by Jeff Goldblum and Prince of Egypt, if that's more familiar for you. He, Aaron, the priest, the high priest, Moses' brother, he stood between the dead and the living and the plague was stopped. There's this plague ravaging God's people and Moses put himself on the line and stood among the people at the very cost of himself being infected with this plague. He stood in the middle of them and the plague was stopped and many people died from the plague, the story says, and when the plague was stopped and it was over, Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting to say, this has happened to the people. I'm coming to you, Moses, and I'm gonna go to God and tell him what's happened.
Colin:Stands in the gap, has this lofty call to be a representative to God for his people plagued by so much between the living and the dead. That's who Jesus is for us too. Jesus is a priest and he's not just a priest, he's the high priest, is feeling and tempted, and is as we are human. Jesus isn't just a priest, and he's not just a high priest. He's your high priest.
Colin:He's our community's high priest. He's your spouse's, your child's, your neighbor's high priest. He's your high priest. Most of the time on Good Friday, the temptation, and I feel this temptation, is to say, when we look at the cross, this is God saying something to us. How bad and naughty you are in your sins.
Colin:This cross is a symbol of how bad you should feel about yourself. And maybe there's room for us to feel, of course, shame about our sin or feel like a need to change our habits or change our lives or think about something we've done and reflect on it and repent and turn the cross is some message from God to us. But if Jesus is our, is your high priest, what does the cross from us say to God about who we are. In Exodus, is another instance of Moses as the high priest. It's in Exodus 28.
Colin:Another really strange story and description is really vivid detailed descriptions of what the priest did and this is something that Aaron did in his function as the high priest for his people. It says this, the breastpiece, so they had to wear this very specific garb and we kind of try to reflect some of this in religious garb now. Wore the or Aaron wore this breastpiece and it shall be bound by its rings to the rings of the ephod with a blue cord so that it may lie on the decorated band. It's like way beyond detailed about what you should wear on this breastplate And on it, not just the beautiful adornments on it, Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastplate of judgment on his heart when he goes in to the holy place. That in his priestly function, as a priest, as his people's high priest, he bore their names before God in God's presence.
Colin:If Jesus is our high priest, if he's your high priest, he carries your name into the holiest place. And Hebrews says not only that, not only does he carry your name before God and say, look at Steve over here. Sorry if your name is Steve, that's just the name that popped into my head. Look at Steve over here, doesn't just carry your name, would you get a look at Steve? Hebrews says, this high priest prays in the presence of God And it goes a step further, not only did he pray on Steve's behalf, on your behalf, in the presence of God, he prayed and he was heard.
Colin:And God responded. Psalm 22 is the prayer that your high priest prayed for you on the cross and prays for you even now. Hear this prayer that your high priest prays. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me from the words of my groaning?
Colin:Oh, my God, I cry by day, but you don't answer, and by night, but find no rest. Yet, you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In in you, our ancestors trusted. They trusted, and you delivered them. To you, they cried and were saved.
Colin:In you, they trusted and were not put to shame. But I'm a worm and not human, scorned by others, despised by the people. All who see me, mock me. They make mouths at me, they shake their heads. Commit your cause to the Lord.
Colin:Let him deliver. Let him rescue the one in whom he delights, they say. Yet it was you who took me from the womb. You kept me safe on my mother's breast. On you, I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me, you have been my God.
Colin:Do not be far from me, for trouble's near, and there is no one to help. Many bulls encircle me, strong bulls of bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax.
Colin:It is melted within my breast. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death, For dogs are all around me, a company of an evil doers encircles me. My hands and my feet have shriveled, I can count on my bones. They stare and gloat over me, they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.
Colin:But you, oh Lord, do not be far away. Oh, my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion, From the horns of the wild oxen, you've rescued me. I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters in the midst of the congregation.
Colin:I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him. Stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel, for he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted. He did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.
Colin:From you comes my praise in the great congregation. My vows I will pay before those who fear him. The poor shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever.
Colin:All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. To him indeed shall all who sleep in the earth bow down. Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. Posterity will serve him.
Colin:Future generations will be told about the Lord and proclaim as of his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it. Your high priest prayed and praised that prayer for you, Thanks be to God for that. Let's pray. Jesus, our high priest, listen. We bear burdens.
Colin:We have hatred in our hearts. We have habits we cannot shake. We see our neighbors and we ignore them. We see ourselves and we feel the burden of self hatred. We are hungry.
Colin:We are thirsty for righteousness. We are longing for you. And we ask that on this day, you would somehow, mysteriously, imprint upon our hearts this good news that when we look at this cross, we don't see a message from you, but we see you being a message for us, that you have our names on your heart, that you speak aloud our longings to the Lord, and that you enthroned with them hear us. That's what we ask, hear us. Having come to this table, hear us.
Colin:On this weekend when all things go silent and dark, hear us we pray. We pray all this in the name of Jesus, our priest. Amen.