Christ, the Perfect Priest

Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

Well, not only is this the season of charge conferences, but it is also the season of football games! In fact, in some ways, charge conferences are a bit like football. For in charge conferences we deal with budgets with numbers being dealt with. Likewise, in football, the quarterback calls out a series of numbers before the ball is hiked. Sometimes these numbers are random. At other times the numbers, themselves, are signals, letting the other players know what play the quarterback wants to run.

Christians can also designate a series of numbers that represent how God's presence will be played out in their lives: 24 - 7 - 356. It's not a very complex code to crack. After all, the God revealed through Christ's sacrifice for us is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year God. No timeouts, no halftime breaks. God is present for us and with us every moment of every day of our lives.

God can be a 24-7-365 God because Jesus was a 1-time Savior. Jesus' sacrifice was once and for all. Through Christ's one act of complete obedience, he became the one intercessory "priest" we need. The sacrifice Jesus made once need not be endlessly repeated, as in the old sacrificial system of the Hebrew people before Jesus.

Out of the evil that was Hitler's Germany there comes a story about the concentration camp and Finkenwalde where Dietrich Bonhoeffer , one of this century's greatest theologians, was held prisoner. In spite of his imprisonment, and the torture of the concentration camp, Bonhoeffer was able to run a small seminary. And on the altar table where the faithful worshiped every day, there was engraved a single word, hapax, meaning "once." That single word focused the hearts and minds of those caught in the middle of one of history's worst nightmares on the nature of Christ's being and the sacrifice that he made in order to transform our relationship to the divine.

Our lesson from the book of Hebrews for this morning about Jesus' being our high priest, could be understood by many persons as being somewhat "otherworldly" or metaphysical. But the message from the book of Hebrews about Jesus' unique identity, his perfect qualifications as our heavenly high priest, and his once-and-for-all sacrifice breathed faith and hope into the gray walls of Finkenwalde . And I think that this same message still breathes faith and hope for all who find themselves in prisons of their own making or imprisoned by forces beyond their control.

Today's text from Hebrews reveals just how much more perfect and available our path to God's presence is now that Jesus has become our "high priest." The once-and-for-all nature of Jesus' sacrifice, coupled with Jesus' own personal sinlessness, means that his intercessory power and saving presence are available at all times and in all places.

As our high priest, Jesus is constantly "on call." Jesus is eternally accessible at a "needs notice" – 24-7-365.

The healing story in today's gospel text demonstrates how Jesus made on-demand "house calls" at any time, any place, anywhere. Jesus and his disciples are starting out on the road to Jerusalem, moving toward the final events that await them there. Suddenly, the cries of a blind beggar, Bartimaeus , come ringing down the road: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" Despite the shushings of others, Bartimaeus calls out again, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Hearing the blind man's cries, Jesus stops his journey, "stands still," and calls Bartimaeus to him. In response to this humble beggar's obvious faith and persistence, Jesus publicly heals him of his blindness. After receiving Jesus' healing touch, Bartimaeus devotedly follows Jesus and the other disciples as they resume their interrupted trip and continue "on their way."

The Bartimaeus story is noteworthy because it is the last healing miracle Jesus performs in Mark's gospel. Jesus and his followers are already "on the way" to Jerusalem, to the cross, when Bartimaeus crosses their path. Despite the new direction Jesus' ministry is beginning to take, he stops and responds without hesitation to Bartimaeus ' cries. Forever "on call," Jesus could not leave a believer alone in his personal pain and darkness. The blind beggar is healed, even though the healing intrudes upon the flow of the journey's progression toward Jerusalem.

As our eternally available, always-open conduit to God's mercy, Jesus the Christ makes it possible for each one of us to be in an immediate, intimate relationship with no less than the God of the cosmos. A distant, unknown and unknowing God who acts as the cosmic creator and judge becomes an image of the past. Jesus' sacrifice introduces each one of us to the arms of God's mercy, and takes us to the heart of God's love.

The forgiveness Christ obtains for us brings us into our heavenly home as full members of the divine family, where we are protected and cherished, nurtured and taught at the knee of our divine parent. With Jesus, we may also now address the ultimate reigning power of the cosmos as "Abba," a word that literally means "Daddy."

Anyone who is a parent knows that parenting is a 24-7-365 undertaking. It doesn't matter if your child is 6 months, 16 years, 36 years, or 60 years old – you are forever "on call," forever "available." Consider then how much more extensive is the parental care that we may receive from God – who as our divine parent is in no way limited by space and time.

As every human parent and every child knows, there are some times, some experiences, which each individual must face without the support of others. But as long as we have let Christ open the way to a personal relationship with God, there is never again any experience in life, or death, that we must face alone. No matter how great our fear, how intense our pain, how prolonged our wait, how profound our doubts – the promise of the gospel is that God is there for us, God is there alongside us, 24-7-365. How grateful we should be!

There's the story of an elderly man who was walking on the beach with his only grandson when a giant wave crashed onshore, sweeping the boy out to sea.

The man looks up to heaven and says, "Oh Lord, this is my only grandson. How can you take him away from me like this? My son will not understand. My daughter-in-law will die from grief!"

Just then another wave crashes on the beach and deposits the boy at the old man's feet. The grandfather looks to the heavens again and says, "He had a hat!"

We humans are a grateful bunch, aren't we?

Many of you may remember Carl Sagan, the respected, engaging and quirky, astrophysicist/philosopher who succeeded in popularizing serious stargazing for a whole generation of readers and wonders. He taught our children that, in his words, "If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

But despite the cosmic scope of his views and helpful impact of his inquiries, Sagan was an old-fashioned "show-me" scientist. He refused to believe anything unless it could be proved according to the established Newtonian rules of modern scientific inquiry. It was this devotion to the documentable that kept Sagan a lifetime doubter about the existence of a personal, caring God, intimately concerned with individuals and their lives. Because no one could "prove" to his satisfaction that this God existed, Sagan simply could not accept the possibility as true.

Yet in his personal life, Carl Sagan reveled in his over 20-year marriage to his wife Anne and delighted in the companionship of his two children. The closeness between Carl and Anne was obvious, their love evident to all. In the last year of his life, as Sagan struggled against a rare form of cancer, he admitted that it was that "love" which supported and nurtured him through the bleakest times. Almost sheepishly, he would testify that, yes, he was depending on the presence of something intangible and unprovable – the love one human being can share with another. Yet after he died, Sagan's widow revealed how he stayed stubbornly true to his "prove-it" principles to the very end. "We were wonderfully happy for over 20 years together," Anne reflected, "but for Carl there was no doubt that when we said goodbye it was for all eternity."

How sad! How tragic! What a desolate and lonely conclusion to a love-filled, intellectually exciting life! What a forlorn feeling to be convinced that there would no longer be any love, any support, any union between hearts and souls, that no one and nothing would be present for the rest of eternity.

That "unprovable," personal God that Sagan could not bring himself to accept refuses to abandon us – not throughout the bad times of our lives and most certainly not at the moment of our death. God is a 24-7-365 God – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

But God doesn't stop there. Because God is eternal, God's love for us extends beyond the short years of our earthly life span. The divine arms that encircle us throughout our lives do not suddenly let go and abandon us at death.

You and I are cuddled in a cosmic clinch that will never let us go!

Amen.