Watch Here
Proper 25 Year B 10/27/2024
Jeremiah 31:7-9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
When we were in England this summer, we had the chance to visit several parishes and grand cathedrals.
And one of the things that stood out was the list of all the leaders of these churches throughout the decades and in some cases, centuries.
Some were famous vicars and rectors of various parishes.
Some were faithful ministers in their time, but few if any would know who they were today.
Some were not great leaders.
But in all these places, most aren’t there now.
Apart from the last one or two (perhaps three) resident vicars, they are dead and gone.
They held office for a time and are now, we trust, resting in peace…
Some of them in their own churchyards.
God raises up leaders from generation to generation.
It’s the same way in our parish, although we have only been around since 1956.
I serve as the eighth Vicar or Rector in our parish.
Most that preceded me are still alive.
But let’s suppose by looking at a parish church somewhere that we discovered that someone had been appointed rector in 1724 and he was still there.
Somehow and in someway the priest had escaped “Father Time” and the parish never needed to replace him…
He was still alive all these years and was a faithful minister of the gospel.
A crazy suggestion…
To even think of having someone run the same parish for 300 years.
It is often a good thing to have a change of rectors every so often…
Different skills…
Different failings are balanced out with different people…
But in this case the 300-year faithful priest was exactly what they needed.
No change was necessary.
This is a bit of what’s going on in our reading from Hebrews today.
The Levitical priests throughout the Old Testament served first in the tabernacle and then in the Jerusalem Temple…
From generation to generation…
Serving like the clergy at a particular church.
But then a priest comes along…
Jesus Christ…
And he continues as a Priest forever.
No more are needed.
You can hear this in our reading from Hebrews 7.26-28…
The writer says this about the High Priest Jesus Christ:
Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.
Unlike the other high priests,
he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people.
He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
For the law appoints as high priests men in all their weakness;
but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son,
who has been made perfect forever.
One of the major motifs of the book of Hebrews is the theme of Jesus as our High Priest.
The writer makes a comparison of the priestly call of Jesus and the priests of the Old Testament.
And right from the start Jesus is different than all the priests that came before him.
Jesus was holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens… (It says in our reading from Hebrews).
The priests of the Old Testament could only be holy, blameless, and undefiled through the ceremonies that they had to do before the sacrifice was made.
Jesus was holy… not born in sin as we are but born of the virgin Mary.
He was holy… loving God with all his heart.
Jesus was blameless… he never retaliated, he never injured, he truly loved his neighbor as himself with full compassion.
Jesus was undefiled… he walked in a world under the curse,
and he mingled with sinners, and yet was never infected with the sin of this world.
Jesus lived under the law… but never broke it.
He fulfilled the law of God.
He loved God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind….
He loved his neighbor as himself.
The priests in the Old Testament are there to plead to God on behalf of his people…
and Jesus fulfills this role perfectly because he holds his royal priesthood in perpetuity… forever and ever.
He has been exalted above all…
Interceding for us at the right hand of God.
Jesus has no sins of his own to deal with before he ministers to and on behalf of the people.
He is perfect.
His central task, acted out physically on Calvary and embodied thereafter in his representative role in the heavenly realms,
is to come before the Father with his sinful people on his heart.
The Father himself appointed him for this purpose, so that we should have complete assurance of salvation,
being in no doubt of his eternal and all-powerful saving love for us.[1]
The primary difference between the priests of the Old Testament…
And the priestly Incarnate Son of God…
Is that he offered himself as the sacrifice.
No one else does that.
And because of that…
No other sacrifice is needed…
His sacrifice is all that is needed going forward.
The Jewish priest offered the blood of bulls and goats both for himself and for his contemporaries.
Christ offered up himself, not the blood of animals,
and he did it all for others,
not for himself.[2]
And in that single great perfect sacrifice – it brought a completion to the sacrifice needed to reconcile man to God.
Jesus finished the work…
He finished the sacrifice…
You will remember…
On the cross…
just before he died…
Jesus said:
It is finished!
(John 19.30)
All the sacrifices of the priests of the Old Testament find their fulfillment in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ…
For Jesus is the Great High Priest who offered himself for the forgiveness of sins.
Even today, the priests in the church do not do a new sacrifice at the altar…
We don’t bring animals to church to offer them at the altar.
No, the work has been done…
The sacrifice for sin has been made complete…
The priest today in the breaking of the bread at the altar remembers the sacrifice of Jesus Christ – that perfect and complete atonement.
In the Eucharist
We remember his death…
We proclaim his resurrection…
We await his coming in glory.
(BCP, 368)
And we find his presence in the sacrifice today…
In the Eucharist…
Jesus is present there…
Jesus was sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.
And he is the priest forever.
In fact, the sacrifice that is made in consequence of communion with Jesus is ourselves… it’s us.
The prayer book says:
It is here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,
ourselves, our souls and bodies,
to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee…
(BCP, 336)
The promise of God to you today is this…
Jesus has offered himself – a full perfect sacrifice – so that you may be saved.
By his gift… his grace…
We can by faith receive the forgiveness of sins…
We can be justified by his righteousness…
We can live in freedom because of the perpetual priesthood of Jesus.
Trusting in his – once and for all – sacrifice …
We experience his love…
His true loving kindness towards us.
His love never fails…
It never ends…
It never goes away.
You see…
… our eternal salvation depends neither on our changeable feelings nor on our wavering experience.
All our confidence is in the God who will not go back on his word.
Christ is our priest for ever.[3]
A complete and holy sacrifice that never becomes thin.
A complete salvation is a never-ending one.[4]
I want to leave you with the words of St. Paul…
The last few verses of Romans 8.
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?
It is God who justifies.
Who then is the one who condemns? No one.
Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future,
nor any powers,
neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Trust in that promise today.
Hear the good news of Jesus.
Our salvation is secure in him.
Amen.
[1] N. T. Wright, Twelve Months of Sundays (New York: Morehouse, 2012), 247.
[2] Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews (Downers Grove: IVP, 1982), 137.
[3] Brown, 138.
[4] Arthur W. Pink, An Exposition of Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 416.
