October 20, 2024
Let’s let our minds wander a bit. Near the beginning of the Bible, Genesis tells the stories of a man who lived nearly four thousand years ago. He’s definitely one of the most important people who ever lived—the most important by some measures. His name was Abram and he was from what was at that time considered to be a big city. Like everybody else in that day and age, the people of that city worshiped a variety of gods.
But one day, for seemingly no reason at all, one of those gods—the One who turned out to be The God—called out to Abram and told him to move out into the wilderness, and eventually God would make something of Abram and his wife Sarai. Abram wasn’t particularly good, but he was always faithful, and God counted his faith as righteousness. God eventually changed Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. And because of Abraham, billions of people believe in the one true God.
There are many stories about Abraham in the book of Genesis. Some of them make perfect sense. Others do not. But one of the most mysterious happens in chapter fourteen. Here we read of kings with strange names going to war against each other. We read of giants. We read of pits of bitumen, swallowing up soldiers. We read of some kings who befriended Abraham, and some who made him their enemy.
And then, out of nowhere, appears the king of Salem—a city that’s mentioned nowhere else in Genesis. Tradition has it that Salem was an early name of Jerusalem, which seems logical. But archaeologists believe that Salem may have been an entirely different city way up in the north. But wherever it was located, the king of this city’s name was Melchizedek—a name that never mentioned before Genesis 14:18, and wasn’t mentioned again until centuries later in Psalm 110.
So the mists of history clear for one brief moment, and into the clearing steps the figure of Melchizedek, who’s not only the king of Salem, but also a priest of The Most High (El Elyon in Hebrew). He gives Abraham bread and wine, and he blesses him:
Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!
—Genesis 14:19-20
Abraham gives Melchizedek a tithe—a tenth of what he has. And then Melchizedek disappears, never to be seen again.
If you just read those couple of sentences and move on to the next part, you might not notice anything that happened there. And you might not care that nobody knows Melchizedek’s origins. And you might not follow up on what happened to him. But, of course, this is the Bible. People study it. People live with it. And people hang on its every word. And so every little fact about this mysterious combination king and priest of God became important to the ancient Hebrews, and later on, to Christians.
First of all, it’s noteworthy that we don’t know his origins. In the minds of many of the faithful, this became equated with Melchizedek not having any origins. And if he had no beginning, the fact that he was never mentioned again became equated with the fact that he had no end.
And the first place we see that Melchizedek was never forgotten is in the 110th Psalm. Now, this psalm is remarkable in and of itself. When you think about psalms that might be considered important in the New Testament, maybe you might consider the 119th Psalm, which is by far the longest one in the Bible. Or our favorite, the 23rd Psalm. I can think of many psalms that I might want to see quoted in the New Testament, but the one that is cited more than any other by early Christians is the 110th Psalm.
This psalm is considered a messianic psalm, and early Christians were able to find Jesus in it, despite occasional confusing and even violent language. And the verse that stands out today is Psalm 110:4, which was quoted in this morning’s scripture reading: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” Remember, Melchizedek wasn’t just a priest, but he was a king. And even though the Hebrew priesthood ran through Aaron’s bloodline, Melchizedek’s priesthood was seen as being of a higher order.
But it goes even further than that. The eternal nature of Melchizedek is our first clue. And then there are his gifts of bread and wine to Abraham. And finally, there’s the fact there was the giving of a tithe, not by Melchizedek to Abraham, but the other way round: Abraham—the faithful servant of God—offered Melchizedek ten percent of what he had.
When you put all these things together with the fact that the name Melchizedek means king of righteousness, and the fact that he was the king of Salem, meaning king of peace, then it makes sense that many devout Christians see in him a Christophany. This means that he was an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.
So you may not have heard of Melchizedek before, but he’s one of the most interesting characters in the Bible—maybe even the most interesting person in history who’s only ever mentioned one time. It’s even possible that when he stepped onto the stage of history in Genesis 14, it was actually an appearance of Christ, the Only Begotten, a priest forever, the King of Righteousness, the Prince of Peace, offering up bread and wine and receiving the tithes of the father of all the faithful.
Genesis may only hint at this, but this appears to be what later generations thought when they read of Melchizedek… later generations including the writer of Hebrews. But this same writer makes it clear that Christ didn’t hoard the honor of the royal priesthood that was Melchizedek’s. He considered obedience more important that inheritance. And if his offering was superior to all others, it was because he offered himself for the sake of others. In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him [Heb. 5:9].
This is our first lesson from this passage. No matter our heritage, faithfulness is more important than privilege. And if we’re unwilling to give of ourselves for the sake of others, neither our pedigree nor our silver tongues mean a thing.
Another important lesson has to do with our Bible reading. So often we rush through difficult or boring sections and want to skip to the good part. But sometimes the best part is hidden right before our eyes—this time in the person of an obscure king who hadn’t been mentioned before and never appeared again, but in whom some were able to see the Son of God.
Which brings me to the third lesson to be learned from Melchizedek. Despite his foreign-sounding, hard-to-pronounce name, despite the fact that he comes out of nowhere, is seen once, and never appears again, Christ was present in who he was and what he did. What might this tell us about the people we encounter in our own comings and goings?
That person we encounter for a moment on the street or in the store may not be Melchizedek. But they do carry the image of Christ and deserve the treatment we would give Christ. Our neighbor who has signs in their yard we disagree with is not God-in-the-flesh. But they were made God’s image and deserve our prayers.
If we were trying to read the complete Bible in a year, we might well yawn through Genesis 14 and might pay no mind to the 18th verse that mentions Melchizedek. And when we got to Psalm 110 and see Melchizedek mentioned again, we might not remember where it was we saw that name previously. But by the time we got to Hebrews 5, we’re probably going to wonder what the big deal is and go back and investigate Melchizedek more closely.
Just because we don’t recognize somebody’s purpose right off the bat, just because don’t immediately see the good in somebody, or realize that God loves them, too—that doesn’t mean they have no purpose, that there’s nothing good about them, or that they’re not deserving of love. In Melchizedek, people of faith see an early appearance of Christ. And in each of our neighbors, we should look for the image of Christ in which they—and we—were created.
—©2024 Sam Greening
