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Meet Father KempThe Sunday After Ascension – 16 May 2010[1]
In the introduction to his little book, The Gospel in Brief, Leo Tolstoy said this, “When fifty years old, having questioned myself, and having questioned the reputed philosophers whom I know, as to what I am, and as to the purport of my life, and after getting the reply that I was a fortuitous concatenation of atoms, and that my life was void of purport, and that life itself is evil, I became desperate, and wished to put an end to my life. But after recalling to myself how formerly, in childhood, while I still had religious faith, life possessed meaning for me; …I was brought into doubt as to the justness of the reply given to me by the wisdom of men of my own station, and I tried once more to understand what answer it is that Christianity gives to those men who live a life with meaning.”[2] Are not these words from Tolstoy brilliant. Of all the places to look for meaning in life, Christianity provides solace to the desperate heart, because Christianity proclaims the person of Jesus. In all of his brilliance, however, Tolstoy made a dreadful mistake. Tolstoy sought and found a Jesus of his own making, a Jesus divorced from history, a Jesus’ whose actions meant nothing, a Jesus who resembled a Sophist, a professional travelling Greek philosopher spouting off applicable and true statements. Listen to Tolstoy’s own words, “[A]ll passages are omitted which treat of the following matters, namely, – …Christ’s birth, and his genealogy; his mother’s flight with him into Egypt; his miracles at Cana and Capernaum; the casting out of devils; the walking on the sea; the cursing of the fig-tree; the healing of sick, and the raising of dead people; the resurrection of Christ himself [Tolstoy also omitted Jesus’ ascension], and finally, the reference to prophecies fulfilled in His life. These passages are omitted in this abridgment, because containing nothing of the teaching, and describing only events which passed before, during, or after the period in which Jesus taught, they complicate the exposition. However, one takes them under any circumstance, they bring to the teaching of Jesus neither contradiction nor confirmation of its truth.”[3] If Tolstoy is right to suggest that all the things Jesus did – his birth, his miracles, his healings, his resurrection and his ascension – do not matter one bit, do not influence and affect Jesus’ teaching and hence does not give our lives any purport and meaning, then Tolstoy is correct to end his gospel with the crucifixion of Jesus, because if Jesus’ actions do not matter then all we have left is a dead Christ. The acts and events in Jesus’ life matter and there is one specific event that has unfathomable ramifications in our present life: Jesus Ascension. To understand the importance of this event, it is necessary to look at two events in the Old Testament: God’s blessing of Abraham which God ratified by oath and Abraham’s tithe to a mysterious man named Melchizedek.
When God made his promise to Abraham: ‘I vow that I will bless you abundantly and multiply your descents,’ he swore by himself, because he had no one greater to swear by. God, desiring to show even more clearly to the hearers of his promise how unchanging was his purpose, guaranteed it by oath, which was a confirmation to end all dispute. Here, then are two irrevocable acts (God’s promise and God’s oath) in which God could not possibly take back. God did this to give powerful encouragement to us, who have claimed his protection by grasping the hope set before us. That hope we hold. It is like an anchor for our lives, an anchor safe and sure. It enters in through the veil when Jesus ascended into heaven and entered on our behalf as forerunner, having become a high priest for ever in the succession of Melchizedek.
This Melchizedek, the king of Salem, priest of God Most High, met Abraham returning from the rout of the kings and blessed him; and Abraham gave him a tithe of everything as his portion. His name, in the first place means, ‘king of righteousness’; next he is king of Salem, that is, ‘king of peace’. He has no father, no mother, no lineage; his years have no beginning, his life no end. He is like the Son of God: he remains a priest for all time because he owes his priesthood not to a system of earth-bound rules but to the power of a life that cannot be destroyed. For here is the testimony: ‘Thou art a priest forever, in the succession of Melchizedek.’ The earlier rules overseeing the priests of the Law are cancelled as impotent and useless, since the Law brought nothing to perfection; and a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.
How great a difference it makes that an oath was sworn! There was no oath sworn when those others were made priests; but for this priest an oath was sworn, as Scripture says of him: “The Lord has sworn and will not go back on his work,’ Thou are a priest for ever.’” Those other priests are appointed in numerous succession, because they are prevented by death from continuing in office; but the priesthood which Jesus holds is perpetual, because he remains alive for ever. That is why he is also able to save absolutely those who approach God through him because he is always living to plead on their behalf.
Such a priest does indeed fit our condition – He was devout, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, raised high above the heavens. He has no need to offer sacrifices daily, as the high priests did, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; for this Christ did once and for all when he offered up himself. The high priests made by the Law are men in all their frailty; but the priest appointed by the words of the oath, which supersedes the Law, is the Son, made perfect now and for ever.
Now this is my main point: just such a high priest we have, Jesus, and he has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the heavens, and who now serves in the real sanctuary, the tent pitched by the Lord and not by man. Every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; hence, this one too must have something to offer. Under the arrangement of the First Covenant, the priest entered the first tent or the outer room to carry on their ministry, but the second tent that is the inner room or Holy of Holies was entered only once a year and by the high priest alone, and even then he must take with him the blood which he offers on his own behalf and for the people’s sins of ignorance. By this, the Holy Spirit signified that so long as the earlier tent stood, the way into the sanctuary remained unrevealed. These symbols point to the present time. The offerings and sacrifices prescribed by the Law cannot give the worshipper inward perfection. It is only a matter of food and drink and various rites of cleansing – external regulations applying until the time of a new order.
But now Christ has come, high priest of good things that are already here. The tent of his priesthood is a greater and more perfect one, not made by men’s hands, that is not belonging to this created world; the blood of his sacrifice [the gift he was appointed to offer] is his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves; and thus he has entered the sanctuary once and for all and secured an eternal deliverance…for Christ has entered, not that sanctuary made my men’s hands which is only a symbol of the reality, but heaven itself, to appear now before God on our behalf. Nor is he there to offer himself again and again. If that were so, he would have had to suffer many times since the world was made. But as it is, he has appeared once and for all at the climax of history to abolish sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is the lot of men to die once, and after death comes judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the burden of men’s sins, and will appear a second time, sin done away, to bring salvation to those who are watching for him. …Therefore, since we have a great high priest who as ascended into the heavens, Jesus Christ, we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by his blood, by a new and living way opened for us through his body. We have, moreover, a great priest set over the house of God, a priest who was tempted in every manner that we are and did not succumb, a priest who knows our trials and struggles and yet did not despair, so let us make our approach to God in sincerity of heart and full assurance of faith, our guilty hearts sprinkled clean, our bodies washed with pure water. Let us be firm and unswerving in the confession of our hope, for the Giver of the promise may be trusted and he has guaranteed his promise by calling His Son to his side in order that he may sit on an eternal throne until all his enemies are made his footstool and all this was done on our behalf.
[1] The biblically literate reader will immediately notice that this sermon is taken almost word for word from sixth through the tenth chapters of The Epistle to the Hebrews. My intent was not to plagiarize the Scripture nor to make my life easier (indeed it took almost as long to write this as to write a standard sermon). My intent was to present the Scriptures in a different way. Furthermore, as I was preparing for this sermon, my thoughts were following similar patterns and lines as the Epistle to the Hebrews. Thus, it behooved me to quote Scripture rather than my own thoughts. The biblically literate reader will also notice that I have selected some portions of the above mentioned chapters but not all. The sole reason for these selections was to craft a sermon that fits the time and hears of modern listeners. If I have altered or changed the meaning of Hebrews in anyway I am well aware to the words of John at the end of Revelations!
[2] Leo Tolstoy, The Gospel in Brief, ed. with preface by F.A. Flowers III, University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, 1997, pg 22.
[3] Ibid, pg 19,20.
