Let’s talk about Melchizedek.
We don’t talk about Melchizedek very often,
partly because Scripture
doesn’t talk about him very often.
In fact, today’s brief first reading
tells pretty much the whole story of Melchizedek.
He, the King of Salem,
appears in the story of Abraham out of nowhere
with an offering of bread and wine,
and blesses Abraham,
who then offers him a tenth
of the loot he has just won in battle.
Having received his tithe,
Melchizedek then vanishes from the story.
He comes up again in the New Testament,
in the Letter to the Hebrews,
where he is seen as a prefiguration
of Christ’s royal priesthood,
a priesthood far surpassing
the priesthood of the old covenant.
but, again, he remains a shadowy figure;
as Hebrews puts it:
“Without father, mother, or ancestry,
without beginning of days or end of life” (7:2).
partly because Scripture
doesn’t talk about him very often.
In fact, today’s brief first reading
tells pretty much the whole story of Melchizedek.
He, the King of Salem,
appears in the story of Abraham out of nowhere
with an offering of bread and wine,
and blesses Abraham,
who then offers him a tenth
of the loot he has just won in battle.
Having received his tithe,
Melchizedek then vanishes from the story.
He comes up again in the New Testament,
in the Letter to the Hebrews,
where he is seen as a prefiguration
of Christ’s royal priesthood,
a priesthood far surpassing
the priesthood of the old covenant.
but, again, he remains a shadowy figure;
as Hebrews puts it:
“Without father, mother, or ancestry,
without beginning of days or end of life” (7:2).
So why do we hear about Melchizedek
on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ?
Well, he makes an offering of bread and wine,
prefiguring the Eucharist
even as he himself prefigures Christ.
But Melchizedek not only
points us toward the Eucharist,
he also tells us something important
about the Eucharist and our sharing in it.
on this feast of the Body and Blood of Christ?
Well, he makes an offering of bread and wine,
prefiguring the Eucharist
even as he himself prefigures Christ.
But Melchizedek not only
points us toward the Eucharist,
he also tells us something important
about the Eucharist and our sharing in it.
The letter to the Hebrews explains
that the name Melchizedek
means king of justice (in Hebrew tsedek)
and the title of King of Salem
means king of peace (in Hebrew shalem).
Commenting on this passage from Hebrews,
St. Thomas Aquinas says,
“It is good that he unites justice and peace,
since nothing makes for peace
that does not preserve justice” (In Heb. §332).
Or, as Pope Saint Paul VI put it back in 1972,
“If you want peace, work for justice.”
that the name Melchizedek
means king of justice (in Hebrew tsedek)
and the title of King of Salem
means king of peace (in Hebrew shalem).
Commenting on this passage from Hebrews,
St. Thomas Aquinas says,
“It is good that he unites justice and peace,
since nothing makes for peace
that does not preserve justice” (In Heb. §332).
Or, as Pope Saint Paul VI put it back in 1972,
“If you want peace, work for justice.”
A peace not founded on justice
is not a true peace;
it is merely the suppression
of obvious forms of violence
by less-obvious forms of violence,
as a quick glance at both human history
and the world of today will tell us.
The world is filled with those
whose offers of false peace
ring in our ears,
who say, “give me power
and I will give you peace.”
But peace as the world gives it
is all too often a matter of one group
dominating another,
whether through force of arms
or economic exploitation.
Peace as the world gives it
is the peace brought by
the boot that tramps in battle,
and the cloak rolled in blood,
the peace of the gallows and the ghetto,
the peace of walls and of razor wire.
is not a true peace;
it is merely the suppression
of obvious forms of violence
by less-obvious forms of violence,
as a quick glance at both human history
and the world of today will tell us.
The world is filled with those
whose offers of false peace
ring in our ears,
who say, “give me power
and I will give you peace.”
But peace as the world gives it
is all too often a matter of one group
dominating another,
whether through force of arms
or economic exploitation.
Peace as the world gives it
is the peace brought by
the boot that tramps in battle,
and the cloak rolled in blood,
the peace of the gallows and the ghetto,
the peace of walls and of razor wire.
But Melchizedek—
king of justice and king of peace—
points us toward Christ,
whose priestly kingdom is one
of eternal peace built on justice:
a justice that is exercised not
in repression and domination
but in mercy and reconciliation,
a justice that believes not
that we must grab for ourselves
the scarce resources of the world,
but that five loaves and two fish,
blessed and broken in the hands of Christ,
could feed a multitude.
Now you might say that the evidence
tends to favor the kind of peace the world gives
more than the peace of Christ’s kingdom.
You might say that talk of mercy and abundance
is all very nice and everything,
but the real world is about hard choices,
about ceaselessly holding out enemies at bay,
about guaranteeing our own peace and security
by any means necessary.
You might say this.
Many people do say this.
The devil on your shoulder says this.
But Jesus says something different.
On the night before he died,
a night poised on the edge
of the most unjust act
in the history of the cosmos—
the judicial murder of God incarnate—
Christ did not decide that the time had come
to get tough with his enemies;
he did not decide that that he had to do
whatever was necessary to secure his own safety;
he did not decide to start acting
as if God’s goodness were not abundantly present,
as if God’s mercy were not the true way of justice.
No, amid the world’s injustice and violence
he held fast to his ministry
as the true and eternal king of justice and peace,
by giving himself away for the life of the world,
bringing forth the bread and wine of blessing
to feed us with the food of undying life.
And as often as we eat the bread
offered by the king of justice
and drink of the cup
offered of the king of peace
we proclaim the reality of the kingdom
that springs from his death and resurrection,
appearing seemingly from nowhere,
like the figure of Melchizedek himself.
In this feast we taste
the truth of mercy and abundance
even amid violence and greed,
and we take him into ourselves.
We commit ourselves to his path,
joining our lives to his
so that we too might become
an offering to God for the life of the world.
On the night before he died,
a night poised on the edge
of the most unjust act
in the history of the cosmos—
the judicial murder of God incarnate—
Christ did not decide that the time had come
to get tough with his enemies;
he did not decide that that he had to do
whatever was necessary to secure his own safety;
he did not decide to start acting
as if God’s goodness were not abundantly present,
as if God’s mercy were not the true way of justice.
No, amid the world’s injustice and violence
he held fast to his ministry
as the true and eternal king of justice and peace,
by giving himself away for the life of the world,
bringing forth the bread and wine of blessing
to feed us with the food of undying life.
And as often as we eat the bread
offered by the king of justice
and drink of the cup
offered of the king of peace
we proclaim the reality of the kingdom
that springs from his death and resurrection,
appearing seemingly from nowhere,
like the figure of Melchizedek himself.
In this feast we taste
the truth of mercy and abundance
even amid violence and greed,
and we take him into ourselves.
We commit ourselves to his path,
joining our lives to his
so that we too might become
an offering to God for the life of the world.
The world is filled with evidence
of the need to grab what we can,
of the demand to do whatever is necessary
to gain our own security and prosperity,
of the wisdom of sacrificing justice for others
for the sake of peace for ourselves.
But Jesus points us toward
a different sort of evidence,
what the Letter to the Hebrews calls
the evidence of things not seen.
We say we believe that bread and wine
become the body and blood of Christ,
no matter what our seeing or smelling
or touching tells us;
can we not also believe
that the deepest truth of the world
is mercy and abundance,
even as we live surrounded by evidence
of violence and greed?
We say we believe that Christ’s body broken
and his blood poured out for the life of the world
are truly here under sacramental signs;
can we not also believe
that his kingdom of justice and peace
is present even now as we partake of his feast?
We say we believe.
So let us pray that Christ
would make us true members of his body,
true servants of the king of justice and peace.
Let us pray that he would bless us
in the name of God most high,
and that God in his mercy
would have mercy on us all.
