Our Great High Priest
PASSION SUNDAY
I want to welcome you all on this 5th Sunday in Lent, known as Passion Sunday, which marks the beginning of what is called Passiontide. The passion of our Lord, his suffering, agony, and sacrificial death. Here just two weeks away from Good Friday, we are turned towards the impending sufferings of Christ: the agony of Gethsemane and the brutality of Golgotha and his precious death as understood through the priestly ministry of Jesus Christ.
In today's Gospel, we read of the Jews rejecting their Christ which is a foreshadowing of the passion of our Lord. Our Lord declaring his divinity amid the growing cries of blasphemy and the increasing threats against his life. They simply could not see that God in Christ was reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cr 5:19). A greater and more perfect tabernacle had come; One far greater than Abraham was now in their midst, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was I AM:" the eternal Son of God made flesh.
St. Matthew records that instead of throwing themselves at before the feet of Christ, "... they took up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple." For you see, His time of suffering had not yet come. The hour in which he would render His priestly ministry upon Golgotha's Cross was not yet. Think on the Cross for just a moment, its mystery and the unfathomable depth of its meaning where the entirety of history converges in the demands of God's perfect justice and His incomprehensible love, at the Cross, "righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Ps 85:10).
Two seeming contradictions and ideas at odds are reconciled in unity and perfect concord: righteousness and peace kiss each other. In the crucified Christ, humility and exaltation co-exist, as do shame and honor; as do the death of the flesh and everlasting life in the Spirit. In the Cross, Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. His sacrificial death is the end of his priestly ministry on earth and the inauguration of his high priestly office in the eternal tabernacle,
From the writer of Hebrews comes the great vision of the ascended and glorified Lord "But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us."
In today's Epistle, St. Paul roots this redemption (our salvation) in both the historical and present priestly ministry of Christ. Paul writes that Christ became a high priest not "by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood." You see, the eternal Son entered into history, condescended himself, and became man so that by his once-for-all sacrificial- offering of his own blood- He would accomplish that which the former priesthood with its sacrifices could not: redemption and eternal life for God's people.
The old priests were men, having sin and infirmity; Christ is the Son of God, holy, perfect, and higher than the heavens. They had to sacrifice first for their own sins; Christ had no sins of his own for which to sacrifice. They offered animals; Christ offered up himself, both priest and sacrifice. This unblemished and perfect offering nailed to the wood of the Cross is the very sacrifice by which you have been redeemed from sin and death. Our high priest gave himself as a ransom and satisfaction, paying that which you could not. In the Psalmist's words, Christ "restored that which he did not steal" (Ps 69:4).
The priestly office of Christ did not cease with his sacrificial death on the Cross but is continued in heaven, for Christ "is the mediator of the new testament" who no longer atones for our sins but intercedes for us. "If any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins…" He not only met the demands of our past sins but presently when we fall into sin, continually pleading for mercy and grace. When our adversary, the Devil, tries to accuse us before God, Christ intercedes for those who, by faith, trust in the mediatorial work of Jesus, the great high priest.
Beloved, know that despite our sins and weaknesses, Christ pleads for us, shielding us with the merits of His redemption. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that has risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us" (Rom 8:32-33). By his blood, Christ has made communion with God possible. And by his blood remains our great high priest who mediates the mercies of God in the heavenly tabernacle until he comes again.
You will have noticed the veiled Cross here on the altar, which may seem counterintuitive on Passion Sunday, as the passion of our Lord and the Cross are indissolubly connected. But mother church in her wisdom directs our devotion to the Cross of Christ, not so much as an emblem of victory to be unveiled at the Easter Vigil, but as an instrument of humiliation and suffering, the humiliation to which our Savior subjected Himself, of hiding Himself when the Jews threatened to stone Him, and the suffering he obediently and willfully incurs between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The Veiled Cross is a corrective to our present-day culture of celebration, rooting Easter's festivities in the reality of suffering and death.
For in the wisdom of God, death precedes eternal life. "The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal" (Jn 12)
What the blood of goats and calves could not win, Christ won by the oblation of his body and blood. By his death, we, by faith, have eternal life and the promise of an eternal inheritance. So, prepare yourself to enter into the holy of holies and be fed by the great high priest and bishop of your soul, as a foretaste of the heavenly banquet that awaits all faithful people who love our Lord Jesus Christ. Come, feed on Christ who says, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eats of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51). Amen+
