Some time ago, I began blogging on our Sunday sermons to help myself review; today, I’m continuing that by covering our May 31 sermon, based on Hebrews 7:1-10. This was the second in a series of several on this passage, and this week’s main focus was 7:1:

This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him…

As before, I won’t summarize the sermon, since you can stream it if you want to hear yourself, but will focus on what I take away from it.

While I’m not summarizing the main points, I’ll note that Pastor Peter began by talking about how sickening and horrible racism is, and relating a number of instances where he’s experienced it. Then he broadened a bit to discussing prejudice. Racism, he argued, is universal and at its core is about prejudice – and all of us have prejudices in one way or another. We have certain thoughts about what it means to be of a particular race, or to be short, or to be from a particular place. Often, these end up helping us place ourselves above others, because at the core of our fallen human natures is wanting to have glory.

Prejudice manifests broadly and it can be racism whenever it’s directed at a race – even to say, “White people are racist” exemplifies its own kind of racism. But it’s far broader than that; we have all kinds of prejudices. If we have a bad experience at a church, we often generalize to say that the church is a bad church.

When we’re frustrated or angry about something, we tend to overgeneralize and throw verbal bombs. Our spouse doesn’t help with the dishes, and instead of asking, “Do you think you could give me a hand with the dishes?” it turns in to “Why do you never help with the dishes?” And the same happens in many other areas.

Pastor Peter connected this back to the gospel – at the root of racism, and prejudice, is our sin. Yes, we don’t want the specific things that happened to George Floyd to happen again, and we want to fight racism – but ultimately, changing the law, police reform, or whatever else will not change people’s hearts. And sin comes from the heart, so this makes the proclamation of the gospel even more important.

At length, we connected back to the main text in Hebrews. The Hebrews had been drifting, or in danger of it, and much of Hebrews is about reminding them that Christ and Christ alone is the refuge and the only one who can change hearts – and this is a crucial message for our time too. We are helpless without Christ.

Melchizedek – pointing to Christ – was a king-priest. And Christ was the same. This is especially important, because it is uniquely his role both to carry out justice as king, but also to reconcile us to God as priest. Normally no human can serve both roles – it would be like if you went to court accused of a crime and found out that your defense attorney was also the district attorney prosecuting you. But Jesus unites those two roles in a single person – bringing justice and punishing sin, but also bringing peace and grace and forgiveness. So given that we have this great king-priest, let us cling to him and NOT drift.

My main take-away from this was the timely reminder that, while current events and what happened to George Floyd are terrible, Christ is the great solution our time needs – and the solution I need for my own sins.