Lent 5: Epistle, Hebrews 5:1-10                     

Hebrews 5:1-10

We use it as a figure of speech denoting when someone finds their niche or even “gets in the groove.” To “come into his or her own” means that the person in question has perhaps found in their life the thing they were made to be or do. Have you ever felt that? Have you ever had that sense of fulfillment?

Our Old Testament reading this week highlighted the prophet Jeremiah speaking about God’s “all along” plan to extend the covenant of salvation to all of Israel (North and South) and indeed all the world, including them in the covenant promises. Indeed, to make of all peoples a new Israel. But one needs a way to get them “into” the covenant. Into a place of receiving all that God has always promised His people: forgiveness, life and salvation.

The writer to the Hebrews is in the midst of making arguments to the blood-line of Abraham that this Jesus of whom he writes is the very fulfillment of all the promises from all of their words, written and spoken. And as God always had required sacrifice for His people to come before Him, the New Covenant would also require sacrifice. But not the blood of bulls and goats. And being in the blood-line of Abraham was not even sufficient. A new line of descent would be required. And it was a line that began with God Himself. All the way down from the top.

The writer of the epistle (more likely a sermon collection), highlights verses from oft-quoted psalms. And from 110 he records God’s statement about His Messiah, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:6). Jesus had come from heaven, taken on a human nature through His most precious mother, and now was being invested with a priesthood that could not be transferred, changed or entered into by anyone else. This was a place the Father had crafted just for His Son. A position of sacrifice, not ease. And a position of death for the lives of those most undeserving.

That is precisely where Jesus the Messiah finds His place. Shaped by the Father’s hand and heart, the sin-forgiving blood of Jesus His Son would guarantee the eternal life of all who would look on the Son and believe what He promised. Jesus, God made flesh, has come into His own.