No Mediation Needed

The Jerusalem temple was segmented into three spaces. There was the: 

Porch:  Also known as the vestibule. This is where sacrifices and the preparation of those sacrifices took place. There, people would give their sacrifices to the priests who prepared them as burnt offerings to present to God inside the temple. We might imagine the porch as our narthex, but one where sacred BBQ’s took place!

Holy Place/Sanctuary: This is the main room for religious ritual where priests, and only priest, presented to God their own prayers and sacrifices and the people’s prayers and sacrifices given to them in the narthex. Priests, and only priests, interceded for the people here with prayers, burnt offerings and did so twice a day.

Holy of Holies: This is the most sacred space. This space is where God abides. Only the high priest can enter this holiest of spaces and only on one day. The high priest on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, enters the holy holies and presents burnt offerings for atonement’s sake - his own atonement and the people’s.

 

Those two spaces – the holy place and the holy of holies – served as a physical reminder of human being’s disconnect from God. There is space between humans and God. Humans, even God’s chosen people, needed mediation to bridge that space.

Mediation came in the form of the priest sand high priest.

But along comes Jesus.

Our reading from Mark 10 describes one tremendously important part of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus, the healer.

Those needing healing – they represent the human predicament. Something is amiss. Something is broken. With Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, it is obvious. He cannot see. His sight is amiss. As a child might say, his eyes are broken. And because of this, he can’t make a living and thus must beg to survive.

In Jesus’ day, Bartimaeus would have been urged to secure, as in buy, an animal for sacrifice, bring it to a priest, who’d sacrifice, prepare, and bring the burnt offering on his behalf into the holy place. If God was pleased with the offering, so the idea went, then Bartimaeus would receive his sight.

If a sacrifice wasn’t possible, getting a priest to intercede for you and offer prayers in the Holy Place was a good option as well.

The priest would mediate between the person’s brokenness and his plea for wholeness.

What does Jesus do? Jesus removes the middleman, the need for a priest to mediate. Jesus is the source of wholeness, and Bartimaeus can approach him directly.

Instead of God passively receiving an offering in the holy place, Jesus is the holy place of God in the flesh! Jesus is the holy place. And Bartimaeus, approaching Jesus, stands unmediated in the holy place that is Jesus’ presence. His aura envelops Bartimaeus in holiness! Healing is the natural consequence.

In Jesus, the holy place comes to us, healing us and making us well!

Our reading from Hebrews points to a larger issue. In those days, sickness was connected to the human reality of sin. In some sense, when it comes to connection with God, humans are by nature amiss. We are disconnected from the God of connection, and so we suffer spiritually, psychologically, and even physically. That was certainly the belief system in Jesus’ day.

Yom Kippur, the one day of atonement, reset things and helped in this regard. But this required the high priest to mediate between the people and atonement. The high priest had to take the people’s burnt offering into the Holy of Holies, the Holiest Place, and place it before God.

Actual sacrifice also mediated between God and humanity. Burnt offerings, which amounted to animal sacrifice, mediated humanity’s relationship with God, too. Without the burnt offerings given to God on Yom Kippur, the people would be continually lost in the wilderness of disconnection from God.

One single day served as a mediator too. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is vital for a year of redemption. So much was put into that one day. People’s well-being in the months to come depended upon that mediator of a day.

Lastly, the Holy Temple mediated. Without the temple on Yom Kippur, the people faced a predicament.

But what would happen if the high priest died just minutes before Yom Kippur? What would happen if a blameless burnt offering couldn’t be secured? What if Yom Kippur one year saw a devastating natural disaster? What if the Temple was destroyed?

The people would be in limbo, left in the vacuum, and have to wait.

Everything was temporary and dependent on temporary things – a human high priest, a blameless animal, the practice of sacrifice and burnt offering, one day a year without bad weather. People’s connection to God depended on what was passing and this-worldly.

 

What the book of Hebrews is saying is that Jesus is our high priest and the sacrifice the high priest offered all rolled into one. Jesus in himself, directly atones for our sin, makes right what is amiss in us, and reconnects us to God. 

There’s no longer the need for a mortal high priest. There’s no longer a need for animal sacrifice or burnt offerings. These temporary things have been fulfilled in Christ who is eternal. Jesus is both high priest and sacrifice making us whole.

Not only that, but Jesus is also himself the holy of holies and the holiest place rolled into one! Jesus on the cross tore away the curtain separating us and God by becoming the holiest place to us. The holy place and the holy of holies live with us. He walks with us and talks with us, and tells us we’re not alone.

We have a sign out front that read “be the church.” The idea is that by being Christlike in our everyday lives, we bring church to people, instead of waiting for people to come to us. 

Well, Christ was the Temple. He was the holy place and the holy of holies in human form and brought the temple to people right where they were. He was God in the flesh after all. Being God, he brought God to people right where they were.

With Christ bringing God right to us, we don’t need mediation. With Christ right before us, we are able to connect directly with God through Christ.

What’s the takeaway for us?

Well, it comes by way of John 14. Jesus is talking with his disciples and says this,

I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.

God was in Christ, and Christ is within us as Christians. The temple that Christ is, the temple that Christ is and brought to people where they were, that temple is in us! We are the holy temple, too!

Paul in I Corinthians 6 confirms this. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, Paul writes. Your body is the temple of the Spirit of Christ!

When we are lovingly present with and to others right where they are, we bring Christ the holy temple in human form with us and into the connections we make.

When you are with someone, really with them, focused on them, undistracted and fullu present, the holy temple of Christ is present and God is real in your midst!

So the takeaway is not about doing anything. The takeaway is about being who you are. Be the church to one another! In these trying, stressful, fearful times, be the church to one another!