God Speaks Through the Priesthood

This may sound like a strange topic. What did the Jewish priesthood of the day have to do with Jesus’ birth? Why do they matter to us?

Well, the priesthood matters to the story and to us in very interesting and meaningful ways.

The Christmas story found in Luke begins with a priest. And not just any priest.

This priest will be Jesus’ uncle.

John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin. And John the Baptist’s dad was Zechariah.

We meet Zechariah in the book of Luke, chapter 1. Verses 5-10 helps us understand the role of the priest a bit as well as Zechariah.

⁵ In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah; and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. ⁶ They were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and requirements of the Lord. ⁷ And yet they had no child, because Elizabeth was infertile, and they were both advanced in ^[j]years.

⁸ Now it happened that while he was performing his priestly service before God in the appointed order of his division, ⁹ according to the custom of the priestly office, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. ¹⁰ And the whole multitude of the people were in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. 

Before we get to what happens after this, let’s use this passage to help us answer a couple questions. Who were the priests? And what did they do?

Who were the priests?

First, priests worked at the temple in Jerusalem. There was a rotating system based on priestly divisions, 24 of them. Priests of each division worked for a whole week twice a year. Well, Zechariah’s division, the Abijah division, its week fell at the time of our story.

You see the name Aaron. Well, only Levites from the line of Aaron could be priests.

Here’s another variable. If you had some kind of physical scar, even a wound or scar, you were excluded. Physical defects precluded you.

The mandate of no physical defects was mirrored by a mandate of no behavioral or ritual defects. A priest was meant to be pure and perfect in some real sense.

What did priests do?

Well, priests served as mediators between God and the people, namely the Jewish people. The main form of mediation priests used were offerings. Priests receive people’s offering and present them to God in the temple.

We often think of offerings, their primary purpose anyway, as being for the atonement of sins. This was certainly a part of it. But the main purpose of offerings, their overarching goal, was to draw nearer to God.

Now, to draw nearer to God meant there wasn’t anything getting in the way to that closeness. What gets in the way is sin. So, some offerings people brought were meant to expiate, to atone for, to make up for people’s sin.

But there were other kinds of offerings. To express gratitude and praise to God or to express our inner devotion to God. Again, the overarching goal of offerings was to draw nearer to God. Like it is with human relationships, if you want to draw closer to a person, you express your gratitude for them to them, you show your devotion to them, you get rid of any barrier to a close relationship with them.  That’s what offerings were – to express gratitude, to show devotion, to atone for sins.

But you needed the priest to do these things. To be your mediator. You couldn’t do any of this on your own.

What about all the talk about incense in Luke 2? Well, incense was a part of the offering process. It was symbolic of drawing closer to God. Like the pleasant, perfumed smoke of the incense ascends to God, we please God by ascending toward him. Be like incense smoke!

People paid for the expensive ingredients needed to make the incense, priests made the incense, and other priests offered the incense in the Holy Place of the temple. To be the priest that offered the incense in the holy place was a really auspicious thing. Chosen by lots, the priest who drew the lot was considered highly blessed.

The Eastern Orthodox tradition believes it was so auspicious that only the high priest, offered incense in this way.

So Zechariah – he’s a highly auspicious priest, maybe even the high priest.

He is highly blessed and devout. Hence, he is chosen to be the parent of John the Baptist, the new prophet Elijah who will be the forerunner of Jesus, the one who will pave the way for Jesus, the Christ.

There’s long been a discussion about whether John the Baptist was a priest. Many believe, Catholics especially, he was. He certainly was qualified by birth to be. And he did priestly duties like baptizing sinners. And he pointed to the Messiah, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Zechariah paves the way for Jesus, too. Zechariah, a priest and representative of priests in the story, paves the way for Jesus, our High Priest

The one born on Christmas day will be our high priest. The book of Hebrews attests to this. Let me turn to Hebrews chapter 4:

¹⁴ Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,^[a] Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. ¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. ¹⁶ Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

What is a high priest?

Well, a high priest is a priest, from the priestly class, chosen to be the highest among them, leading and guiding not simply the priests below him but the people in general. Think the ancient Jewish equivalent of the Pope.

What did they do?

Well, outside of leading the priesthood and the Jewish people, he performed one sacred task that happened once a year at the Jerusalem Temple. On Yom Kippur, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies, the most sacred place in all the earth, the place where God is believed to reside. The high priest would enter with an offering to atone for the people’s sin for the year before. This set things right entering the new year. The slate was wiped clean as the new year began. Only the high priest presided over this pivotal event.

Jesus is our high priest, the final and lasting one. He as our high priest didn’t offer a lamb, he was the lamb who offered himself. He is how we draw closer to God!

Within himself, as our High Priest, he mediated between God and human, divinity and humanity.

As God, he comes to us!

As human, he shares in our weaknesses and human flaws.

Remember that requirement that a priest – chief priest, high priest - be without any kind of defect, even a physical defect?

That wasn’t Jesus! His wounds and scars could not be hidden. They would have been disqualifying defects to the religious authorities. But to God those Cross caused wounds and scars were the holy of holies. For those wounds and scars were our wounds and scars. They made him too defective to be a priest in the worlds and his own religion’s eyes. But those wounds and scars made him perfect for our reconciliation. The wounds and scars he bore for us didn’t disqualify him but made him imperfectly perfect, they made him our perfect high priest!

Christ as our high priest takes our wounds and scars as his own and being imperfectly perfect becomes our sacrifice and our atonement, allowing us to draw closer to God.

His wounds and scars are ours!

And through them we are healed!

Mediation has become a meeting, a meeting of Christ who is God incarnate. Meet Christ, meet God.

The question for us is the same question Pontius Pilate ask some 33 years later. What will you do with this Jesus?

Will you receive his healing?

Will you come and meet the babe in a manger?

Will you sing the truth Zechariah once sang about him:

In the tender compassion of our God,
the dawn from on high has broken and lights upon us,
shining on those who dwell in darkness and death’s shadow, 
guiding our feet in and along the way of peace.