March 4, 2010

Hebrews 7

I admit all the Melchizedek really confused me. And it kept being weird and inaccessible to me, so I went to wikipedia. Since I didn't have a priest handy at almost one in the morning.

The section was very, very short, but it covered this part of the Bible too. And, although it didn't quite go here because it's job is not to interpret the Bible, I realized that the point Paul of all people is probably trying to make here is that Priesthood and Religious Authority doesn't come exclusively from one ancestral line of a small tribe of people. The Levites are not the only source of divine authority on Earth.

It's a more complex formula now for priesthood and spiritual leadership, but it's an endorsement of the fact that God comes to us from everywhere at once now. I don't know, since I live in the post-Christ world, what it was like before, if God really came down in a single lightning bolt to one tribe of people and opened the doors to that tribe first. Perhaps you could always feel Him, because what is time to Him, and this was the door He was simply making for Himself before He could come. But now His light has exploded into the world.

The Easter metaphors are how we reach God more often now, His Spirit springing up all around us, popping out of the ground, or perhaps more appropriately (if even the most poetic of metaphors could ever wrap itself around such a thing) a Wind continually rushing about the world ruffling feathers and bringing a new breath of life and filling our lungs and becoming a part of the very oxygen in all the cells of our bodies, the very thing that makes us live.

Perhaps the lightning was more spectacular to watch, but compare the damage of the wind and the lightning do in a hurricane. I wonder if the Coming of the Holy Spirit felt like a tornado rampaging through that upstairs room. And if that sounds too negative, remember the double edged sword and how much like dying change (even for the better) can feel. How it's hard to remember that you don't have to empty your soul to fill it with God.

I mentioned several days ago, in one of the earliest posts I think, the Fallen World (thank you, Paul Menzer), but I don't think that's entirely accurate. It is a Fallen World, yes, we fell from grace and Eden. We fell from easy blessedness. But the Old Testament was the story of the Fallen World, and holding on to that is heartbreaking - although it's not a Jewish sin that does that (even if I clumsily made it sound like that) it's a thing we see all the time in Christians and atheists and all religions. Heartbreaking, because we live in a Redeemed World.

We live in a world where salvation isn't specific and restricted. We live in a world that isn't tryin desperately to keep from falling further, trying to get along at the same level rather than slipping, perhaps laboriously climbing slowly ever so slowly up. We are rising, flying, we have the chance to soar with the angels again.

How we must miss that, without knowing it sometimes. Wanting to plod along when you can soar is the most heartbreaking sin we can commit on ourselves. And that's probably overstepping myself here monumentally, but, well, these are only my personal reflections. My own faith I'm trying to share.

I'm trying to breathe out the Spirit I've breathed in. It doesn't decrease the Spirit dwelling like the oxygen molecules in all the cells of my body. It only goes away if you don't listen to it, or rather seems to.

God is everywhere. Even the places you thought He left. It's such a heartbreaking thing to forget.