Text: Hebrews 9:11-22
We’ve been well-conditioned to look down on the idea of an intermediary. Having someone stand in your place is reminiscent of having to have a parent sign a permission slip or when you’re older to have a power of attorney sign your checks. No, for us, the ideal is to be able to speak for ourselves and represent ourselves unless absolutely necessary. You’ve probably also heard the quip against Roman Catholic teaching that says, I don’t need a priest or pope. I can go straight to God!
Without stopping to discuss the validity of Roman teaching, can you or I really go straight to God?
Isaiah would warn us otherwise, because when he found himself in God’s immediate presence, he cried out in fear (Isaiah 6). Moses’ experience was that even he had to hide in the cleft of the rock, because the Lord Himself said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)
An intermediary, a representative is required…not just another better person like clergy or an exalted saint. Our sinfulness is such that we need more. The Lord said clearly, “The soul who sins shall die” but He also said, “I desire not the death of the wicked, but that he turn from his evil ways and live.” (Ezekiel 18:4, 23) Truth be told, a sacrifice must be made, a blood price for the sinners and his sins.
And we know who this intermediary and sacrifice is: Jesus Christ. We are able to go to God without a human priest involved, but not without “Christ the high priest of the good things to come”! And as for the price that must be paid, a hymnwriter contemplates this in ‘Thy works, not mine, O Christ,’ and concludes, “Ten thousand deaths like mine / Would have been all too few.” (LSB 565, st. 4)
What He goes in our place is to establish is a covenant. (what is a covenant?)
15Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
An agreement between two or more parties outlining mutual rights and responsibilities… An integral part of a covenant was the ritual slaughtering of an animal and the pronouncement of the formula: “Just as this [beast] is cut up, so may [X] be cut up.” Most likely the parties making the covenant thereby declared that whoever might break the agreement would likewise be killed.
This is the new covenant that replaced the old, which the people had broken time and again. And as they had broken it, so they deserved to be killed. But in this new covenant, Christ put his own life as the guarantee. Sinful humans are still the ones who would break the covenant, but in this new covenant, Christ is the one who dies to inaugurate it. He Himself is for us the intermediary.
The sign of this new covenant is what He has given in His Supper. Yes, many covenants are established over a meal, but the Eucharist is wholly unique, because He says: “Take; eat. This is My Body which is given for you. Take; drink. This is My Blood which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
Yet, for centuries, we’ve been fighting the battle with those who say it’s impossible that Christ can be present in this meal. This fight has left us with the false impression that a right participation is to assent to spiritual facts. Do you believe that Christ is bodily present in the Bread and Wine on the altar? You do? Ok, good!
But this gravely misses the larger reality of what this “new covenant in My blood” really is in the first place.
Firstly, do you acknowledge the Christ established this new covenant by establishing it with His own death? That is the central teaching of the Gospel, and one which all Christians are right to confess.
But this meal is more than confessing who Jesus Christ is and what He has done broadly. What is it that He gives in this particular holy meal? He gives it for us Christians to eat and to drink, confident that He is giving to us—the people with whom He has established this covenant—the promised benefits: forgiveness of our sins, union with our God and with His Church.
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