Melchizedek, King and Priest

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2000 by T.K. Thomas

The words "pagan" and "paganism" were actually Christian coinages, and they are loaded with the Christian brand of self-righteousness. "Pagani were civilians who had not enlisted through baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan. By its word for non-believers, Christian slang bore witness to the heavenly battle which coloured Christians' view of life."(8) But it hardly bore witness to Christian love. And it made it impossible for Christians to learn from pagans. For example, pagans, while they practised religious rites, did not have carefully formulated and jealously guarded creeds and confessions -- and therefore no heresies either. They could manage without inquisitions, excommunications and anathematizations. They did not encroach on God's freedom and usurp the right to punish.

If Melchizedek were to offer us bread and wine, many of us might not accept his hospitality. In our climate of religious intolerance on the one hand and religious indifference on the other, Melchizedek must have a message for us.

Second, Melchizedek is king and priest. In being eternally king and priest, he reinterprets kingship and priesthood.

That he radically redefines kingship is the thrust of Psalm 110, where the emphasis is on political power. The Christian appropriation of this Psalm involves the affirmation that

   Jesus subverted both the power of Roman legions and the authority of Jewish
   tradition when he announced the simple good news that God rules the world
   ... This radical good news allowed tax-collectors, sinners, lepers,
   prostitutes, children, women and men to sit down and eat at the same table
   in the realm of God. Thus Psalm 110 is not mere artifact of ancient
   political propaganda. Rather, in relation to Jesus Messiah, it is a
   world-transforming challenge to every form of politics and power that does
   not begin with submission of the self to God's claim. Jesus, Messiah and
   Priest ... guarantees all people access to God.(9)

Kings and queens have by and large disappeared. Those who linger on as remnants of old dynasties have become politically emaciated. But rulers, from military dictators to elected presidents and prime ministers, and the cabinets and coteries they preside over, are very much with us -- and generally over us. They have not become priests.

Not only have our rulers not become priests; our priests have all too readily become rulers. The church hierarchy is often no less power-hungry than the political hierarchy. That is the case with most religious hierarchies -- Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist and others. Religious leaders have often appropriated for themselves the appurtenances of royalty and wielded political power. The royal Psalm which celebrates the primordial priesthood of Melchizedek challenges the pretensions of all rulers, political and religious, which distance and separate them from people.

Finally, Melchizedek, while he is. priest from eternity to eternity, is just priest. There is no mention of his religious, much less denominational affiliation. Ordination services sometimes refer to the order of Melchizedek, but we do not know whether he himself has a preference for the Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant persuasion. He has been called "the High Priest of the Cosmic Religion".(10) How I wish I could somehow present him as an Indian sage, a Hindu purohit of the old days -- before the ideology of Hindutva politicized the religion, undermining its character and genius known as sanatana dharma, eternal righteousness and universal peace! Today the Hindu priest is as much an agent of communal intolerance and social inequality as any other convert to religious fundamentalism.