(Edited 3/31 minor changes)
My current temp position is working phones for the National Immunization Survey. While working there I have been preparing for a sermon I will preach this Sunday on Jesus as High Priest, and been reading John Meyendor's collection of essays The Byzantine Legacy in the Orthodoxy.
I am struggling with preaching on Jesus as High Priest not because I am having trouble comprehending what this means but what sort of significance it has for those I am preaching to and by extension to all the people I am working with. Add to that reading about the christological controversies from an Orhtodox perspective and it is a challenge not because these things are irrelavant but because we live in a world that is largely unaffected by such questions- especially in comparison to the Byzantine era I am reading about. On the surface level who Christ is appears the most distant thing from what I experience at work. Yet, (pietist warning) I also know that it is my relationship to Christ that orders my understanding of the world.
The challenge of the creeds and Hebrews for me right now is how to articulate my relationship to Christ that I know creates order out of what is often a chaotic and meaningless reality of day to day life. What does it mean at NIS and for all those working the phones that Jesus is our great High Priest and is God, and as both God and human suffered on the cross diead and rose again. I am not sure I know how to articulate such a thing beyond my experience. And so I struggle with my sermon on Sunday. Which is sort of Jesus is our Great High Priest, this is true but so what.still strugling with this sermon, 3/31
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