This Sunday Message was originally delivered at Weasley Chapel United Methodist Church on July 7, 2024. Below the live video is the sermon text I preached from, if you would like to follow along. Biblical texts for reference: Genesis 14:1-24; 2 Samuel 5:1-10; Hebrews 7:1-19; Revelation 21-22 Read online with https://www.biblegateway.com – a fantastic resource.
Once upon a time, Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was kidnapped.
Lot was already living in Sodom at the time. And yes, that Sodom, of Sodom and Gomorrah infamy…
But this happened before all that. Years before the infamous tale of fire and brimstone, the King of Sodom had joined forces with a coalition of kings against another coalition of kings. They had all gone to war. And in the crossfire, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are raided and Lot ends up kidnapped—along with pretty much everyone left in the cities… Because that’s what happens when your army is forced to retreat into the hills, leaving your city defenseless…
But someone escapes, and he runs not to the king, but to this wandering nomad named Abram—later Abraham. Father Abraham, who does not yet have many sons. In fact, his only living relative at this time, aside from his wife, is Lot, and Lot’s family. So when he hears that Lot has been kidnapped, he gathers what is essentially a private army—fighting men born in his household, is what the text calls them. And he goes after Lot—and consequently, everyone else who was taken from Sodom.
And he wins.
Against this coalition of kings who had just forced the other coalition of kings to retreat, Abram the wandering nomad wins, rescues everyone who was captured, and recovers everything that was stolen from Sodom and Gomorrah…
I think that we have done ourselves a disservice in forgetting this part of the Sodom and Gomorrah story. Because that story, the infamous fire and brimstone and judgment, does not begin with God’s judgment in chapter 18. The story begins here, in Genesis Chapter 14, with a rescue.
The story begins with two kings leaving their own cities defenseless, and then Abraham, the man chosen by God, coming to their rescue. The beginning of the story here sets the tone for how it all ends, what the problem actually was—pride, and the reliance on wealth, both things we see in this first Sodom and Gomorrah story.
I think we’ve done ourselves a disservice by forgetting that Abraham—and by extension God—first saves Sodom and Gomorrah, long before the fire and brimstone.
And we’ve certainly done Abraham a disservice here, because the most important part of this story, the end, which we read among our scripture readings today—When the King of Sodom offers to pay Abraham for what he has done, Abraham refuses. And he doesn’t refuse out of politeness, or because he’s “just happy my nephew’s safe” or anything like that. Abraham refuses the wealth of Sodom because he refuses to let Sodom have any claim on him.
This is significant because Abraham does accept the wealth, gifts, payments, etc., from other kings. He is already wealthy because of gifts from other kings—including the king of Egypt, even. His refusal here is specific to Sodom, because there is something about Sodom’s wealth, already here at the beginning of the story, that is tainted. And this is, of course, the great contrast between Abraham and Lot, why Lot ends his days as a refugee hiding up in the hills, while Abraham dies wealthy and respected by all the kings around him. Lot chooses to live in Sodom—even after this whole kidnapping thing. Lot is taken in by Sodom’s wealth, while Abraham refuses it, and keeps refusing it.
But anyway… Back to the story.
Because in our story today, we’re actually talking about another king. A king who shows up for literally three verses here in Genesis 14 and then just vanishes, as suddenly as he appeared…
This enigmatic character: Melchizedek, the King of Salem.
And the king of Sodom went out to meet him [Abram] at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley), after [this whole rescue story we just went over…]
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said:
“Blessed be Abram of God Most High,
Possessor of heaven and earth;
And blessed be God Most High,
Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”
And he, [Abram] gave him [Melchizedek] a tenth of all.
~ Genesis 14:18-20 (NKJV)
That’s it. Melchizedek’s entire story. But you know, it’s interesting—This king with this crazy name who shows up for three verses in Genesis is so well-known that the automatic spell-checking software in Word recognizes his name and does not mark it as an unknown word.
Melchizedek, King of Salem, to whom Abraham gives a tenth—This is actually where the concept of tithing starts—you know, the idea of giving ten percent of your income back to God, or the church. It’s usually attributed to Jacob, later in Genesis, and for good reason. But this is the first actual occurrence in Genesis.
But who is this person?
He’s named as a priest of the Most High God—in other words, God… The same God that called Abraham. And as for his name itself, our reading from Hebrews actually did explain it, but…
Melech is the Hebrew word for King. Zedek is the Hebrew word for righteousness or a righteous person. So put it together, we have Melchizedek—the King of Righteousness or the Righteous King. And then… Salem…
No, not that town just down the road from us. And not that village on the East Coast where a literal psychotic group frenzy got a bunch of people accused of witchcraft—many of them men, by the way…
This is the original Salem, and the name matters, see…
There’s a word in Hebrew—Shalom… But it’s easier to hear in the Arabic version of the word—which is salam. The similarity to salem, which Hebrew speakers would pronounce sah’lem. Shalom/salam/sahlem.
These are all the same word.
It means “peace.”
So here we have Melchizedek—the Righteous King of the City of Peace, to whom Abraham gives the first tithe—on record, anyway.
And here’s where it gets really interesting… Because Salem is not just another city among the hundred city states that come and go from this area of the world. The Salem, at some point between Genesis and 2 Samuel, gets a prefix added to its name. The word Yeru, which means “flowing.”
So Salem, by David’s time in 2 Samuel 5, is now known, as it will be from then until this very day, by the name Yeru-Salem.
The King of Righteousness, back in Genesis, some three thousand years before Jesus was born, this Priest of the Most High God, to whom Abraham gives the first tithe, is the King of Jerusalem.
And now put this all together, the meaning of these Hebrew words that go into Jerusalem—Yeru-Salem—and you get “The City of Flowing Peace…” Just hold that image in your mind, for a second. Peace, like water, flowing down from this shining city on top of highest hill around…
That image is not a coincidence. Names have meanings, just intrinsically. That is why we name things, because assigning identity and belonging to something by naming it is a powerful thing. And people in the ancient world were even more aware of this than we are today. So the images and concepts that spring to mind from the literal meanings of ancient names are often intentional. Someone meant for us to get that image, understand that concept, feel that emotion. This is one of the many reasons you do miss a lot of the meaning in the bible if you are only reading translations, if you do not know Hebrew and Greek. I’m sorry, I know there’s a certain difficulty, a learning curve here… But that’s just the truth. A lot of the deep and profound beauty in the bible is its wordplay—and that wordplay can’t be translated.
Jerusalem, the City of Flowing Peace, whose first King is the King of Righteousness.
There are these themes that run through the bible. They are some of the most incredible things about the bible—these themes, patterns, that just keep going and building on themselves, unbroken, all the way through this collection of totally separate written works that we call the bible. These themes are what unite this collection of separate documents into a single book. And they are why I had us read passages that run through the bible, all about the same theme, the King of Righteousness in the City of Flowing Peace…
God’s chosen King in God’s chosen City.
Now, obviously, there’s a lot of real stuff going on in the real Jerusalem right now. Many ways in which it does not seem like a city of people, but of contention, hostility, outright violence, perhaps… The Kings of Jerusalem, whatever they call themselves today, may not be righteous… I don’t know…
But one of the other great things about the bible is how many layers there are to it. It’s one of the great things about literature in general. One of the things that makes all written works—particularly narrative written works—so powerful. And in the bible, it’s particularly true.
There is a historical layer to these stories, and then there are the layers that are beyond history. And to be clear, this is not a new idea. This is not a modern concept invented in the modern age to discredit the historicity of the bible—this is what theologians, religious scholars, people who study the bible have been saying since Jesus’s time. Christian theology has always embraced the idea that there are both literal and allegorical meanings to every single part of the bible—yes, including Genesis chapter 1; yes, including the Gospels; yes, including Revelation—just to name the most contentious parts…
There is the historical David in 2 Samuel, who laid siege to a historical city and turned it into the capital of his kingdom….
And then there’s what David represents, what he comes to represent in the stories written after he lived, and what his city represents even back in Genesis.
The Righteous King, Servant of the Most High God, in the City of Peace.
What these layers allow us to do is talk about and address real problems in the real world—without losing the symbols, or the lessons those symbols were created to teach us. When the writers of the later books in the bible, including the entire New Testament, talk about David and Jerusalem, they are talking about the symbol, the idea of God’s justice and truth prevailing despite all odds, that God is the source of Righteousness and Peace and that these things will prevail in the end. The reading from Hebrews today—which I know is long and complicated and needs more of an explanation than I have time for this morning—but this morning just know what it means: That these prior Kings of Righteousness, Melchizedek, and, though he’s not mentioned in Hebrews, David are just stand-ins for the ultimate Righteous King, the One True High Priest—Jesus. The passage from Hebrews today, to boil it way down and frankly do it an injustice, but ultimately, it is a statement about how there is no legitimate human mediator left between us and God. That Jesus is the true Melchizedek, the true Righteous King, our direct connection to God forever.
Here, in the book of Hebrews, the Saga of Salem—as I have called it in my sermon title—really starts to come together, at least for Christians. In historical reality, Jerusalem is a city that has been besieged over and over again—war and famine and disease. The city has been wiped out and rebuilt at least three times in history. And yet it still stands as a symbol of peace and righteousness. The righteous human kings fail over and over again, and yet the righteousness the stand for and the God they witness to remains. The city on the hill remains on the hill despite the three-plus times it has been essentially wiped off that hill. And I think it is exactly that contradiction between the historical reality and the symbol that gives the symbol its greatest power.
Because the City of Peace Endures, the King of Righteousness stands tall in his City on that Hill, through literally everything the world has to throw at them. The symbol endures, motives, gives hope, and inspires, from Genesis to Revelation:
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God… And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people.” …
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. …
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life… And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it…Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new. … I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. … He who overcomes shall inherit all things… But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
This is my abbreviation of the two chapters at the end of Revelation—the chapters that end the bible in the form that it’s had for the last 1500 years. And I hope you see all the symbolism repeating here—kings and thrones, the city, water flowing… But I actually quoted it a bit out of order. If you read it for yourself, you’ll see that the last part I read—“Behold I make all things new” and particularly that part about what won’t get into the new Jerusalem, murderers and such—that all actually comes at the beginning of these chapters. And I put it at the end for a reason—to bring us back, here at the end, to Genesis…
These two kings in Genesis 14—Two Kings like the two trees in the creation story, in Eden, even further back in Genesis. In Eden there’s the Tree of Life—which reappears here, in Revelation, in the New Jerusalem… And there’s also the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree that Adam and Eve chose—the wrong tree. The other tree that does not reappear in the New Jerusalem…
The other tree, like the other King in Genesis 14—the King of Sodom, whom Abraham not only does not pay a tithe to, but Abraham will not even take payment from him. Because in the great symbolic tapestry that is the bible, Sodom is the opposite of Jerusalem—a symbol illustrated so beautifully in this forgotten story from Genesis 14. Sodom is those things that will not make it into the New Jerusalem—those things that wise men like Abraham will not allow to have any power over them.
And this is where we will end today, on this reminder that there is a choice here, always the ever-present choice from Genesis to Revelation—two trees, two cities, two kings. The ever-present choice between good and evil. And yes, the line can get blurry from time to time. I think this upcoming election is, unfortunately, a perfect example of that reality. But I think, more than anything else, that times like this cut to the heart of what really matters—which is the choice itself. Because it’s not actually about being right or wrong. We’re human. We will not always get it right. Righteousness is about choosing to pursue righteousness, to do things for the right reasons, rather than just go along with what’s wrong. It is harder, notice, to give ten percent to the King of Salem than it is to take money from the King of Sodom. But which does Abraham do?
About your choices, anything that you choose to do or support, can you say inside your deepest self, the place only God will ever see, with complete sincerity, that you have thoroughly examined all sides of the matter and are making your choice in the honest pursuit of right and nothing else? That you are not just following the path of least resistance, being carried along with everyone else? That you have no motive but truth and justice and peace? And that you are allowing no evil thing a foothold in your life? Just something to ponder as we end our message today.
