At my right hand

Readings from the Book of Psalms and the Letter to the Hebrews

Psalm 110:1-7

Of David. A Psalm.

The Lord says to my lord,

“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”

The Lord sends out from Zion
your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your foes.
Your people will offer themselves willingly
on the day you lead your forces
on the holy mountains.
From the womb of the morning,
like dew, your youth will come to you.

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind,

“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

The Lord is at your right hand;
he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
He will execute judgment among the nations,
filling them with corpses;
he will shatter heads
over the wide earth.
He will drink from the stream by the path;
therefore he will lift up his head.

Hebrews 4:14-16, 6:19-20, 10:19-23

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (...)

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. (...)

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Let's get physical

We have to get our hands out with these texts if we want to understand the depth of meaning that the disciples associated with ‘God’s right hand.’ Maybe you can start with the psalm ascribed to David. Just read it out loud, with due emphasis on the vows of the Lord to David. Don’t hesitate when you get to corpses and shattered heads, but don’t get distracted either – it was a different time. Can you imagine yourself at David’s court, singing his praises like this? Or does that feel too militaristic and over the top? Can you imagine yourself among the people of Israel oppressed by Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, praying this psalm in your despair and hope? “Send us a ‘Son of David’ to lead us and defeat our enemies!” Or do you feel too much a lust for revenge in these words?

Can you go a step further, and imagine yourself in the position of the king. Do you see how the psalm plays with you: You start in a position of honor in God’s throne room, where you may sit at God’s right hand. And then the image shifts to the battlefield, where God is as your right hand: fighting tirelessly as your champion. He does not stop to eat but drinks from the stream along your path.
Can you now think about the line: “you are a priest forever,” – aren’t priests supposed to work spiritually rather than fight with military means? What is it that could turn a king into a priest, a mediator between God and his people, representing the one to the many, and the many to the one?

Is that about Jesus?

After the resurrection, the friends of Jesus proclaimed him to be the Messiah, but the way they had come to understand this was radically different from what their contemporaries thought and hoped for. And the seeds for that new understanding were sown by Jesus himself when he spoke about this psalm.
During the last week before his crucifixion, various political and religious groups tried to catch Jesus in a statement that would either make him lose the support of the people or constitute grounds for arresting him as a rebel leader. When all attempts had failed, Jesus came with a question of his own, one that I think had been on his mind for quite some time (Matthew 22:41-46):

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
“The son of David,” they replied.
He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’

If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?”

No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Jesus is asking questions and the very people who were so certain of their exact beliefs fall silent: How can the Messiah truly set people free if he is only a human successor to king David? On the other hand, how can he set people free if he is not a man with power in this world? How can he be more?

Jesus recognizes the power of Holy Spirit in the words of the psalm, an ambiguity that makes it difficult to say where the wind comes from or to where it will blow. One thing surprises: the wind breathes life into the withered leaves, making them dance and fly. So too it is with you when you are borne on the wind. Holy spirit connects the world of God with the world of man. He sits at the right hand of God in the heavens while God strengthens his right hand here on earth. The Messiah that Jesus came to expect was both royal and priestly. He presents God to the people and the people to God. He is very different from a new king from the house of David.

Melchizedek, the people's priest before God and God's king before the people

That same week, Jesus had his ‘last supper’ with his friends. Together with them he celebrated the Passover, the story of the liberation of the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt. He spoke about his death. He was determined to make it count. He broke the bread and asked them to think about his broken body. He poured the wine and reminded them of his blood that would be shed for the people. That one night, they felt closer to him and to his heavenly father than they had ever done before. They would forever remember his death as an act of divine love for his people.

Is it any wonder, that his followers remembered this even stronger than the hope they had had for a new king who would defeat the Romans? In the decades after his death, in that mix of strange experiences of resurrection and spiritual gifts, when lives were transformed and new ideas were born, they identified Jesus as the anointed in a new sense, as the one who had given them the boldness to claim God as their loving father. They came to see him as the high priest who showed them to enter God’s presence without fear or shame. Not as the high priest of the temple that was corrupted through their collaboration with the empire, but as the enigmatic Melchizedek, whose name means ‘king of righteousness’ and who is identified as the ‘king of Salem’ (peace). He had shared bread and wine with their ancestor Abraham and he had blessed him. The Letter to the Hebrews is entirely devoted to the idea that Jesus is the priestly messiah who became a ‘high priest’ (mentioned 18 times) like ancient Melchizedek (named 9 times). In this letter, Jesus is our anchor, that safely connects us with a lifeline into the presence of God. In this way, the anchor became a symbol of hope for the early followers of Jesus. And when they said the word in Greek, ankura, it sounded like en kurio: ‘in the Lord.’

Seated with Jesus in heaven, acting with God here below

Around that same time, the Letter to the Ephesians was written. Again we dance a bit further into the light, and this time we dance with Jesus himself (Ephesians 1:17-23, 2:4-10):

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (…)

And God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ —by grace you have been saved!— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

When the disciples thought of Jesus at the right hand of God, they felt no distance. They were with him in heaven and he was with them on earth. It was a joyous and empowering thought.

I may have experienced something similar when defending my doctoral thesis in 2007. As part of the ceremony, I could bring two friends (in the Netherlands, they are called ‘paranymphs’ as at ancient Greece weddings) and we were given a room to prepare in and wait until called to publicly defend my thesis against the ‘opposition’ of a number of some very learned professors. In that little room we prayed and I received a kind of vision: I saw us all playing like little children before the throne of our loving Father. It comforted me and made me look forward. Being in God’s presence did not take me away from the university auditorium, but it allowed me to appreciate my opponents and answer their questions without fear and to the best of my abilities.

*      *

The Creation of Adam is one of the most popular panels of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, all of which was painted by Michelangelo in the years 1508-1512. Adam (humanity) comes to life when touched by the hand of God. A little space separates the two hands as they belong to different realms. Some people believe that with the complex depiction of God, Michelangelo alludes to a brain (the intellectual world). It is filled with angels and the Trinity. The Father holds a Lady (the spirit or wisdom, Proverbs 3:19) in his left arm and a Child in his left hand, connecting Adam with his logos: ‘Let us make Man in our image.’

In the first century, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria was careful not to define God as part of this created world. He saw his hand as a metaphor for how the divine power nevertheless influenced our reality. The second century church fathers Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyon, wrote of the “hands of God” as referring to his spirit (wisdom), and his word (his logos or son): “Now God shall be glorified in His work, which he formed like and modelled after his own Son. For by the hands of the Father, that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit, he made man … in the likeness of God.” (Against Heresies 5.6.1).

Suggestions for dialogue

A moderator can explain the dialogue steps and invite people to contribute:

• Check in with yourself. Share with each other how you are in this moment. Then take a moment again to seek stillness, humility and openness. 
• First round: Share something from the text or image(s) that stood out to you and that you would like to explore with the group, briefly indicating the thoughts and feelings that it evoked within you. Listen to the others do the same: what resonates with you? Responses in this round should be limited to questions for clarification.
• Second round: Name one or two things that resonated with you from the things that others just shared. 
• Third round: Having heard the group, the moderator names the main topics for exploration. The moderator may also propose a common thread that emerged in several topics. The exploration normally starts with asking the person(s) who brought up the topic to expand on it.
• Leave room for silence and contemplation. 
• Check out by sharing what you take home from this dialogue.

These suggestions are an adaptation of the Estuary protocol. Look for more at https://www.estuaryhub.com