In the Mystery We Find God
Preached at Blue Ocean Faith Columbus on Sunday, July 12, 2026
Reminder: I never stick completely to my written sermon. This isn’t a transcript, but the written sermon I was using when I preached.
Friends, listen for a word from God in the Book of Genesis, the 14th chapter, verses 17-20.
17 After [Abram’s] return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh, that is, the King’s Valley. 18 And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. 19 He blessed him and said,
“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
maker of heaven and earth,
20 and blessed be God Most High,
who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”
And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything.
This is the word of God for the people of God.
Setting the Scene
This chapter is the continuation of a narrative arc begun in chapter 12 when God first calls Abram who is a nomadic herder rich in livestock and other wealth. We’d be forgiven if we’ve come to view Abram (later Abraham) as a sort of solitary character with only a few people around him, because that’s how the Bible tends to portray him. In fact, he’s a much more powerful person than that. He’s more like a chief or even a king in his own right. He leads a whole host of adults and children who are bound to him through both familiar and legal dynamics. But he doesn’t own or have direct claim on the land and so we often see him and his people moving about from one area to another. At the beginning of Genesis 13, both Abram’s group and Lot’s group are traveling together, but Genesis 13:5-7 notes that “Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, and the land could not support both of them living together because their possessions were so great that they could not live together. Thus, strife arose between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock.” Not wanting there to be strife between their respective groups, Abram, and Lot part ways. They survey the respective areas, and Lot selects the Jordan plain which was “like the garden of the Lord” (Genesis 13:10). Per their agreement, Abram goes in the opposite direction and settles Canaan.
If you’re thinking that Lot shows up a lot in Genesis, and he always seems to be in trouble; you’re not wrong. Lot serves as a cautionary tale, but who is he? He’s the son of Haran, the younger brother of Abram, who died before their father Terah. It’s unclear how old Lot is when his father dies, but Abram seems to take him in. Though Lot is his nephew, given that Abram has no children, Lot becomes a kind of adoptive son and likely had Isaac not been born, Lot would have become Abram’s heir.
When Lot and Abram part ways, Lot impulsively chooses the more verdant land, but that land was also dotted with cities and kings who had staked claim to the land. Not only does Lot become involved with the drama and wars being waged by these kings, in time he loses his connection to the land entirely and moves his home into Sodom itself, which is where, in chapter 14, he’s captured and held for ransom.
The Valley of the King
That brings us to tonight’s scripture. Abram rode out to rescue his nephew Lot, who had gotten swept up in someone else’s regional conflict, a power struggle between a group of five kings against four. Armies from cities and under kings with names we can barely pronounce.
Abram took only a quarter of the men available to him and went out to do battle with the goal of saving Lot and retaking what belonged to Lot, to the King of Sodom, and the kings allied to him. As Abram returns, two kings come out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh. One is the Bera, King of Sodom, whose people were just liberated from captivity, and the other is Melchizedek, the King of Salem.
We could write off Bera immediately, his city will be destroyed four chapters later anyway, but Melchizedek is someone we need to talk about. First, his name is doing a lot of theological work just by existing. “Melchi” means “king” and “Tzedek” means “righteousness.” He literally is the King of Righteousness. And he comes from a place called Salem, a word that shares its root with “shalom” or peace. The King of Righteousness, from the city of Peace.
Perhaps even more important, he comes out of nowhere, with no backstory, is presented as a priest, and he invokes God in the say way that Abram and others invoke God throughout the Bible. Melchizedek is a mysterious character, simultaneously a priest and a king, two positions which typically don’t go together, particularly in the ancient world. And here he is already in service of God. Even the many writers of the Bible will spend centuries trying to figure out what to do with him (he’s mentioned again in Psalm 110 and in Hebrews 5-7).
Bread, Wine, and a Blessing
But before we get to that, notice what Melchizedek does. He brings out bread and wine. Simple and earthy. Not sacrificial animals, incense, or some kind of elaborate ritual which would have been very appropriate for this kind of occasion. In this time and place, a meal of bread and wine was the standard meal one took on a journey. It was about sustenance not celebration. Yet, with these elements Melchizedek enacts a highly sacred moment.
He blesses Abram. He blesses God. He names what has happened in the language of divine providence: “Blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand” (Genesis 14:19-20). For his part and in response to this blessing, Abram gives Melchizedek a tenth of everything. Though not yet required in any covenant or law, Abram instinctively offers this priest-king 10% of everything he has won in battle.
Something happened in that valley. Something real, important, and consequential. The text doesn’t fully explain it. It just shows it to us, trusts us to feel the weight of it, and moves on.
The Echo That Won’t Quit
Despite being named among a group of other kings who have almost nothing else to do with the rest of the text, the Bible can’t leave Melchizedek alone. You’d think a figure who appears in only three verses would fade from memory. But centuries after Genesis 14, a psalm attributed to David reaches back for him. Psalm 110:4 announces: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.’”
The coming messianic king won’t be like the Levitical priests, descended from Aaron, embedded in the legal and genealogical structures of Israel. He’ll be something older. Something stranger. Something that precedes the whole system.
Paul runs with this reflection in Hebrews, chapters five, six, and seven, a sustained meditation on Melchizedek as one key to understanding Jesus. Paul says that because Melchizedek appears without recorded genealogy, without recorded birth or death, he resembles the Son of God and remains a priest forever. Jesus isn’t explained through the expected lineage. He’s explained through the mysterious one.
The parallels are striking. Both Jesus and Melchizedek appear with a level of mystery in their backgrounds. They are both designated as priests and kings. They are both called kings of righteousness whose kingdoms are peace. They both offer bread and wine as sacrifice.
And they both demonstrate that the eternal is revealed not through what’s documented and traceable, but through what exceeds our categories. That’s not an accident. That’s a theological statement about the nature of God.
The Gift of the Inexplicable
We like our faith to make sense. We like it to be traceable and coherent where we know how one belief led to another or who and where it was that we learned this or that. Tradition matters. The accumulated wisdom of those who came before us matters. How God has revealed themselves to us matters. Our own logic and reason matter.
But Melchizedek shows up to remind us that God doesn’t always work through the expected channels. Sometimes God shows up without genealogy or an introduction. Most of the time God shows up and doesn’t fit into the categories we’ve carefully constructed. But the mystery isn’t a problem to be solved. The mystery is where God lives.
In tonight’s scripture, a text that’s fundamentally about a military victory, about power and politics and who controls what territory, the moment the Spirit preserves for us across three millennia is a mysterious king-priest appearing from nowhere, bringing out bread and wine, offering a blessing, and leaving.
The battle will be forgotten. The kings will be forgotten. The valley and the skirmish and the geopolitics of the ancient Near East, all forgotten. But Melchizedek endures in our memory, because what happened in that ordinary place was extraordinary. When we least expect it, in the most unlikely of places, God shows up.
Where the Mystery Lives
Think about your own experiences with God. We’ve all had moments when an interaction, a conversation, a sight in nature, or a quiet moment alone invoked the presence of God in our lives.
The conversation that broke something open we’d been carrying for years. The stranger’s kindness that arrived at exactly the moment we needed it. The unexpected beauty that stopped us in our tracks and left us certain, somehow, that we were not alone in the universe.
These aren’t coincidences to explain away. These are Melchizedeks. They don’t come with genealogies. They don’t arrive pre-approved by the religious authorities, and they don’t fit perfectly in our categories of the sacred. They just show up and then they’re gone. And we’re left standing in the valley, changed. God is not confined to the places we’ve designated as sacred. God is not limited to the voices we’ve authorized to speak the holy word.
Whoever you thought God was going to be, whatever shape you thought the sacred was going to take, be open to the possibility that it’ll look like something else entirely.
Blessed Are You
Melchizedek blesses Abram. And Abram receives it. That might be the quietest, most profound thing in the text. He doesn’t demand credentials. He doesn’t question the authority. He just receives the blessing for what it is.
Open your hands. Receive the blessing. You don’t always need to understand its source. The mystery isn’t a threat to your faith. The mystery is an invitation to a deeper one. God is not only in the places you’ve already found God. God is not only in the voices you’ve already learned to recognize as holy. God is not only in the traditions you’ve inherited or the language you’ve been given. God is also in the valley. In the stranger. In the bread and wine offered by someone whose name you barely know.
In the mystery, we find God. Amen.