It is the holiest of days. And on this holy day, the day of atonement, a man stands alone inside the great temple, stands at the very heart of the temple itself, stands in front of that place named the holy of holies, the very mercy seat of God. A massive curtain soars above him dividing off this holy of holies from the rest of the temple. One man alone comes this far, daring to tread upon this most holy of ground. Dressed in the robes of the high priest and serving in that office under call from God, this one man alone is permitted to undertake the ritual that now follows. One man alone is permitted to enter the holiest place, to sprinkle the blood so that the temple might be cleansed from impurity and to prepare the scapegoat which will be sent out into the desert so that it might bear away the sins of the nation and of God's people. One man alone carries upon his shoulders the weight of this task, so that the nation can be relieved of the burden of its sin. It is the holiest of days for God's people, this day of atonement. It is the holiest of days for their relationship with him. It is the holiest of days because after this ritual, they will begin again with new life, new hope, and new promise from their God.

"Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession" (v. 14). The author of Hebrews speaks to the church, telling them of a different high priest than that one in the temple so long ago. He tells them of a great high priest to whom we offer our confession of faith. And what is this confession? For the author of Hebrews it is nothing less than the great theme of salvation that speaks the eternal truth — Jesus leaves the heavenly throne to come down to earth, thereby entering into human history. Sharing fully in our human experience, Jesus dies and is raised and then ascends triumphantly back into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the Father. Incarnation, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension — this is the confession of our faith. And just as the Hebrew people had a high priest who could enter into the holy of holies, so the people to whom the author of Hebrews writes are told that their high priest is no one less than Jesus, the Son of the very God of heaven. No longer passing through the curtain of the temple, for that had been destroyed along with the rest of the building, and no longer called to offer sacrifice for the cleansing of sin, the man who now stands before the throne room of God is our new high priest who has ascended into the very heights of heaven itself.

But God though he was, he was also fully human. That high priest, standing before the holy of holies, dressed in the magnificent robes of his office, daring to enter into this most sacred of places, this man was still a man. And this is also true for our high priest. Descending from the very throne of God, this Jesus enters fully into our humanity. The fullness of the infinite God is contained in the finite nature of his humanity. Fully human, this man, Jesus, knows our weaknesses. Fully human, this man, Jesus, undergoes even temptation. Fully human, this man, Jesus, is like us in all things except sin.

Because this man knows our frailties, our needs, our hopes, and our desires, the author of Hebrews urges us to turn to him in prayer. For like the high priest of ancient days, this high priest named Jesus stands at the very point between heaven and earth, between the sacred and the earthly. That earlier high priest had gone to stand alone before God so that God would work through him to bring forgiveness and new life to the people. Standing alone before God, this high priest would offer intercession to God for the people and then bring to them the word of cleansing and new hope. Now we have this great high priest named Jesus who also stands alone before God, interceding for us, pleading for us, and offering us the new life that is in him.

Jesus is the great high priest who has passed through the heavens, the great high priest who now sits at the right hand of God, the great high priest who not only intercedes for us but also speaks the word of God to us. It is to this great high priest that the writer of Hebrews urges us to entrust our prayers. Pray, he says, pray like you have never prayed before. Pray in a daring way; pray even in an audacious way. Approach the throne of grace with boldness. Boldness! Yes, boldness! Put aside your tentative prayers and call upon God with confidence that you are child of God. Pray as a child who, while on bent knees before the almighty God who created you, can speak as one who is so loved by that God. Do this knowing that God has promised to give us whatever we ask of him. Call upon this God who has loved you to the point of sending his own Son to die for you, confident that he will hear you. Pray, says the preacher of Hebrews, not like someone asking permission to do something. Rather, pray with the same confidence that children do when they fearfully cry out in the night, trusting that their parents will come to comfort them.

The author of Hebrews is not offering us a manual on prayer here, a how-to guide to an easy and successful prayer life. Prayer, he says, is not a matter of technique, but rather it is an expression of our complete trust in God. Prayer and the prayers we pray rest entirely upon what we believe about God and how we understand that this God relates to us, for these are the creedal truths of our faith. And these are our creedal truths — God is our creator. Jesus is the "reflection of God's glory," the very word of God and the very being of God. The Spirit is the one who brings life and speaks the word of God in faith to us. These are the fundamental understandings of our faith, a faith the author of Hebrews has already told us to hold fast to. Holding fast to this faith, we dare to approach God in prayer even though he is the almighty creator of heaven and earth. Believing that Jesus is the Son of God who has revealed God to us, we pray with the confidence of those who are now invited to come and stand before him and to make our requests known to him. This does not mean that we should pray as if we were ordering clothes from a catalog, asking for one of those and one of those, confident that God, like some clerk in a warehouse, will fill our order.

Rather, trusting in faith and believing in hope, we pray as those who come to stand in awe before God. For he is God, the almighty, the creator. We are not worthy of ourselves to stand before him. In the mystery and majesty of God, we, like Moses of old, should be taking our shoes off as we approach the throne of grace with awe. In ourselves, we are not worthy to speak to God, for the only one who is worthy, the only one without sin, is Jesus. But our confession, says the author of Hebrews, is good news, for it tells us of this Jesus who makes possible what we could not attain on our own. Jesus is fully human in all things except sin. And because he has taken on our humanity, Jesus knows the full weakness and vulnerability of our daily existence, the temptations and sufferings of our lives. But in that same humanity, he stands alone as that high priest before God, stands before the throne of God, not just to offer a sacrifice for sin but rather to be the sacrifice for our sins so that all of creation can be brought back into the household of God.

The high priest came to that holy of holies so many centuries ago so that he might approach God on behalf of the people, to bring to God their offerings, their prayers, the signs of their repentance, their cares, their needs, and their wants. All these the priest brings into the presence of God. Jesus is now the great high priest who has passed through the heavens to do the same, to bring our offerings and prayers before God. Fully divine but also fully human, Jesus knows our needs and wants expressed in prayer. He knows the frailty of our lives, the pain and hurt of our existence. This great high priest carries to the very throne of God itself our distress, our pain, our infirmities, our hunger for justice, and our cry for peace.

While this high priest faces toward God on behalf of humanity, he also faces toward humanity on behalf of God. The priest represents God's holy presence among his people and since Jesus is the reflection of God's own glory, it is in Jesus that we see the hidden God revealed to us, God made known to us. This God has come down to us, become incarnate among us, to bear all our sorrows and griefs. It is to this incarnate God called Jesus that the author of Hebrews tells us that we can come to in prayer in complete confidence that he will hear us. "For we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God ... therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness." Amen.