When you think of the duties of a priest, particularly after what we've learned about them over the last two weeks, you probably do not think of extreme sorrow and loud crying with tears. I compared a priest to a lawyer and a plumber. Those professions have their share of difficulty, but one does not think of plumbers as being emotional wrecks. Yet our text this morning describes Christ's priestly activity in terms of lamentation and suffering, and not just any lamentation and suffering. He prayed and supplicated with loud cries and tears. He learned obedience by what He suffered. And through His sufferings, He became the source of eternal salvation.
One would almost think that the writer has moved on from talking about the priestly work of connecting man to God, and that he is now rehashing the crucifixion. Obviously he is rehashing the crucifixion. But the frame around the passage — "high priest" in vv. 1 & 10 — makes it clear that he is still very much talking about Jesus' role as priest. In other words, in addition to the fairly vanilla stuff in vv. 1-6, we must understand the soul-and-body-separating suffering recounted in vv. 7-9 as further description of what Jesus did as our priest. We have to recognize that in addition to offering the sacrifice, our great high priest was the sacrifice. He did not just kill the lamb; He was the lamb, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. As that suffering Lamb slain, He prayed, He learned, and He saved.
