phoebe and ... melchizedek?

I saw some post on social media about Tom Bombadil, that weird character from Lord of the Rings, and the way it was phrased it reminded me of Melchizedek, that weird character from the book of Genesis. 

And *that* got me to thinking about Phoebe Buffay, that weird character from Friends. 

Hear me out.    Could Phoebe be the Melchizedek of Friends?    Betteridge says a firm No, but that might not be the end of it.

After all, think about both of them as out-of-the-system characters.    Mel simply drops into Abram’s story in Genesis 14, along with a bunch of other figures, but he stands out.    He holds real authority, and is somehow both priest and king.    Phoebe comes into her friends' lives with a questionable backstory, but is fully accepted even though she’s not really 'from' their more-conventional lives.    He seems to be recognized by Abram, at least enough for Abram to pay him tribute in the form of a tithe, a tenth, of his war spoils.    She, too, seems to cut through everyone's layers with weirdly-true insight, and they accept that authority as authentic.

He's a priest but, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, not a son of Levi (for the excellent reason that Levi was Abram's great-grandson) and is "without genealogy."    She has no stable career, none of the usual success markers, but also none of the just-haven't-made-it-yet markers of the other young Friends in the show's early seasons.

Call it legitimacy without credentials.

Add to that a certain immunity to the rules.    Mel is, as mentioned, not bound by Levitical law, and seems to exist outside the usual hierarchies.    Phoebs is, with almost her every word and gesture, unbound by norms, or often even logic.

And then look at these sudden, fleeting moments of deep seriousness:  Mel appears in a few sentences, but is taken up in the 110th Psalm in a phrase (Adonai, Lord of all, makes "my lord" a Melchizedekian priest forever) that's often interpreted Christologically, and used to explode the priesthood later in the Hebrews account.    Reliably-wacky Phoebs now and then reveals some profound line or a genuine heartbreaking life trauma.    In each case, a seemingly non-main character opens up an ocean of depth.

What exactly do they *do*?    Melchizedek shows up and offers food, blessing, a sacred moment of hospitality.    Phoebe brings bizarre-but-healing affirmations:  "She's your lobster!"    When Chandler says proposing feels weird, she offers her life thesis:  "Everything important is weird."    She'll say something absurd —– a comedy koan —– that somehow makes you feel seen and calmed.    It's the absurdness that delivers the goods, like a eucharist at a postwar summit. 

Both are oddly essential in a way unforeseen at first.    Neither is fully integrated into the story.    Try to explain either one too fully and you might ruin it.

Think about their relationship to power:  the king whom the text presents as not demanding or threatening or leveraging or trying to build dynasty;  the Friend who seems indifferent to status, career-building, privilege.    Presence over ambition.

Go ask someone, "Which of the Friends feels like some primal cosmic leak into the world?"