BLOG: 8/17/14. HAS THE CHURCH MISSED THE POINT OF BEING A PRIEST?
OK, allow me to be my contrarian self—but I struggle with the whole idea of a ‘priesthood/clergy’ category of Christian discipleship. So help me, I scour the New Testament and what I find is that when Jesus inaugurated his New Creation (the Kingdom of God), he inaugurated a whole new concept of the community that would result from that new reality, and it did not include the traditional temple as the dwelling place of God, nor did it include a caste of priests, or clergy, to see to the rites of the temple, and to serve as the community’s necessary intermediaries with God. Every believer was to have direct access to God through Jesus Christ.
One of the only clues one finds as to what Jesus intended as the purpose for his church is in his revealing prayer on the eve of his crucifixion, when he told God the Father that he had completed the work he was sent to do … and then prayed for what was to be incarnated in his followers. There is no mention of priests, or of temples. There was the implicit understanding that all of his followers were to be those who incarnated, or demonstrated, his teachings and that for which he had come … all of this by their relationship to him by the Spirit.
Yes, there were his unique twelve immediate followers, and that larger group who were also his disciples, but they were to be models and teachers of his teachings, and who had engaged in a life-transforming encounter with himself, and so become a part of his new creation. Moreover, it was Peter, who was something of the acknowledged leader of the community, who used the designation of priesthood, only it was that the whole community of believers were to be a “nation of priests”—every believer a priest! (I Peter 2:9). Or maybe it was John, who described the church as those whom God had made us to be “a kingdom and priests to our God” (Revelation 5:10).
And the temple, by the way, was replaced by God making his ‘dwelling place’ to be in and among his people by the Spirit. But we keep reverting to the Old Testament pattern of temple buildings, and a special caste of priests—which in essence makes the church to be something utterly different than the awesome and omnipresent phenomenon that is set forth in New Testament documents. Martin Luther, in a sense, tried to make a case for this, but it all quickly reverted to the default of the dominant Roman Catholic ecclesiastical pattern of buildings and priesthood.
Let me make my case: every believer, by virtue of his/her baptismal vows becomes ordained to be a priest, to be a missionary, to be the demonstration of New Creation in behavior and thinking—every believer! Every believer is to be the glory of God and demonstrations of the divine nature. I watch the tragic events in the Middle East and remember that this whole region was where the Christian faith was centered until the 12th or 13th century, but rather than make disciples, and rather than being a holy nation and a royal priesthood, it became a ‘religion’ centered in its sacralized buildings and with its caste of clergy. It ceased to be leaven and light. It became cloistered, but it did not make radical disciples who were practitioners of New Creation. John, in Revelation, says that God’s people overcome the works of darkness: “ … by the blood the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, even at the cost of their lives.”
The church was never promised status, nor sanctuary from the hostility of the dominion of darkness. It was commanded to demonstrate love for each other, and for enemies. It was promised suffering and persecution, but it was also promised that it would be accompanied by the Presence of the Son of God. That is all still true. We have watched this with China in recent generations, when the church was outlawed, and disenfranchised, it went underground and became faithful to its original calling, and then against all human odds has grown exponentially.
Every believer a priest, 24/7. Disciples on the loose as practitioners of the love of God. Take note.
