Strange Priests

Revelation 1:4-8
1:4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,
1:5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,
1:6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
1:7 Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.
1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

 

Spot anything wrong in this picture?  That's right, I saw it right away too.  The guy in the front is wearing green vestments to an event that clearly calls for red vestments!  Oh, and Darth Vader is in the procession too.  I have no idea how Darth Vader fits into this high church worship service, but I totally want to go. So, when we say, "priesthood of all believers"  this is not what we mean.

I recently had a well meaning evangelical pastor try to explain to me that we are all called to this thing called "the priesthood of all believers" and then he asked me if Lutherans would be open to the concept of the priesthood of all believers. I had to let him down gently and explain that we invented the concept and that Luther first wrote about it in 1520 in his essay "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation".   He paused for a minute, collected his thoughts, and then said in all earnestness, "Yes but evangelicals do it better."... Sigh...



So, other than the annoyance of "The Topper" and his need to "Top" other people, that evangelical pastor I was talking to had a good point about the importance of the notion of the Priesthood of All Believers.  The Priesthood of All Believers is central to our understanding of the relationship of Humanity to God...in fact the  priesthood of all believers is sprinkled all over the New Testament. But just in case the concept does not ring a bell...

Priesthood of All Believers:Means that each believer can directly come before the throne of God and be heard by God absent of any sort of intercession from another person or institution.  

That is what priests did in the Old Testament:  they came before God to speak on the people's behalf because the people could not come to God themselves.  In a way that is what Roman Catholic priests continued to do even after the New Testament.  Luther and the other reformers questioned this.  They looked at the scriptures and wondered if we can't all now come without the need of an "go-between" to do it for us. Certainly today's texts say that we are called to serve as Priests in Christ's kingdom.  You are a priest in the sense that you can speak directly to God and God listens.

We all have the promise that we can come before God, without needing an intercessor priest, and speak freely and know that we are heard, but what is it that we are called to speak?  John points out that we are called to serve in Christ's kingdom as "Priests serving his God and Father"  Sometimes the notion of the priesthood of all believers is cast in terms of how we don't need someone else to intercede for us since we can come before God all on our own, like one-person-churches...Just Jesus and Me....but maybe this is a backward understanding of what a priest is or does.


In the journal First Things (which I highly recommend and regularly read) Peter J. Leithart defines Luther's concept this way, "Priestly ministry was ministry within and to the church. To be a priest means to be a priest for someone. “The fact that we are all priests and kings means that each of us Christians may go before God and intercede for the other,” Luther wrote in a preface to the Psalter. “If I notice that you have no faith or a weak faith, I can ask God to give you a strong faith.” Timothy George captures Luther’s viewpoint in one sentence: “Every Christian is someone else’s priest, and we are all priests to one another ” (emphasis added).

Maybe the notion that we don't need someone else to speak to God on our behalf has less to do with the"rugged individualism" of "just Jesus and Me" and more to do with a stronger network of empowered intercessors all linked together in a great web of prayer, intercession, and mutual accountability.

Leithart points out that to be a priest is to be a priest FOR someone.  Can you look at your neighbors, your friends, your family, your co-workers and see yourself appointed by God to serve as a priest for them?


Insert your face here.  Maybe us Lutherans need to talk more about the concept that originated with us.  Maybe we need to point out that the Priesthood of All Believers has less to do with "Not needing any dang priest to talk to God for me!" and more to do with "God has called me to talk to him about the kingdom He has called me to serve".  May you have a priestly day, and never forget that the Christ who saved you opened the way for you to come to he Father's throne and speak and be heard.  Now the question is only, about what will you speak?