Flippin’ Priests.

Churches from the low end of the spectrum of churchmanship love to point out to those who call their ministers ‘priests’ that we are now a priesthood of all believers and we quote from 2 Peter:

You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ ..... But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 1Pet. 2:5 & 9

We built this theology from passages like Mat 27:51 that tell us that at the point of Jesus death the temple curtain was torn in two. 

In the Old Testament the temple was the place where the Jews could get close to God. It was the house of God. But God is holy and so the very much unholy people couldn’t get too close for fear that they might die. Try to think of the temple system as a way of insulating people from the huge powerful presence of God. You wanted to get close, but it was to scary. Imagine that God was like a zillion volts of electricity. You wanted to plug into some power, but not that much power. To get to the real power you would need insulation like the rubber coating on wires.

In the diagram above we can see that the non Jews were only allowed to go as far as the Court of Gentiles. These people weren't at all holy so they had to be insulated by at least four walls. Jewish women were a bit more holy, but still needed no fewer than three walls of protection from the awesome power of God. Jewish men could go one more layer in and priests could go one more step closer because they were even more holy. Of course the rituals of washing and sacrifices also had to be performed to make sure than optimal holiness was achieved and so minimising the risk of spiritual electrocution as it were. But one day a year on the day of Atonement, the High Priest after going through the prescribed preparations, could go into the actual Holy of Holies, he was so holy himself that he could withstand the holiness of God, unless of course he was somehow unexpectedly impure when he would die. For this reason the High Priest always had a rope tied around his ankle before he went through the temple curtain into the Holy of Holies, if he were to die he could be dragged out by the rope!

Now Christians are declared holy by God because of Christ’s death and resurrection and not through our gender, race, or whatever offerings we have made or cleansing we have been through. We are in the presence of the living God and we are insulated by Christ. What is more, the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in AD 70 and there is no temple but us. We are the house of God and we are priests, but those who don’t yet know Christ as their Lord need us to be their priests, to come before God on their behalf because they, like the gentiles of the temple days, cannot.

We rightly conclude that to enter into the presence of God we don't need a priest anymore. We are all priests. Of course many denominations who hold to this view confuse the issue in insisting that for the sake of church order the ordained person must preside at communion. Many get confused by this and also, because the higher end of church theology and practice sees communion as a sacrifice on an altar by a priest. So we kind of feel that we are all priests, but the top guy, the one with the theological education and the collar, is the real one. However, if we are all priests, as I believe scripture reveals, who then are we priests for? Not for each other, but for the world. For all of those who are not yet in Christ. Of course the people who live and work around us don’t see us as their priests, they don’t necessarily know that we are interceding for them or that we are a way for them to find God. But, if we have a good relationship with them, when they need God, we will be their priests until, by the work of the Holy Spirit, they come to Christ themselves. Just like the Old Testament priests we don’t have access to God just for our own relationship, but to be responsible for all of those who cannot yet come on their own behalf. We are not priests for the Sunday hour or the communion service, but yet again, for 365 days of the year. This means that we must be priests who intercede for those who are not yet part of the Kingdom of God, not just praying for their salvation, but for all their circumstances.

The other thing that Old Testament priests got involved in was worship. They were in the temple day and night and the temple was a place of amazing worship, praise, adoration and thanksgiving. Once again those who don’t yet acknowledge Jesus as Lord do not worship him. The Church worships God because we are called to do so in numerous verses of the Bible like:

Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;

bring an offering and come before him!

Worship the LORD in the splendour of holiness 

1 Chr 16:29

The psalms are full of wonderful worship and would have been sung with instruments accompanying the choirs in the temple. When we worship we are doing many different things and this blog is nowhere near big enough to scratch the surface of what worship is about, but today when we worship as priests, I have noticed a particular aspect which high churches have never lost, but isn’t stressed in low styles of churchmanship. We, the worshipping community, draw others into our midst and they meet with the transcendence and imminence of God through our worship.

When I was a chaplain in the RAF I would get non Christian families wanting me to ‘christen’ their babies or couples asking if I could conduct their weddings. I would always suggest to these people that they should come and experience our church worshipping before they made their mind up about whether they wanted their service in our style of church. Regularly these visitors would come to the church for the fist time and begin to weep as the worship continued. After the service or in the weeks following they would comment that something was happening to them as the people played and sang. Many of those visitor became Christians and joined the church because their first experience of God was when the priesthood worshipped their Lord. Let me make one other observation here. It wasn't that we always had wonderful musicians, although we have been blessed over the years with great instrumentalists and singers, it was that the people of God worshipped. Great bands, organists and choirs are one thing, but if they don’t or can’t lead the priesthood of all believers into worship, then they are not fulfilling their calling.

Next time I want to delve into two of the things Jesus calls us, 'lamps and salt'.