Sermon: We Are All Priests

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in West Greenville, South Carolina on October 19, 2014, Laity Sunday.

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

We Are All Priests

Audio Version

Come to Him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  For it stands in Scripture:

"See, I am laying in Zion a stone,

a cornerstone chosen and precious;

and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame."

To you then who believe, He is precious; but for those who do not believe,

"The stone that the builders rejected

has become the very head of the corner,"

and

"A stone that makes them stumble,

and a rock that makes them fall."

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,

but now you are God's people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:4-10 (NRSV)

I can hear the least of these

Cryin' out so desperately

And I know we are the hands and feet

Of You, oh God

So if You say move

It's time for me to follow through

And do what I was made to do

And show them who You are

From "I Refuse" by Josh Wilson

What do you want to be when you grow up?

It is the type of question a grown-up might ask a young child.  It also happens to be the type of question a foreign language instructor might ask her students.

As I approached my junior year of college, I decided to bite the bullet and begin working on the foreign language requirements for my degree, and, in the fall term, I found myself in an introductory German class.  One morning, my professor asked all of us in her class what we wanted to do after we graduated, and we were all required to respond auf Deutsch.  When it was my turn to answer the question, I responded, "Wie sagt man 'computer programmer'?"  I asked her, in German, "How does one say 'computer programmer'?" because our vocabulary lesson did not cover that particular career choice.  As my professor told me that the German word I wanted was Computerprogrammierer - a word obviously borrowed from the English language - something inside me asked, "Are you sure that's really what you want to do with your life?"

Months earlier, I declared my major in computer science-mathematics,¹ and, though I knew I was somewhat less than passionate about computer programming, I knew it was something I understood.  I also knew that, unless I wanted to become a professor myself, a degree in computer science would do a lot more to help me pay the bills than a degree in religion or philosophy, which is what I would have pursued if I had actually followed my heart.  At some point in the years that preceded my decision, I dismissed the idea of becoming a pastor because I didn't want to have to be a role model or an example for anyone else.  I was well aware of the fact that pastors are held to a higher standard than other people, and that kind of life just wasn't for me.  I knew that, if I became a pastor, people would be watching me attentively, as a critic might carefully watch an actor on a stage.

The Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once compared the activities of the Church to a theatrical production.  In a typical stage production, one or more performers put on a show for an audience, all the while taking cues from an unseen prompter or director.  Typically, people in a church congregation understand themselves to be an audience watching a production at the front of the sanctuary.  The pastor is understood to be a performer, delivering sermons and exhortations from the stage, with God as the unseen director who gives the cues to the performer.²  If you're not very fond of theatre metaphors, then a church congregation might compare itself to a crowd watching a sports event.  The pastor might be compared to an athlete on the field, while God might be compared to the athlete's coach.

In this way, "church" is typically understood to be a spectator event.  We speak of going to church in the same way we might speak of going to the game or going to the movies.  Some people even go "church shopping," seeking out the church that can put on the best production and draw the biggest audience.  They seek the church that has the most charismatic orators on stage delivering the most compelling messages with the most cutting-edge music to accompany the performance.  Churchgoers complain when the performers put on a less than stellar performance, and they complain when they just don't get as much out of the production as they had hoped.

As you all probably know, a few months after I graduated, I began working for a casino vender as a software engineer, and I learned that computer programming in the private sector is not all it's cracked up to be.  I utterly hated my job.  I constantly felt ashamed for working in a morally bankrupt industry, and, at work, I was surrounded by workaholics who believed that keeping casinos in business was actually important.  In my misery, I began to wonder if I might have missed God's calling for my life.  After all, if I was thinking up reasons not to become a pastor, then the idea of going into the ministry had obviously found its way into my mind.

I began to reconsider a career in the ministry, thinking that, if my career was something that would inevitably take over my life, then my employer had better be God.  I decided to stick my toe in the water.  Wondering if I was capable of preaching on any given Sunday, I requested the opportunity to preach a few times.  Realizing that my opportunities to preach might be few and far between, I also volunteered to teach Sunday school once in a while.  I figured that I would just have to deal with anything in my life that would make me less than a qualified pastor.  Almost anything would be better than the career I had chosen.

More than once, I have heard people expressing apprehension at the thought of being called by God.  The feeling they typically express is the fear of being unqualified for the job, but, if they're like me, then unworthy might be a better word to describe their feelings.  As I said earlier, pastors are held to a higher standard than other people.  This fact is not without a biblical basis: letters addressed from Paul to early Church pastors Timothy and Titus describe the type of character a leader in the Church should have.³  Though people fail morally on a daily basis, we find ourselves particularly shocked and appalled when church leaders fail to live up to our expectations.  We tend to forget that church leaders are mere mortals just like the rest of us, and we forget that they need grace just as much as everyone else.

St. Peter, in one of his letters to the early Church, calls his readers to be built like "living stones" into a "spiritual house" of which Jesus Christ Himself is the cornerstone. He then reminds his readers that they are a "holy nation" and a "royal priesthood" that offers "spiritual sacrifices" to God.  For Peter's Jewish readers, this exhortation would have called to mind a scene from the Book of Exodus.  The ancient Israelites had been delivered by God from slavery in Egypt, and they had trekked through the wilderness for three months until they reached the foot of Mt. Sinai, where they stopped and set up camp.  There, God commanded Moses to deliver a special message to the Israelites:
You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.  Now therefore, if you obey My voice and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession out of all the peoples.  Indeed, the whole earth is Mine, but you shall be for Me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.⁴

Through Moses, God called the ancient Israelites to be a "priestly kingdom," and Peter uses the same type of language to describe God's calling for the Church.  So what exactly does it mean to be a kingdom of priests?  According to Rob Bell and Don Golden,
A priest mediates the divine.  To mediate is to come between.  A priest comes between people and a god or gods.  A priest shows you what his or her god is like. When you go to a temple or shrine and you see the priest there - what they do, what they say about it, the rituals they perform - you get a sense for what their god cares about.  So when God invites the people to be priests, it's an invitation to show the world who this God is and what this God is like.⁵
At the foot of Mt. Sinai, God called the people of Israel to show the world what God is like.  Peter has come to the realization that, in Christ, this call is not restricted to the Jewish people but is extended to both the Jews and the Gentiles.⁶

Peter calls his readers to be built into a "spiritual house" with Christ as the cornerstone.  St. Paul uses similar language in his first letter to the Corinthian church, in which he reminds a divided congregation that together they are the very temple of the Holy Spirit, built on Christ as their foundation.⁷  In this same letter, Paul says that the Church is not just a structure but also a Body.  In the same way that a body is made up of many different parts, the Body of Christ - the Church - is made up of many different people with many different gifts and talents.⁸  What we learn from these metaphors is that the Church is empowered by the Holy Spirit to carry on the work Christ started two thousand years ago.  The Church is made up of many people with many talents and functions united as one Body with one Spirit and one purpose.  A building with stained glass windows and a steeple is not the Church.  Such a building is merely the place where a very small part of the Church gathers every week.

My time working in the gambling industry did not last for very long: I lost my job nearly two years after I accepted it.  Looking back, I realize the job was a gift from God... in the same way the whale that swallowed Jonah was a gift from God.  It was the wake-up call that made me realize how important it is for me to be intentional about my life and my faith.  A few months after I lost my job, I accepted another job as a computer programmer at a local two-year college, where I have been employed for nearly five years.  I cannot say that I am working at my dream job, but I can say that I am grateful for the opportunity to use my skills for good and not for evil.

I continued to wade out into the waters of ministry.  I continued teaching Sunday school, writing about my faith, and preaching whenever I got the chance.  I started taking classes to become certified to preach as a layperson,⁹ and a number of times I've had the honor to preach for congregations other than my home church.  I still don't know if I have it in me to shepherd a congregation, but do know that I love writing about matters of faith and sharing what I write with other people.  Last year, I took a bus ride with a number of people from a large church downtown, and my friend David introduced me to everyone else on the bus as "a preacher."  It was at that moment I realized that I had accomplished what had I set out to do.  I preach; therefore, I am... a preacher.

Sometime earlier, I had come to another realization: I am a minister, a pastor, a priest, even though I have not gone to seminary and earned a Master of Divinity degree, even though the bishop has not placed a stole around my neck.  And I am here to tell you that if you identify yourself as a Christian, if you describe yourself as "saved" or "born again," if you have put your trust in Jesus Christ and have decided to follow in His footsteps, then the same is true about you.

According to Kierkegaard, the vast majority of us are dead wrong in our understanding of the Church.  The people in the congregation are not the audience watching the performance: they are the actors themselves.  The pastor is the prompter, offering the congregation cues from the front of the sanctuary.  The performance - life itself - is being watched and critiqued by an Audience of One, namely God.¹⁰  In this way, the Shakespearean character was correct to say that the world is a stage and that the people in it are actors.¹¹  To return to the sports analogy, the people of the Church are not called to be spectators of the game: they are called to get in the game and play their hearts out before their God.

In the Church, we have a tendency to draw a very distinct line between the clergy - the people "who are trained and ordained for religious service"¹² - and the laity - the rest of us.  Within the Church, there are people who have been granted certain authority and responsibility by their denominations or congregations.  Though such a distinction is probably necessary, I wonder if we have somehow constructed a false dichotomy.  I wonder if ultimately there is no laity or clergy in the Church, because, according to St. Peter, we are all priests.

We are all pastors, for we all lead and shepherd one another.

We are all ministers, for we all minister to the needs of others.

We are all preachers, for we all proclaim the Good News that "Jesus Christ is Lord."

We are all priests, for we all show people what our God is like.

If you regularly attend church, take some time to take a look around the room during your next gathering.  The people you will see there are your priests, and you are theirs.

The Priesthood of All Believers is the Christian doctrine that reminds us that, in the Church, we are all called to carry on the ministry Christ started.  We are all called to "proclaim the mighty acts of [God]" by our words and by our actions, for, like the ancient Israelites, we too have all been called "out of darkness" and into "[God's] marvelous light."

All analogies fail at some point, and one way in which I think Kierkegaard's theatre analogy falls short is the fact that God is not the only one watching the Church's performance.  The fact of the matter is that Church is being watched by the rest of the world as well.  Though we tend to forget that our clergy are only human like everybody else, perhaps the problem is not that we hold our clergy to a higher standard but that we are not holding ourselves to the same high standard.  We are all priests, so the world is watching us, the Church, to see what our God is like.  Our priesthood is not a mere 9-5 job but rather a 24/7 reality.

If it is the task of a priest to show the world what his or her God is like, and if we are all priests, then we must ask ourselves what kind of God we are showing the world.  Are we showing the world an angry, fearful God, full of hate, ready to be done with the world?  Or are we showing the world a God who is irrelevant, powerless, useless, and, quite frankly, dead?  Or are we showing the world the same God who has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ, a God of grace, peace, mercy, and love?

So, as priests, how are we to show the world the God revealed in Christ?  Jesus said to His first disciples,
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.¹³
It is through acts of self-sacrificial love that we are called to show the world what our God is like.  St. Teresa of Ávila once said,
Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world.  Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.  Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people.¹⁴

Revolution Church of New York City was a small, progressive, non-denominational congregation that met in a bar in Brooklyn and had a sizable online following.  Founded in 2006 by Pastor Jay Bakker, this "community of grace and provocation" was a far cry from the Pentecostal "empire" started by Jay's parents, Jim and Tammy Faye.  If you are seeking a church off the beaten path, then look no further than Revolution.¹⁵

In early 2013, Jay moved to Minneapolis to plant another church community, leaving the Brooklyn community in the care of his co-pastor Reverend Vince Anderson.  One Sunday, during that time of transition, Vince called his anxious congregation to take an active role in shaping the church's future.  He recounted the story of how he became Jay's co-pastor and then said to the congregation,
Today I ordain everyone that is in this room and everyone that is listening online as ministers of Revolution.  You might have walked in wanting something, but you're going to walk out (or you're going to log off) as a minister.¹⁶
Imagine my surprise as I sat at my desk at work, listening to this sermon on my iPod, being ordained as a minister of a church I have never even visited.  Though Vince didn't speak directly about the priesthood of all believers, it is obvious that he not only understood the ministry we all share, but also wanted it to be a reality to his congregation.

At this time, I still have not discerned that I have a future in the ordained ministry.  Nevertheless, the journey I started nearly six years ago has changed my life.  Somewhere along the way, I realized that, ordained or not, as a Christian, I am a servant of God and a representative of Christ.  If you remember nothing else from this sermon, please remember that the same is true about you.  We are all priests - qualified or not, worthy or not, ready or not, like it or not - for we all share in Christ's ministry.

Amen.


Notes:

1. My major was interdisciplinary, half computer science and half math.  I later declared my second major in straight computer science.  General education requirements aside, my studies consisted of two parts computer science and one part math.  I think my brain would have melted if I took any additional math courses.
2. Søren Kierkegaard.  Parables of Kierkegaard (Thomas C. Oden, editor).  1978, Princeton University Press.  pp. 89  (I owe much of this interpretation of Kierkegaard's analogy to my friend David.)
3. See 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9.
4. Exodus 19:1-6 (NRSV)
5. Rob Bell and Don Golden.  Jesus Wants to Save Christians.  2008, Zondervan.  pp. 30-31  (Paragraph breaks have been removed from this quote for simplicity.)
6. See Acts 10.
7. 1 Corinthians 3:10-17
8. 1 Corinthians 12:12-27
9. FYI, this sermon is a rewrite of the sermon I delivered for the first of these classes.
10. Parables of Kierkegaard, pp. 89-90
11. Such a statement is made by the character Jaques in Act II Scene VII of William Shakespeare's play As You Like It.
12. Wiktionary: Clergy
13. John 13:34-35 (NRSV)
14. http://www.catholicity.com/prayer/prayer-of-saint-teresa-of-avila.html
15. I write about Revolution NYC in the past tense because the congregation has amicably split from Revolution Minnesota and continues to meet as Barstool Tabernacle.
16. Vince Anderson.  "Cooking with Gideon."  Revolution Church Podcast, 03/17/13.

The image of the approach to Mount Sinai was painted by David Roberts in 1839.