Made to Be Priests?

Made to Be Priests?

Two New Testament texts characterize the ministry and accomplishment of Jesus Christ as enabling us to become priests who offer ourselves in service to God. In fact, more can be said. Given the strategic placement of these two texts in their respective larger literary contexts, both authors seem to suggest that “priesthood” is the core identity and responsibility of those who have been liberated by Jesus and called to join Him in His mission of loving the world.

“As you come to [Jesus], a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 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.” (1 Peter 2.4-5; see also 1 Peter 2.9)

“To him [Jesus] who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Revelation 1.5-6; see also Revelation 5.9-10)

Of all the images that New Testament authors draw upon to explain the identity, responsibility, and calling of those who follow Jesus, none may be more inaccessible or unintelligible to the modern reader than that of “priesthood”. Disciple, sheep, body (or body part), soldier, obedient child, family member (brothers and sisters)—for the most part these are understandable. But priest? What does this mean?

One way to clarify what it means to be a holy priesthood is to look at the role and function of priests in the Old Testament. There we see that the primary function of priests was to represent God to the world and the people of God, and to represent the people back to God. Priests were intermediaries; they were called to intercede on behalf of the people to God—to offer requests, to give thanks, to offer sacrifices of atonement, etc. Priests were also called to know God’s word (what He has revealed about Himself, His will, what He loves, what He hates, etc.), to understand how the world works, and in light of this, to discern good from evil, clean from unclean, right from wrong. Additionally, priest were also called to order communal life—“housekeeping”, making sure everything was in its proper place, and in particular making sure that time was properly ordered around the worship of God. Finally, priests were called to bless, offering pronouncements of God’s favor and giving thanks for the many gifts that God bestows upon us.

The Eastern Orthodox tradition offers another way to better understand what it means to be a priesthood. In this Christian tradition, which is often unfamiliar to Christians in the West, the image of priesthood is central to understanding what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Below is a brief summary of two Eastern Orthodox theologians, Alexander Schmemann (For the Life of the World) and John Zizioulas (“Proprietors or Priests of Creation?”), who trace the problems of our world to our failure to be priests.

In his preface to For the Life of the World, Schmemann explains that he wrote his “little book” to help ministry students understand how the eucharist (or communion or the Lord’s supper) ought to shape their understanding of the Christian mission in and for the world. The overarching question that he seeks to address is, What is life for?

He raises this question because he sees two fundamental distortions in the way that Christians approach the world and life therein (distortions which are also common within non-Christian approaches to the world). He labels these two distortions "spirituality" and "secularism".

According to Schmemann, the "spirituality" approach to Christian mission implies that this world is something from which we need to escape. In this approach, the church's mission is to convert people to live in another world, to a life that essentially sees this world as irrelevant, to a life that amounts to piety and patience as we wait for something beyond the here and now. 

The "secularist" approach implicitly affirms that life consists of making this world better. The world has been lost, and we need to take it back through social, economic, and political action. And yet, Schmemann, notes, with this approach the question still remains--what is this life that we must regain? 

For Schmemann, both these approaches fail to appreciate the world for what it really is, they fail to understand and embrace the telos (or goal) of creation: "All that exists," Schmemann writes, "is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God" (pg.21). "Spirituality" rejects this world as God's gift to humankind, as a sacrament through which we share communion with God. And "secularism", in all its efforts to make the world better, fails to recognize the telos of this life as communion with God. The secularist approach treats social justice (as important as that is) as an end in and of itself. "When we see the world as an end in itself, everything...loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning and value of everything...The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world" (pg.24). 

"Whether we 'spiritualize' our life or 'secularize' our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them in a secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only-begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp" (pg. 20). 

So how do we avoid adopting these two distorted approaches to the world? What is the faithful way forward? 

According to Schmemann, our distorted views of what life is for, of what the world is for, derive from an improper understanding of what a human being is for:

"The first, the basic definition of man [read humankind] is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God--and by filling the world with this eucharist [thanksgiving], he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with him. The world was created as the 'matter', the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament." (pg.22)

 Schmemann looks to the Garden as the archetype for how humans abandoned their first and basic calling as priests:

"The fruit of that one tree...was unlike every other fruit in the Garden: it was not offered as a gift to man. Not given, not blessed by God, it was food whose eating was condemned to be communion with itself alone, and not with God. It is the image of a world loved for itself, and eating it is the image of life understood as an end in itself...Man has loved the world, but as an end in itself and not as transparent to God" (pg. 23)

Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas further illuminates Schmemman's insight. In his short essay "Proprietors or Priests of Creation?", he argues that our ecological crisis is fundamentally a crisis of misunderstanding what this world is for, how the world is designed to work, and what our place is in the larger economy of the world. He writes,

“In our Western culture we did everything to de-sacralise life, to fill our society with legislators, moralists and thinkers, and undermined the fact that the human being is also, or rather primarily, a liturgical being, faced from the moment of birth with a world that he or she must treat either as a sacred gift or as raw material for exploitation and use. We are all born priests, and unless we remain so throughout our lives we are bound to suffer the ecological consequences we are now experiencing.”  (pg.1)

 He further explains that

"This role of the human being, as the priest of creation, is absolutely necessary for creation itself, because without this reference of creation to God the whole created universe will die. It will die because it is a finite universe, as most scientists accept today...Therefore, the only way to protect the world from its finitude which is inherent in its nature, is to bring it into relation with God. This is because God is the only infinite, immortal being, and it is only by relating to him that the world can overcome its natural finitude. In other words, when God created the world finite, and therefore subject by nature to death and mortality, he wanted the world to live forever and to be united with him--that is, to be in communion with him. It is precisely for this reason that God created the human being. This underlines the significance of man as the priest of creation, who would unite the world and relate it to God so that it may live forever. Now, the human being did not perform this function, and here lies for theology the root of ecological problem. The human being was tempted to make himself the ultimate point of reference, i.e. God...the human being rejected his role as the priest of creation making himself God in creation." (pg. 4)

 He then explains how Christ has restored this calling of humankind and invites his followers to participate in his perpetual priesthood for the sake of the world:

Now it is this role, which Christ performed personally through his cross and resurrection, that he assigned to his Church, which is his Body. The Church is there precisely in order to act as the priest of creation who unites the world and refers it back to God, bringing it into communion with him. This takes place in the Church particularly through the sacraments. The meaning of the sacraments, for example that of baptism, is that through it the attitude of the fallen Adam is reversed. Man dies as to his claim to be God in creation, and instead recognises God as its Lord…through the Eucharist, the Church proclaims and realises precisely this priestly function of humanity. The Eucharist consists in taking elements from the natural world, the bread and the wine which represent the created material world, and bringing them into the hands of the human being, the hands of Christ who is the man par excellence and the priest of creation, in order to refer them to God. At this point, it is important to remember - especially those of us who belong to the Orthodox Church and are familiar with the Orthodox Liturgy - that the central point in our Liturgy is when the priest exclaims: 'Thine of thine own we offer unto Thee'. This means precisely that the world, the creation, is recognised as belonging to God, and is referred back to him. It is precisely the reversal of Adam's attitude, who took the world as his own and referred it to himself. In the Eucharist, the Church does precisely the opposite: the world belongs to God and we refer it back to its Creator through the priestly action of Christ as the real and true man, who is the head of the Body of the Church." (pg.4)

For Zizioulas, humans have the unique capacity to collect and gather this fragmented world and make it unified and harmonious. Humans have the capacity to unite the world—but only as priests who refer all things from and to God:

“The priest is the one who freely and, as himself an organic part of it, takes the world in his hands to refer it to God, and who, in return, brings God's blessing to what he refers to God. Through this act, creation is brought into communion with God himself. This is the essence of priesthood, and it is only the human being who can do it, namely, unite the world in his hands in order to refer it to God, so that it can be united with God and thus saved and fulfilled…only the human being is united with creation while being able to transcend it through freedom.” (pg. 3)

When Peter declares that “you are royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2.9), he is calling us to be a people that sees the world for what it really is—a gift that is meant to be received with gratitude and intended to draw us into communion with God. As a communal priesthood, we are called to refer all of life to God and to extend the life of God to our world. In this priestly calling, we are reminded that we are not the ultimate point of reference, but that all of life derives its meaning, purpose and life from God. For this reason we “humble ourselves under the mighty (and sustaining) hand of God” (1 Peter 5.6)—for the life of the world.