Joe Merrill⎮  Summer 2012

We Anglicans like to use the word “priest” and “priesthood” to refer both to the entire church (priesthood of all believers) and to a select group of people who can do things that we don’t like to let anyone else do: celebrate the Eucharist, pronounce absolution after confession, and consecrate things like water (for baptism) and oil (for healing prayer and chrism).  We use the term, “ministerial priesthood” to refer to the latter. 

But aren’t (some will ask) we essentially having our cake and eating it too?  Aren’t Anglicans Protestants, and by definition do not require the ministrations of a class of people to mediate between us and God?  What basis do both types of priesthoods rely on, and doesn’t the existence of the one abolish the other?

In the Jewish rites of the Old Testament, and in the religious rights of many of the surrounding cultures, a priest had one purpose – to mediate between God and humanity by the offering of sacrifices.  The types of sacrifices differed from religion to religion, but the role of the priest was largely the same: he appeased the gods through the shedding of blood so that the people could continue on and live in peace. 

The New Testament is quite insistent that Jesus fulfilled this role of mediator through his own blood.  He was the perfect mediator – unlike all other priests who came before, he offered himself.  The argument in Hebrews is fairly complex, but it establishes the relationship between the first covenant and the “new” covenant as that of image to reality. The first covenant is “earthly” (9:1) and is a “copy” (9:23) of the heavenly things.  The priests of this old covenant purified the flesh of those who worshiped through the sacrifice of goats and calves.  The one-time sacrifice of Jesus, who is the “high priest of the good things to come” (9:11), secured redemption for us “not by means of the blood of goats and calves” (9:12) but by offering his body. 

His body is referred to in chapter 10 in three ways.  The first time is a quote from Psalm 40: “sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.”  The second time is in verse 10: “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”  The third time is in verse 20: “therefore brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.”  The idea is that the offered and sacrificed body of Christ is better than offerings of the first covenant (first use) it sanctifies us (which is more than the blood of goats and calves could do, second use) and is itself the curtain of which the first curtain was an image (third use.)

So it all comes together.  The torn veil of the Temple in the Johanine narrative is an image for the tearing of the body of Christ, just as it is also an effect of the tearing of the body of Christ.  In the first covenant, access to God was prevented by a thick veil, and a priest could only go in once a year.  In the new covenant (of which the first was an image) access to God is through the body of Christ because of his once-for-all sacrifice.  How else does Scripture refer to the body of Christ?

“Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:27, speaking to those who have been born into the life of Christ through baptism.  In Ephesians 3:1-7 he reveals the “mystery of Christ” that had remained hidden: gentiles are fellow heirs and have become “members of the same body, and partakers in the same promise in Christ Jesus.”  The idea is that to be a Christian is to become one who is made pure before God because we participate in his body.  There are two unavoidable conclusions.

Our participation in the life (body) of Christ means we share in his priestly role.  All Christians are priests, “a holy priesthood” and “ministers of reconciliation,” who “offer our bodies as a living sacrifice.”  All Christians are people who literally take part in Christ’s action of being a mediator between God and humanity by offering themselves in service to God even as God literally fills them with His life.  What then, does it mean to be a Christian priest?  Clearly a Christian priest is unlike other priests, since all members of the Christian faith are mediators. 

A Christian priest is a shepherd.  The Christian priesthood is where John 6 with its great language about the feeding on the body and blood of Jesus (and therefore having life) and John 10 with its great language about the sheep being the ones who know the voice of the good shepherd, the one who lays down his life for them, meet.

But, some will ask, doesn’t the Eucharist - the consumption of Christ’s body by the church - prove me wrong?  Isn’t the idea of mediation and “being made right” and sin being removed so that it can be replaced with righteousness central to the very concept of the Eucharist?  What need then is there for a separate group of priests?

When we were saved, we were baptized.  Our baptism was an entry into the body of Christ.  In the Eucharist, we are fed that body so that we might continue to grow “into the image of Christ.”  The removal of sin and the replacing of our sin with the righteousness of God already happened 2000 years ago.  Our eating of the Eucharist in remembrance of Christ is not an act which purifies us anymore than we were before we ate.  Rather, our eating of the Eucharist in remembrance of Christ feeds us with Christ that we might be “built up in him.”  And, in a beautiful paradox, the more filled with his life we become, the more each meal fills us with him.

So, a Christian priest then is one who is Christian (he is a mediator between God and men) and a priest (one who is a shepherd), he feeds the body of Christ with the body of Christ that it might continue to grow.  In the middle of Paul’s great language about Christians being the body of Christ, and each having different roles in that body (some teachers, some servers, some givers, etc) he lays down the foundation for there being different roles within the body of Christ.  In Acts we see the development of two different roles: diaconate (people who serve the body of Christ) and presbyter (people who are shepherds).  Within a few decades, the church tradition would split the presbyter into two further roles: bishop, and priest.  The split was largely functional – the church had grown so large by then that the bishop could not be everywhere at once, so he delegated his role as the shepherd who fed his sheep to a priest who could also feed sheep because the bishop gave him that role.

Because redemption takes place in and through the body of Christ, all who are members of that body are truly a “holy priesthood.”  Because redemption takes place in and through the body of Christ those who’s special role it is to feed his sheep are priests – but priests of the new covenant.  The Christian priest accomplishes the role of mediator, but only because he is the one who feeds those who are baptized with the “food of new and unending life.”