This is a bit of discernment I gained while reading "To Be a Priest," a book from 1975 comprising essays from Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox teachers prompted by the controversy in the Episcopal church surrounding gender and ordination. The bulk of the essays are from Episcopalians, as that is the church of the two editors. Few of the essays directly "take a side" in the debate, although the editors intentionally solicited writers with varied views on the topic (the two editors being themselves split on the issue). The essays do, however as the book title indicates, reflect on the nature of the priesthood.
There are no Christian priests -- plural -- as there is only one great high priest, Jesus the Christ, in continuity with his body, the church. The passage in 1 Peter often quoted by Protestants about "a royal priesthood" refers to Christ comprising all believers into a single priesthood -- his own. More than one essay makes this case and I am persuaded by it.
This understanding has an important implication: One does not pursue the priesthood; it pursues you. Jesus initiated our current priesthood -- a fulfillment of the Hebrew one -- in Palestine two thousand years ago. Since them the Holy Spirit has been snapping up people, by baptism, to be a part of it. The priesthood is by God's design, not man's.
Early on the church came to see distinct ongoing functions within the one priesthood, that is the Christian community. Two of those functions were oversight and service. Oversight was the authority to keep a community going in the way the apostles had passed on from Jesus. Service, it seems, was both an administrative role under an overseer and the tasks necessary to support the church's mission of acting mercifully to neighbors. The latter is the place in the priesthood of the deacon; the former is the bishop.
Interestingly, we still haven't come to what we call today a "priest." That role's antecedent in the New Testament is "presbyter," which seems to have some of the overseeing function. It's translation is "elder" and one essay convincingly finds its heritage in the councils of elders overseeing local synagogues. After the age of the apostles, but still during the early church, the presbyter comes to be identified as something like the bishop's representative at the celebration of the Eucharist. A Catholic theologian writes beautifully about a priest being, essentially, the guy who facilitates the occurrence of the Eucharist.
Some essays in the collection stink. I won't dwell beyond this paragraph on what's not edifying, but one of the editors, Urban T. Holmes, writes about how there are limitations to sociological and psychological description of the priesthood and then goes on to give one himself, using a comparative-religion paradigm the model with an emphasis on a priest's duty to mediate an unspecified "transcendent reality". And then there is, of course, one obligatory essay with the oppression-equality-rights narrative. Such essays don't teach much about the priesthood, but they are helpful in the sense of laying out the diversity of thought within The Episcopal Church.
Most compelling in "To Be a Priest" is the opening essay by Robert Terwilliger, a co-editor of the book. He speaks with a holy authority about the nature of the priesthood with a faithful vision of the church I associate with Michael Ramsey's book "The Gospel and the Catholic Church". Terwilliger writes:
There is only one priest, Jesus Christ. He and he alone can bond God and man because of what he did for us, and because of what he is as the incarnate unity of God and man....
The priesthood of Christ is sent forth into the world. The commission of the apostles is part of the Gospel. Jesus projects what he is and what he does for man into history in the persons of other men. He chooses, definitely chooses and designates, the Twelve to go forth in his name. They are to be not merely teachers and examples but extensions of himself and his divine mission....
It is through this ministry of apostles that the Church is brought into being and built up. They do act as ministers of the Church and in the Church, but they are, above all, apostles to the Church. They represent the continual coming of Christ to the Church and the world.
There's a worldly voice that tells me after reading this book that I should express opinion about the relationship between gender and ordained ministry. And, I can say that the voices I find most instructive tend to see the offices of bishop and priest as male, although not uniformly so. But, I think I'll pass on saying anything more than that. What this book more substantially prompts in is a renewed vision of the expanse, beauty and power of the crucified Christ and his body with its particular functions, membership and mission.
Reading "To Be a Priest" has sharpened my discernment indeed ... about becoming a deacon. Oops, I guess that's a matter for another post.
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