A Kingdom of Priests

Easter 2                                         11 April 2010

Since this is St Thomas’ Church and this is St Thomas’ Sunday, I really ought to preach about Thomas’ confession of faith and the doubts that have become attached to his name.  But I couldn’t seem to come up with anything new to say about Thomas and I did find something in our lessons I had not noticed before, so I thought I would share something with you about it.  It is an interesting phrase in one of our lessons this morning, quite rare in the Bible, which I wonder if you noticed?  It is from the reading from the Book of Revelation and goes like this: “To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” [Revelation 1.6]  Another translation says it this way: He made us “a Kingdom of Priests to serve his God and Father.”  The people to whom John is referring are none other than us, of course—according to him, we have been made a Kingdom and Priests, or a Priestly Kingdom, or a Kingdom of Priests—to serve the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Another similar passage occurs in Revelation 5 [v. 10]: “you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”  Again, in another translation, it says: “[You] made them a line of kings and priests for God to rule the world.” 

Now we are used to the idea that Christ has made us part of his kingdom, the Kingdom of God.  In fact, it seems to me that we have talked about nothing other than the Kingdom of God around here for a long time.  But when we join the idea of “priest” to the idea of “kingdom” what are we saying?  I suppose we ought to think for a moment about the idea of “priesthood.”  In ancient days, a priest was a person who was in the service of God in a special way.  He offered sacrifices in particular, but most of his life was taken up in a specific service to God that was different than the rest of the people among whom he worked.  In fact, much of her service for God as a priest was directed towards the people—she was God servant, God's priest, for the sake of the people who also belonged to God.  So the priest was a kind of intermediary—the priest represented God to the people and the people to God.  The priest did for the people what they could not do for themselves. 

For us Christians, the nature of priesthood is seen particularly in the One whom we think of as our great High Priest, Jesus.  He offered sacrifice to God for us, he did for us what we could not do for ourselves, redeeming us from sin and death.  He represents God to us and represents us to God.  Our very access to God is through him.  We have no independent way of reaching God without going through our priest, Jesus.  The great work of Jesus as our priest is to open the way for us to access his Kingdom, where he is King as well as Priest. 

But when the Scriptures call all of us who belong to Christ, Priests and Kings, what can than mean?  Here we are assisted by understanding that the two verses in Revelation are actually referring to the Old Testament book of Exodus, in particular, chapter 19: “Then Moses went up to God; the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell 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. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”  A priestly kingdom and a holy nation—in other words, Israel had a vocation in the world, not simply to be God's special people for itself, but to be God's special people on behalf of the world.  God's choice of Israel was his answer to the fall of Adam and Eve—he would create a people, a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, which would stand between God and the world, in order to reveal God to the world and in order to offer sacrifice not only on their own behalf but on behalf of the world.  This vocation, we now understand, was fulfilled in Christ and is now being carried on in the Church. 

Listen to these words from 1 Peter: “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. . . .[Y]ou 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.” [chapter 2]  St Paul in Romans 15 speaks of “the priestly service of the gospel of God.”  And Jesus himself says on the Day of the Resurrection: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” [John 20]  His own priestly vocation was now to be replicated in the lives of his followers. 

What does it all mean?  Perhaps this: our religion is not primarily for ourselves, for our own benefit.  Of course, it is for ourselves, too, there is an advantage in it for us, because if we were not caught up into Kingdom life we would never be the royal priests the Scriptures talk about.  But the priest in ancient days was not a priest for himself—he was a priest of God for the People.  He was to take of what was God's and give it to the people, and take what was of the people and offer it to God.  That is what Jesus did preeminently.  That is what we are to do.  We are to live the life of the Kingdom in this world—the life of faith and love—on behalf of a world that does not know our resurrected Lord in order that it might come to know him.  We offer our spiritual sacrifices to God for the world—that is, we live for God in the power of the Risen Christ, so that we ourselves might be saved, but also for a world that is still broken and fallen.  The world will not know about the Father of our Lord Jesus unless they see him reflected in our lives.  Our work and prayer and worship are all ways in which the life of the world is taken up and presented to God—our lives, in other words, are largely intercessory, intermediary. 

How does that all work?  It varies according to each of our capacities, positions, and talents.  It means that the places where we live and work and play are the temples in which we offer our sacrifices.  There we find the people to serve, the jobs to do, the witness to bear, the Kingdom to represent, the piece of the world that God has entrusted to us to enlighten, to intercede for, to bear upon our own cross.  And then we all gather back together here, to worship and offer all that we have done in union with the sacrifice of the Eucharist, encouraging each other, listening to each other, being renewed to go out again when Mass is ended.  It is all a very creative process, open to all sorts of people and gifts and service.  We are all a Kingdom of Priests here, a “royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that [we] may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.”