Today's PAYG focussed on part of Hebrews 7, Jesus as a priest in the order of Melchizedek, and asked, among other things, how the listener saw priesthood. An interesting question for a Jesuit to ask a Baptist, I felt! My immediate response was our, often ill-understood, priesthood of all believers self-understanding which we often have the audacity to assume no-one else has. It was explained to me, a long time ago, as "I'll be your priest and you'll be mine." Which is all fine and dandy if you know what you think a priest is or does.
For me, a human priest is not an icon of Christ, though even as I type that I am aware that we glibly speaking of seeing Christ in others, so maybe we are in some way 'signposts' towards Christ. The metaphor I find more helpful is the pontifical one - the priest as a bridge between people and God, earth and heaven. No, I don't mean that we need a human intermediary to God, that would be contra all that Christianity teaches, just that there is some value in the metaphor. If "I'll be your bridge and you'll be mine" means something like "I'll help you on your journey Godwards and you'll help me on mine" then it works for a Baptisty kind of perspective.
Hebrews 7 describes the High Priest that is Jesus as
"... holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. " (Heb 7:26b-27, NRSV)
I find I baulk at this a bit when I think then of human 'priests' who are, let's face it ordinary believers, frail and failing. I'm not so keen on the 'separated from sinners' bit either - how does that fit with being salt and light? What kind of priests, what kind of bridges, are we? As I tried to think of real life bridges I thought maybe we are like the 'Squinty Bridge' at a bit of an angle to 'true' or the 'Millennium Bridge' that wobbled? Then came to mind the fairy tale of the three billy goats gruff and the 'rickety-rackety bridge' over which the goats went, trit-trot, trit-trot (at least in the version I knew and loved). Quite what a rickety-rackety bridge might look like is in the eye of the reader/hearer yet we all instinctively know that it is a bit wobbly, a bit wonky... and the way to the lush pastures beyond. I'll not push the metaphor too far, but I think it is how I imagine a priest within the context of a congregational ecclesiology... I'll be a rickety-rackety bridge for you and you'll be a rickety-rackety bridge for me.
What d'you reckon?
Comments
Priests as distinct from High Priest(s) maybe.... I think the writer to the Hebrews probably has a particular set of ideas related to that unique role, which forms the basis of that extended metaphor.
The Heb 7 metaphor seems to concentrate on transcendence rather than immanence, though elsewhere in Hebrews it talks about a High Priest able to understand our temptations, and tested as we are... so a creative tension being teased out. Neither complete without the other.
Alternatively, it's a typical metaphor. Like yet unlike.
As for us, definitely wobbly bridges. I have no aspiration to be a High Priest... and imagine a church full of people trying to be one. Even wobblier!