Tag: priesthood

In the name of Christ we gather

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘In the name of Christ we gather’ by Shirley Murray. It’s a niche hymn intended for an ordination service. In Anglican (and probably Catholic) tradition these usually happen at Petertide, i.e. St Peter’s Day – 29th June, or in practice the nearest weekend.  Many cathedrals will have hosted such services today, when people are ordained as deacons or priests, or their ministry ‘upgraded’ from one to the other.

The first verse acknowledges that the ordination is ‘in the name of Christ’.  The new deacon or priest is expected in many ways to represent Christ to their community, both the regular congregation and wider parish.  That’s what makes it such a high calling, and different from an ordinary form of employment. 

The second verse expands this by referring to some of the particular priestly functions: teaching and caring (though those are increasingly shared with lay people), and to administer the sacraments of communion and baptism (‘in bread and wine and water’), to which we could add weddings and funerals. 

The third verse recognises that the priestly life is not always easy, needing God’s word to make the ‘preaching, praying and caring’ effective, and that there will be ‘doubts and challenge, days of pain and darkness’.  The last verse turns back to God, as ‘Word of joy, enlivening Spirit’, calling him to ‘grow within your chosen servants life of God that has no end’.

Let us pray for all those setting out on this new life today, that they will live up to their calling and stay faithful to it even in the difficult times.

The Bible in a Year – 14-16 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

14-16 March. Joshua chapters 12 – 21

I have taken three days readings together here, since it takes a full ten chapters (admittedly some of them quite short) to recount the division of the land between the tribes.  And I will admit to having speed-read much of this, as much of it reads like the gazetteer at the back of a road atlas.  What I did find helpful was a map that I found on Wikimedia Commons  showing the areas given to each tribe:

12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Just one particular point occurred to me: as well as the tribal areas and a list of their towns and villages, Joshua makes provision for some towns and their pasture lands to be occupied by the priestly Levites who had no territory of their own as such.  The Levites therefore were spread out across all the tribal areas, and their cities included Kedesh, Hebron, Shechem, Golan, Bezer and Ramoth-in-Gilead, which were the six cities of refuge (for those accused of capital offences, to protect them from vengeance until proper justice could be done).

 

The Levites, then, had no inheritance, but received the tithes of the people. They also had the privilege of being spread out in the community, and with a particular presence where people came for refuge.  There are several resonances there with the tradition of the parish priest in Catholic or Anglican tradition.

 

The priest (at least in the Catholic church) is expected to be celibate, and therefore without descendants. He (or she, in the case of the Anglican church in many countries) is expected to minister out in the community and not only to his or her own ‘flock’ in church. Priests are expected to move around several times during their training and subsequent ministry, and become familiar with all sections of society.  And they are to have a particular concern for the vulnerable: the secrecy of the confessional is traditionally sacrosanct (although in recent times a secular concern for safeguarding has obliged a priest to disclose pastoral secrets in certain circumstances).   The priest’s reward is not financial, and his or her lie will be long and demanding.  But their satisfaction will be in seeing lives transformed and people meeting with God through their sacramental and pastoral ministry.  The main difference between then and now is that priesthood is seen as an individual calling rather than a tribal duty.

 

The Bible in a Year – 18 February

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

18 February. Numbers 16-17

The “Korah rebellion” is one of those shocking tales found in the Old Testament when God, despite the pleadings of a holy man (Moses in this instance) kills large numbers of people – just as most of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were killed despite Abraham’s bargaining with God.  The rebel leaders, along with their wives and children who presumably were innocent in the matter, are swallowed up by the earth, and 14,700 people are then killed by an unidentified plague before Aaron’s prayers stopped it spreading (for comparison, about 11,000 innocent Africans died in the 2015 Ebola plague).

 

But what was their sin? At one level it was an attempted political coup – Moses’ argument “is it not enough that you have been selected” (as servants in the tabernacle) was met with the ironic reply “is it not enough that you have brought us out into the desert and failed to bring us to the promised land?” (paraphrased).  And political coups either succeed, or if they fail then inevitably the leaders of the uprising are killed.

 

But this being the Bible, there is also a theological point.  God had appointed the descendants of Aaron to be priests – the highest calling – and the tribe of Levi to serve in the tabernacle. But a Levite and three members of a separate tribe (Reuben) headed this rebellion, which Moses interpreted as their desire to be counted as equal to the priests.  The severe punishments which followed were supposed to be appropriate to this sin. The miraculous budding of Aaron’s staff in the following chapter is then seen as confirmation that his descendants alone counted as true priests.

 

Nowadays we have other ways of selecting church leaders than tribal allegiance, and of course different Christian groups will have their different ways of doing this.  But the mainstream denominations (Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican) retain the concept of the ‘orders’ of Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and licensed lay workers, each of whom are allowed to perform certain functions which lower orders may not, and for a lay person to perform the sacraments as if they were a priest is still considered a breach of church discipline.  If for example I were to baptise a child, or perform a marriage service, or hear confession using  the words of a priest, I would be answerable to the Bishop.  But I do hope the ground would not swallow me up!