I Want You For The Priesthood

"I Want You For The Priesthood"
Revelation 1:4-8


You are all priests.  You probably don’t feel like priests.  You may not have ever thought of yourself as a priest.  And you may not want to be priests.  But you are all priests.  You haven’t gone to seminary.  You haven’t taken the Standard Ordination Exams.  You haven’t taken ordination vows.  You haven’t been installed in a church.  The Presbyterian denomination, or any other denomination for that matter, doesn’t recognize your priesthood.  But you are all priests.

You don’t wear the priest’s collar shirt.  You don’t wear special robes or vestments when you come to church.  You don’t have on big priests crosses, or other liturgical jewelry.  You don’t wear those funny hats some priests wear.  But you are all priests.

Most of you have never had to preach a sermon or lead worship.  You haven’t baptized anyone or presided at Holy Communion.  You haven’t performed a marriage or funeral service.  You may do some informal advice giving to family and friends, but you’ve never heard a confession or done any formal counseling.  You may have never been a spiritual director for someone.  But you are all priests.

“When did this happen?” you may be asking.  It happened the day you gave your life to Christ as Savior.  The day you accepted the fact that Jesus Christ freed you from your sin, forgave you of all the times you passively and aggressively avoided God and God’s will, is the day you became a priest.

Kind of scary, isn’t it?  You thought you were just becoming a Christian.  You thought you were only committing yourself to being a simple believer in the Lord.  But I’m happy to inform you, there was more happening than that.  The act of giving your life to Christ was also your ordination service, so-to-speak, and your entrance into the priesthood.

How many of you knew that?  How many of you know exactly what that means?  How many of you know what a priest does, according to the Bible, so that you know what YOU are supposed to do as a priest?

Well, let’s go through the job description for a priest.  John, in these opening verses in Revelation said that Jesus freed us from our sins so that we--all of us--could serve God as priests.  If that’s true, if you are all priests, then you need to know what that means for how you are to act.  You need to know how the fact of your priesthood should shape your self-image.

First, the priest represents all the believers before God.  When the priest went into the temple to worship and pray to God, he went in not just as himself.  When you come to worship, you probably have the sense that you are basically just bringing yourself--you have come representing only yourself.  But the priest comes into the sanctuary as a representative of the people.

So when the priest prays, he is praying as if he is the mouthpiece for all other pray-ers.  He didn’t talk to God as if he were the only one speaking.  It was like the people were also having conversation with God through the priest.  What a difference this makes in our praying and worshipping.

Some people don’t know how to pray.  Like the little boy who was saying his bedtime prayers:  “Dear God, I’m not praying for anything for myself; just a bike for my brother that I can ride too.”  Some people’s motives get all mixed up in prayer.  Some people want and need to pray for themselves but don’t exactly know how to put the words together to do that.  They need a priest to help them give voice to their groaning.

Bishop Simpson was a person who just played around the boarders of the Christian faith  Sometimes there are people who are narthex believers--they hang around in the narthex but never quite make it into the sanctuary, into the holy presence of God.  That’s the kind of person Bishop Simpson was.

But one time he came home from college on a break.  He decided to go to a revival meeting his church was holding.  He watched as a group of young men went forward and gave their lives to Christ.  Simpson thought that he had already done that, but didn’t feel the emotional fervor those young men were feeling as they made their commitment to Jesus Christ.

He watched as one of that group of young men held back.  The young man was standing near the railing.  It was clear he was wrestling with the possibility of becoming a Christian.  Simpson came up behind the young man, laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and asked him if he’d like to go forward for prayer.  The young man replied he would go if Simpson would go with him.

Together the two men went to the altar and knelt in prayer.  Simpson said a prayer for the young man.  But in that prayer, in which Simpson was carrying the young man who didn’t know how to pray for himself, Simpson was also touched by the holy presence of Christ.  Simpson ended up praying for both of their souls at that meeting, dedicating the young man and himself to Christ and the work of the church.  Bishop Simpson went on to finish college and become one of the great Methodist preachers of the gospel.

That night, Bishop Simpson fulfilled his role and function as priest.  He prayed a prayer that encompassed his life and the life of another who didn’t exactly know how to pray, and needed someone else to do that.  By so doing, it had a profound effect on both of their lives.

In similar ways, the priest approaches God, carrying the people with them, saying for them what they have a hard time saying themselves.  Things like, “I’m sorry,” prayers; or “Thank you” prayers.  Or, “Wow!” prayers.

Generally, the priest is someone who is comfortable in the presence of God.  Most people don’t feel comfortable in the presence of God.  The quietness is unsettling.  They don’t know if they’ve been heard.  Not hearing much in reply is frustrating.  But we as priests have become comfortable with God.  We move in and out of God’s presence daily.  We are relaxed in the quietness of God. Our ears are tuned to the still small voice of God who speaks deeply to our soul and spirits.  As a priest, that is one of your main roles and functions.


Another role and function of the priest is an unidentical twin to the first.  The priest represents God to the people.  The priest demonstrates the character and purposes of God in their own person.  Therefore, the priest drives both directions on the street of holiness.  The priest represents the people before God, and the priest represents God before the people.

This can cause an identity crisis.  Most people have a hard enough time representing themselves before others.  We struggle with our own sense of what kind of character we are.  We live aimlessly, trying to discover what our purpose in the world is supposed to be.  How can we portray God’s character and purpose in our lives when we may not even have a grasp of what our character and purpose is?  The answer is that we find ourselves in God’s self.

The opening chapters in Genesis tell us that we are made in the image of 
God.  There is something of the likeness of God built into every one of us.  It stands to reason that we can only find ourselves by tapping into that image of God that is “in there” somewhere.  Only by finding God will we find ourselves.  Only by portraying that God-likeness that is in us will we be portraying our truest self.

A large part of what is at the heart of the character and purpose of God is serving.  Jesus, when he washed the disciple’s feet, told them that his main role was that of a servant of others.  He told them that that was to be their role and function as well.  The apostle Paul always addressed his letters with the words, “From Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ…”  Here in these verses that open up Revelation, where John says that Jesus has made us priests of God, notice the word he uses:  “...who has made of us a royal house to serve as the priests of his God and Father…”

One of the problems Paul and the first evangelists faced was that the message of serving Christ and serving others was repugnant to Greek culture.  To the Greeks, service was undignified.  Something that was built into the Greek psyche was that people were born to rule, not to serve.  A person served only if it promoted them to a place of authority.  To always be serving others meant those others were ruling over you.  It was a hard message to hear that Christ had come to make any believer into a priest, but by being a priest, that meant servanthood, not authority.

I think our culture isn’t too different from the Greek culture Paul faced.  We also undervalue and underestimate the holiness of serving.  It won’t be long before the Christmas movie classic, It’s a Wonderful Life will be airing on TV.  It’s a great story starring Jimmy Stewart about a man who had used his life serving others, but didn’t think it made any difference in anyone’s life.  A frumpy angel by the name of Clarence gives him the chance to see what his town would be like if he had never lived.  It was a profound statement about the powerful effect on life could have when they take priestly serving seriously.

Mother Teresa wrote:
If I had not first picked up the woman who was being eaten by rats--her face, and legs and so on--I could not have been a Missionary of Charity...Whatever you do, even if you help somebody across the road, you do it for Jesus.  Even giving someone a glass of water, you do it for Jesus.  Such a simple teaching, but it’s more and more important...In the work we have to do, it does not matter how small and humble it may be, make it Christ’s love in service.

To be a priest in this respect is to find your identity in serving.  Serving is at the very heart of God.  It’s part of the image we share with God.  If you serve as a priest of God, representing God before people, it will be in the identity and integrity of a servant.

Victor Daley, and Australian poet, was being cared for in a Catholic hospital while he was dying of cancer.  One of his last acts was to thank the nurses for all their kindness to him.  “Don’t than us,” the nurses said.  “Thank the grace of God.”
With holy perception, Daley replied, “But aren’t you the grace of God?”

In serving others, we are the grace of God.  We are demonstrating the image of God.  We are, as priests, representing God t the people in the holiest ways of service.


You are all priests.  I know you don’t feel like priests.  Now that I have explained a little about what a priest is, you many not feel up to being a priest.  But the truth is, you are all priests whether you feel like it, or whether you want to be or not.  It is your role and function to represent the people before God.  When you go into the presence of God in prayer and worship, you carry the people of God with you.  And you represent God to the people.  In your attitude and character of serving, you demonstrate to others who God is.

Welcome to the priesthood.