Who Are We? A Royal Priesthood - 1st Peter 2:9-10 (Sermon from 02/15)
Last week we
began a season of remembering who we are—using 1st Peter 2:9-10 as a
springboard to launch our remembering or understanding, Peter told those
dispersed Christians in Asia Minor, who were facing persecution and ridicule,
and he tells us: “You 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. Once you were not a people, but now you are
God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received
mercy.”
Last week we
examined what it means to be a chosen race.
We eliminated the idea that it had anything to do with the color of our
skin, our ethnicity, the language we speak, or any other physical
characteristic…being a chosen race simply means being those chosen by God and
in Christ all of those other worldly boundaries are wiped away…as Paul would
say, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of god through faith. As many of you were baptized into Christ have
clothed yourselves with Christ. There is
no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”[i] We realized that being God’s chosen race
means that: we are loved, we have value, and we have a purpose.
Today, we move
from the consideration of being a chosen race, to the next part of our identity
found in 1st Peter 2:9. As we
ask “Who are we,” Peter says our response should be, “a royal priesthood.”
What does it mean
to be found in the royal priesthood? Or to begin with, what does it mean to be
amongst the priests? To truly understand
what it means to be a priest in service to God, we must move from 1st
Peter all the way back to the origins of this understanding, and the
establishment of the role of priest, to the book of Exodus.
In Exodus, we see
the line of the priesthood established Aaron and his descendants. They were
given the priestly role for the people of Israel. What were they to do? The people were separated from God, they
could not come into his presence—they understood their sin to put them in risk
of instant death were they to come into God’s presence. The priests were to represent the people before
God, making sacrifices on behalf of their sin…and they would in turn represent
God to the people—mediating God’s forgiveness and blessings to those who had
brought their sacrifices to atone for their sins and to offer God thanksgiving.
In doing so, they would lead they people to turn their hearts and lives toward
the worship, love, and service of God.
In Exodus, Moses tells the people they are to be kingdom of priests—they
are fulfilling the role that God promised Abraham, that Abraham’s descendants
would be a nation through which the rest of the world would be blessed...[ii]
Peter, as he
writes the Christians that are dispersed across Asia Minor, wants them to make
the connection and know that role has been passed to them. They were called to serve as those who would
come stand in the gap between God and those who found themselves estranged or
separated from God. Thinking back to
last week, we remember that these people lived in a place where they were
ridiculed, persecuted, and possibly killed for their faith. Peter was calling them to stand as a royal
priesthood in the midst of all of their struggles—in many ways they were called
stand as representatives of God to a people who were hostile towards God and
His people.
Their role is our
role as well…we are called to be a royal priesthood. We are all called as part of this—this verse
is not one that is directed to clergy, but to all believers. From the time of Martin Luther, to now, this
has come to be known as “The Priesthood of All Believers.” This is centered in understanding that
through Christ, we have all received the blessing of direct access to the
throne of God and no longer need someone to stand as that representative in
between God and His people.
So, you may be
saying, “Preacher, what are you getting at?
We understand that you are saying that we are to be a bunch of
priests…but we have no idea what that means.”
My brothers and sisters, that is a good question, it is probably the
same question that many of God’s people had from the Exodus onward…Aaron and
his descendants struggled with fulfilling their role as priests, and the people
struggled with understanding what it was to live out being a “kingdom of
priests.” However, my friends, we have
an advantage…if we want to see what it means to live out our lives as a royal
priesthood, we have simply to look at the One who was, is, and forevermore will
be the High Priest of all high priests, Jesus Christ himself, who as the author
of Hebrews tells us:
For it was fitting that we should have such a
high priest, 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. For the law appoints
as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath,
which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect
forever.[iii]
To understand our role as a royal
priesthood, we look to none other than Christ, for rather than finding
ourselves in the line of Aaron and his descendants, we find ourselves in the
line of the High Priest of high priests and the King of kings…we are truly
members of a royal priesthood, and as such, we are called to live out the
priestly role of Jesus in the world.
Priests
throughout the Old Testaments were mediators of God’s forgiveness. After offering the sacrifice that the people
would bring to the altar, the priests would come out of the “Holy of Holies,”
where they had offered the sacrifices, and pronounce that God had forgiven them
of their sins. Jesus, throughout His
ministry, in a way that often found himself at odds with the religious leaders
of His time, pronounced forgiveness on those who came before him in need:
“And just then
some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the
paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”[iv]
“Then he said to
her, “Your sins are forgiven.”[v]
“Jesus
straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, were are they? Has no one condemned
you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus
said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your
way, and from now on do not sin again.’”[vi]
Many in Jesus’
time wanted to “tote around signs” condemning those who were sinners, excluding
them from community, and only worthy of God’s judgment and punishment. They ridiculed Jesus every chance they had,
often berating Him for eating with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other
sinners. However, we hear the words of
the ultimate High Priest:
“Those who are
well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. God and learn what this means, “I desire
mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”[vii]
“Indeed, God did
not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him.”[viii]
This role as
mediators of forgiveness becomes our role as a royal priesthood. Too often we find ourselves pronouncing God’s
judgment upon those we consider unclean, the tax collectors and prostitutes of
our day: the drug dealers, the murderers, the adulterers, the homosexuals, and
those who have personally wronged us.
Too often we want them cast away or kept away from our community for
fear their sin will contaminate us. We
want them changed and made perfect before they dare darken the doors of a
church, some of them we may even want to declare unforgivable because of what
they have done. Yet they are the very
ones, just as we once were, that Jesus calls us to mediate God’s forgiveness to—to
invite them into relationship and share with them the very grace of God,
letting them know that they are forgiven, and calling them to a life with
Christ.
Deuteronomy tells
us that the part of the role of the priests was to be mediators of God’s blessings: “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall
come forward, for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to him and to
pronounce blessings in the name of the Lord…”[ix] They would simply pronounce God’s love and
blessings upon the people…in Jesus, our Perfect High Priest we see God’s
blessings pour out time after time…in the healing of the infirm, the returning
of sight to the blind, the feeding of the 5000, the resuscitation of the dead,
and the freeing of the possessed.
My brothers and
sisters, as a royal priesthood, we are called to be mediators of the blessings
of God in the same way as our Kingly Priest—to feed those who are hungry, to
befriend those who are lonely or who have been cast aside, to free those who
are possessed by the demons of addiction, mental illness, or poverty, to free
others from the bonds of slavery and exploitation, and to offer to all of these
and any we encounter the assurance of God’s love and presence in their
lives—not in word alone, but through the reality of our acceptance and presence
in their lives.
Through this all,
we have to acknowledge that it will be difficult. We will find ourselves opposed by many—by the
world and those who are bound by the religion of proclaiming judgment more than
grace. As we encounter resistance, we
are called to remember the key role of the priest—that of offering sacrifice. Before the priests of the Old Testament could
offer forgiveness or blessings, a sacrifice had to be made, whether it be
sacrifices of animals or crops. Jesus
put an end to the practice of offering animals and crops by offering Himself in
their place, the complete sacrifice for the salvation of all.
And while we will
not be called upon to sacrifice goats, sheep, doves, grain, or any other part
of God’s creation, for Christ put an end to those once and for all—we may, in
our role as priests in the line of Christ, be called to sacrifice in line with
Christ—sacrificing ourselves in order to make God’s forgiveness and blessings
upon those in the world who are in need of knowing the love of Christ—it may
mean sacrificing a meal out at a restaurant in order to use those funds to feed
several hungry persons in our community; it may mean sacrificing free time we
could use to fish, play golf, or sit and watch a movie in order to respond to
spend a day serving in our disaster response warehouse; it may mean sacrificing
our relationship with some in order to take a stand against racism or any form
of ethnic prejudice; it may mean sacrificing a secure income in order to
respond to a call of God to mission or ministry.
My brothers and
sisters, what a blessing it is to have been chosen by God—to be His chosen
race, and to be called to serve as the mediators of His forgiveness and His
blessings…we a blessing it is to be declared by God to a royal priesthood—servants
of God in the line of Christ Himself.
Who are we? In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we are a royal
priesthood! Amen.
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