Wednesday, May 28, 2008

On Priesthood

It should go without saying, but it bears repeating: bishops and priests are leaders.

It should go without saying because the very names of these orders of ministry bespeak their particular calling. In the New Testament and earliest Church tradition, we find two orders which share in the leadership of the church: the overseers (episcopoi or bishops) and the elders (presbutoroi or presbyters.)

It bears repeating because we live in a cultural context in which established patterns of authority, leadership, and governance are contested and frequently rejected. Quite candidly, we live in a society in which many people have for a long time been deeply suspicious of ancient (which could mean simply pre-American) Christian churches. We have many who have left ‘organized religion’ altogether on a journey of usually self-directed syncretism. We have many more, perhaps far more, who have flocked to “nondenominational” churches marked by casual contemporary worship, informal aesthetics, and clergy who disdain the traditional titles, trappings or styles of ordained status - yet which retain in most cases a particularly strong vision of the authority of clergy (who are almost aways men.)Within the Episcopal Church in particular are a couple of generations of clergy who have sought to revise the identity of bishops and presbyters, sometimes asserting that their main role is to serve as therapists, prophets, counter-cultural rebels, or mystics.

While the ministry of bishops and presbyters may well have therapeutic, prophetic, counter-cultural and mystical results, I would like to assert that bishops and priests are called to serve the whole baptised people of God as leaders with particular charisms of ministry which are not primarily therapy, prophesy, rebellion or mysticism. Moreover, it needs to be said that we in the Church are not merely participants in a gathering of like-minded folks with similar ideas and goals, who have organized ourselves with a form purely of our own devising.

No, we who believe we are living inside a reality shaped not by ourselves but by Jesus Christ, believe that we have been given a form that itself is shaped like the One who formed it. As Rowan Williams writes in his reflection on the work of Michael Ramsey,

“the Church is never left to reimagine itself or reshape itself according to its own priorities of the moment; for it to be itself, it has received those gifts that express and determine its essential self as a place where the eternal self-giving of Christ is happening in such a way as to heal and change lives.”2


5 comments:

Ann said...

Well, I don't believe I live in a reality shaped by Jesus Christ, but by the one Trinity. By God. Jesus, I believe, came to *point the way* to a reality that already existed in God's mind, but not necessarily to shape it further.

Greg Jones said...

In the beginning was the Word and the was with God and the Word was God - all things came into being through Him...

shawnbm said...

I liked the thorough analysis you present here, Fr. Jones. I concur with much of what you have written, especially how clergy are called to act in a different fashion from the litany of things mentioned at the beginning of your article. It seems to me the bishops and priests are about preserving that which has been handed down through the centuries and helping the laity better understand not only from where we come, but the importance of participating in the salvific mission we are all called to assist in through the sacraments. Thanks for the article. I am sure you will get a few responses.

Fr. Bryan Owen said...

Ann - In making the distinction between a reality shaped by Jesus Christ versus a reality shaped by "the one Trinity" (i.e., God), and then expressing your belief that you live in the latter as opposed to the former, are you thereby saying that Jesus Christ is not God?

Greg Jones said...

This was put up to share with a few folks, I've pulled the link to the rest until it is reworked further.