Chosen Race, Sacred Nation

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."

-- 1 Peter 2:9

The title of this sermon and the text on which it is based might be taken as expressions of the worst feature of biblical religion, it’s elitism. Currently we see the nemesis of such elitism day by day; but it is, thank God, not the only theme in the Bible. Furthermore the Bible itself criticizes and corrects it as our lesson for today shows. A look at our text in context shows that it intends not to affirm but to rectify the exclusionism and elitism of Jewish racial purity and ethnic privilege. In its historical context this remarkable claim of dignity attributes to a non-Jewish group of persecuted nobodies in Northern Asia Minor, far from the “sacred” space of Zion, the proudest claims of the Jewish priestly class. Their own little community is the temple, a spiritual edifice in whose fabric each of them is a living stone, and in whose liturgy each of these gentile parvenus is a royal priest. Thus Peter democratizes the priesthood and the temple; anyone who by faith accepts God’s saving work in Jesus Christ, regardless of race or genealogy can be a living part of the fabric of God’s presence in the world.

This metaphor of temple and priesthood applies also to us here in Woodside, and I want to take it as an opportunity to set out a few fundamental ideas on the nature of the church in general and on the privilege and duty of membership. There are two other reasons for addressing the subject; one is that next Sunday we shall be receiving ten young people into membership through confirmation and I want them to have an account of what we believe about the church they are joining. (They are currently on retreat with our assistant pastor, but the hard copy of this sermon will be added to their folders to join the one on the liturgy I preached a few weeks ago). The other reason is the current crisis touching the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church; I want to express solidarity with that church in its present embarrassment and to reflect on the link between the church as an institution of grace and its priesthood or ministry.

Let me take up these points in reverse order. Long ago, in the fourth century, it was established by the Catholic Church that the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the virtue of the priest. St Augustine was a leading representative of this point of view, not least because his Episcopal see in Hippo, North Africa (Tunisia), included a schismatic majority called Donatists, whose main tenet was that the priests had to be morally pure for the liturgy to be effective. They called themselves “the church of the martyrs” and taught that only priests who had never succumbed under the torture of Roman persecution should be allowed to continue as priests. They were the “one strike and you’re out” party of the third and fourth centuries, and in Augustine’s town theirs was the big church, and his Catholics were the threatened minority. Donatist gangs would manhandle Catholics in the streets and countryside, and Donatist propaganda called the Catholic Church the church of the traitors (traditores, i.e. the “handers-over” of the Scriptures to the persecutors in the times of the pagan persecution).

By saying this I do not wish to exonerate priests who have committed crimes before the law, nor the officials of the church who have concealed their crimes and thus obstructed justice, but merely to affirm that I have no doubt at all that the Catholic church continues as an effective conduit of the divine grace, a grace that does not depend on the moral virtue of the clergy. Even to affirm that is embarrassing, - how can one avoid the odor of condescension? - but at a time when my web log-on page asks me to click whether I have lost faith in the Catholic church or not, I want to go on record here, “NO WAY!” (The other things I have to say, about the framers of such questions, must remain off the record).

The principle on which most of us in the Western and Eastern Churches have been operating since that time is the one favored by Augustine, that the work of God in Jesus Christ is perfect and efficacious in and of itself and does not depend on the virtue, skill, spiritual experience, or good temper of the clergy for its truth or its effect. “God can raise up sons of Abraham from these stones!” to quote John the Baptist (Luke 3:8), and the work of our salvation is God’s work not ours. I affirm this traditional principle as the only basis on which we clergy can possibly do what do. If the flow of the grace of God to you in this church depended on my virtue I would have quit this job long ago. Some weeks ago in our Bible study someone asked why we wear robes and stoles to lead worship. My answer is that we are in a representative capacity when we lead worship, not a personal capacity. Ideally, you should not even know our names, and certainly not be judging whether we are nice or not. That’s irrelevant, but has alas been the cause of burnout for many clergy who have sought to please their congregations more than God.

Richard John Neuhaus, a prominent Catholic intellectual, editor of the magazine “First Things,” makes the distinction between ecclesial Christians and evangelical Christians. The article is entitled “How I became the Catholic I was,” and it explains why he converted to Catholicism after thirty years as a Lutheran pastor. He grew up the son of the pastor of St John’s Lutheran Church, Missouri-Synod, in the Ottawa Valley of Canada. St John’s was located opposite an evangelical Protestant chapel and a few blocks from the Catholic cathedral, and he had childhood friends in both churches. Let me quote him: “I am sure that it was unarticulated but self-evident to me by the time I was five years old that St John’s and the cathedral had more in common than either had with the evangelical chapel. For one immeasurably momentous thing, our churches baptized babies. Then too, our being saved was something that God did through His Church; it was given, a gift. It did not depend- as it did for Dougy Cahill, our evangelical friend – upon feelings or spiritual experience. It depended on grace bestowed through things done  (FT 122, April 2002, p. 15).”

I like that phrase, “grace bestowed through things done.” What might some of these things be? Here let me turn to us, including our absent confirmands, and suggest a few essential things. (I cannot avoid a few “musts” at this point, but after all one should be allowed to be preachy in a sermon). We must participate regularly in the worship of the church; we must participate in the governance of the church, by serving on committees and boards; we must participate in the mission of the church by serving the community through the opportunities provided by the church, and in other ways; we must participate in the teaching of children and youth in our church school and youth ministry; and we must maintain a life of active private prayer, study and reflection. All these “musts” are obligations and opportunities, because by them the grace of God is mediated to us. Doing such things will not always give us a good feeling; sometimes quite the contrary; nevertheless negatively or positively they are teaching us how to live together as a Christian community, how to be a church, and they are bearing God’s grace into our lives.

I have said repeatedly how proud I am of the way we have pulled together to strengthen our congregation. As living stones in this spiritual temple we must continue to be strong and solid in ourselves and steady in support of our church. Remember Rudyard Kipling’s “Law of the Jungle” in his “Jungle Books:” “Now this is the Law of the Jungle/ – as old and as true as the sky/ And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, / but the wolf that shall break it must die. / As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk / the Law runneth forward and back / - For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” 

I am not suggesting that we are a pack of wolves, despite some tense meetings, so let’s not change the metaphor but return to our text. Before we are wolves, whose strength both contributes to and draws from the strength of the pack we are living stones and royal priests. As stones we must be steady and reliable and as priests active and true. I have noticed from historical documents of   our congregation that preparation for membership in the church emphasized greatly what in the trade is called the “priesthood of all believers.” Some old liturgies of admission to membership here sound like ordination services to me. Perhaps that emphasis is why the longer-standing members among us are so loyal, and why deacon Chet always refers to himself as an ordained deacon. I affirm that self- understanding and wish you all could regard yourselves as priests of this church, but I know that there are different levels of comfort among us with regard to the fundamental doctrines and I do not wish anyone to affirm more than he or she honestly can. For that reason we have lowered somewhat the theological profile of a member, but not our expectations of you for this church. Whatever our level of adherence to the doctrine Christ regards us all as priests of the new covenant, ministers of the Gospel.

Now perhaps you can see why it is essential that the efficacy of the Gospel not depend on the virtue of its representatives. It is not false modesty to confess that we are unworthy of this trust, nor is it false pride to accept that God has entrusted to our hands the precious balm of grace, and to our words the Word of Life. So, to the confirmands and to us all I say, “Be true priests! Take your place and play your part in this congregation of the church of Christ. Do not pay too much attention to feeling; just do it! And you will experience “the grace bestowed through things done.”