This week Fr Jim goes on retreat in preparation for his ordination to the priest hood in this church on July 4th. I’m not sure what the retreat conductor will be saying to Fr Jim and his contemporaries about priesthood but I thought this morning I would get my say in first. And that seems appropriate because our gospel reading speaks of the authority Jesus gives to his disciples to exercise ministry in his name. And it speaks of the motivation of that ministry in Jesus compassion for the people who seem like a harassed and helpless flock of sheep without a shepherd.
So what does it mean to be a priest and why do we have priests in the church of England? And if we see part of our Christian responsibility as being to encourage people to think about becoming a priest what are we really asking them to take on?
These are of course questions which many priests ask themselves even after they have been ordained. What is the point of an ordained priesthood in the contemporary world? The numbers of the clergy have declined dramatically, perhaps because young people hesitate to take up work which is usually demanding and poorly remunerated in worldly terms. They hesitate to take on a role which seems so ill defined especially as so many of their tasks could be done by far better qualified lay people. Increasingly priests seem to be required to be expert at everything on all points of the social spectrum from Hampstead to Hackney, Their home is also their work place so it becomes hard to have what everyone else would call ‘a private life’. It’s not surprising that many young priests and perhaps older ones too, have a fear of losing themselves in their role. So one of our former deacons could write, ‘As I prepare for priesthood, I find myself wrestling with various issues. Who am I in this process? Am I significant, or am I to be blotted out by the whole thing?’ It seems all too easy to loose sight of your own humanity in the priesthood, as in many other high pressure roles in our society. So as we try to define what the priesthood really is, we mustn’t come up with something which it is impossible for ‘real’ human beings to undertake.
We might start therefore with the things which no-one but a priest can regularly do in church. The distinctive thing about the priest is that he or she celebrates the sacraments. The sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist don’t just happen nor do we believe that anyone could lead such services. We could simply pick on someone to celebrate the Eucharist as they came through the church door (provided they knew what to do) – but in the Church of England we think that would be wrong. We believe a priest must do these sacramental things for us. The priest must therefore also be sacramental or as one preacher once put it, the priest is ‘a walking sacrament’ because he or she is the instrument whereby the sacraments can happen.
What then might it mean to be a ‘walking sacrament’? First we need to think what this word sacrament means. A simple definition is that a sacrament is an outward sign of an internal process. A sacrament is a sign, so it needs something that we can see like water or bread and wine or the gesture of the laying on of hands. And the sign also needs words to accompany it, to set this sign in a context of meaning. So we celebrate the Eucharist by repeating Christ’s words at the last supper. And finally this sign and these words effect something in those who receive it. Sacraments make a difference to us. The sacraments are God’s way of making things happen in us. And more precisely they work in two different ways. First they act as a remedy against the things which separate us from God. You come to the altar feeling irritable, distracted, sorry for yourself, you kneel for a while to receive the bread and the wine and then as you return to your place what you have just done may work a gradual change in you. And this is the second more positive aspect of what a sacrament does. It can provide a different more creative perspective on where you are with yourself. So perhaps instead of being wrapped up in yourself, you notice another member of the congregation you haven’t seen for weeks, you smile and think that you must talk to them afterwards. And life moves on more gracefully. So we can more formally say the sacraments are a remedy against sin and they enable us to find joy in worshipping God, and serving our neighbour.
So what is the sacrament of ordination and what more especially does it do? The visible sign associated with ordination is the laying on of hands. But what is the grace which this act releases through the people so ordained? As walking sacraments what aspect of God’s grace are the clergy instrumental in bringing about? Perhaps the clue is in the words used – ordination, ordained, holy orders, the sacrament of order.
We are not used perhaps to think of order as a grace, though as English people so used to queuing in an orderly fashion, you might think it ought to be obvious to us. Order of course is essential to creation and redemption. Genesis tells the story of bringing order out of chaos so that the world might come into being. Order is necessary to the life of a community. So we might also think of St Paul wrestling with the moral and spiritual disorder in the church in Corinth where he has to tell them that the Eucharist should be celebrated decently and in good order.
So we can say that through the Holy Spirit the sacrament of order releases the grace whereby things can happen in the church in an ordered way through the recognized ministry of particular men and women. Earlier I said that sacraments are firstly a remedy against sin. The sacrament of order might therefore be seen as a remedy against the sin of disorder, separation and disunity. And more positively the sacrament of order should help us to worship God together, forming an harmonious community so that we might receive the grace of holy communion.
I have taken these ideas from that great medieval thinker who is often surprisingly modern, St Thomas Aquinas. He also suggests that each sacrament might be associated with a particular virtue and that the virtue associated with the sacrament of order is ‘prudentia’. Prudence is a much neglected if not somewhat comic sounding virtue and is probably better referred to in terms of discretion, foresight, and wisdom drawn from practical experience. As Jesus tells the apostles they are to be ‘wise as serpents and innocent as doves.’
So where does this leave us? It leaves us, I hope, with a view of priests as the men and women whose responsibility it is to help us to order for good our relations with one another and with God. This ordering starts in our worship and moves out into whatever aspect of our lives are in need of this priestly ministry. In their ordination priests are given the authority to be the prudential authors of community. There may be many things that lay people can do far better than the clergy, but the community does not have a right to those things, they have to be volunteered. Whereas the community does have a right to the priest’s ministry and service and leadership for its good ordering under God. And that good ordering starts in the liturgy and extends out into the skilful chairing of a meeting, a sensitive pastoral encounter, the construction of a sermon or keeping a tidy desk. So as Fr Jim approaches his ordination the question for him is this. How is a priest to order his own life so that he may become the instrument of order within a community? How is a priest best enabled to exercise his holy orders so that the community may be ordered in such a way that it becomes more and more open to the healing and creative grace of God? He has to ask himself, ‘Who I am as I try to order my particular life joyfully and creatively under God, so that I can be wisely available to a particular community of people trying to come together under God.’ As walking sacraments the clergy are to let their ordered lives confess the humanity which will build up the body of Christ in the places to which Jesus sends them, as he sent out his disciples to bring peace and order to the world. Amen.