Sarx

In part three, we wonder what priest is at all if priest is not the lone eucharistic wonder-working member of the congregation, or (in the Orthodox understanding) the only channel in the congregation through which God might work eucharistic wonders.

Mindful, as Rick Fabian points out, in Worship at St Gregory’s, that that the sole Cohen - priest - is Jesus. The Church, the Body of Christ, shares in that priesthood. The Church does something that Jesus does in offering herself to the world. Over time it became logical for one person to be praying in place of or in lieu of the assembled voices of the community. This voice is the host, or the one who presides at the Eucharistic banquet. Presbyteros is the word from the Greek - where Hieros is used is in the New Testament to refer to Jesus. English is unfortunate in that we do not have another word for priest. So, Hieros and Presbyteros both come out as “priest”.

Heiros is also used in several occult orders, as well as through the Renaissance Ceremonial Magicians. It is a rank of initiation and seems to be tied, also, to the Roman mystery cults rather than the Church before she became an institution of the Roman State. The sacramental, mechanistic and one might say magical version that I rejected in the previous post results from an assumption that “priest” = “hieros” instead of “presbyteros”. Pardon the phraseology, but what does a more presbyterian instead of hierophantic model of the priesthood look like?

Cam’s sermon gave a mentality, a psychological rational for it. But what is this presbyterial model in practice? This is where Donald’s email came in. See how well these images fit with Cam’s:

priest is rabbi who knows the tradition and can draw from it treasures old and new;
priest is elder who listens and remembers backwards and also listens and remembers the moment and how the Spirit is moving the congregation;
priest is the one that can gather the community (at prayer or otherwise) in Christ’s name and have the community know and act (more or less) as who and what it is from that calling.

Mindful that both of these - the email and the sermon - came together (a “coincidence”) after I - and some others - had just prayed two novenas for me to find guidance.

I may not *have* the qualities sought after… but I have a clearer idea of what they are: not because of my mentors saying so, but because God clearly answered a prayer for guidance.

Twice.

No… maybe a third time?

I had a chat conversation with a member of my old discernment committee that said something about priest as map-keeper: not as in “I’ve got the treasure map and you don’t” but rather, again, to fit in with Cam’s sermon:

him: um… I don’t know about the “liturgical” qualifier, but as a functionary, yes. I mean, obviously liturgical, but I’m not sure where “liturgy” ends in this quest.
me: interesting
him: maybe it’s because my own attention is sparse, but my priest has my back, inasmuch as I can count on him to spend some time intersecting my experience with the path to God, even when I consciously won’t.
me: hmm. I’m not wading through your images very well. what do you mean “has my back, inasmuch as I can count on him to spend some time intersecting my experience with the path to God, even when I consciously won’t.”
him: I don’t spend nearly as much time as you*, for instance, thinking about church, and/or what’s right by God. And while I think it’s the church’s responsibility (the entire laity and all of it) to hold all it’s members up, I guess I feel like it’s this guy’s *job (the priest) to keep an eye on the map. To keep interpreting… what are those three legs of the Anglican “stool of faith”? Tradition, and a couple other things…

See: that idea of priest-as-connexion, priest-as-sacramental tie to what is supposed to be. Priest-as-horcrux. Priest as thing-the-community-created-to-be-itself. There’s the view from the POV of the non-ordained. It’s not the job of the priest to be the Best Christian around. The priest has the same duties as any Christian: love, pray, visit, hold, work… But the duties of the priest are expanded in another way based on her gifts - to anchor a community within both worlds.

I think the magical view gives us priests-as-lawyers and priests-as-newspaper writers. We have too many clergy, let’s give them gainful employment, at least. But I think, seriously, that the non-magical view can give us those things as well: a priest who is a newspaper (wo)man ties the Fourth Estate to the Kingdom. A priest who is a lawyer may do far more to effect her fellow lawyers salvation than anything else.

Salvation = “made whole” in this theology.

A priest represents a reminder to be made whole no matter what your profession: or his. (I don’t think “priesthood” is a profession.)