Monday Devotional: November 18, 2024

Bible Reading: Revelation 1:4b-8

⁴ Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, ⁵ and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood ⁶ and made us a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. ⁷ Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. So it is to be. Amen. ⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Some of us attend faith communities where we call the pastor a priest, and it’s his or her role to celebrate the sacraments and pronounce God’s forgiveness. Other of us go to churches where we call the minister “pastor” or “preacher,” but it’s still easy for us to imagine that he or she has a privileged relationship with God- a relationship we think we could never have.

During the sixteenth-century Reformation, a renewed understanding emerged of a concept called the “priesthood of all believers.” That phrase doesn’t mean that we don’t need human pastors and priests to lead, teach, and guide the people of God. It means that the whole people of God- the church itself- is a priestly community. Clergy and laypeople together make up this priestly community. This community serves God by serving as a priest to its neighbors, offering a sign of God’s presence to them.

Some people believe that the term “priesthood of all believers” means that each one of us is our own priest, that we don’t need others to help us in our relationship with God. Rather, it means that in baptism we become priests for one another precisely because we do need to help one another relate to God. We need to announce God’s forgiveness to one another. We want to intercede in prayer for one another. We desire to allow our voices to carry words of praise on behalf of others when their own voices can’t. We need to be the kingdom of priests God has made us.

And in our priestly praying, we will thank God for those pastors and priests whom God has given to guide us and equip us as we grow into our own priestly role as bearers of God’s love, forgiveness, and presence in the world.

Prayer

Almighty God, as a member of your priestly people, help me see how I can make your presence and grace known to my friends and neighbors. Amen.

By L. Roger Owens, The Upper Room Disciplines 2015, page 336.