The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



For the Ministry (III), April 9, 2011, Lay Ministry Celebration, Christ Church Cathedral Nashville

“The whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:5-6).

When I was a teenager and new to the Christian faith, my imagination was captured by Christian worship and I quickly became involved in serving at the altar. It was something I could do. My brother and I would come to church with our parents on Sunday morning and hang around the sacristy hoping that folks wouldn’t show up so that we could serve; and sometimes we would stay on for the late service after the parents had left in order to get another chance. I think I finally learned how to drive a car only so I could serve at an early weekday liturgy, which was one of my first experiences of adult responsibility in the church, the first of many. That’s an odd motivation for a teen-aged boy to get a license. Little did I know how much time in the future I would be spending in the car doing God’s work.

Those were heady days, becoming acquainted with holy things and with the accoutrements of priestly work. Having said this, my strongest memory is of one ridiculous morning when my torch got stuck in its stand before the Gospel procession, until with a steady heave ho I yanked it free, sending the candle out like an explosive round into the midst of the chancel. Absolutely mortifying to a “sacristy rat”: a cautionary tale that if you practice the art of liturgical correctness you are likely to be hoist on your own petard (or candle, as the case may be).

There’s a tension to the priestly work of gathering the People and of the worship of Almighty God, a tension that’s referenced in our first reading from the Book of Exodus. God chooses Israel as a priestly People so that they can serve before him, but at the same time the whole earth is God’s creation, his own possession. Israel is God’s family, the tribe of Abraham, but nevertheless all the nations of the earth belong to God. God claims a particular People to be a holy nation but only for the sake of the universal human family that will inherit the promise given to the Patriarchs. God seeks fellowship and communion with all humanity, and not just a part, no matter how distant and estranged from him and from each other that they may be. The tension at work is that between the particular and the universal; between the service of the sanctuary and the life of the world.

The tension is creative and not irreconcilable. God gives Israel a priestly vocation, to gather and worship God, which is priestly work. In the Exodus story YHWH calls the People out of slavery to be his People, to gather in the wilderness and to worship him on the mountain. God gives them a Law on Sinai so that they can be a People, no longer enemies of God but in covenant with him. Ancient Israel would have a priesthood, but in a more profound sense they were meant as a whole to be a priestly People on behalf of the world. They were meant to point toward a future in which all humanity would be reconciled to God.

This work is fulfilled in the Church, the Body of Christ, who in his body has reconciled the world to himself (cf. Col. 1:22). Jesus Christ our Great High Priest is the One who reconciles, and he brings into being a new People of God, reformed and renewed. The Book of Revelation gives us a picture of the Church as a kingdom of priests gathered for worship around the heavenly throne. It’s in the sacraments of the Church that we come closest to heavenly realities that cannot be otherwise accessed. Our Eucharist itself invites us to gather and join angels and archangels in worship, entering into another realm even while we are in this world. That’s our common possession as Christians, as baptized people, and those who help to gather the priestly People for the worship of God have a special role to play in claiming this inheritance of prayer, praise and piety.

But remember the tension of that moment when God’s ancient People were gathered at the mountain to serve him, that tension with which we began. “The whole earth is mine”, says God; his writ runs everywhere and not just in a single place with a single People, even the gathered Church. The Church is nothing less than the world reconciled, St Augustine said; so the Church better get out in the world and start living the life and spreading the news. The Church is not so much a “gathered community” as it is a community intended by God to gather all. “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, * the world and all who dwell therein” (Ps. 24:1), as it says in the Psalms. We have a universal call and a universal mission which lies outside the doors of the church. We sacristy rats will have to leave our lairs behind and join God’s People in a triumphal procession out into the world if the work of God’s priestly People is to go forward. We gather for worship so that we may be ready for action, to claim the world that’s being reconciled to God.

- The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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