Kingdom of Priests

Dear Friend,
How are you? Hope you’re well.

Do you want to know your future? :) I think I know what you and I will be in the future:
“To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us a kingdom of priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Rev. 1:5b~6)”
“And they sang a new song, saying:
‘You are worthy to take the scroll,
And to open its seals;
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made us a kingdom of priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth.’ (Rev. 5:9~10)”
Actually, these tell us that you and I are already priests now as well as in the future.

Today, I’d like to share Eugene Peterson’s writings about David and Samuel’s story in Leap over a Wall, related to a kingdom of priests. 

Samuel went to the house of Jesse, David’s Father, to anoint God’s chosen one.
“Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all the young men here?” Then he said, “There remains yet the youngest, and there he is, keeping the sheep.” (1 Samuel 16:10~11) 

Eugene wrote about the Hebrew word, Haqqaton for the baby brother, that carries undertones of insignificance. And he went on to write on “The Ordinary Person”:
So it’s of considerable moment to realize that the centerfold account in Scripture of a human being living by faith comes in the shape of a layperson, David wasn’t ordained to the priesthood. He wasn’t called, as we say, “to the ministry.” He was “just” a layperson, Haqqaton. But there isn’t a hint in the narrative that his status is evidence of inadequacy. This is humanity burgeoning and vital, bold and extravagant, skillful and inventive in love and prayer and work.
David’s life is the premier biblical instance of what’s sometimes called “the priesthood of all believers.”
…
When Christian communities are healthy, the “little ones” aren’t demeaned and dispirited into being followers and consumers but find themselves acquiring initiative and originality as their priests and pastors, deacons and bishops, friends and neighbors serve them.
David’s ancestors, freshly rescued from a doomed life in Egypt, heard the constituting sentence: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6) When that sentence struck their ears, they could only have reacted with a kind of uncomprehending astonishment. Nothing in their experience in Egypt could have prepared them for such a definition of their lives. In Egypt a few priests held all the power, controlled the rituals, and ran the affairs of the nation from the great temple complexes along the Nile. Extravagantly garbed, surrounded by fawning servants, they were privileged and impressive upper class. In the presence of such a priest, a mere layperson could only feel a kind of disreputable inadequacy.
…
And yet, there it was: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests.” Out in the desert with a pop-up tent for a temple, forced into a rough-and-ready equality by the austere conditions of wilderness survival, they were not to have priests but to be priests. Priests without robes, without temples, without training, without hierarchical status. The first Christians were assigned the same identity. When Jesus Christ freed them from their sins, he made them, among other things, priests (I Peter 2:5,9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6)
Called something by God that no one else would dream of calling them, they were forced to figure out what, in fact, a priest is. Not how a priest dresses, not what temple he’s in charge of, not what rituals he presides over, not what lore he’s privy to - but “What is a priest, anyway?”
Put that way, the answer is obvious enough. A priest presents a person to God, or presents God to a person. A priest represents human needs before God, sets God’s word before men and women. God and humans have something to do with one another, everything to do with one another. A priest says and acts that reality.
The Hebrews became an entire community of people doing that for one another. Each was learning an identity that consisted of being the “image of God.” Each was being trained in the rigors of a life of faith that consisted of listening to God, receiving his grace, obeying his commands, receiving his promises. Simply by being out of Egypt and on the far shore of the Red Sea, they were in a position to realize that nothing in them or about them could ever again be understood apart from the presence and action of God. That, and that alone, whether they carried through on it or not, qualified them to be priests.
Embarrassingly forgetful of the God who saves us, and easily distracted from the God who is with us, we need priests to remind us of God, to confront us with God. And we need a lot of them. God, knowing our need, put us in a kingdom of priests. But for the most part, they’re priests who don’t look like priests, priests who don’t take on the airs of priests, priests who don’t dress like priests, priests who don’t talk like priests. But they’re priests all the same.
David is such a priest. He was never called a priest; all his life he was what we dismissively describe as just a layperson. Yet all his life those around him recognized God’s rule and grace and mercy being mediated to them through his life and work. David is the basic biblical rebuke to the minimizing adjective just.

Friend, 
I wanted to share what resonates with me from Eugene Peterson’s book. I hope this blesses you. It’s my prayer that you and I live as His priests, presenting our family, friends, and communities to God and presenting God to them.
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Have a bliss!
Julie

​But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy. (1 Peter 2:9~10)