No ‘Plan B’
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Let’s begin with prayer, shall we?
Mighty and Holy God, thank you, that you are Lord over all. Lord we ask that you, by your Spirit, would quicken our hearts and speak to us today what you have for us, each one of us, where we need to be spoken to. So, Lord, use these words for your glory and for your honor. We ask it because of Jesus. Amen.
Well perhaps recently you saw on one of the local T.V. stations that a woman had been going through the pregnancy, and eventually her birth, on television and it was all broadcast on the internet. We were invited to join Lynsee as she went through, first her pregnancy and her doctor visits and all those kinds of things; and then eventually went into labor. At that point it went live on the internet through this T.V station, on through and up to, and including, the birth.
Now I didn’t see little Solveig being born, and truth be told, I really didn’t want to. Not because it was too graphic or I might faint –which both could very easily be true– but rather there is something, I think, about a delivery room that is special; that that is a place for families where there are bonds built and memories made. And just because we can go there with technology, I don’t think it means that we should go there with technology. Now I pray nothing but the best for this family and this little guy as he grows up, but I was just thinking about that and it got me thinking about the birthing experience in general, particularly from a child’s point of view. If you think of it from a child being born it is a pretty traumatic few hours, isn’t it? I would guess that they would just as soon stay in the warmth and safety of the womb rather than be born into this new harsh environment. The outside world is not something they would normally choose, yet that is exactly what must happen for this child to become destined to what it is to be, a child breaking into a new world with all the hopes, all the promises of any new life. And I don’t think it is any different when we think about the birth of Jesus.
You know, when Jesus was born on that cold harsh night into a manger that was full of straw and, realistically, probably manure mixed in with it, all the aspects of any new life were in play then, weren’t they? Would he have ten fingers and ten toes? Would his lungs fill with air when he grasped for his first breath? Those were tenuous moments for Mary and Joseph, as they are for any parent. But the other side of that picture, as the heavenly Father was looking down from on high, he had no doubts. He had no doubts. He knew that Jesus would be fine. He knew he would become the Savior and the Sacrifice that all humanity needed, that he would be part of God’s plan for redemption. In the birth of Jesus we have the first, the best, the only plan on God’s part to restore creation back to the way it was. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” You see, God put all of his eggs in Jesus’ basket. There was no Plan B for God with the birth of Jesus. Think about all the prophecies, we just heard some today that speak of Jesus’ birth, of his life, of his death and his resurrection. God set this plan in motion. He gave is very own son. He did not turn his back on creation and his own people. And for those of us who call Christ, Lord, those who seek to follow him with all our hearts and minds, we are God’s own people. We are now at the point of carrying on that plan of redemption in the world. We are now front and center in God’s plans. Just like there was no Plan B in Jesus’ birth, there is no Plan B for you and me. God has put all of his eggs in you and me to carry out that plan. We are to bring the message to the world that Jesus started. Think about that for a moment, if that weren’t the case, then why are we here? I mean, really, if God was going to do some other way and it wasn’t on our shoulders, when we made a commitment to Christ, why didn’t we just go to heaven? But we are here, aren’t we? We are here for a reason.
We are part of God’s plan. And folks, there is no Plan B. If we want to use that birth analogy, part of it is for us to move into that unknown, trusting God, to become the people that God has destined each one of us to be in his body. We are the carriers of God’s plan of redemption to the world. We are his witnesses. As part of God’s plan for redemption, he has given us something very special, a special title, in fact. Part of God’s plan for us is for you and me to be priests. And, I think that leads us to our scripture. So I want to read that. It comes from 1 Peter, Chapter 2, verses 4, 5 and then verse 9.
As you come to him, the living Stone –rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him –you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
And then verse 9:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
You are a priest. You are God’s priests. Now we have probably heard about this notion of the priesthood of all believers at some point in our lives, but I don’t know if we have a good idea of what that really means. So what I want to do is to unpack that a little bit for all of us so that we might embrace this roll as God’s priests in the world. Now depending on your upbringing, you may have all kinds of preconceived ideas of what it means to be a priest, what a priest does, who he is or she is. I think it is important for us to separate what our ideas are from what the biblical understanding is of a priest. So we want to take a look at that a little bit right now.
In the Old Testament, the priesthood was that group of people that were the people that were meant to interact with God. The priests were the ones who served as mediators or go-betweens between God and the people under very strict guidelines in terms of what they could do and what they couldn’t do. One of their main responsibilities was obviously to offer sacrifices, wasn’t it? Offer sacrifices to God in the temple. Those sacrifices were a demonstration of the peoples’ faith and trust in God. But with the coming of Jesus, the roles and the requirements of a priest are radically transformed. When the Holy Spirit comes in Acts, Chapter 2, at Pentecost, people no longer had to rely on a priest as a go-between between them and the Father. It is with that shift that God issues an invitation to all of us, all believers, to assume that new role as a priest. The role that was once for a select few in the Old Testament is now open to all who call Christ, Lord.
So what I want to do is to draw out some comparisons to help us understand that a little bit more in terms of what it was and what it now is. In the Old Testament the priesthood was based on the descendents of one particular person: Aaron, and the Levites. If you weren’t a Levite you could not be a priest; that is the end of the story. But in the New Testament all who follow Christ are now priests. We are all now priests. In the Old Testament, the priests were the ones who offered sacrifices. They offered sacrifices, where? In a man-made temple, didn’t they? Well now with Christ, our lives are to be the sacrifices, and our bodies are now the temple that God resides in.
In the Old Testament the priests were the ones who mediated the affairs between God and between man but now with Christ, each follower can boldly come before the throne without mediation. We have access to God now. In the Old Testament a chosen priest was to minister or to serve many people; but now in the New Testament because there are many people that serve and minister, as priests we serve many people, so it has been spread out. In the Old Testament in the priesthood everything was dependent on one person, with them interacting for us before God; but now there is an interdependence for us and we are interdependent on each other as priests. Then finally, the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was contained within the Holy of Holies, that inner most room within the temple; but now with the coming of the Holy Spirit, it resides within each one of us, for we are now the temples of God.
So the primary role of a priest has always been to serve God and, as a by-product, serve people. So with the coming of Christ, the role of a priest has not changed. We need to understand that. But it has moved. It has moved from one person or one group of people to now everyone who claims Christ, from one special place to the world because of the Holy Spirit. Let me say it again. You are a priest. You are a priest before God and before each other. Your primary role as a priest, just as it was in the Old Testament, is to approach God with dignity and with care, seeking to love, honor and serve him, and then to love, honor and serve the people around us, because we know that they are all created and loved by Jesus.
So God’s plan for us is that we would embrace that priestly role. That we would embrace what it means to be priests among each other. How do we do that? We do that by learning from Christ. We learn from Christ how he carried out his priestly functions and we are to do the same. Your priestly sacrifice, your spiritual sacrifice as it talks about in Romans 12, is to serve God and as a result then serve others, as well. That is how you fulfill your role as a priest.
Now, let me stop right there and ask you to imagine, imagine what might happen in a congregation like this if we all fully embraced our roles as priests before God and before each other. What might that do to our worship? We have had wonderful worship today, how might that change? If we embrace our role as priests, how might that change how we interact with each other? How we care for one another? When we become priests to each other there is an interdependence that is created that needs to happen within the body. Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 12 where he uses the body metaphor, how we all have different roles but we are all interdependent on each other; we are interdependent on each other to become one so that we can function in a healthy way, and Paul uses that body metaphor to explain that. In other words, we need each other. So as we serve God in our God-gifted areas, as I was talking about with the children, it is about knowing our spiritual gifts and using them. That is how we use and act out on our priestly nature. When we do that within our church and within the world, we have the ability to make a huge impact in what God is doing in us, in our church, and around the world.
In that, the role of carrying out the work is not left to the professionals. It is all of us, because we are all priests, and that role is carried out by all of us as priests. So there is no Plan B in God’s eyes folks. We are to fulfill our roles as God’s priests knowing that one person can make a difference. One person can make a difference. Let me leave you with a couple stories that illustrate that.
Bob was a seventy-something retiree that was working in a children’s ministry at a church. As the service ended he was there waiting for the parents to come and pick up the children and one little girl was still there. So the little girl came up and she said, “Would you read me this book?” (and she had the book, Winnie the Pooh.) So he said, “Yes, I will do that.” He read the book to her while he kept one eye on the door waiting for the parents to show up. Well, they didn’t show up and Bob wasn’t quite sure what to do, a little concerned and the little girl said, “Would you read it again?” He said, “O.K. I will.” He read it again, even though in his mind he was getting worried, wondering where mom and dad were. He finished the book, and again, the parents had not shown up and he was not sure what to do and he was getting worried at this point. The little girl said, “Will you read it again?” He said, “O.K., I will.” As he was about halfway through the story, he could see that the mom had shown up in the doorway. The mom just silently stood there and watched and allowed him to finish reading the story. After they were done he brought the little girl to the mom and the mom apologized for being late. She said, “You know, I just didn’t want to interrupt you because I was watching and that was the first time that my daughter had a book read to her by a man since my husband died two years ago.”
That is the kind of difference one person can make unbeknownst to them, when we act in the role of a priest.
Then there is a story of a young woman who had been estranged from her mom for a long time to the point where she had been kicked out of the house and hadn’t talked for many years. She said that “we weren’t doing that well; in fact, we weren’t even talking. Then one year on a Thanksgiving, my mom attempted suicide,” she said, “and she ended up in a nursing home as a quadriplegic. She had no movement, she couldn’t talk, and she was hanging on to the last threads of mental faculty.” The girl said “at that point I was a new Christian. After church every week I would go to that little nursing home and I would try to take care of her. It started with a cup with one of those little kiddie straws,” and she said “it took all the spiritual energy and courage I had but I somehow felt I had to do that because I think it would please Jesus if I did that.”
That is the kind of difference one person can make.
I invite you to embrace your role as a priest. Would you pray with me, please?
Lord God, thank you. Thank you that you have given us the high calling of being a priest. Lord help us not to back away from that but rather to fully embrace it knowing that in doing that, not only can we make a difference in someone’s lives, but we move the kingdom forward; and Lord that is your desire. That is your plan of redemption, one life at a time. Lord, in this season of Advent, let us be the priests that you have called us to be, in your name. Amen.