A Royal Priesthood

1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.

Having just celebrated the last Sunday of the liturgical year of Christ the King yesterday, we take a pre-advent look the idea raised in the letter of Peter, the we are chosen to be a Royal Priesthood.

But what does it mean to be chosen according to God’s strategy?

There was a boy who did not have much athletic ability. Every time he and his friends would play some game, he was always the last to be chosen. One day two new fellows came to play with them and were allowed to be team captains because they were older. The first team captain chose the boy who had always been chosen last before. Why? Because they were brothers, and he loved his brother. So it is with God. He chose us not because of our abilities, but because he loves us.

Yet, what does being chosen to the Christian Priesthood. R. Paul Stevens is Professor Emeritus in Marketplace Theology, Regent College, Vancouver suggests that “Christian priesthood is not a matter of being religious and Mr. Goody two shoes but of serving God and God’s purposes in the nitty gritty everydayness of life in the world, not a matter of sacred times and sacred places but ordinary times and ordinary places, not a matter of ordained ministers but the whole people of God. Talking about God’s people folded into the world as seed and yeast and salt. Every church of 200 hundred members has two hundred missionaries penetrating neighbourhoods, offices, factories, workshops and schools, into all the powers and places, seven days a week.”

Dear Jesus,

I have belonged to lots of groups in my life but none is so important to me as the family of believers among whom you have placed me. It’s there that I have received mercy. There forgiveness has restored my life to hope. It’s there that I have understood the meaning of my disappointments and successes. It’s there that I found you and the meaning of life. I am so thankful for being included in your church. Help me to warmly reflect to the world around me how loving and faithful you are to all creation. Help me to teach them who you are and what you want to be for them. Help me reach those who otherwise live dejected and rejected lives, in order to give them the rescue of redeeming grace and a place in your family.

AMEN