Jesus and the Priesthood

 

June 22, 2025

The Catholic Lectionary offers us three different themes for the feast of Corpus Christi, that we celebrate today - a different theme for each of the three years of the Liturgical Cycle.  This year the theme is that of Jesus’ priesthood.  So we can ask ourselves how did the concept of priesthood emerge, and in the light of that, then ask how is Jesus’ priesthood to be understood.

 

There is a common experience that is found across religious people from all faiths - namely the experience of an Ultimate Reality that is bigger than ourselves, part of our lives and yet completely other; a Reality that is close, and yet completely out of reach. In the words of Rudolf Otto, in all religions, God is experienced as a mystery that is both terrifying and fascinating. And most people who follow a religion are conscious of a huge abyss between this kind of God and themselves. Very very few seem to be able to ‘cross’ this gap and experience God directly. 

The biblical story of Creation tells us that initially this direct experience of God was available to all human beings, but the parents of the human race (symbolically called Adam and Eve) by their own choices, lost this experience and so their ‘children’ lost this privilege. And so, according to the biblical story, we continue to experience this chasm between God and humankind, until many centuries later, a good man, Abraham, is offered this direct experience, as part of God’s plan to restore to all human beings this original privilege. After Abraham, we have his grandson, Jacob, the one who is given the name Israel because he wrestled with/experienced God directly (Genesis 32;22-32),  and then we have Moses who also experiences God face-to-face as it were, and after him come the many prophets who also engage with God directly.  But these experiences were few and far between.   

 

However, each of these experiences, (found in every religious tradition) is treasured as precious, and their followers strive to safeguard the wisdom, the truth experienced, in order to pass on the message, and the method, by which others too could hopefully experience this Ultimate Reality, who is seen as the ground, the power, the very ocean in which we all move and live and have our very being. And that is why in every religion, after the original individual or his/her immediate followers pass away, there emerges such a group of guardians, who are called priests.  

 

Thus, while Moses experienced God directly, it is not he but Aaron, his brother who becomes the first High Priest when he is made spokesperson for Moses himself - both when Moses goes to meet the Pharaoh, and even when Moses has to communicate Yahweh’s wishes/laws to the people.  After Aaron dies, then  the tribe descended from Levi, (one of the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel) is entrusted with this role. And so the Levites become the priestly class among the Jews, the ones who are entrusted with this guardianship role for the Jews.  

 

Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, these ‘guardians’ tend to become gates, rather than pathways - and since with time they would need to apply the wisdom they have treasured to newly evolving times, they create new rules and rituals.  Over time, for the rest of us who still do not seem to be able cross this gap to experience God directly but want to, these guardians gradually become gatekeepers or mediators. They offer sacrifices on behalf of the rest, they perform religious rituals, and they intercede on behalf of the rest of us. And this system of going through the priest to reach this mysterious, terrifying and fascinating God becomes so ingrained in us, that we cannot even fathom a world where we can cross this chasm by ourselves.

 

But Jesus comes and upsets this whole understanding. For, according to Jesus, God was not this frightening, distant being that was beyond reach. Jesus’ God was an Abba who has greater joy over one sinner returning than over 99 who never went astray (Luke 15:7), who sends his rain and sun on both the good and the bad (Mathew 5:45), who always forgives (Luke 15:11-32), and who would rather that we help someone in need rather than fulfil religious edicts/laws (as evidenced in the many instances where he breaks the Law of the Sabbath in order to help someone in need.).

 

And this kind of loving Abba father, requires no mediator. The author of the letter to Hebrews, - the letter which has the most extensive explanation of the priesthood of Jesus - takes this earlier meaning of priesthood that is at the heart of the Jewish religion, and suggests that Jesus (who was not from the tribe of Levi i.e the priestly tribe) introduced a new kind of priesthood (Hebrews ch. 7).  The author calls Jesus a ‘higher’ kind of priest ‘according to the order of Melchizedek’, on the basis of two reasons: firstly Melchizedek’s priesthood antedated the Jewish priesthood and so could be considered ‘higher’ than the Aaronite or Levitical priesthood, especially as Abraham himself, the ancestor of both Aaron and Levi, gave Melchizedek a tenth of all he owned, in the same way that the Jews gave a tithe to the  Levitical priests.  Secondly using the support of Psalm 110, vs. 4 (the only other place where Melchizedek is mentioned in the Old Testament) the author of Hebrews calls him a priest. According to this Psalm, the Messiah was, of course, going to be a king, but he would also be a priest 'according to the order of Melchizedek', - one who was both king and priest. Thus, the author of the letter is trying to explain to the Jews, using their own familiar terminology of ‘priest’ and ‘king’, that unlike the kind of conquering KING that they were expecting or a mediator PRIEST that was the only kind of priesthood they understood, Jesus was a king who suffers, not conquers his enemies, and a priest who offers no sacrifice of animals, but a sacrifice of himself. This is why, as George Soares Prabhu (the late well-known Indian Jesuit Scripture Scholar) once remarked, that letter to the Hebrews marks the death of the priesthood, as it is normally understood. In fact, Peter takes up this theme and says that all followers of Jesus share in this kind of royal priesthood of Jesus (1 Peter 2:29). Consequently we too are called to suffer and offer ourselves for others and it is through this that we too will experience God.

 

But if we have not really experienced this God ourselves, if we still need a mediator to reach God, then perhaps we have not really experienced the Good News that Jesus tried to bring to us.  And the reality is that, unfortunately, it is the earlier mediator-type of priesthood that is the common understanding among most Catholics today. And we see this in so many small ways in which we practice religion. For example, for some time now there has been a liturgical struggle in the Eastern Catholic Syro-Malabar Church in the Ernakulam Diocese, in Kerala, India, which it was feared could even lead to a schism in that Church. The dispute is/was about whether the priest should face the altar or the people while celebrating the Eucharist. It seems to me that this dispute too is basically a struggle between an understanding of the role of the priest, based on whether the Mass is perceived as a ritual of Worship or as the Lord’s Supper.  In the former understanding the priest is the mediating  one, the one who stands between God and humans, and so is asked to lead the people in worship, which means he naturally turns his face towards God, and away from the people. In the latter understanding, the Mass is a meal, and like in all meals, the people present face each other, with the priest sitting at the head of the table as presider (president).  

 

They say about democratic systems of government, that we get the government we deserve.  Perhaps we can say the same thing in the realm of religion, namely that we get the God that we deserve and the priesthood that we deserve.  As long as we see God as this judging, stern and powerful Being, who is keeping track of all the good and bad that we do, and is ready to punish us for the bad as much as reward us for the good we do, and who is a God we cannot access directly, then we will get a priesthood that caters to such a God.

First Reading: Genesis 14: 18-20

And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. He blessed him and said,

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
    maker of heaven and earth,
 and blessed be God Most High,
    who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

And Abram gave him one-tenth of everything.

 

Second Reading: First Corinthians 11: 23-26

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread,  and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

 

Gospel: Luke 9: 11b-17

Jesus spoke to them about the kingdom of God and healed those who needed to be cured. The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside to lodge and get provisions, for we are here in a deserted place.”  But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.”  For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.”  They did so and had them all sit down.  And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.  And all ate and were filled, and what was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.