Priesthood or Discipleship? Where does authority truly lie?

One of the news items this week had me thinking, once again, about the programmed failure of organized religion to be equitable to all people. The pastor at small Roman Catholic parish in San Francisco has declared that girls will no longer be allowed to serve at the altar. The reason given is that serving at the altar is the first step toward becoming a priest, and since women can’t become priests, that role must naturally be reserved for boys. The Archbishop of the local Diocese allowed this decision to stand.

[Before I continue, I want to be clear that I am not a Roman Catholic, but belong to a Protestant denomination. I am a practicing Christian, but I constantly question doctrines and practices, believing that many of them are completely in error and beside the point.]

To my understanding, the person of Jesus showed himself to be a radical against the actions of the Temple priesthood. If you really read the canonical gospels, you see that Jesus conveys, in his actions and words, the notion that such hierarchical “management” schemes really only serve to allow a small group of people to control a large group of people (and money), and that the taking of such authority mostly leads toward a sense of entitlement and corruption among the “management class,” not toward justice or service or the addressing of need. More importantly, Jesus sees that the apathy of those who are not in power (all those who are disempowered or outcast) leads them to emulate bad behaviors or actions exhibited by those in control.

Said differently, many average people create and maintain a corrupt status quo by following the example of those in authority. When Jesus spoke to people, he was not interested in hearing about complaints or excuses. He seemed interested in the “what are you going to do about it?” part of any discussion. Whenever he was asked to do something or say something, to judge or to decide, to a great extent, he more often than not eschewed arbiter roles, preferring that people engage in their own problem solving, rather than allowing “the system” to offer the last word. As we know only too well from experience, when we leave anything “to the system,” the results tend to be unsatisfactory.

This is why I think Jesus was not pointing to a new kind of priesthood, but rather advocating for a discipleship of personal engagement and responsibility—even activism. Outcasts were assigned their status on whose authority? If the only authority and judge is a deity, then how can any temporal court make such a determination? Will healing and recovery take place? Will social justice be served? Or is this just a way of dismissing all who are deemed unsavory? These are the sorts of discussions Jesus attempted with his disciples. I rather think he expected such discussions to lead to affirmative action within his community. When affirmative action was not forthcoming, he would resort to “healing” people. He encouraged self-healing and renewed personal esteem.

When Jesus left the scene, things returned to more of the same old same old, all of which hinged (and still does to this day) on “authority.” Who had the authority and who didn’t? Was this to be a dynastic succession or a hierarchical elect? Yes, yes, the disciples were told… Peter and Paul… Stephen… James… someone was left in charge... but what actually happened? Why does “the Church” work in a way that is so different from what Jesus did and said while he was alive?

All we know is what has come down to us: the priesthood “after the order of Melchizedek.” However it was that this came about, whose ever bright idea it was, this is the foundation on which the Christian religion was built. And it is, I believe, in error. The error was made and exists primarily in order to establish and maintain an authority to control people, as well as to lend credence to all those people who have claimed such authority. This method of organization does not reflect what Jesus was teaching, and I am convinced Jesus would think much of what goes on today, under his authority and in his name, is sacrilegious.

If you think about it for a minute, you see that our entire frame of reference around what can be known is built on all that has been known before. College students are asked to express original thoughts, but only if they hang on some previous authority (hence, the need for footnote after footnote, reference after reference, and a pile of book titles). This is how we “prove” our knowledge and our thinking: we read what is out there and then we bring forth our own notions about it, but we must cite authority in order to make our claim.

This may be part of what happened to the early Christian community. Unfortunately, the original message got lost in a power struggle. How this happened, we will never know for certain, but what is clearer to see is that hierarchical power is involved, resulting in control over the masses. Constantine’s adoption of Christianity was purely in order to gain authority, control, money and conformity from a growing group of people. You could even say assurance of complicity was part of the bargain.

A more appropriate way to view the message of Jesus is through the window of the 20^th century Platonist philosopher, Iris Murdoch. Her book title “The Sovereignty of Good” is a kind of summation of what we should have ended up with. What might that look like? Sabbath meetings in which all were welcome, and all who came were fed; studies of Torah and how it could be applied to current community issues; presiders would be different each week, so all could experience and learn benign leadership; discussion of people and their needs, including ideas about how those could be addressed, who would volunteer to help, what could be given now. That is how I would characterize the Work of the People, the Sovereignty of Good.

Instead, what we see from the Roman tradition that has come down to us is an intercessory leadership. A priest is there to order or lend authority and to be an intermediary between an individual and God. In that role, the priest has the power to make rules, to demand obedience, oaths, confession and contrition, and to exact payment for wrongs done. Note: I am being simplistic in this to the purpose of illustrating how far away this is what Jesus presented.

Jesus told people to do the right thing, even if that meant going against a law or an authority figure. Doing the right thing, he suggested from within his understanding of Torah, is what God would want at all times. Doing the right thing is a happier way, a moral way, a peaceful way, the way of righteousness.

I further put it to you that one of the things Jesus did was overthrow the notion that a priesthood was required to lead people to righteousness. Priesthood demands obedience; discipleship requires personal will and action. Those who adhere only to obedience are liable to abdicate their personal responsibility and their will. I am sure that is not what Jesus meant for his followers; certainly, the gospel texts do not convey that message to me. I am convinced, for example, that the passage “render under Caesar what is Caesar’s; render unto God what is God’s” is a direct call to honor the best practices set out in Torah—merely following temporal laws alone is not sufficient to fulfill the commandment, “love thy neighbor.“

To honor Caesar, you must follow temporal laws; to honor God, you must have the will to be responsible, to honor and support all people in all ways, every day.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews declared Jesus to be a priest "after the order of Melchizedek." The person of Melchizedek figures very abruptly in, then disappears altogether (!) from Genesis; but for a mention in one Psalm. The reference from Genesis in the letter to the Hebrews is used to lend authority to the notion of Jesus as High Priest. The name Melchizedek means Righteous King, and he comes from Salem, which means Peace--clearly, this is highly metaphorical passage, intended to lend authority to people in the situation described in Genesis: a shift in dynastic leadership polity from the sons of Aaron to the sons of Abraham.

By contrast, Jesus calls us each to be responsible for our actions, and all responsible to one another—that each person's service to another is a sacrifice and a blessing that results in equity and peace. Neither gender, nor station in life, has anything to do with service or social responsibility, righteousness or godly love. These are all things self-governed, and will-propelled, by love, not ordered by a priest. That is discipleship.

It is too bad “the Church” lost that memo… It is working so hard at the wrong sort of corporate compliance.

Of course, I went through all of this just so I could make the observation that it certainly is most backward and unproductive, if not also decidedly unJesus-like to deny girls the opportunity to serve in fellowship. If the call was to serve, then all should.

Not Trinitarian, But Devoted to Trinity

In the calendar of the greater Christian Church, this past Sunday was Trinity Sunday.

I am not Trinitarian, and I personally believe the doctrine of the Trinity to be heretical, scripturally unsupported and socially destructive.

I won’t spend a great deal of time on this; for most people, this comes under the heading “churchy, boring, and who cares?” I mention it because I care.

I do not have much in the way of scholarly authority, but I do know that the notion of Trinity hangs on one slim line of scriptural text, Matthew 28:19: Go ye, therefore, and instruct all nations; and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. There has been a great deal of argument, in recent years as to whether this sentence is spurious or genuine. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that baptism as recorded in “The Acts of the Apostles” isn’t described in a way that matches with the description in Matthew. It seems obvious that things happened one or more ways in the beginnings of the early church, after which changes were adopted then for some reason, helped along by the zeal to establish an orthodoxy of practice.

There are triads all over the place in mythology and in many other cultural manifestations. The formula of “thought, word and deed” appears in Christianity by way of Judaism from Zoroastrianism. Three is a magical and a basic number, and I have no argument against the loveliness of three.

However, what I find offensive about the Christian idea of Trinity, as it comes to us today, is how it treats the feminine aspect in the world.

For me, three is the number that defines the basic family formula: Father, Mother, Child. Even in this modern era of wonderful families of two moms with a child or two dads with a child, it is still true that the only way for most kinds of children to arrive is by means of a fertile male component mingling with a fertile female component.

The oldest versions of words for Spirit or Wisdom are feminine. Ruaḥ is the Hebrew word for spirit (and Hokmah is the Hebrew word for wisdom; Shekinah is the Aramaic word for presence). Ruaḥ was translated into Greek as Pneuma, a neutral gender form, and the Vulgate has translated that into the Latin word Spiritus, which is masculine.

Just the other day, I wrote, in an Introduction to a collection of poems, “The more basic truth about words is that their accumulation constitutes the collective memory of our species, for better and for worse.” What I meant by that is that meanings and contexts can be and are lost through the avenues of translation. In terms of scriptural devices, the Trinitarian formula is invoked to make Yeshua into a super divine being, rather than a spiritually aware human. I’ll come clean and say I don’t think that is what Yeshua was about—Yeshua believed in YHWH, above all. Yeshua also believed that YHWH expected each person to respect, uphold and serve the holiness in every other person.

The Christian Religion has done a lot to ignore the recorded example of what Yeshua did during his ministry, opting to go its own way with generations of dogmatic hogwash and contradictory or even demeaning doctrine and theology, all of which has resulted in so much injustice and bloodshed. Indeed, most people who claim to be followers of Yeshua have no idea how many people were killed so that they can be materialist snobs, follow the ravings of ideologues, and revere commercialism during the Christmas season.

Getting back to that three-in-one idea, I have to say that I’ve never heard a single sermon on Trinity that has ever seemed anything but completely lame. But, we have to swear to it, because that is what came out of the Council of Nicea (in the year 325); a loyalty oath that was intended to build consensus throughout the church.

I’ll be honest and say that the only scripturally supported Trinity I can get behind is the one that Yeshua spoke as first clause of the Great Commandment: “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.” The second clause is equated with the first: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Returning to an earlier thread, you might ask why I quibble over the translation of Ruaḥ? It is because I look around me and see that the feminine has been written out of the picture in exchange for a purely patriarchal understanding and mode of operation. I know that it just happened that way… one language was more masculine than the other when it came to matters of spirit. But I also know that men try to own spirituality. Men cannot own spirituality, but they try to do so.

Yeshua was for people, male and female; conversely, the church seems all about sacerdotal hierarchy, which is dominated by males. Not only true of Christian denominations, this seems to be a global enterprise. Even in this modern era, women pushed out of the picture, as much and as far as possible. Daily, I read about women being assaulted, cheated, kidnapped, denigrated, trafficked, enslaved and murdered. Hundreds of girls are kidnapped from their school! Who is doing these things? Some men are doing them. Societies, the world over, have allowed women to be treated as inferiors and as objects by some men. With the exception of a token few, women are not allowed to be identified as holy. And this priestly business has turned out so well, hasn’t it? The terms episcopoi, presbuteroi, diakonoi mean (respectively) overseer, elder and servant; these titles do not automatically imply priesthood at all, but a role in community rule.

But again I digress. Perhaps my meandering thoughts are no better than any sermon you have heard on the doctrine of Trinity, if you have heard any.

In the creation story that I read for our congregation, it says very plainly “male and female, He created them… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” For me, this is the essence of what it is to follow the example of Yeshua: we must acknowledge that every being in this world is good, and we must respect, uphold and serve this truth with our actions. 

If there is a Trinity that must be respected, served and upheld, there is no mystery about what it is and what it means—it is the family unit: parent, parent, child. Everyone is both a parent and a child, worthy and beautiful: male and female, however they identify.

Peace be to you.