5th Sunday of Easter A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2011 

The first Letter of Peter, today’s Second Reading, calls us all priests.  Firstly, it says we are a holy priesthood; then, later, it says we’re a royal priesthood  - so not just priests but kings, too.

In the ancient world, priests offered sacrifice, but the victim they killed was always someone, or, later, something else - animals, usually, but also the first and best fruits of the harvest.  Jesus turned all that sacrificial stuff upside down.  He allowed sinful humanity to make him victim, and sinful humanity did the killing, thinking in the process that they were doing the sensible thing and even pleasing God - as if God were into violence, too, like themselves.

In fact, Jesus was offering himself to the God who is all love.  As priest, he offered himself as the victim.  He was offering himself because he, like God, was all love.  He accepted his death, or, to say the same thing positively, he offered his life as the price of his loving a world of violent people.  In full freedom, fully deliberately, he accepted being murdered.  He wasn’t helpless.  He could have backed off, but he wouldn’t.  He entrusted the outcome to God.  He offered himself to God in trust, trusting that God somehow makes sense of vulnerable love.  Any true love, love at its best, love at its fiercest, is always necessarily vulnerable - because it is unconditional and because it excludes no one - not even those who choose to hurt us somehow.

Jesus has united us in his priesthood [for better or for worse] - that is how we are all now a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood.  He calls us to be priests like him.  As tonight’s Gospel had Jesus say: I am the Way.  The Epistle of Peter, too, said much the same thing: Set yourselves close to him.  Sharing his priesthood, following him as the Way, setting ourselves close to him, means that we allow ourselves to be victimised like he was, paying the price involved in every choice to love, especially to love those who oppose us or exploit our love, but even the price of the mini-deaths to self involved in loving those who love us and who appreciate our love.  

Again, as the Epistle of Peter put it: we offer ourselves as spiritual sacrifices that Jesus makes acceptable to God.  That is, we choose to love, and we accept the price of our choice; we are open willingly to be victimised.  Since we share now the priesthood of Jesus, every act of love, every act of service, in the home, at work, wherever, is an expression of that priesthood.

Over the years, we have tended to look at priests like me, ordained priests, as the only priests, or at least on our priesthood as the more important priesthood.  But the only effective priest is Jesus.  And we all share in his priesthood  through our baptism.  Have you noticed how, after people have been baptised, the priest anoints them on the head with the Oil of Chrism and declares them to be priests, prophets and kings with Jesus?

In a few  moments, I shall say: Pray, everyone, that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, our almighty Father.  Our sacrifice -- yours and mine, and Christ’s, too.  Ours - because we offer it as priests; ours - because we are the victims, too; ours - because we join our loves with Jesus.