The Heyward Model of Priesthood
All human beings are people of God.
For Christians, the sign of this reality is baptism, by which a person acknowledges (or has acknowledged for her) her being as a person of God.
All baptized persons are priests, comprising “a priesthood of believers,” which is the Christian Church. Fundamental to the Church are its faith, its community, its inclusiveness, and its mission.
Faith is personal statement in God’s presence and God’s transcendence. It has to do with caring about God and with awareness of God. Faith is well sustained by what German theologian Dorothee Solle calls “phantasie” and by what I have termed “imagination”: the capacity to bend one’s mind beyond what seems to be the case and to see beyond what is visible to the eye.
Community (koinonia) is when two or three are gathered together in faith. A common language (such as creed, prayer book, catechism) is helpful, but not mandatory, for community. Sacramental awareness of reality—or awareness of hidden, “invisible,” layers of reality—is vital for community and enables the community to stretch its imagination, in faith, beyond its own physical parameters to include people, processes, and events from other places and times.
Inclusiveness is that characteristic of extension beyond present boundaries, in order that community can grow, change, and remain always open to new possibilities. Inclusiveness is usually strange and frightening for members of the community. But exclusiveness, which purposes to limit community within fixed parameters, is deadly. A community cannot live long unless it changes and grows. And community will not grow and change unless it assumes that “outsiders” have as much to offer the community as the community has to offer them.
Mission is that to which the faithful and inclusive Christian community is called. There are many biblical mandates for mission: among them are Matthew 25:31-46, in which we are told to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked; Mark 12:29-31, in which we are told that we are to love the Lord our God, and our neighbor as ourself; “The Beatitudes” as recorded in Matthew and Luke. These are only a few of many passages of mandate in Scripture. We are always selective in the ones we choose.
The fundamental mission of the Church is to bring people to faith. Taken as a whole, the Holy Scriptures make plain this mission: we are to bring people to faith by action in faith towards people. By its very nature, faith brings people to a peace they, and we, cannot understand; and by its very nature, faith consistently undergirds a strong ethic of awareness, concern, and involvement in matters of human justice, human freedom, and human dignity. For, in faith, all people are seen for what they are: people of God, no more and no less than I myself.
All Christian people are called by God to this priestly and inclusive community of faith and mission. This community needs people within it whose primary investment of energy and time will be to the sustenance of the community’s faith and mission. The community will call forth such people from within it to be its “priests.”
These members of the community will be called forth for “ordination” as priests. These people will have skills and interests that will be focused specifically on the facilitation of the Church’s growth in faith, community, inclusiveness, and mission. These people need to be “sacramental functionaries,” which is to say, they need to have a functional sacramental eye for how it is that faith, community, inclusiveness, and mission are interlocked—often invisibly—and held actively in creative tension.
The ordained priest has one primary task: to help maintain the faithfulness of the community.
The ordained priest is self-consciously a sacramental person, acutely aware of many layers comprising a single reality.
The ordained priest is, in faith, a person of prayer—of phantasie and imagination.
The ordained priest is a member of community. Within it, he can be himself. From it, he derives strength.
The ordained priest is an inclusive person. She is actively aware of the functional and ethical imperatives for inclusion of people in community—regardless of color, religion, age, state of health, nationality, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality.
The ordained priest is a missioner. He is nonapologetic for his mission. He is prophetic, pastoral, liturgical, instructive, enabling, leading, following; he had best be able to cope with ambiguity and to embrace the unknown and the unexpected.
The ordained priest is her vocation. For her, there is no demarcation between the person and the mission, no bifurcation between who one is and what one does. She is what she thinks, feels, knows, believes, says, and does.
The ordained priest is a priest forever. “Priesthood” is not a coat he can take off and leave behind at the office. Functional, it is—like any function, carved out in a person’s character. Etched upon his soul. “One cannot go home again.” A retired doctor is still a doctor in terms of skills, interests, values, essential vocation. Similarly, a retired, removed, or deposed priest is still a priest. Ordination is thoroughgoing and indelible.
The ordained priest is simply human. She shares the same needs, fears, confusions, problems. She is a member of the same humanity.
The ordained priest is called to a life of holiness. To live a holy life is to live a simply human life, in faith.
I realize that nowhere in the preceeding reflections do I mention, explicitly, “Jesus Christ.” Throughout the reflections, Jesus Christ has been close at hand, and is written implicitly between each line. Perhaps another task of the priest is to make explicit what is implicit—to point to Jesus Christ’s presence everywhere; and to make implicit what is explicit—that is to demythologize and humanize what is, at best, the meaningful language of common faith; and what is at worst, ecclesiastical rhetoric.
-- Carter Heyward, A Priest Forever [
