All of this, of course, can sound very insular and moralistic, as if the ordained are just to be rather rarefied objects of virtuous living that the small Christian minority in our culture would do well to imitate. Have we been called simply to be good for the good of the Church? Well, in one sense, yes we have – and being good is no easy thing, for ‘only God is good’ (Luke 18:19), and the Church is no small thing in the purposes of God. But the calling to be good has a particular quality (an indicative and active quality, as we shall see later) about it, and is a far more dynamic business than the immediate images conjured up by exhortations to exemplary behaviour. Being examples to Christ’s people involves being an example of Christ’s people. It is a calling to indicate the identity of the Church by embodying the characteristics of the Church. It is a calling to live out the way of being to which the Church is called. The Church is called to be a holy priesthood. The presbyter is called to signify this priestly calling. In more sacramental language, the presbyter is a sign of the priestly life of the Church.
There was a fascinating and very important debate in the late nineteenth century about priesthood between J. B. Lightfoot, the Cambridge New Testament scholar and R. C. Moberly the Oxford professor of Pastoral Theology. It was a quintessentially Anglican exchange. They were passionate but polite, committed both to reformation principles and to the catholic inheritance, showing a detailed attention to scripture and to the application of scripture in the tradition of the Church. Although they differed about quite a lot, including the origin and role of bishops in the Church, they found themselves agreeing – in Lightfoot’s words, quoted approvingly by Moberly – that:
Hitherto [in the early centuries of the Church] the sacerdotal view of the Christian ministry has not been held apart from a distinct recognition of the sacerdotal functions of the whole Christian body. The minister is thus regarded as a priest, because he is the mouthpiece, the representative of the priestly race . . . So long as this important aspect is kept in view, so long as the priesthood of the ministry is regarded as springing from the priesthood of the whole body, the teaching of the Apostles has not been directly violated.21
Moberly went on to say that ‘The ordained priests are priests only because it is the Church’s prerogative to be priestly’ and that they are always, in their ‘own spiritual attitude and effort – to Godward for man, to manward for God – called to realize, and (as it were) to personify, the characteristic priestliness of the Church’.22
In the late twentieth century, very much in the style of Lightfoot and Moberly, the House of Bishops of the Church of England claimed that the priest is called to embody the four classic marks of the Church – oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity.23 There is richness in this idea that is worth pursuing. We are to be one, integrated, at peace with ourselves, body, mind and spirit, able to live authentically with ourselves and with integrity with others, respecting difference but enjoying togetherness. We are to be holy, icons of a new way of living, fully alive in our humanity, gladly receiving all that our creaturely human life offers and allowing it to be infused with faith, hope and love. We are to be catholic, connected to the holos, the whole, faithfully living life with others. We are to be apostolic, people sent to save, thrust out with the same generative energy that we see in those who first gave birth to the Church. This is part of what it means to be appointed to a representative ministry. The Church is saying ‘We want to be able to look at you and be reminded of what we have been called to be. And remember, that as we place you in this relation to us, so the world will look to you to read us.’ Presbyters, therefore, may be called priests because they indicate or signify the priestly identity of the people of God.
While very content with the representative calling of the presbyter, Lightfoot and Moberly were quite clear that this was not a vicarial ministry in the sense of doing something in place of the people of God. There was no question in their minds that we are to be holy to exempt the Church from being holy. Our priestly calling does not erase the priestly calling of the people of God. It exemplifies it and, as we shall see, empowers the people of God to realize their true identity as the priestly people of God. ‘For-other-ness’ cannot do otherwise. Its inspiration is caught in Irenaeus’ catchphrase – ‘ the glory of God is a human person fully alive and the life of humanity is to see God’. Priestly ministry longs for human beings to live with the vibrancy and joy, trustfulness and confidence, individuality and sociality for which God destined us and which glorifies God because it demonstrates that God is the creator whose purposes are for the good of the other.
Before we move on to look more closely at the activating calling of the priest, it is worth spending some more time considering the depth of the Church’s calling. Ephesians 4, one of the most inspiring chapters in the New Testament about the calling of the Church, urges the people of God to come ‘to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’ (4:13). The true calling of the Church is to express and to enact the life of Christ in the world. Christ’s life is the life that is one with the Father and the Spirit. Christ’s is the life that is given to the world to bring all things into communion with God. Christ’s life is the life that is holy, brought to birth by the Holy Spirit, the life that ministered in the Spirit and was offered to the Father through the Spirit and raised to life by the Spirit. Christ’s is the life that is catholic, related to all God has made, embracing all the world in outstretched arms on the cross. Christ’s is the life that is apostolic, perpetually sent by the Father in the breath of the Spirit to bring God’s purposes to completion. Some more words from Irenaeus catch something of the priestly heart of Christ: ‘The Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord: who for his immense love’s sake was made that which we are, in order that he might perfect us to be what he is’.24 The stature of the Church is nothing less than the stature of the life of Christ.
The priestly identity of the Church that presbyters are called to indicate and to signify, is nothing less than the priestly identity of Christ. Therefore, although ‘priesthood in the presbyteral order’25 arises from the priesthood of the whole people of God, its ultimate source is the person of Christ. Priests are to ‘set the example of the Good Shepherd always before them as the pattern of their calling’, declares the bishop in the Anglican rite. ‘Know what you do, imitate what you celebrate and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross’, the bishop says to the newly ordained in the Roman Catholic rite as the bread and the chalice to be used in the Eucharist that follows their ordination are placed into their hands. It is good advice for those called to preside among the priestly people of God and to minister to God’s people with a pure heart – ‘imitate what you celebrate’. Let