The P's of the Royal Priesthood

Martha was the one serving in this week’s Gospel. It must have been somewhere away; away from the house in Bethany because Martha was in a flap! She could not find what she was looking for and she wanted to fix a nice meal because it had probably been a while since Jesus and the 12 had eaten a proper, home cooked meal. She wanted this meal to be some special because of that. Yet nothing was going according to plan. Everything was extra work and Mary had disappeared on her so she was rattling around the kitchen with her frustration at the situation coming promptly to a rolling boil. She was ready to spill over like a pot, cooking rice with too much water in it.

Then she, stormed out the group and spotted her sister sitting at the feet of the Master, just like she was “one of the guys”! "Teacher, don’t you care that I have been left alone to do all this work? Tell my sister to help me out!"

With compassion for the work and the spirit of Martha, Jesus points out to the flustered chief cook and bottle washer, “Martha, dear Martha... Mary has made a better choice and she won’t have what she is receiving taken away from her.” While some might consider this a ‘slap down’for impatience, it is not meant to be – just an eye opener and a refocusing of priorities where all of the disciples are concerned. Martha’s service was being accepted. What Jesus wasn’t going to accept was the worry and the anxiety that Martha was expressing because of the elaborate agenda she had set. One dish would suffice. It did not have to be a major feast. The extra time and energy could be put to other, better uses. As it was once apply said by a missionary, “God’s work, done God’s way, will not lack God’s supply. “

So what does one do when you're in a spot? What do you do when you think things are going to hell in a hand cart and you cannot tell one end of the egg from the other? Here are some thoughts about serving in the royal priesthood of all believers:

1)      Provision:  There are countless times recounted in Scripture when God has provided for his people. He provided a son for Sarah and an heir for Abraham; Abraham found the ram when he need it for the altar instead of sacrificing Isaac. God gave Hannah a son and she gave Samuel back to God that he might be a powerful prophet; and be the king maker. God led his people out of bondage in Egypt, through the Red Sea and fed them in the years out in the Sinai Desert. God provided a way home from exile in Babylon. And most of all God have us all Jesus that we might have a way home to him. We need to recognize that even the poorest man is equipped with everything that God can give him. On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. Eat and be filled then feed that others that you might be followed into the kingdom.

2)      Prayer: Where prayer is focused, power falls. I remember a gentleman telling me that he would not pray the Lord’s Prayer because he didn’t need bread, he had lots in his house. The point of prayer is not to get things but to communicate thanks and ask “those things which are requisite and necessary for the body as well for the soul (BCP).”Give us this day our daily bread is to ask God to provision the day and the demands that are going to be place on our resources so that we can be faithful to proclaim the kingdom, that the kingdom would finally come. Prayer provides the connection between God and ourselves, both personally and corporately to have the power and the direction we need to proclaim and the power to do it well.

3)      Power: there is a little chorus we used to sing all the time: “For I am building a people of power, and I am making a people of praise. We are given by God through the Spirit “dynamos” or dynamite. Power in God’s kingdom is not given to those who rule but to those who serve. Leadership is not about position, provision or power. It is about those who serve and those who need to be served. Power is given to enable the servant to serve the least, the last and the lost not ourselves. Divine power is not given so much to turn the world upside down as it is given to turn the Church inside out.

4)      Persistence: Christianity is a way of life that we need to persist in: day by day, day after day. It is the only way in which the Church is going to grow and mature into the Body of Christ. We need in our modern society, to learn how to persist in prayer, in wisely using the provisions we are given and sharing, and operate sensibly with the power and authority to serve and care for those who are around us as neighbours. We need to persist in blessing and being blessed. Blessings are not just for fair weather but for the every day – fair or foul weather. We continue to sail on, even when life is heard and the going not so clear. Life may not be what we would call “fair” but we do know that God is always faithful.

5)      Proclamation: we are to announce the coming of the one, true King and to tell how God has provided for you and for the community, and to let people know that the same kingdom is coming near to them, whether they respond or not. When the world recognizes that we are being provided for, that we are active in prayer and in being answers to prayer, in being powerful and persistent servants of the least, the last and the lost in the name of Christ, then do we make the kingdom fully known to this world of God’s.

There will always be the worries of ministry and somehow will some things get done. Nevertheless, when we recognize that there is provision, prayer, power, the need for persistence and the need to proclaim the greatness of God's grace and love, we are well on our way home.

Jason+