Priestly Weight-Bearing

Homily for May 3, 2026
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
1 Peter 2:2-10

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,
in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

These words, inscribed around the perimeter of the baptismal pool at the entrance of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, remind the baptized every time they enter who they are and what is their mission:  the baptized are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, God’s own people;” and their mission is to “proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  In these few words are many homilies; the words I will preach on today are, “you are… a royal priesthood.”  I will begin with a story…

I have a colleague from India who, in his first year of ordination, was part of a team of priests pastoring a cluster of congregations in South India. In the parish to which he was assigned was a 28-year-old man who attended with his mother.  Two years previously, this man had been blinded in chemical factory accident, and now he was dependent on his parents’ support.  Always in the back of my colleague’s mind when he preached was, “How will what I want to say sound to this man and his mother?” One Sunday the Gospel was Jesus quoting from Isaiah in Luke chapter 4 –“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind.”  My colleague asked the head pastor of the cluster what he might say about that passage, given the situation.  “If you’re looking for a miracle, there is one,” said the head pastor, “but it’s not what you think.”  “The miracle,” said the head pastor, “given their circumstance – wondering why this happened, wondering why it happened to them,why after two years of prayer the son is still blind – [the miracle is] that they still believe.”  And then the pastor added:  “The heaviest weight we priests bear is the seemingly unheard prayers and the unanswered questions of our parishioners.”  

Each time I go on sabbatical, I feel as though I am setting aside a weight. Though I would have said that the weight I was setting aside was the full schedule of evening meetings or worry about our physical plant or worry about our finances, the more I reflect on what this older colleague said, I think he’s right:  “The heaviest weight we priests bear is the seemingly unheard prayers and unanswered questions of our parishioners.”  The scriptures support him.  Recall Exodus 28 in which God told Moses to affix to the priest Aaron’s breast piece twelve stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel (28:21), “So that Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel… on his heart when he goes into the holy place, for a continual remembrance before the Lord” (28:29). The prayers that have been heard and the questions that have been answered, Aaron need no longer bear – those prayers have been heard and those questions answered.  It is only the seemingly unheard prayers and the unanswered questions that Aaron must continue to “bear… on his heart.”   The heaviest weight priests bear is the seemingly unheard prayers and unanswered questions of their people.

Peter writes that the baptized are “a royal priesthood,” from which our tradition derives the phrase,“priesthood of all believers.”  When considering the “priesthood of all believers,” I suspect it is a dearth of our imagination that leads us to interpret the phrase as meaning that the laity might sometimes take on priestly liturgical roles – the “priesthood of all believers” is bigger than liturgical roles.  What the phrase means is not so much that the laity might take on certain liturgical roles but rather that the laity – like Aaron carrying the twelve stones “on his heart when he goes into the holy place” – [it means that the laity] also has a responsibility to bear weight on behalf of the community.  Not merely the weight of stepping up to volunteer, not merely the weight of stepping up to give generously, but we – the “priesthood of all believers” – are called to step up and share in bearing the weight of the community’s seemingly unheard prayers and unanswered questions.

This kind of weight-bearing involves at least three things:  showing up, listening and prayer.  First, showing up.  We might think that our presence at worship is a personal matter, that whether we are here or not is our choice and affects only ourselves.  Today’s passage from 1 Peter challenges that assumption, for the author writes that we the baptized are a “people,” a “priesthood,” and a “nation.”  As part of a people, priesthood and nation, our presence – or our absence – affects those around us.  Priestly weight-bearing involves showing up.  Second, listening.  If when we go into the “holy place” we are to carry on our hearts the names of our “tribe,” it helps to listen.  We get a sense of others’ seemingly unheard prayers and unanswered questions as we worship – we learn much about each other through worshiping together.  We get a sense of others’ prayers and questions through conversation – we can learn much about another even from a brief exchange.  And we learn of others’ seemingly unheard prayers and unanswered questions through groups such as the Baptismal Preparation Group where, gathered around the scriptures, we learn much not only about God but about each other.  Priestly weight-bearing involves listening.  And lastly, like Aaron bearing on his heart the stones with the names of the tribes of Israel as he went into the Tent of the Meeting to pray, so, too, are we “the priesthood of all believers” called to bear on our hearts the names of others as we go into our“holy place” and as we with Aaron “make a continual remembrance before the Lord.”  And if we should doubt whether praying for others “works,” go back to number two and listen –listen to the stories of our fellow parishioners, who will share how much the prayers of others – our prayers – have upheld them in times of need.  Priestly weight-bearing involves prayer.

In the third of his “Cinq Priéres dans la cathédrale de Chartres,” or, “Five Prayers in the Cathedral of Chartres,” late 19^th-century French poet Charles Peguy, in language similar to the “cornerstone” language of today’s reading from 1 Peter, compares a priest to one who stands not only at the altar but also at the intersection of cathedral vaults, bearing weight.  Note the many images of like a pillar settling down and bearing weight in Peguy’s poem,“Prayer of Trust,” with which I will leave us.

We do not ask that this fair linen
Be ever folded back again into the shelves of the cupboard;
We do not ask that any crease of memory
Be ever smoothed away from beneath this heavy cloak.

Mistress of the way and of joining-up again,
O mirror of justice and of a soul’s true balance,
You alone know, O great Our Lady,
What it is to pause – and to gather oneself inward.

Mistress of descent and of new grafting of blood,
O temple of wisdom and of learned law,
You alone know, O wise prudence,
What it is to judge – and to weigh, to keep the scales.

When we had to sit down at the crossroads’ cross
And choose regret apart from remorse,
When we had to sit down at the corner of double fates
And fix our gaze on the keystone of the two vaults,

You alone know, mistress of the secret,
That one of the two roads went downwards.
You know the one our steps chose –
As one chooses cedar, and the wood for a casket.

And not out of virtue – for we have little enough,
And not out of duty – for we do not love it,
But as a carpenter arms himself with his compass –
Out of need to set ourselves at the center of distress.

To place ourselves cleanly on this axis,
And by that dull need to be more distressed still
To go where it is heaviest,
And to take evil in its full exactness.

By that old knack of the hand, by that same deftness
That will no longer serve us for chasing happiness –
Grant us, O Queen, at least to hold to honor,
And keep for it alone our poor tenderness.

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