Priesthood entirely depends on us understanding that our Lord Jesus Christ is here in front of us, when we are gathered together in worship of God. He is here by the Holy Spirit who has gathered us here before him. The Spirit brings us before him so that we are present to him, but he is only present to us by faith. We cannot grasp him, hear or see him, but nonetheless as we stand here, we stand before him.
When we gather, we send one of us to the front, to stand in the Lord’s place. He stands where Jesus stands, and we stand where the disciples stand. We look towards the minister who stands there before us in order that, by faith, we see Jesus. As we look towards the place where the Lord stands, and by faith gaze at him, the attention of the world is drawn to him. They follow our eyes. That is our job. That is the vocation and office of all Christians, all the time, whether singly or when gathered together explicitly as the Lord people. When one of us stands there before us, as the Lord is before us, although we cannot see him, the rest of us can direct ourselves toward him, worship him and direct the gaze of the world away from its tyrants and tormentors to its saviour. We worship him as long as we all direct ourselves towards him.
If you have a low view of Christian worship and the public office of the gathered Christian people, if you think that a service is a meeting in which the person taking the service leads by passing out information or instructions to an audience, then you will necessarily have a low view of both congregation and worship leader. This could relate to a low view of the baptism of the Christian and of the office and mission of the church of many Christians.
But in the Great Church the priest is a place-holder or the viewfinder by which we gather around Christ and so draw the gaze of the world towards him. The priest is transparent to Christ. We see priest and Christ simultaneously, two persons in one body. The priest is the place-marker, the cipher, the cursor on the screen that marks the point of action.
The presence of Christ does not push us out. If you were to stand in my place I would have to move or else you would push me aside. But it is not so with Christ, for he is here in the very space that we are, and we are able to be here together precisely because he is here. He is here by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to be co-present to one another, to inhabit the same place, to stand directly before one another and so to encounter one another, face to face.
The presence of the priest does not mean that Christ cannot be present, but that he can be present to us, here and now, in a way that does not threaten our freedom. We are not forced. We can believe him and follow him, or not. We can acknowledge his presence by faith, or not. His presence to us is not so blindingly, unavoidably obvious that we have no choice. We are free. We may acknowledge him, and we may do so by gathering around and acknowledging one another as his church and as the body of which he is head.
