Models of priesthood

My readings this week from the D&C/Church history curriculum were on the subject of priesthood. I remember as a deacon learning to define priesthood as "the authority to act in God's name." That central preoccupation with authority was reflected in my readings as well, especially D&C 107 and 121 (though 121 at least has the redeeming quality of being a statement condemning the unrighteous use of authority).

There are better ways for us to talk about priesthood than in terms of authority. Priesthood is about service. It's about being commissioned and empowered to help carry out God's work—about being able to tap into the powers of heaven to be an instrument for bringing blessings into others' lives. And understood in those terms, priesthood is something that every Latter-day Saint has or ought to have. Or better yet, priesthood is something that every Latter-day Saint ought to live.

Here are the two models, or images, of priesthood drawn from LDS tradition that speak to me most powerfully:

1. "Lord, pour out your Spirit upon your servant." In Mosiah 18, we read about Alma baptizing the community of believers who have met at the Waters of Mormon. Before performing the first baptism, Alma prays, "O Lord, pour out your Spirit upon your servant, that he may do this work with holiness of heart." The text then reports that "when he had said these words, the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he said: Helam, I baptize you, having authority from the Almighty God..." (18:12-13). To resolve the problem of how Alma can baptize without himself having been baptized, he immerses himself at the same time he immerses Helam. (Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery will opt for a different solution to that problem.)

Later, scriptorians like Joseph Fielding Smith, who want the scriptures to be a consistent exposition of contemporary LDS doctrine, will have to invent answers to the question: Where did Alma get the authority to baptize? And their inevitable answer will be: Well, somehow, sometime, somewhere, he must have been ordained to the Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthood. But what we're actually seeing in this passage is a model of priesthood that predates Joseph's thinking about the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods. Alma's authority to baptize is the outpouring of the Spirit he receives in response to the prayer he offers immediately preceding the baptism. The Spirit authorizes him to baptize—or to put it another way, the Spirit empowers him to baptize. The Spirit empowers him to minister.

(Note, incidentally, that the question of authority in Mosiah 18 isn't a question of having the right office. The question is: How can Alma presume to minister as a sinful human being? Hence he prays that the Spirit will give him "holiness of heart"—that holiness being what will authorize him, or qualify him, to do God's work.)

I regret that Joseph wasn't content to keep priesthood that simple in the LDS movement. But he—and his male followers—loved holding office, loved getting promotions, loved heaping title upon title. When he ran out of titles from the Bible to graft on his awkwardly sprawling system of priesthood offices (a system that LDS and RLDS leaders would spend decades trying to figure out how to make actually work), Joseph turned to Masonry as a source of further degrees of aggrandizement. If I force myself to interpret this charitably, I can understand why marginalized people would long for the power exercised by their society's elites; I can even warm to the neverending expansion of priesthood offices and degrees and anointings as a way to enact the principle of eternal progression. But I also yearn for the simplicity of a faith community where the Spirit is recognized as pouring out gifts that enable people to serve in a variety of capacities, without this preoccupation for the proper line of authority, the proper channels, who is and is not eligible to be ordained, etc. Mosiah 18 points toward that vision, even though the LDS community quickly moved in a very different direction.

This past Friday I led a Taize worship service for members of the Episcopal church Hugo and I attend, as I do on the first Friday of every month. And as I do on many occasions when I'm about to begin something I'm conscious of as an act of serivce, I silently prayed the words spoken by Alma: "Lord, pour out your Spirit upon your servant, that I may do this work with holiness of heart."

2. "Kings and queens, priests and priestesses." The symbols of priesthood as they're used in the temple are another place in LDS tradition where I sense God pushing us away from models of priesthood as hierarchical authority and exclusive privilege. We haven't gone as far, yet, as I sense God would like us to go. But the temple ceremonies get us moving in the right direction. In the temple, priesthood is for women and men both (although there are still vestiges of 19th-century gender inequality, despite the helpful 1990 revisions). All are anointed to be priests or priestesses; all are told that they are "prepared to officiate in the ordinances" of the priesthood. All exercise what in the Bible is reserved as the exclusive privilege of the high priest: to pass through the temple veil into the presence of God. This is a priesthood open, in theory at least, to anyone who is willing to make a lifelong covenant commitment to the principles of the gospel, including sacrifice, charity, modesty, temperance, fidelity, service. Everyone who makes that commitment is a minister of God, endowed with power from on high.

In other words, the temple uses symbols of priesthood as a way of illustrating for us what commitment to the gospel entails. In baptism, that commitment is portrayed for us as death and rebirth—beginning a new life as a member of the body of Christ, enlivened by Christ's Spirit. In the endowment, that same commitment is represented to us as a priestly commission—a commission to be priests and priestesses, ministers of God's grace, to those around us. In the world, we're plainclothes priests; but in the temple we dress the part so we can see what our true calling is, and outside the temple we wear the garment under our street clothes so we won't forget.

That's why I keep wearing temple garments, even after being excommunicated, even though I have to wear garments that are 15 years old and falling apart. (I need to come up with a solution to that problem soon.) It's how I remember that I've committed to be a priestly person. I'm a lousy priest, but I accept the obligation to serve.

That's what priesthood means to me.