The Priesthood of All Believers - Sundays with John Ball

‘And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did shake, and the rocks rent.’

As you know, I don’t mind being called mad, but I do mind being called a priest. That’s because anybody who calls himself a priest is a phoney, a toady of the Evil one, a lackey of the thugs. I’ll tell you why.
The Old Testament Jews had a priesthood that offered a sacrifice to God on behalf of the people. They performed this sacrifice in a room in the Temple from which the ordinary believer was absent.
The ordinary person needed a priest to intercede for him, to approach God for him, for God was hidden behind a curtain in this room.
But when Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God, the Christ, was crucified, God himself had enacted the ultimate sacrifice.
Jesus was the final sacrifice.
Throughout Northern Europe the pagans, our own ancestors, gave up human sacrifice and animal sacrifice and sent their priests away to do something useful.
Through Jesus Christ’s ultimate sacrifice we no longer need to appease God. We don‘t need to propitiate his righteous anger.
Jesus is the final sacrifice and so we don’t need  priests any longer. Through Jesus we have direct access to God. No more priests getting in the way. Now we are all priests and at the same time the priesthood has been abolished.
Hierarchy is the Greek word for the rule of the priests.
A Christian knows no hierarchy.
A Christian does not distinguish between slave and free. We are all free in Christ, free from the power of sin, free from guilt, and free from the intervention of the priests.
Of course the thugs and the kings of this world love a hierarchy. They want the rule of reward and punishment to continue. They don’t want us to be free.
They have used the Roman Church to deny Christ and re-establish the rule of priests. In your twenty first century you have experts and public servants, but in my day, back in the fourteenth century it was the priests of the Roman Church.
They said that salvation came through obedience to the Roman Church, that slavery is freedom. They demanded that we fight wars to expand the rule of the priests, to kill our fellows. They told us that war is peace, that might is right.
They banned us from reading the Gospel of Christ.
But Mr. Wycliffe  and his friends translated the Bible into English and we began to spread the true Gospel.
We learnt that the priests were false, that slavery is slavery and that war is war.
Now we are all priests in Christ, and we are all free in Christ.
For knowing the Truth and speaking the Truth I was hanged drawn and quartered. Today they would drug me and send me to a mental hospital.
Different method, same war.
But the Truth lives on.