Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 24:1 (Winter 2010)
Article: Editor’s Reflections
Author: William David Spencer

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PP 24:1 (Winter 2010) p. 2

Editor’s Reflections

William David Spencer

The church has not only the right, but the duty, to be the church of Jesus Christ. . . . The job of the priest isn’t to give you the answers to all of your questions for all of your life. But the priest is there to help you frame the questions and to point you toward the one with the answers. The goal of the priest is that you might enter into a mature relationship with God. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. Have you taken to heart the implications of your own priesthood?

This is the advice from her preaching professor pondered by the delightful and all-too-human Rev. Mary Prichard, rector of St. Andrews Episcopal Church, in Two Faces of Death, a new mystery novel about an ordained, single, detecting, female minister.1 That the church has a “right” and “duty” to be Christ’s church is more than an afterthought—it is our mission: to share the opportunity to join the reign or rule of God with everyone around our world.

Our primal model is the early church, and each of us hopes that our denomination or non-denomination is the true configuration Christ intended. In fact, we sometimes invest too much time debating this issue, as we realize when we try to understand what the New Testament Christians meant when they described God’s gathering or remnant (ekklesia). Kuriakos, an adjective meaning “belonging to the Lord”2 and used for the “house” or “people of God,” has come down to English as a cognate, a word borrowed and modified from another language (in this case Greek), becoming “kirche, kirk, church.”3

We may trace the beginning of the church in the Old Testament to Eden’s garden, where God walks and talks and communes with Adam and Eve at the dawn of creation. After the fall, worship continues and a sacrificial system is introduced to the human children with catastrophic results; Cain’s reaction at the rejection of his offering is the first lethal disagreement over how worship should be performed (Gen. 4:3-8). By the time of Enosh, Adam and Eve’s grandson (or next significant descendant, if the Genesis record is only highlighting significant members of the human line), we are told, “people began to call on the name of the Lord” (Gen. 4:26 TNIV). The use of the hophal form of the verb for praise (hll, huhal) suggests to me that this “calling on the name of the Lord” involves praise and worship, so Genesis 4:26 may be describing formal worship. We know that, by the tim...

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