At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law how on the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is lord of the sabbath.” (Matthew 12:1-8)
One possible lesson we can glean from the above Gospel passage in which the Pharisees criticize Christ’s disciples for eating on the Sabbath is that Jesus in his response is telling the Pharisees that God always intended for all His people to be priests. In ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ makes all of us into God’s priests. This fulfills what God envisioned and promised in the book of Exodus:
Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. (Exodus 19:5-6)
Jesus answers the Pharisees’ complaint by citing a story from the Old Testament of David and his companions who behaved as priests both in entering the temple and in eating the bread of the Presence. He also points out that the temple priests technically violate the Law in the temple by working and eating on the Sabbath and yet are guiltless. If all of God’s people are priests, as God intended, no violation of the law is occurring by gathering food on the Sabbath because everyone is behaving according to God’s will for priests.
The Book of Revelation says that Christ made all of us into God’s priests:
... Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1:5-6)
“Worthy art thou [Christ the Lamb of God] to take the scroll and to open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth.” (Revelation 5:9-10)
Every Christian is to be a priest of God Most High. This is a truth that the Pharisees and priests of Judaism could not accept. In Church history, Christian clergy also had difficulty with this concept. The Orthodox Church makes it very clear that there is a difference between clergy and laity. The development of the iconostasis further solidified the distinction between the clergy and the laity – excluding the laity from the altar area, though originally in the early church all laity (male and female) approached the altar to receive Holy Communion. Orthodoxy makes a distinction between the priesthood of all believers and the liturgical priesthood, but it needs to think more about how to treat all of Christ’s followers as priests as is described in Revelation in fulfillment of God’s wish in Exodus 19. Christ says His disciples are faultless for harvesting grain and eating it on the Sabbath because they are all priests of the Heavenly Father.
Fraternized 