Episode 3: Missional Priesthood
Season 1 · Episode 3
Missional Priesthood: Cleansing the Earth through Confession, Healing, & Exorcism
Show Notes
Sipping Maine Blueberry tea and marking 19 years of marriage, Amy and Justin Howard trace the story of the priesthood from the vibrant, deliverance-fueled early church through its consolidation into institutional Christianity, the Reformation's recovery of direct access to God, and the Wesleyan revival. Along the way they ask what got lost when uniquely priestly gifts like cleansing, healing, and deliverance were handed off to a professional clergy class. Drawing on church history and the neurobiology of shame in Curt Thompson's work, they make the case that the priesthood of all believers is far bigger than praying alone in your room: it is the shared, embodied work of confession, being seen, and welcoming one another back into fellowship. This is an invitation to imagine communities where nobody hides, leaders go first, and heaven and earth come together in the ordinary work of loving each other well.
In This Episode
- In the early church, praying for healing, deliverance, and casting out demons was seen as everyone's job, not a specialized role, and this public ministry may have been a driving force behind the spread of Christianity.
- As Christianity became legal under Constantine and grew into an institution, uniquely priestly gifts such as cleansing, forgiveness, healing, and deliverance were consolidated into a professional clergy class, and the expectation for God to show up supernaturally dropped off sharply.
- The Reformation, through Martin Luther, recovered the truth that anyone can have a direct relationship with God and does not need a priest as an intermediary.
- That recovery, while vital, often shrank the priesthood of all believers down to 'I can pray and confess alone,' losing its communal and missional dimensions.
- Drawing on Curt Thompson, the hosts explain that shame is healed when our brokenness is seen by another person and met with welcome, so we genuinely need each other, not just private access to God.
- The priesthood of all believers means every Spirit-indwelt Christian shares in the work of purification, creating little Edens and helping one another confess, cleanse, and be reconciled.
- Real transformation in a community happens when leaders go first in vulnerability and confession, making it safe for others to come clean, whether in a church or in a family.
Going Deeper — Discussion Questions
- The hosts describe the early church as having a 'very live cosmology,' an awareness of an unseen realm that many Westerners struggle to grasp. Where do you find yourself on that spectrum, and what has shaped your view of the unseen world?
- Amy and Justin argue that the priesthood is 'written into the identity of the people of God,' not just a job for professionals. How does seeing yourself as a priest change the way you think about your family, neighborhood, and church?
- As the church institutionalized, gifts like healing and deliverance got handed off to a few professionals and expectation dropped 'off a cliff.' Where have you seen important spiritual work quietly become 'somebody else's job,' and what might it look like to reclaim it?
- The Reformation recovered direct access to God, but the hosts say the priesthood of all believers is much bigger than praying alone in your room. What parts of the priesthood have you tended to overlook?
- Curt Thompson's work suggests shame is healed when another person sees our brokenness and welcomes us anyway. Why is it so hard to let ourselves be truly seen, and where have you experienced the freedom of being welcomed in your vulnerability?
- The hosts say community changes when leaders go first in confession, and that 'if you feel dirty, you're gonna live dirty.' Who are the safe people in your life you could confess to, and what keeps you from taking that step?
- Justin and Amy note that becoming vulnerable can cost you respect with some people while setting others free. How do you respond to the idea of being 'the fragrance of life' to some and 'the fragrance of death' to others when you share your story?
Full Transcript
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0:03Introduction
Welcome to Between Heaven and Earth. We're your hosts, Justin and Amy Howard, husband and wife and parents to six amazing boys. We're church planters, coaches, and leaders of a mission agency right here in beautiful New England. We're thrilled to have you join us. Together, we will discover what it means to be a follower of Jesus bringing heaven and earth together in your family, neighborhood, and community. In each episode, we'll explore how to cultivate an understanding of what the Spirit of God is doing in and around us. Our goal is to empower you to thrive in the collision of kingdoms and join Jesus in his great project of restoration until his glorious return.
This podcast is brought to you by Encounter Culture Mission Collaborative, a mission agency dedicated to working with ordinary followers of Jesus to mend, make, and multiply disciples right where they are. If you enjoy our conversations, please like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. Let's dive in. Okay, well, welcome back to the Heaven and Earth podcast. We are hosts, Justin and Amy. And I am sipping my favorite tea. This is the tea that has been my favorite for all time. It is Maine Blueberry, sold by the Republic of Tea. I think it is probably the best kind of tea. I mean, we started drinking it when—when we were— When we were first married.
Right, we'd window shop. We lived in a little apartment in downtown Bangor, Maine, and we had less than $0. We had just debt. Yeah, just debt, and your parents fed us almost every night. Not every night; I made stir fry. Yeah, like stuff that we got on, like, I don't know, the seven-day-old shelf at the store. Yeah, okay. But it was pretty great. Anyway, this tea is amazing. So we'd window shop, and this was the only thing we could afford, is to buy tea at this cool little tea store. Yeah, and like we'd go on a date, you know, once a month or whatever. To go look at stuff. Yeah, and we didn't buy anything except for this tea. And I absolutely love this tea. We got chopsticks, do you remember that?
We did buy chopsticks. We thought it was the coolest thing. And then we ate our stir fry with the chopsticks. That's right, yeah. Well, this tea though, this tea, it just reminds me of our early marriage. We've been married 19 years this year. That's true. Isn't that crazy? That's true. And our oldest son is going to college this fall, which I can't even believe. No, that's wild. Wow. So anyway, here I am sipping this tea 19 years later and still thinking about you and loving you. Aww. And you made this for me, which made it all the more special. I did. Yeah. Thanks, I love you. So anyway, this is my tea. You'll hear me sipping it, slurping it on the audio, hopefully not too loud.
3:03The Priesthood Goes Outward
But I'm hoping for us to get back to the topic at hand. This is actually, this is episode three, and we're going to be talking about the priesthood. Again, but we're going to be picking up at the time of the Reformation. Well, early church first. Oh, early church, okay. Let's go back to the early church. So if you heard the previous episode, we were talking about the priesthood from Eden to Exodus, the people of God, the tabernacle, John the Baptist, Jesus, the New Testament church. And we're building this case for being a priest is actually written into the identity of the people of God, that it's not just a job, it's not just a career, that actually God made men and women to be priests.
Yeah, totally. You know one of my favorite Old Testament prophecies? I love it in Advent. Oh, say it. Malachi: "I will purify the sons of Levi." I think that's my favorite song in Handel's Messiah. Oh yeah. And I love it because that's a prophecy about us. Yeah. We are the priesthood. Yeah. And he has purified us so that he can dwell in us. Yeah. Yeah, we looked at how the priesthood used to be vulnerable after the fall. It was vulnerable to the very stuff that it was ministering to. So you could look at somebody's leprosy and you were in danger of catching the leprosy yourself as the priest. You know, if you touched it, or however, you know, it was a dangerous job.
It was a dangerous job. I mean, they, they were exposed to, yeah, stuff that made them unclean on a regular basis. There was always a sense that contagion itself was risky, risky business, and powerful. Yeah, whether it was mold or leprosy or whoredom. Oh my gosh. It was "contagion." No, that's how we talk. I love it. The heart. The, the whoredom. But really, there was a contagion that was released into the community. I don't think I said that word until I was in college. Well, it's in the Bible, the whore of Babylon, you know, it's a thing. And her smoke will rise before the saints forever. Hallelujah, we will rejoice. Yeah. We will. I love it. Yeah. Okay. So, funny trail.
So we're talking about how the kingdom of God and our priesthood goes outward. Yeah. So Jesus shows up on the scene. John, John the Baptist took the priesthood outside of the temple, and now it's out in the wilderness, making a way for heaven and earth to come together. God-man, Jesus is the embodiment of heaven and earth coming together. John made everybody ready. He showed them where their pain was, did that priestly activity, and then cleansed them. Symbolic baptism for the forgiveness of sin so they could—so they wanted to be near Jesus instead of wanting to run in the other direction. And then Jesus started acting like a priest on the earth, and, and, and more. Yes.
Like, like a super priest. He was bringing heaven and earth together. Yeah. In his body. And somehow he wasn't subjected to the same fear of contagion. And then his disciples, when they were full of the Holy Spirit delivering people from demons and healing diseases and sicknesses and death, it didn't seem like—like the holiness was moving outward. Like the holiness was now contagious. That's right. And the night that Jesus left them, you know, when he was betrayed, in John 15, yeah, he makes this astonishing claim where he says, "You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."
And that word "clean" in John 15 is the same word that he uses in this, in the same sentences, in that, in that passage, as "to prune." So, "Every branch in me that produces fruit, my Father prunes. And you are already clean because of the word I've said." So you're already pruned. You're already clean. It's cleansed. And I think that that, that goes back to that Eden reality, that he's the great priest. He has cleansed us. Right. He kicked the enemy out. Instead of entertaining, instead of listening to his lies, he kicked him out, and he just displaced the enemy in our lives, and he has cleansed us. That's right. And he's made a way for heaven and earth to come together in us.
That's right. And now through us. That's right. So Jesus makes disciples that then go and make disciples, there in the tradition of the early rabbis. You were not just teaching what your teacher taught you. You were, you were them in the world. I mean, you were eating the way they ate and sitting the way they sat, and you, you had relationships the way that they did. So Jesus made disciples. He didn't just make people that were gonna teach the stuff that he taught, although that was part of it. He made disciples that were gonna go do what he did. And so that continues through the early church. We see these little Edens go scampering off into the four corners of the known world.
Into the Gentile world. Into the Gentile—the Gentiles start becoming priests. That's right. And in the early church, there was, the first couple of hundred years, there was a real sense that this was everybody's job, that you were praying for healing and deliverance, that you were, that, you know, I love—we talked about last time, that James 5 passage where you can hear James' little community wringing their hands. What should we do? There's somebody sick, quick, bring the professionals. And James just kicks it right back to them and says, "Yep, you guys do it. You do this stuff. You pray and expect that God is gonna show up when you pray." So then what happened?
I mean, you know, obviously things changed. Things changed that led to the Reformation, but, you know, 1500 years later. Yeah. So the church is expanding. Under persecution. I mean, massive persecution. People, the church is facing all kinds of challenges. Heresy, false teaching. People are falling away because of the persecution, and then they went back into the church, and the church was like, well, what did we do about this? It was a messy time. Absolute mess. But the church was growing exponentially. That's right. The Rise of Christianity is a great book if you wanna read about that. And anyway, amazing, amazing book.
9:32Exorcism in the Early Church
So anyway, so the church is expanding because of these really home-based churches. Yeah, and deliverance ministry, in particular, played a huge role. That's right. There's some really great recent scholarship. If you're interested in reading, I was just really enjoying The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. Do you remember who wrote that? Do you want to look at it real quick? I don't remember, but keep going. Okay, I just won't give you the name. And he basically said—the author posits that deliverance ministry, the ministry of exorcism, was such a public service that it might have been the vanguard of the spread of Christianity.
This idea that Christians were healing humans that had been torn apart by the demonic. That's right, yeah, the author— Alan Kreider. Yeah, that's right. I guess it is. I just thought that's how you— Wow. Kreider. You have one of those fascinating memories. It's kind of—I mean, I'm really grateful for it, but it's also very irritating, 'cause that means I can never win an argument. Or I say, "No, I didn't say that," like, "Yes you did." Oh, I'm sorry. It's the way you sanctify me in our relationship. It's good. All right, so— Hold you accountable. Yeah, right.
The other thing that, you know, in my studies in seminary, one of the things I learned is that in the first three to 400 years of Christianity, if you were a proselyte or you wanted to become a Christian, you had to go through two or three years of preparation before you were baptized. Yeah. And because you needed to count the cost. Am I— And you were assigned an exorcist. Yes, that's right. You were assigned an exorcist, a mentor who would teach you the faith, and an exorcist. A personal one. A personal exorcist, because most of these people were people that come out of pagan cultures that are worshiping demons.
Well, the sense was, you've come in with pain, with your own story, with your own stuff, and the church knew that it was their job to continue that work of the priesthood, to cleanse and to restore the potential for communion with God. Right, so the early church is just immersed in this reality. It took it seriously. They had a—what theologians would call a very live cosmology. Yeah. This idea that there is a whole—there is an unseen realm that, as Westerners today, we do not fully grasp. It's like, no, it really does matter. Yeah. And you're like, well, you know, there aren't really that many demon-possessed people.
And when you go to the third world, the two-thirds world, you'll see demon-possessed people, people foaming at the mouth. You're just like, you know, it was Jesus's day. But I would say in Western culture, a lot of ours, it's the same. It's the same. They might not be foaming at the mouth. They may wear doctoral hoods. I think they may be teaching at universities. Yeah. I think that the developing world has a lot, the majority-Christianity world has a lot to teach the West about deliverance ministry. Absolutely. I think we have a lot to learn from them. I think there's just been such a sense in the Enlightenment—
This is another conversation for another day, but just such a sense, since the Enlightenment especially, that you can solve all your problems with your brain, that actually at the end of the day, you don't need God to show up. Yeah. If you just work real hard and do your best, then you can fix the problems. Right. But there's still unseen oppressive realities. Right. It changed the dynamics of humans—or human beings anymore. And... But it's very Christian to believe that there's a, there's an unseen world. Yeah. And we're going to have some great conversations about that. Lots of stories. Yes. So many stories, so many stories.
And if you are one of those people that's thinking, "And I've never seen what you're talking about, I've never witnessed that, I've never seen someone get set free from something demonic, I've—I don't think I've ever been set free from something demonic myself"—tune in. I, I think this is going to be a really exciting journey for you. Yeah. A really interesting one. And we'd actually love to bring you along. Yes. So, so we're not all talk here. We set up weekend events all over the place where you can actually experience being set free yourself, and also seeing other people set free. It's really neat.
So let's put a pin in that and circle back to it when we talk more about deliverance ministry and cosmology. Oh, yeah. And the unseen realm and all that, all that great stuff. Impress your friends. Use that word. Oh, yeah. Cosmology. Action item. Yeah. Vibrant cosmology. A robust, a robust—robust. That word is overused, robust. I'm going to—I like it. But I mean, it's everywhere right now. I don't know. Yeah. Like synergy. So, okay. So what happened? So the first couple hundred years, this is just normal Christianity. I mean, you read like Justin Martyr, and he, he mentions exorcism casually. Yeah. Like, of course everybody knows this is what's happening and this is what's going on.
14:41The Rise of Institutional Christianity
No explanation required. It just—yeah. Yeah. Let me talk about the watchers. He talks about some crazy—he talks about some, like, the principalities and stuff. I think you're thinking of Irenaeus. Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. All right. We'll get there. So anyway, so, so first 300 years, and then something happens, and it's kind of like a really awesome thing and simultaneously brings some real challenges on board. You have the emergence of institutional Christianity. And I, and I'm not saying that like it, like it's just a bad thing. The reality is, when you need organization, you need an institution. And—do you want to talk a little bit about this?
So, so how does Christianity become institutional Christianity? Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm very honored. I do have a master's degree in Christian history and theology. Oh, and I was the president of the theological society. That's why I wasn't allowed to wear my pajama pants down to the— And yeah, when we were in university and we were dating, I was like, "I can't be dating you, you're wearing pajama pants." It's not like I wore them to class. Okay. Scampered across campus in your pajama pants, and you were dating the president of the theological society. How embarrassing. Wow. They were tasteful though.
We're speaking in a Zoom era where everyone goes to all their meetings in their pajama pants. Oh, that's true. That's true. Things have changed. And now every time we go to university, everyone's in pajama pants. Yeah. That doesn't bode well for the future of our nation. Oh. Anyway, so here we are. We're talking about the rise of Christianity, the rise of institution. As many of you know, in 312, the emperor Constantine basically legalizes Christianity. They've experienced massive persecution up to this point. And hundreds of thousands of people begin pouring into the church because it's legal now.
And the people that maybe walked away from Christianity because the pressure was too intense come back into the church. And so they need more organization. What does it look like for people to worship publicly now? Where do you worship? Yeah, when you've got 400 people instead of 12. Right, right. And you're doing mass baptisms. Right. You've got a big building. A thousand people. Yeah. You've got to come up with systems. You've got to— But not only that. So that happens. So you need organization to take just the influx of people.
But then you need an organization because then, as the Roman Empire begins to crumble, the Roman Empire begins to rely more and more on the ecclesiastical structure. The church structure. The church, yeah. I was going to say, some people might not know what that was. But please, yeah. It means church. They begin to rely on church structure, that's, so bishops and priests, or elders, that are now over these larger communities of people, because they've just experienced hundreds of thousands of people coming into the church. And so now bishops become judges and governors and mayors. Yeah. And you know— Which is the equivalent of a mayor today?
Through one side of the telescope, it's kind of a great thing. But you see this marriage of church and state. And the marriage of church and state means more power is centralized in these church authorities. Yeah, they have more power, more control, more influence. And that's just never a great thing. Well, I mean, I think in an ideal world, there could be a version of that story that—and I think in some places, the version of that story was really beautiful. The idea that the person who is governing an area would be a person particularly called and consecrated by God, who loves the Lord, who cares about people. I mean, in some ways it's kind of ideal. Unfortunately, it's also human.
And so it was not that tidy. Mm-hmm. And one of the things that just got a little not tidy about it was the consolidation of the jobs. So in the early church, everybody's praying for healing. People are baptizing. Jesus says, "Go into the world and make disciples, baptize them." He didn't say, "A couple of you do the baptisms." He's like, "Go baptize people." And so they went, and they were making converts. They were sharing their faith. They were eating together and worshiping together. And that doesn't mean there was no leadership. No, there were, most definitely, there were deacons. There were elders. Yeah, and they served as kind of like a membrane of a community, right?
Yep, there were deacons and elders. And then this part is a little controversial, but there were also overseers that may have been a separate office. But we definitely see this emerge after the death of the last apostle. We see bishops emerge as almost sort of carrying on the apostolic ministry of the apostles that had died. So these are bishops who are overseeing a number of home churches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we've got those three orders kind of emerge very early on in the churches. Right, right. But still you have people kind of confessing to each other. You have a lot of people praying for healing. You've got a lot of deliverance ministry going on. And as—
Christianity became institutionalized, some of those jobs that were uniquely priesthood got consolidated into the professional class of clergy. So eventually it became just the job of the priest, who is praying over the communion of the Eucharist. It became just the job of the priest who was praying for healing. It became just the job of the priest or the bishop to, you know, do certain jobs in the church. And the jobs themselves became a little more well-defined. Who's doing what, whose job is this? And some of that's not bad, because at least someone's taking responsibility for it. And some of it was quality control too. Yeah, there was—and they needed some quality control.
Yeah, absolutely. Some of the crazy stuff going on. A lot of crazy teaching. Yeah, yeah. And they needed leadership. I mean, in the church, the idea that there would be shepherds that served as membranes of a community—if you think of a cell that has a membrane, that membrane is preventing bad things from coming in. It's letting digested bad things out. That's right. And it's keeping the good stuff on the inside. So the idea that there would be shepherds who were helping to tend and nurture and equip and keep the bad stuff out. I mean, you read First John.
John's pretty serious about the need to protect those early flocks from people who are deceived, or people who are just looking for their own gain and who are looking to take advantage of naive Christians. I mean, there was a need for leadership. Oh, absolutely. In St. Paul—you know, he orders Timothy to basically, you know, appoint elders in the congregations. Right. So I don't—I don't want to build—I'm not trying to build a case for having leadership was bad. But those uniquely priestly gifts got consolidated into that same leadership structure. Cleansing, forgiveness, intercession, mediation, compassion, prayers for healing and deliverance. That's right.
21:56When Expectation for Healing Faded
And as fewer and fewer people were practicing those things, and more and more people were coming into Christianity, whether they really wanted to or not. So, so yes, you had a Christianity boom in the 300s, 400s, but there were moments in those first several hundred years, you know, up through the 700s, 800s, the beginning of the Carolingians, where there were forced baptisms. I mean, people were, you know, rulers were, you know, said to tribes, you know, "Convert or die." I mean, there were some—there were a lot of people coming to faith that may or may not have had a conversion, a conversion. Yeah. They were baptizing and whatever. So you've got an influx.
But you have to admit, it was a civilizing moment. I mean, with some of these, you know, the Huns—I mean, all like all the folks in Northern Germany—I mean, it just needed to be, they needed to be that. I've been reading Tom Holland's book recently. What's, what's it called? I don't know, I'm partway through. He's, he's not a Christian believer himself. He has an interesting take on the advance of Christianity, and some, some really creative kind of thoughts, and also some—I'm like, "Huh?"
But anyway, so, so you've got an influx of people that may or may not take Christianity seriously. They may or may not be flowing in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit. They may not be in relationship with God. And what's fascinating is, really early on, the expectation for God to show up supernaturally for healing and deliverance dropped off a cliff. So right through the 200s, you've got a lot of expectation. By the time of Augustine—when was Augustine? Late fourth, early fifth century. Yeah. By the time of Augustine, Augustine is writing at the beginning of his career in regards to healing and deliverance.
Those things are very rare among us, or, no, they don't happen anymore. So, so the idea that regular exorcism was happening even within those first couple of hundred years of institutionalization, that it just dropped off a cliff. So, so there were—there, I'm sure there are other reasons for this as well, but certainly some of it seems to have been the consolidation of those jobs into a very few professional-class clergy. And also this lowered expectation, because you had the church full of people that were not necessarily actually converted, right? But then also, I mean, you—you get some really cool stories coming out of, you know, of the 500s, like in Ireland—in Ireland the Celtic Christians. I mean, people were raised from the dead, people had demons cast out of them. I mean, you know, these—these buildings and statues that were filled with, a principality, you know, are—are displaced. Saint Boniface goes and he chops down the ancient tree that the pagans were worshiping in Germany.
I mean, it's like—so, Patrick and the Beltane fires. Yeah, Patrick—I mean, there, there are so many stories of the Lord breaking in in supernatural ways, and, you know, in signs and wonders, right? But what we find is, the places where the institution had kind of kicked in, it becomes a little more rare. Yeah, which was fascinating. So anyway, the institution kind of takes root, and you can see some of it as raw power grab. But I think a lot of it is just the progression of organizations. And I'm not trying to let bad people off the hook.
25:30Reformation and the Priesthood of All Believers
There were some real shady characters, then, you can read church history, but a lot of it is just, you know, people are culturally doing what made sense to them and making the institution work. And there were some real good things about it, and some things that were rough. But by the time Martin Luther came on the stage in the 1500s, by the time the Reformation's percolating, there were some real genuine abuses taking place. There was real, real consolidation of wealth and power. And a lot of the priests couldn't read, a lot of the priests couldn't read, and forgiveness was tied to money and to control over whole regions. Like, you can't—you can't get baptized or forgiven if you're whole—you know, if your king or your region has been executed. There's a lot of wielding of that original priesthood job for nefarious purposes. Right. So Martin Luther, in 1517—1517, he comes in, and he kind of like pushes the reset button in certain ways, and he says, actually—primarily, I think one of his big concerns with pushing the reset button in the priesthood, one of the big ones, was anybody can have a meaningful relationship with God, and they don't need an intermediary. Right, they don't need somebody in the middle.
You want to develop that thought a little bit? Well, yeah, I mean, you don't need a priest to get to God. You don't need a priest to give you the sacraments in order to get to God. You can actually have direct line of communication with the Lord, because you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Yeah, and the fact that that was kind of a surprise to people gives you a real sense of maybe the general feelings within Christianity in the high Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, right? Right, that there was a sense that, because those jobs of the priesthood, like forgiveness and prayer for healing—well, prayer for healing pretty much disappeared, it got shuffled off into the last rites by, like, I think 700. By, by pretty early on in Christianity, healing prayer had transitioned from, "I think God's going to heal you," to, "We're not going to pray for healing until we're absolutely sure you're about to die."
Because our expectation is so low that God's really going to show up. And there's also the sense that the only people that got their prayers really answered miraculously were the saints, were the people that were super, super holy. And actually, if you were really holy, the only way to know you were really holy and not be proud about it was to be dead and then perform miracles. Because then you couldn't be proud of it. Yeah, so then people would ask for your intercession as a dead person. Right. And if, I mean— Good, bad, or otherwise. I mean, I'm not weighing in on the effectiveness of that.
I'm just saying the— Oh my. Justin's rolling his eyes. No, no, no, I'm just—that's a different conversation for a different day. I'm just saying there was this sense that the only people that God heard in prayers for healing and for deliverance were people who were super, super holy. Right. And you were really only that holy—you could only know that someone was that holy a lot of times if they were dead. Right, right. So the Reformation sort of restores this idea. It does restore this idea that we can be in direct communion with God. Yeah. And we don't need the church even as an intermediary, let alone a priest. Right. But the church— I mean, Martin Luther wasn't quite that extreme.
He still thought there needed to be shepherds and— Oh, absolutely. Yeah. He had a pretty high sacramentology, all things— Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about sacramentology. If that word doesn't make any sense to you, don't sweat it. We'll get there. Basically baptism and communion, they're sacraments. He believed that they were generally necessary— for new basis. —for believers to do. So anyway, so he's—so then, as Protestantism continues, we see a lot of kind of development of Protestant theology over the next 200 years. And then the 1700s come. And we see the Wesley revival—the Wesley—the Wesleys. John and Charles Wesley.
And there's this big, quote unquote, evangelical revival that happens in England. Many historians say that it saves England from the plight that was met in France with the Civil War and the Revolution, because people get converted. They were baptized in the Church of England, but now they get converted. And John did some shady stuff, because he kind of deinstitutionalized things again. He did. He took confession and preaching and healing out of the church buildings and into the coal mines. The cow fields. And into the cow fields. I wouldn't call that shady. That's—well, that's kingdom of God. Yeah, but he—he kind of deinstitutionalized things again.
So I want to talk a little bit, though, about that priesthood of all believers. So we can pick up with John Wesley in a bit, because—now, I love that guy. And his mama. Susanna. What a woman. The story goes that she—so she had a lot of kids. How many kids did she have? 17. Yeah, not all of them survived infancy. But the story goes that to get alone, she would throw her apron over her head. And that's as alone as she ever got. And I just want to say, I've tried that, and it doesn't count. It doesn't work. Actually, it doesn't work. It's not alone. It's like—it's running around. It doesn't work.
So this idea of the priesthood of all believers—when you were growing up, how did you understand the priesthood of all believers? What did you understand about that? Yeah, so just as I had articulated, that I didn't need a priest as an intermediary. I could go to my room and I could pray to God, and I could confess my sins to God. And I could hear from God, and God, the Spirit, would interpret the Scriptures for me. And I didn't really need anyone or anything for grace other than God. So you didn't necessarily see it as, "I have this job to bring Eden where I go." No, absolutely not. And to cleanse the earth. No, the priesthood had nothing to do with mission in my mind.
Yeah, it just had to do with, you can talk to God yourself. That's right. Yeah. And he'll forgive you when you say sorry. That's right. Yeah. So what's wild though is that, as we've been talking, that's just a little tiny piece of the priesthood. That's just this little, little tiny priest. And actually, it's not even a great take on the priesthood, right? Because we actually still need each other. I mean, you may not need a professional, but you actually need another person—not to be forgiven, because God forgives you when you say sorry to him. I mean, God's already forgiven you, but you're reconciled to him when you say sorry. But you actually need somebody. You need bodies. Yeah, you do.
You need people to be able to have fellowship and walk in the light. You weren't created to be alone. That's right. You were meant to be in a kingdom of priests. Right. And I think one—yes, amen. I think one of the unfortunate things is that the elders of the church, aka priests in the Roman church at that time, that they're even called priests. Because there is this unfortunate link between the Roman Catholic priesthood, or even Anglican priesthood, with the Levitical priesthood. Which was kind of a limited group of people. Yeah. It's a limited group of people, and they're the intermediaries. And that's really unfortunate.
And the reason is because the Greek word for elder is presbyteros, where we get Presbyterian. And that basically just means elder. And so presbyteros gets turned into "prest," "priest." That's sort of like the, you know, that's the development of that word. So unfortunately, theologically, we kind of get ourselves into a bit of a muddle here, because they're really only elders. So these are people in a community that are trustworthy with your pain. They are the elders. Yeah. These are people in a community that can help serve as membranes to that community, and that can help facilitate learning and service and mission, you know, healing, community.
34:23Confession, Shame, and Healing
Yeah, continue to facilitate those things. But not the functions necessarily of the priesthood. That's right. Those are kind of two separate things, aren't they? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. They're kind of two separate things. You and I have been really jamming on Curt Thompson these last—this last year or so. Yes, we have. And I think one of the things that so excites me about the work that he's doing is he is—if you haven't read any of his books, the one that we've just kind of just finished is The Deepest Place. And Curt is—what is he, a neurobiologist, that he writes in The Deepest Place? He's a psychiatrist. He's an MD. An MD psychiatrist.
So he writes in his book about the way that shame is actually healed. So shame is this deeply alienating force. It's like death. And the way in your brain that shame is healed is when the stuff that caused you shame is seen by another set of eyes, by another person, and you experience welcome. So this deep-seated fear of abandonment in us—"I have done something bad, therefore I am bad, therefore I'm rejectable, therefore I am going to be abandoned." The only way to break that narrative is actually another person seeing your disintegration, seeing—that's confession—seeing the places of your need, the places of your vulnerability, and welcoming those parts of you back into humanity.
Yeah, yeah. Back out of alienation. And that's what actually changes your brain. That's the work. So that's the priesthood. That's part of the priesthood. So somebody else listening, you know—you're telling your story, you're sharing where the pain is, they're helping you to discern, "All right, what is that? What's the name for that? Is that jealousy? Is that, is that loss? Is it trauma? Is it whatever?" And then helping you lovingly bring those things to Jesus, the broken body of Jesus, in prayer, so that he bears the justice and the cost of the—of your sin, your pain, other people's sin against you. And that your brain starts to rewire as you experience that with another person. Yeah.
Oh man, neurobiology. I wish—I wish I had time to read more on that, because it's so fascinating. It shouts the glory of God. It does. You know, it's like we want—we want to kind of over-spiritualize everything, you know. So, I mean, obviously the healing is a miracle. You say that oftentimes. Yeah, you say forgiveness is a choice, healing is a miracle. Right. So, but man, he has written into the physicality of our human nature to heal itself by interacting with the physicality of someone else. That's so crazy. That is absolutely crazy. And in ways that—he doesn't normally, or, you know, heal just by snapping his fingers. Right.
He could have—he could have done it when he was on the earth. Jesus could have just snapped his fingers or thought healing thoughts toward everyone. And instead he welcomed people back to life with his hands, with his eyes, with his voice, with his garment, with his spit. I mean, he physically interacted with people in the place of their pain and brokenness. And so let's just take it full circle. So this idea of the priesthood of all believers isn't just, "I can say I'm sorry to God, and I don't need a priest to be reconciled to God." However, what it is—you want to pick that up? You're like staring at me. I thought you were going to add something. No, no, I was waiting for you. Oh, okay.
You don't need a priest to be reconciled to God. But you do need a priest to heal. Yeah. And the priests are not just the professional class. No. They're all believers. It's all believers who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, who have been cleansed and purged. They've been purified, and the Holy Spirit indwells them. And so they're part of that work of purification on the earth. That's right. They're creating little Edens. Kicking the serpent out wherever the serpent is. And so when someone's bringing order and life, yeah. So when you confess your shame to someone face to face, and your eyes are, you know, you're averting your eyes, and they say, "No, look at me as you confess your sin."
And then they look you in the eye and they say, "In the name of Jesus, you are forgiven. You are cleansed. You're welcomed home." That kind of ministry, it feels like cleansing, doesn't it? Yeah. It absolutely feels like cleansing. And I think oftentimes, like in 1 John, John says, you know, if you confess your sins one to another, you'll have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all unrighteousness. Yeah. So it's walking in the light and fellowship where we experience cleansing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And if there's no walking in the light in a real way, in an incarnational, real way, not just an idea.
With another person. With another person, you will not feel clean. Yeah, yeah. And we love to say, if you feel dirty, you're gonna live dirty. That's right. Yeah, if you feel dirty, you live dirty. And that's the reality of shame. Shame will cause you to live at a distance from God, from yourself, and from others. And the way to break that—because the enemy has come to bring alienation—the way to break that is to confess and to be vulnerable in front of someone and let them love you. And can you imagine what our communities would look like if that were the norm? I mean, like if there were no skeletons in your community and people were being set free.
I mean, like, the closest you get to that are recovery communities. Yeah, yeah. AA, NA, Celebrate Recovery. Celebrate Recovery, things like that. Where everybody actually knows they've got this story and they need to be seen. And they need to be seen by other people. And they've learned that that's—breaking the power of shame and addiction cycles looks like welcoming other people in. That's right. And I mean, I feel like that's discipleship 101. Oh yeah. And it's so— Which is odd, 'cause you don't see it in discipleship books. No, no, in very few. I have told you, I mean, for the last 15 years, I've looked for the silver bullet for discipleship, you know, in parish ministry.
41:20Leaders Who Go First
And we've done so many books. And they're great. They have great things to offer. But this piece is often missing. Right. And I think it's because it's so uncomfortable. And the only—as Curt Thompson likes to talk about in The Soul of Shame, he says, you know, you're not gonna break shame by denying it. You're gonna break it by vulnerability. Yeah. And the way that community changes is that the leaders do it first. That's right. So they're not the "better than everybody else" people, that don't have a story and have to look better than everybody. But they're actually the ones who go first in confession. Yeah, that's super uncomfortable. Oh. It really is, you know? Oh.
I mean, I remember, you know, as a leader, getting up in front of the church on Sunday morning and sharing bits and pieces of my testimony. I just saw a pastor a couple months ago get up and share his testimony in front of a number of people in his congregation. And it was raw. And it was recent. Like within the last five years. While he was pastoring. While he was pastoring, he had a testimony of God setting him free. And you know what's crazy? From hurt and pain and all this other stuff. There may have been some people that lost respect for us when we started living this way. And there may have been some people that lost respect for him.
But you know what the majority of the people thought in that moment? And I know this because I've spoken to some of them. This is one of the groups that we've been working with. I thought—"Oh, if he can get set free, it's safe for me." That's right. Absolutely. "Oh, he needs God, he's not perfect." Oh, instead of just living it, thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna judge my own crummy life against the perfect life of my pastor," I'm gonna say, "Whoa, that was really bold. And now I have imagination for—it's safe for me to come clean." Absolutely. And you know, we're talking about this on a church—it's a church-wide level, but this can also happen in your family. That's right.
If you want deeper relationship with your children or your spouse, oftentimes you need to confess and apologize. You know, I mean, that is the way to really develop that depth of intimacy and relationship, is by living vulnerable in front of people that you love and that you want a relationship with. And how much more for pastors, who when they get vulnerable in front of their people, talk about their struggles, like current and past. Yeah. There may be some people that will judge you for it and say, "Oh, I can't respect you anymore." Guess what? Haters are gonna hate. Haters are gonna hate, and they— You're the fragrance of death. Of death. You're the fragrance of Christ.
You're the fragrance of life to those who wanna live. That's right, and you're the fragrance of death to those who want to die. I mean, you can't be the fragrance of life to everyone. I mean, St. Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter two that to some we're the fragrance of life and to some we're the fragrance of death. You smell really bad to some people. Yeah, you do. And those are the people—'cause I have experiences too, as a pastor sharing my testimony, and people actually saying, "I lost respect for you." Yeah. Wow. And I saw— It's bold. And I, yeah, I know. And I knew their stories, and I knew how they had yet to experience the grace of God.
They themselves had never experienced the grace of God, and they were still stuck in their sin. And it's just—I mean, what can you do? My heart just swells with compassion. Like, I didn't get all uptight, like, "Oh, you know, I need to not tell my story again." No, no, no. There are a lot of people who are like, if you talk about something uncomfortable in front of the church, or you get someone to come and give their testimony and it's uncomfortable, you get people in the group that are gonna be uncomfortable, and they'll say, "Well, other people might have felt uncomfortable"—well, it's probably you. Yeah, but we can continue.
I think it sounds like a good conversation about confession itself, 'cause there are communities where that's not safe and it's not a good idea. That's right, yeah. And there are some law-based, quote unquote, Christian communities where it's not safe. Right, and we've seen that be the case. Sometimes it's really grievous. We've also seen things go really well. So we can peer into that. We can look into—and then what it looks like to help be the priesthood for each other. How do we do this? How do we do it together as a community? How do we bring heaven and earth together as priests? I know—help each other clear out the encumbrances. Yeah.
46:00Creating Little Edens Together
And it's not that God is waiting for us to clear them out. He's already there. We have the fullness of God in Christ Jesus already, right now, but it's our own consciences and our own shame that keep us at a distance. And so when we are priests to one another and we help one another cleanse and prune, guess what? The fullness of God comes. Eden. Eden is there, and we have fellowship with God and with one another. Amen. So thanks for joining us today. We may be actually—probably, well, we'll probably go on a different topic next week, but I just really love this topic. I think we should keep going with confession. I think we could dig it—mine that out a little bit more. Yeah, I think so too.
I think next time when we come back, we wanna talk about the power of confession and the kind—like, not just power for us, but the power that's released into a community. Yeah, and what prevents it from happening. Right. Some kind of worst-case scenarios, and then maybe some best-case scenarios. Yeah, and we're gonna tell some stories. We're gonna tell some stories. I mean, we're not gonna tell anybody's confession. No, no, no, no, we never do that. But we will—well, we might use an alias, 'cause it might be ours. It might be our confession, we just—like, but we wanna make sure, you know, this is a place where we wanna empower you.
We wanna empower you to do this stuff, because we wanna see heaven and earth come, in you, in your family, in your neighborhood, and in your church community. So check us out, encounterculturene.com. We'd love to be your guide and teach you healing prayer and get you in a place where you can apprentice, where you can practice it in a safe space, and then where it can just become a part of the culture of your rhythm of life. So that's what we're passionate about. Until next week, love you all. Bye. Thanks. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Between Heaven and Earth.
We hope that you are stirred to curiosity and courage as we explored bringing heaven and earth together right where you are. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. We're here to support you in understanding what the Spirit of God is doing in your life and responding in obedience to his good leadership. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please take a moment to like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and questions with us on our Facebook page or by email, podcast@encounterculturene.com. Your support helps us reach more people who are eager to join Jesus in his great project of restoration.
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