Video Transcript: Ordination

Now we're going to talk about the key idea of ordination. And in order to do that, we ask this  question, what did it mean? What does it mean? And what did it mean then? And how did it  evolve, and it did evolve. And so I think it's important to understand that. So I have here four  words that are related. The first two are Latin, and the other two are Greek. And I'd like to  focus first on the two Greek words cheirothesia and cheirotonia, both of them meaning simply laying on of hands. And in the, in the earliest references, those are the kinds of words that are used. And, and, for example, in Acts 8:18, this is a story of Simon, wanting to get the same  power that the apostles had. And he asked them to, to, to do it, it's the power of laying on of  hands, and he offers money for it. So the apostles lay on hands on people in this case of  healing. And he wants to have the same thing. So the reference is to the gesture of laying on  of hands. And it can be for healing. There are other times when when it is healing in Mark 6:5, in fact, it says that Jesus healed by doing that by laying on hands, it's the you might say it's  the power of touch, there of healing touch, there's a whole kind of ministry that's called  Healing Touch, the human contact. Also in James the letter James 5:14, it says, If anyone is  sick or depressed for presbyters come in and lay hands on them, so so this is the the power of healing through doing that. But it also is the designation for leadership that becomes the the  symbol for that. And II Timothy 1:6 is an example of that where Paul says, Remember, the gift  of the Spirit that was given to you was a laying on of my hands. So it's delegation, delegation  for something for leadership, in this case. Now, let's go back to the the two Latin words, Ordo  and ordinare ordinare, because they really come into a different idea. And Ordo it's a rank, it's an order. It's some kind of organizational principle. And in fact, it had a very specific meaning  in ancient Roman culture. And that was belonging to certain social levels, certain social ranks, the upper ranks, it was the Ordo of the senatorial class and the ordo of the equestrian class.  That's the origin of the words, in Latin. So it's a very different idea from laying on hands. And  that that idea became extended into other uses. And particularly in Christian use, for  example, Tertulian. In the second session, we'll talk about the order of widows, the order of  virgins, the order of presbyters, so he is now extending, and he's not the only one, extending  this idea that originally referred to the upper classes of Roman society. He's extending it now  into understanding of designated groups and ordinare the Latin was to designate someone to  belong to that group, by the laying on of hands, but the idea of the laying on of hands is not  involved in the in the meaning of the original meaning and developed meaning of the Latin  term. So, we have here two different ideas that come together to produce this idea of  ordination and it is certainly an idea that that took a while to develop into something that we  would recognize as ordination in the early earliest period. It probably Was there an actual  ritual of laying on of hands? We're not sure about that. But it was a human and a social  designation. Other people did it, parents did it for children, probably, it was a way of  affirming, and in some cases delegating to a task. We have references to the I Timothy  passage that I just that I just told you about the healing gesture. And when we in Acts it says  that the apostles appointed presbyters in every city we'll talk about later what a presbyter is,  and that may have been with laying on of hands. So it's a gesture that was already there in  society. And so they probably appropriated it in these contexts. And it's a designated  designation for leadership. Now, it's, you have to look at this in in a developmental sense,  because leadership, we've already looked at many aspects of that what was involved in  leadership in a community, certainly responsibility of some kind. Probably, the persons who  were designated as leaders in the first generation, were also people who could exercise  patronage, people who would be patrons, who would give hospitality in their homes, etc.  Leadership is one thing. Teaching is is another and I want to say something about that for a  moment. It was not necessarily true, I think, in the first generation, that the best teachers  were the ones who were appointed as leaders. I think the ones appointed as leaders were  people who had certainly the gift of relationship, but also of organization. And as I said,  people who were in a social situation in which they could exercise patronage, they can be  patrons, now that person might not necessarily be the best teacher, I think that that would be a different function that was, was exercised differently. Later on. As the church develops and  got more organized, they tried to put the two together. And by the time you get to later of  choosing bishops, the bishop is supposed to be the person who can organize things, but also 

is the teacher and the role of teacher and leader is, is combined, but that's a little bit later. In,  in the very first generations, I think what was going on was, as I said, that they they look for  someone who can exercise patronage, who who can be a good patron for the community, and that is the person who is designated as leader. Also, of course, someone who has the ability to form relationships to to stay in them to, to inspire the community, as well, but that there  would be other people who well and even readers, we've talked about how difficult it was to  to read a text. So reading was a separate skill. And so probably, that was somebody who was  well educated, and had the ability to read and interpret texts. And then the teachers and  remember we also had prophets, people who were recognized as prophets, and they wouldn't  necessarily be the people who were leaders at all. And later hands were not late on prophets.  Prophets were not ordained, the Holy Spirit decided who was going to be a prophet. And the  way prophecy usually functions in a community is really better if the prophet is not somebody who is responsible for the community because that weighs the prophet down. The prophet  should be free to to inspire and challenge. So when we talk about leadership, it's not only one  person or one function, there are all kinds of different leaders. Remember Paul in I Corinthians 12:28 says, God has established in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers,  and he named numbers them, first, second, third like that. And I've also always pondered  what he means by that, why there's this numerical order and I think the, I think what he  means is that apostles are the founders of the church apostles are not people who stay  around, you know, they're they're itinerant, they found the churches, and then they leave,  then you've got the prophets. And the prophets are people who are not the best organizers,  usually. But the teachers, then the teachers are the people who who solidly continue the  formation of the community was very interesting, that he doesn't say there. Anything about  ordination, he doesn't say anything about laying on of hands. He doesn't say anything about  who's really the leader here. And I think that's probably understood that the people who can  supply the patronage and in all the senses that we talked about, those are the people they  would look to as designated leaders. And to the extent that that that gesture of laying on of  hands was was used. That's, that's where it would be done. Now, we've talked about  leadership and coordination. We haven't talked about mediation of the sacred. And what I  mean by that is patronage with God. The people who are recognized as having the best  connections with God, the ones who can stand before God, and represent the people. Now, in  the very early years, of the Christian communities, I don't think this was, was perceived as  something extraordinarily important or necessary. And the reason I say that is because they,  you know, the Christian groups originated in Judaism, and Judaism had the temple until 70, of  the first century, as the place where sacrifice was done. And there you need the mediation of  the sacred, there, you need the priest, to offer the sacrifice, stand before God and represent  the people in the holy place. But Jews were already meeting in synagogue, they were already  meeting in other places away from the temple, in which there was no sacrifice done. It was  rather the reading of the scriptures and comment on the scriptures, in other words, a word  based service. When Christians began adapting that they also had the ritual of bread and cup  in memory of Jesus of what he did at the Last Supper. And very early on, there's, there's  sacrificial language used about it, but it is not sacrifice in the same way, it's not destruction of an animal or of the elements, you know, other than consuming them, the people consuming  them. And so it doesn't have the same sense of what I want to call the sacred. As temple  worship does now. All the other not all the other, but that there's certainly many of the other  religions, certainly civic religion had temples in which the sacrifice was going on. Let me just  back up for a moment and say something about sacrifice. Sacrifice is the substitution of the  human person, substitution of something else for the human person who offers the self to  God. Because that is the best gift. It is the perception that that God is so holy, that something  has to be done, to mediate to keep that connection and the offering of the self is the best.  The Second best is human sacrifices, in cultures and religion in which human sacrifice is done. That didn't go in Judaism. And so what else then animal or the the first fruits of our harvest,  how can we get the best thing and offer it solely to God given over completely to God, that  the that's the instinct behind sacrifice. And sacrifice is is done in the Jewish temple. We know  that when the temple was destroyed, Judaism doesn't have it either. And Judaism then turns, 

much more deeply, intensely, into the life of the word in the synagogue. Now Christians in the meantime have the memory of the death of Jesus. That's the sacrifice. That's all the sacrifice  they need. They don't need to offer animals, they don't need to offer other things and destroy 

them, for God's use, because they have the sacrifice of Jesus. And that is commemorated in  the ritual of bread and cup. So when the when the Christians come together, in the first years, they don't need this high sense of the sacred. What what Paul basically argues is that the  community is sacred. The community is the temple Even, says that in over in I Corinthians in  chapter one, you are God's temple, you are the holy, the the whole community is as holy as  the temple. So that's, that's what keeps them going at the beginning. As Christianity  progresses, and as the temple is destroyed, and as everybody tries to figure out, What is God  doing with that, in Christianity, there comes the sense of the replacement of Judaism, the  replacement of Temple, we call this supersessionism. That means that, that, that Christians  now of coarse, who are not Jews are claiming all the promises in the covenant and everything  that was part of Israel. They're claiming it has come over to them. And this is a problem in  terms of Jewish Christian relations in Jewish Christian theology, we won't go into that, but it's  happening. And therefore they look to the shape and the form of religion in the temple. And  they see that there is no no longer a priesthood, a Jewish priesthood. And so they're going to  appropriate that, that idea. And at the same time, the organization in the Christian  community is developing into a position where you have one leader, who's a Bishop, who has  presbyters and deacons, and we're going to talk about that later. And the bishop now  becomes seen as functioning as a priest, with the priesthood. And so there's, there's a need  for the sacred. And this really increases the the need to have formal official designation,  which we now call ordination, which is the recognition of leadership within a more organized  community, and in which there's some consciousness of the appropriation of the whole legacy of the Covenant and the temple in Judaism. And ordination becomes the the normal way of  designating, recognized leaders. And what's important there is the word recognized that it  that that leadership arises from the community, it is the it is the people who recognize who  acclaim the person, they want to be their leader. And ordination is the way of designating  that. And I just want to say one other thing about this at this point, and that is that when  ordination does develop as a formal designation, it's local and permanent. It is that someone  is designated out of the community arises out of the community designated for leadership.  And it's permanent it for that place. It is not, not something that gives you an accreditation  that enables you to move around to some other community. It's for this community  specifically, later on, they're going to be developments of that. So so the important thing at  this point is to say is that that leadership within the community arises from the needs of the  community it is not something that is imposed from outside. It's what does our community  need, and who can do it and less, let's recognize the persons who can do it formally, with  ordination.