Our Nehemiah Bible Study this past week reminded me of something Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in wonderful meditation called The Preaching Life.  In it she stresses the need for all Christians to rediscover their preaching vocation.

Somewhere along the way we have misplaced the ancient vision of the church as a priestly people—set apart for ministry in baptism, confirmed and strengthened in worship, made manifest in service to the world.  That vision is a foreign one to many church members, who have learned from colloquial usage that “minister” means the ‘ordained person,’ in a congregation, while “lay person” means ‘someone who does not engage in full-time ministry.’  Professionally speaking that is fair enough—but speaking ecclesiastically, it is a disaster. Language like that turns clergy into purveyors of religion, and lay persons into consumers, who shop around for the church that offers them the best product.

Taylor writes of the need to revive Martin Luther’s vision of the priesthood of all believers, who are ordained by God at baptism to share Christ’s ministry in this world.

All we have to do is sit down and study he scriptures to understand that this is just how our God works in this world.  Nowhere in the scriptures do we find God saying, “Go into the world and make Christian lay people out of people.  Bring them into the church so they can sing some hymns, pray and listen to a sermon about being good, moral people.  Form a type of club.  Hire a full-time club president who is going to be there for the club members.  Her job will be to hold their hand and pray for them in the hospital, marry them, and one day bury them.

No, what we do find in scriptures is Jesus instructing us to go into the world and make disciples .  And what do disciples do?  Sit on a pew every Sunday?  Sing, pray, try to be good, religious?  No, they do what Jesus did.  They preach, teach, heal and exorcise demons.

But you say, “I can’t do those things.  I can’t preach.  That’s why we call you “preacher!”  “That’s why we pay you!”

Barbara Brown Taylor continues writing:

While preaching and celebrating the sacraments are two particular functions to which I was ordained, they are also metaphors for the whole church’s understanding of life and faith…Preaching is not something that an ordained minister does for 15 minutes on Sundays, but what the whole congregation does all week long; it is a way of approaching the world, and of gleaning God’s presence there.

Many of you are preaching every week, and you don’t even realize it.