Tag Archives: priesthood

Violence, Altars, and Modest Priests?

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Aaron, brother of Moses, offers sacrifice as High Priest.
This stained glass window can be found in
Cathedral of Our Lady and St Philip Howard, Arundel


And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offering, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it. (Exodus 20:22-26)

Moses has just received the Ten Commandments and then God repeats what seems to be what he considers to be the most important commandment: “Do not worship any idols.” This is the summary of the Ten because authentic worship of the living God—not the futile worship of an idol, which stands for what does not exist or is untrue—covers and includes all the other commandments, just as Jesus summarizes the Law: “Love God …. Love your neighbor.”

Idol worship is not devil worship; an idol is not a devil, according to St. Paul. An idol is “no thing,” something that doesn’t exist. But we can insert ourselves into that empty space. Nature abhors a vacuum and we are made to worship. We will worship ourselves if we are not worshipping the true God.

Then God tells Moses, “Don’t use tools of violence to make an altar.” An altar is a place of peacemaking: making peace between God and humanity, God and specific persons, God and the whole created order. The place of such peacemaking should not be fashioned with iron tools (weapons). The sacrifice itself is violent enough.

Sacrifices were bloody affairs. Priests would cut the throat of the offered animal and blood would gush everywhere. He would catch the blood in a bowl. He would sprinkle the blood on the altar and the people. He would butcher the animal, cutting out the organs and cut the body into pieces; these organs and body parts—cuts of meat—would be roasted on the altar.

This was all very bloody, messy business. Priests wore very little as they did this, unlike the stained glass window of Aaron above. The vestments most priests wore during the actual sacrifice were loin clothes. (High priests would wear special vestments in certain occasions but these were constantly in need of being replaced because it was so hard to get the bloodstains out of the vestments.)

Because the vestments were so skimpy, it would be easy to see underneath the priestly loin cloth if the priest went up a few steps to the altar. So the altar was not meant to be more than a single step higher than the people on whose behalf the priest was making the sacrifice so that no one could see his nakedness.

Just like people are always wondering what a man is wearing under a kilt, people would peak to see what the priest had on under his loincloth vestment.

Jethro and Moses … and Christ

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Bodelian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 2708, Folio 39V
A good man? Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, is a devoted family man, well respected for his advice on governing and his benevolent leadership of the tribes of Midian. This early 13th-century illustration from the Bible moralisée depicts Jethro (seated under the arch on the right) rewarding Moses (left) for rescuing his daughters (six of whom are pictured in the center) and their flocks from rival shepherds.



Jethro, to most people, was the not-so-bright son of Jed and Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” How many realize that Jethro was the name of Moses’ father-in-law? Jethro was “priest and prince of Midian,” the area where Moses encountered the Burning Bush.

Jethro comes to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, before the giving of the Ten Commandments, because he is bringing his daughter–Moses’ wife–back to him. Although the text does not tell us this earlier, she evidently took their children and went to her father for safekeeping during Moses’ confrontation with Pharoah; when Moses tells Jethro everything the Lord did for the people, including the plagues, this is all news to Jethro. If his daughter had seen any of this, she would have told him; evidently, she left Moses in Egypt before the plagues began. In thanksgiving for the deliverance of the people, Jethro offers a large sacrifice and invites all the clan leaders to the feast that follows.

The text tells us that Jethro is priest-and-prince. We already knew that he was wealthy because of the description of his large flocks when Moses first meets him. Whether Jethro was a wealthy herdsman who was therefore acknowledged as “prince” or was the prince and therefore was wealthy, we don’t know. But the linkage of royalty and priesthood only occurs one other time in the Old Testament: the priest-king Melchizedek who blesses Abraham and is seen as a “type” of Christ by the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Medieval rabbis were eager to avoid the embarrassment of Moses having a pagan priest-prince as a father-in-law and so they began to suggest that Jethro was circumcised after he heard the recitation of God’s mighty acts of deliverance–after he heard what became the Passover haggadah, in effect. This made Jethro, like Melchizedek, a legitimate priest before Aaron and his sons were made a legitimate priesthood. This makes Jethro, like Melchizedek, a foreshadowing of Christ–the Son of David who is both priest and king on the Cross. Jethro, however, was not the focus of the typology in the Epistle to the Hebrews because he did not evidently live forever, like Melchizedek did; Jethro was an imperfect type of Christ, the ultimate king-priest who is eternal.

Nevertheless, this makes for fascinating speculation about Moses–raised as a prince of Egypt– and his immediate family as Middle Eastern royalty and their connection to priesthood in both Moses’ father-in-law (Jethro) and his brother (Aaron).

From Faith to Fantasy: How the Priesthood Shaped My Fiction

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Holy Saturday (1991) at St. Mary Magdalen parish in Lampman Chapel at Union Theological Seminary. (photo courtesy of Alexandra Chistyakova LaCombe)

Holy Saturday (1991) at St. Mary Magdalen parish in Lampman Chapel at Union Theological Seminary. (photo courtesy of Alexandra Chistyakova LaCombe)

I served as parish priest for a small Eastern Orthodox congregation on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and at Columbia University for many years. I celebrated services, preached sermons, performed marriages and funerals. I counseled the confused and the despairing, taught those with questions, rejoiced with the joyful. I read. I shared what I had discovered on my own journey. Most importantly, I listened. Most people already knew the answers to their own questions; they just needed someone to help them listen to themselves.

Hopefully, that listening and sharing is reflected in my writing. I listen to the characters and help them to discover who they are and what journeys they are on. I share aspects of myself with each of them and they share themselves with me; if I am quiet and listen, I can share not only their joys and frustrations and despair myself but communicate their experience to my readers.

One aspect of Eastern Orthodoxy that is distinct from other styles of Christianity is the ongoing, living voice of Tradition. This is not simply a blind or rigid adherence to the past. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Democracy says everyone’s voice counts, even if they are stable hands or cowherds. Tradition says that everyone’s voice counts, even if they are dead. We shall not be governed by the oligarchy of those who simply happen to be alive. Some vote with stones, as in ancient Greece. Others vote with tombstones.” In order to do Orthodox theology in a modern context, we must be in dialogue with the great preachers and thinkers of the 4th-5th-6th centuries as much as we are in dialogue with modern thinkers; when wrestling with issues today, it is probably even more important to be in dialogue with the preachers and thinkers of the formative periods of Orthodox thought and practice than with those who simply happen to be our contemporaries.

My novels are shaped by the folklore, legends, and history of the places where they are set: the Baltic States (Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania), Poland, Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic), Ireland. My characters interact with those authentic pre-modern beliefs and practices, retelling and reshaping them for modern audiences. I introduce characters to each other that might not have met in their original settings but that have stories and experiences to share with each other. By sharing their experiences, they enrich each other and the readers who can eavesdrop on their conversations or thoughts.

Priesthood is primarily a way of being, of bridge-building. In writing, I try to be my truest self and attempt to build bridges between cultures and histories, practices and experiences, characters and readers.

(This essay first appeared as my guest post on Eve Heart’s blog in September 2016.)

Another photo of Holy Saturday 1991. (photo courtesy of Alexandra Chistyakova LaCombe)

Another photo of Holy Saturday 1991. (photo courtesy of Alexandra Chistyakova LaCombe)