The priest this Sunday said these passages are a good example of what the Church should be and not the “authoritarian” Church it is today. He said that Christ sowed the seeds of the Church but did not envision what we have today. I am not getting this from these passages. I need a little help???
Authority and service are not mutually exclusive. For instance, view Jesus. Being God he had supreme authority over everything and everyone. But, as the suffering servant he subjected himself, lowered himself to become man-- washing the feet of his disciples even.
Jesus likewise gives his authority to his apostles. View Matthew 28:18-20,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and baptize all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
And again, observe the words of our Lord, “as the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21).
And how has the Father sent the son? For the ministry of reconciliation on earth. Right away Jesus gives the apostles a very concrete and real power or authority:
"And when he had said this, he breathes on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (Jn 20: 22-23).
In fact, to Peter singularly (Matt 16: 19), and the Apostles collectively, he gives a charism to ‘bind and loose.’
Witness Matthew 18: 15-18
15: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
16: But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
17: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
18: Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
What can we gather from this? The authority of the church, namely. While it is preferable to first resolve issues on a personal level, it is the Christian’s prerogative to ‘tell it to the church.’ What is the consequence if he will not listen
even to the church? He will be to you
as a Gentile and a tax collector. That is, he will be cut off from you-- excommunicated. Hence why verse 18 comes directly after this, ‘whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven…’ affirming the authority of the church to make such juridicial actions as excommunication. I believe this coincides with such a very action that Paul commands in the fifth chapter of first Corinthians.
2: And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
3: For though absent in body I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment
4: in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
5: you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
This is essentially what excommunication is: it is the exclusion of someone from communion with the Church due to their sin, but with the express purpose of spurring repentance from sin for the good of their own soul.
Authority, as I said, is given to St. Peter to bind and loose, but also, as Jesus says, “the keys to the kingdom of heaven” to Peter alone (Matt 16: 19). The keys are yet another symbol of authority,
cf. Rev 3:7, Is 22:22
7: "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: `The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens. (Rev 3:7)
22: And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.(Is 22:22)
Basically, the Church has authority, and a lot of it.
What Jesus is referring to is not
whether the Church has authority, but how it should be exercised-- and we have no disagreement there-- humbly and piously.
-Rob
