21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/the-divinely-willed-papacy/
Transcript
Thanks to an Assumption parishioner for editing the transcript.
Our great enemy today is secularism. It is the idea that nobody needs religion; that religion is a malevolent force; and that the more people eschew religion, the happier they will be. So, generally today, it is considered uncouth and unhelpful for us to go after the differences between us and other Christian churches. Christians need to band together for the sake of a positive view of religion, to show the difference that Christ makes in our lives.
However, the readings today are exclusively about the papacy, and the papacy is what sets Catholicism apart. So, we do have to talk about the differences between us and other Christians. We do share a lot with other Christians. With all Christians, we share the belief in the divinity of Jesus. We share a belief and trust, hopefully, in the scriptures. With the Orthodox, we share a belief in the sacraments and in the hierarchy of the Church. But only Catholics believe in the power and authority of the papacy. Every time there has been a split in Christianity, it comes because someone has rejected the papacy and its power and its authority.
So, the question we have to ask ourselves this morning is: Is the papacy divinely willed? Does God himself desire the papacy, or is it a human institution that we can reject? Let’s look to our Gospel. Jesus says something really powerful and important in this Gospel. He says, upon this rock I will build my church. The word church is used a lot in the Bible. In the Old Testament, it is usually translated as “assembly,” not church. You will see this phrase in Exodus and in a lot of different books of the Bible—the assembly of the children of Israel. Well, when that was translated into Greek, the word they used was ecclesia. It is the ecclesia of the children of Israel. So, you could equally translate that phrase in the Old Testament as the church of the children of Israel. It is the group of people who have been called out of the world to something holy. And so, we see this word church over and over and over again in the Old Testament, referring to the people that God has called out of the world to make His own. And then we see the word ecclesia a lot in the Acts of the Apostles—the story of the early Christian Church—where God is calling people out of the world to follow His Son.
But we only see this word three times in the Gospels, all of them in the Gospel of Matthew. This is not surprising—Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, and if they heard the word ecclesia, they would understand all of the Old Testament implications of that word. He uses it twice in Matthew 18, where he tells people how to resolve a dispute amongst Christians—the last step being to bring the matter before the Church, in this case, the assembly of believers. The third time this word is used in the Gospels is here in Matthew 16. And Jesus says something really important. He says, My Church. It is clear from this scripture that it was the will of Jesus that He would establish His Church, His assembly, His community. Many of our Protestant brothers and sisters will say that “the church” is a human institution, and that everybody was equal at the beginning of Christianity and in the church. When the group of people got too big, they needed a structure. They say that the church is somehow our invention, a humanly created structure. But Jesus is very clear. He is creating a Church. He says, My Church. He has in His mind the idea. In His earthly ministry, He is creating something specific. In other scriptures, we see that He uses the apostles to lead His Church. So not only is the idea of a church, His assembly, divinely willed, but the idea that that assembly would be under the headship of the apostles—that it would be run by the 12—that is also divinely willed. Some of our Protestant brothers and sisters will say that the apostles were a one-time thing, that Jesus called the apostles only for the first generation of Christians to jump-start the Gospel, to be the spark of preaching—and then when they died, there would not be apostles after that. However, it is clear from the scriptures that a church with a hierarchy is the will of God. Jesus desired that it should be so.
And so, if Matthew 16 is the only place in the Gospels that Jesus says, My church, we should pay very special attention to the context, because He is establishing His church here. What does it look like? Well, He says, And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. His church is founded on something. It’s founded on a rock. What is that rock? We lose this in English, but that rock is Peter. In Greek, it is the same word. Jesus is saying, You are Peter (rock), and on this rock I will build my church. So, the only time Jesus talks about creating His church, it is intimately and irrevocably connected to the idea that Peter will be the rock on which the church is built. You cannot have the church of Jesus without also having Peter. It is clear from the scriptures this is what the Lord was doing.
Notice Jesus also says, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. This is another interesting word. The word key is only used twice in the entire Old Testament. One time it’s a verb form, and it is used as sort of an analogy like unlocking our hearts or unlocking our minds. The only other time it is used in the Old Testament is in our first reading from Isaiah where it is used as a noun, as a substantive, as something that you can touch and hold—an actual key. Which means that Jesus, when He gives the keys to the kingdom of heaven to Peter, the only thing He could possibly have had in mind from the entire work of God with the Jewish people is what’s going on in the book of Isaiah. What’s going on? The house of David had established a steward. (If you’ve read Tolkien, there is this idea of a steward which runs throughout. Tolkien did not come up with that idea; he got it straight here from scripture.) The steward controlled access to the king. So, the symbol of his office was the key to the house of David. We think of that as an analogy, but it is not. He is the guy who physically had the key to the physical house of David. If you wanted access to the king, if you wanted to know the mind of the king, the laws of the king, the opinion of the king, if you wanted the governance of the king, you had to go through the steward. When the steward unlocked the door, nobody could lock it, and when the steward locked the door, nobody could unlock it. That was his role. So, when Jesus is giving Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, He is referencing this passage from Isaiah when Eliakim is given the keys to the house of David.
Jesus takes that, and He elevates it to a heavenly idea. You, Peter, have the keys, just like the steward of the house of David. You have the keys—but not to the house of David—you have the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Peter is not the head of the Church. Jesus is the head of the Church. He is the King. Jesus is Moses. Jesus is David. But Peter is the steward. So, if somebody wants access to Jesus the King of the kingdom of heaven—to know the mind of the King, or the laws of the King, or the opinion of the King, or the governance of the King—they go to the one with the key, who is Peter. Saint Peter gives us access to the King of the kingdom of heaven.
Peter has been given the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus expands that to, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, far more than just a door being opened; he is binding and loosing our faith. The Church is divinely willed, and Jesus says, You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.
But what is Saint Peter really supposed to do? What does this office carry out? Go to the beginning of the Gospel. What is the context? Jesus asks, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And there’s a debate about it. Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Okay, the apostles are providing a lot of different answers. They are saying, yeah, we don’t know. There is debate. And then Jesus says, But who do you say that I am? And Peter speaks up, You are the Christ, the son of the living God. And then Jesus confirms that by saying, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. Peter did not create this out of his humanity. Instead, when there is a debate among the apostles, Peter steps in and resolves the debate. And the resolution of the debate does not come from flesh and blood. The resolution of the debate comes from the Heavenly Father. This is the establishment of the papacy, and this exchange gives us information about what the papacy is supposed to do. The foundational role of the papacy is to maintain unity in the church through the clarity of faith whenever there is a debate among the bishops.
Why would Jesus will this from the beginning? Returning to the Isaiah reading, it is important to note that the office of steward is taken from Shebna and given to Eliakim because it shows that it is an office. So, when our Protestant brothers and sisters say that that the apostles died and there were no more apostles, it is clear from the context of Isaiah that that’s not true. There is an office of the steward, and that office is handed on to successive people and successive generations. It was taken from Shebna and given to Eliakim. In the same way, when Peter died, the papacy was given to Linus and Cletus and Clement and Sixtus and Cornelius. Yes, those are the first popes. We pray for their intercession every Sunday. The papacy is an office that is stewarded by the current inhabitant of the office—after Peter, it was given to other men.
Jesus knew that between the apostles, and between their successors, the bishops, there would always be debates. What does this scripture mean? We have a deeper understanding of this teaching; is this an accurate understanding? The bishops hand on the faith, and they are going to fight. That happens. We should not be scandalized. Jesus knew it was going to happen. Peter steps in and brings clarity from the mind of the Heavenly Father. That is his role. That is what he does. Again, like I mentioned at the beginning, every other group of Christians has splintered because they don’t have an authority that they can go to. There is nobody who can resolve their debates. Well, as Catholics, we go to the Pope—because we believe Jesus gave us the Pope as a gift so that we would have unity in the Church., so that when there is a debate, the Pope can say, this is the mind of the Heavenly Father. It is resolved. It’s done. Now we have unity. Every time there has been a split in Christianity, it is because the Pope resolved a debate and then somebody rejected it. The Patriarch of Constantinople—as close as we are to the Orthodox, as much as we love them–rejected the authority of the papacy to resolve these kinds of debates. And then, of course, all of the reformers—Martin Luther, everybody else—all of the Christian splinters. It is because they do not accept Matthew 16. They do not accept the fact that the Pope is a gift to the Church for the unity of the Church.
A final point, but it is still probably going to take me like five minutes to make this point, so strap in. As Catholics, we should be very good at making a distinction between the office and the man. If you have lived in the Church for any length of time, you have dealt with multiple priests. You don’t always like your priests; some of them you get along with, some of them you don’t. But, we still respect the office of the priesthood, even if we disagree with some of the human decisions that are made in it.
This is also true with the Pope. If the Pope is a sinner—and we have had plenty of sinful popes—it does not undercut what Jesus is doing here because Jesus gives the papacy to the Church to provide unity to the bishops on matters of faith. So, if the Pope is out philandering, as the Medici popes did, does that threaten his ability to bring unity to the bishops? Well, sort of—people are going to listen less to a sinner. But no, it doesn’t undercut his ability to bring unity to the bishops. If the Pope is making imprudent decisions, if he is appointing his nephew to be the Cardinal of Milan—which is, by the way, where we got Saint Charles Borromeo—does that mean you have sacrificed the office of Peter? No, it doesn’t, because the office maintains. Insofar as the Pope acts in his capacity to bring unity to the Church by resolving theological debates, he is protected by the Holy Spirit. He is not protected by the Holy Spirit—and this is an annoyance that many young priests share right now—when he gives an interview on a plane. We are all sick of explaining what the Pope says on a plane. It is not defended by the Holy Spirit; he is just speaking as a theologian. And that’s okay. He is protected by the Holy Spirit when he is exercising his role to resolve debates among the bishops. You don’t have to like the Pope; you didn’t have to like John Paul II; you didn’t have to like Benedict; and you don’t have to like Francis. You can believe that these men who are human are making decisions that are good or bad. But when he becomes the representative of Peter—when he does the thing that Matthew 16 is telling him to do—when he says, we cannot have division in the Church, we have to know the mind of God, and I am going to resolve this theological debate, we have to listen. We are all, as Catholics, bound to that. I think one of the most controversial examples of this is when John Paul II, during his papacy, resolved definitively the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood. He said, it is not possible. In the document, he was very clear: I am acting as the successor to Saint Peter; I am speaking on behalf of the permanent magisterium of the popes. He put in all the language. To be clear, he was doing what Matthew 16 told him to do. He was bringing unity to the bishops. He resolved the debate. What he binds on earth is bound in heaven, and what he looses on earth is loosed in heaven. It is resolved; it is no longer a debatable thing. We could go through the list of things that the popes have resolved. There are certain things that we are bound by as Catholics, because the Pope has spoken and because we respect the office. Even if you think that one Pope or another made bad decisions in his human capacity—if you think that it was wrong for the popes to have the Papal States, for example, for a millennium, right? Or if you really wish the pope wouldn’t speculate because now I’ve got to go explain it away. Right, fine, whatever—but respect the office. The Pope has an essential role in the Church, and we should not go around badmouthing him. He has to do what the Lord has asked him to do, and if we, as Catholics, show disrespect for the papacy amongst ourselves, let alone with those outside the church, then when the Pope steps in to resolve a theological dispute, what respect will we have left for his office? It is okay to disagree with a man, but it is not okay to speak glibly about the office.
Finally, let’s say you don’t think I have done good exegesis. Let’s say you think the scriptural argument is bunk. I’ll leave you with one last point. The American presidency has had a volleyball since Reagan; I’m pretty sure it is called the Mexico City policy. This is the idea: it is an executive order concerning whether we are going to fund abortions overseas. Every Republican president since Reagan has said we’re not going to fund abortions overseas. Every Democratic president since Clinton has said that we will. And every time a president takes office—I think consistently on the first day that they are in office, though Biden might have waited until the second day—after a president of the previous party was in office, they always reverse their predecessor. This has happened every single time without fail, over the course of, what, 40 years since Reagan. Now, the papacy has existed for 2,000 years, and we have no examples of something like this. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely zero. Huge goose egg. Nothing. The papacy has never fallen into reversing itself on faith, in 2,000 years. How have we not messed this up? I mean, we complain about decisions that our bishops make all the time. How has the papacy existed for 2,000 years, and they haven’t violated this principle? If the pope is revealing the mind of God, and God can’t change, then the papacy can’t change its teachings. You’d think somebody in 2,000 years would have been selfish enough or myopic enough to be like: oh, I hate that guy; I really didn’t like the guy who was ahead of me: I’m just going to undo everything he did. It has never happened because the papacy is divinely willed. It is a gift of God to the Church, and He is going to preserve the papacy Himself.
Fr. Moore 