Building Up The Church
by Fr. David M. Knight
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Twenty-Second Week of the Year
Lectionary 434
1 Cor 3:18-23/Lk 5:1-11
1Corinthians 3:18-23 tells us not to “boast about human beings,” or our allegiance to “Paul or Apollos or Cephas [Peter].” Paul says, “What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul?” Or the pope? They are just “ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one.” You are not to serve them; they are to serve you. They, like “the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”
We serve only Christ, and we use all the ministers he gives us to serve him better. Those to whom he gives authority over us are to use it for the common good, as our servants. Jesus said: “Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” We make use of authorities’ service by obeying them. But we do not “serve” them except as we serve all—and in all, Christ. (See Mark 10:43-45. Also note the pope’s title is “servant of the servants of God.” That keeps things in perspective.
Our goal should never be to “build up” any particular minister, whether pope, preacher or prophet. We all work to build up the Church:
Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is of any special account, but only God, who causes the growth.... [All] work to the same end. All will receive wages in proportion to their toil. We are God's co-workers; you are God's field, God's building.
Our focus is always on “building up the body of Christ, until we all... form that perfect man who is Christ come to full stature.” We focus on the building, not on the builders. And yes, we “put the cart before the horse”—we focus on the cart being led, not on what it is following. (See Ephesians 4:12-13 in the 1970 New Testament of The New American Bible. The point of focus here in the Greek text is the andra teleion, the “perfect man,” Christ himself, head and members. Other translations have subtly shifted the focus to us. See also 1Corinthians, chapter 14.)
In Luke 5:1-11 Jesus gives us the secret of “fishing for people.” He says, “Put out into deep water.” We can’t win anyone to the Gospel if we “dumb down” the Good News to simplistic doctrines and superficial observances. Paul went to the heart of it: what he preached was “the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Everything Paul said and wrote centered on the “mystery of Christ.” And that mystery is precisely the mystery of Christ in us. Until we can say comfortably with St. Augustine that we have “become Christ,” we have not heard the Good News. (See Colossians 1:27, 2:2, 4:3 and Ephesians 1:9; 3:4; 5:32. For “become Christ” see Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 795.).
Initiative: Focus on Christ and on everyone else as serving “in Christ.”
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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