Apostles on Third and Main

This morning I drove by a storefront that looks like it would have been a music store in the 1970s. When I read the marquee, though, I discovered that this was in fact a church. Instead of the names of singers or bands, the names of the church leadership were emblazoned on the sign. What really caught my eye, though, was the additional title that the pastor had for himself: apostle. (That is, I'm assuming it was the title, and that it wasn't his name, like Priest Holmes or Deacon Jones.) It was a tad surprising to see. When we hear the word apostle, we think of the 12 selected by Jesus to assist in and carry on his ministry, and of men like Mathias and Barnabas and Paul who joined this effort. We don't think of Todd Smith who runs his little place on Third and Main. How do we understand this? What exactly is an apostle anyway?

The word apostle comes from the Greek word meaning "to be sent." Its Latin equivalent would be something like missionary. Now, the thing about the verb "to send" is that there's always an object--that is, there is always someone or something being sent, and there's always someone doing the sending. The identity of the sender is a crucial question. If someone approaches you and says "I have been sent to you," your immediate response will be to ask "By whom?" You are always less interested in the messenger than in the one who sent the message. So, we know right off the bat that if someone calls himself an apostle he must have been sent by someone, and it's essential that we know who that is.

To be an apostle is to be sent by Christ for the purpose of preaching the Good News and building up the Church. Christ is no longer personally present on earth to appoint more apostles, nor has he made extraordinary interventions as he did with St. Paul. So we know that, strictly speaking, there can be no one today who holds that rank, and certainly no one can seize it for themselves. Yet the gospel still needs preaching, and the church still needs building, so who is left to do it? The apostles were aware both of their own limited lifespans and of the Church's perpetual need for this ministry, and thus they provided for us in the form of those offices mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and in the letters of St. Paul, most especially in the letters to Timothy and Titus. Those are the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon. It is to these offices that the apostles entrusted the sacred duties of teaching, governing, and sanctifying. The bishops especially are considered the successors of the apostles, not in the sense that they carry the full weight of apostleship, but in the sense that the office of bishop succeeds that of apostle and provides for the Church those essential things which the apostle provided and which need to be carried on through time.

The mandate to carry on this ministry of servant leadership comes directly from Christ himself. Christ commanded his apostles to preach, to baptize, to forgive sins, and to celebrate the Eucharist, among other things. And all of these duties are essential to the church. So, it is essential that there be an office to carry them out. Thus, bishops, priests, and deacons trace their mandate, their commissioning, their being sent, through a direct line of bishops all the way back to the apostles and to Christ himself. This is what we call apostolic succession.

To be an apostle is to have been sent directly by Christ. No one today can fit that bill. To be in apostolic succession is to be sent by those who were sent by Christ. Those unbroken lines are found in the hierarchies of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The bishops send men on behalf of Christ to carry out this work. If you are not sent by one who has the authority to send, you are not an apostle, nor are you apostolic. Pastors who take this title unto themselves should be very wary. Apostleship cannot be claimed or assumed; it must be given; you must be sent. Much as we might want to style ourselves after the Twelve, we can't summon apostleship by ourselves down to Third and Main.

Salvation History in Three Minutes or Less

For those who have trouble keeping straight in their head whether Moses was before or after Jesus, I offer this brief account of salvation history:

In the beginning (and we mean "beginning" in the broadest sense, the sort of beginning that could span billions of years), God created everything, from angels to galaxies to cockroaches, and as creation's crowning achievement, he made human beings, endowed with intellects so they could know God and wills so they could love God and bodies so they could serve God in the material world. Humanity was to live in union with God. But these very first human beings disobeyed God and did the one thing He asked them not to do: they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, and bit off more than they could chew. Their bond with God was broken by their own actions. So God banished them from paradise, and thus began the long, sad story of human death and misery. But even then God planned, in the fullness of time, to restore humanity to unity with Him.

Part of God's plan was to form humanity by establishing a special relationship with certain human beings, making covenants with them. He made a covenant with Noah that He would never again flood the entire earth and would no longer make war on humanity. He made a covenant with Abraham that He would bring forth from Abraham a holy people, a people set apart as God's own. He made a covenant with Moses to let Israel flourish in the land He would give them if they obeyed his commandments and laws. He made a covenant with David that David's descendants would rule Israel as a shepherd tends his sheep and always enjoy God's favor. And after the time of David, through the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, through the captivity of the people in Babylon, through their return to their land, the prophets, from Amos to Isaiah to Jeremiah to Malachi, continually proclaimed God's promises of His covenant, assuring the people that they would one day be fulfilled.

Let's put the contents of these covenants together: God promises to have peace with humanity; God promises to make a holy people; God promises that the people will flourish if they obey Him; God promises that the Son of David will lead this people. God fulfilled all of these covenants perfectly when He Himself came to fulfill them. God took flesh and became man in the person of Jesus Christ, and through his life, death, and resurrection, brought peace between God and humanity, made a holy people of those who believe in him (his Church), gave them the sacraments to give them spiritual nourishment and new life, and became the Good Shepherd who leads his flock.

After Christ's ascension, the apostles spread the Good News of this new and everlasting covenant between God and all humanity, as Christ had sent them to do, traveling to all corners of the known world and building up the Church. (Tradition has various apostles going everywhere from India to Spain to Ethiopia.) The apostles then appointed those who would succeed them in guiding the Church in holiness and teaching the true faith, and those ones in turn appointed successors, so that, two thousand years later, via a sort of apostolic chain of custody, we still profess with the faith of the apostles, and are taught, governed, and sanctified through the work of the apostolic ministry (bishops, priests, deacons).

God keeps His promises.