NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 21 in Ordinary Time, Year A ⧸ Feast of St Apostles Peter and Paul

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to the homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. As in over the last couple of Sundays, geography is going to be important to our understanding of this Gospel — today's Gospel. If you remember, Jesus, more than Joshua, had entered into the land where there was a mixture of people from the nations as well as people from Israel. He'd had rows with the Pharisees and Sadducees over their way of trying to install the worship of Yahweh in this land; he had strong disagreements with them. He'd performed, first of all, this miracle, this healing for the Canaanite woman, who'd come from the borderlands but who'd recognized that he was the Son of David. He then did a whole lot more healing, and then the feeding of the 4,000 — the second of these two mass feedings, this time with 4,000 people — probably referring to the four cardinal points, or the four winds, meaning the worldwide. And seven baskets collected at the end, referring probably to the seven Noachide laws, the laws given to Noah by which all peoples — not only the Jewish people — should live. The seven nations representing all the other nations of the world. So here he's fulfilling Joshua, showing how what he's doing is going to open up beyond the people of Israel to the whole world. There is then another row with the Pharisees and Sadducees — in Matthew's Gospel it's the Pharisees and Herodians, in Mark's Gospel — they've come from Jerusalem, and they want a sign from him. Again, they're not stupid; they can tell that he's reenacting Joshua. They want some sign from him concerning his relationship with these pagan people in whose midst he's performing these signs. They want a sign to show that this is from God, and he tells them no: they're a faithless generation, and the only sign they'll be given is that of Jonah. And what's particularly significant about Jonah, of course, is that Jonah was sent to preach to the pagans but ran away from doing so, wanted to get as far away from it as possible, and eventually was forced by a large fish to come to Nineveh, where he was supposed to preach to the pagans. And immediately, before he even opened his mouth, they were all converted. And he then goes into a grand sulk, because he wanted to be harsh with them; he wanted to reprimand them in the name of God, and behold, God treated them as with no guile at all, and they all repented — and even the cattle put on sackcloth and ashes, one of my favorite lines in the Bible — in signs of penitence, while Jonah the prophet has a hissy fit. That's the sign he's giving: the sign of "I'm actually going to be going to open up this land to the Gentiles, going to open up the kingdom of God to the Gentiles — are you going to stick with Jonah having a hissy fit when seeing all that is opening up? So that's the sign that they've had to take home and think about. And it's then that Jesus, coming completely into pagan land, comes to Caesarea Philippi. This is where geography is important. Caesarea Philippi is by the side of Mount Hermon. It was a pagan capital — very much a pagan capital — only some twenty kilometers or so from Galilee. But it was a place with a sacred mountain in which there were lots of carved niches with statues of pagan gods, and at the bottom of it there was a strange water system, a kind of well which ran under the mountain, which was referred to by the locals as one of the entrances to Hades, one of the gates of hell. There were two or three places in the eastern Mediterranean which were referred to as gates of Hades: one was in Greece, and this one in Caesarea Philippi. In other words, this is the center of the pagan cult of death. So, looking at it from a Jewish or a Christian perspective: ultimate pagan cult, all sorts of worship of gods, the going down to the world of the dead — all set up in this rock, with the gates of Hades underneath. And strangely, it's now in the midst of that context — not in Jerusalem, not even in the half-land where he'd been with the Canaanite one, but straightforwardly in the face of, if you like, a basilica, a pantheon of paganism, literally based on one of the entrances to the underworld — that he asks them: "Who is the Son of Man?" And it's very interesting, because he's keen to see how much they have understood of what's been going on up till now. And initially they give him answers that are within the ballpark of the continuation of things that they might expect: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. This Son of Man figure was a figure who had been seen in the Most High by Daniel, who had been glimpsed by Ezekiel, who had been referred to — although more opaquely — by Isaiah. So there was this figure coming in who was known. And yet exactly who this Son of Man is, and what his relationship to the Davidic promises were, wasn't clear. So Jesus, having heard these answers — not bad answers, but answers with a certain continuity of expectation with promises from Israel — he says: "But who do you say that I am?" It's enough what the others say; that's — I'm not really only interested in rumour, which is what you have to say. And here Peter speaks up and says, "You are the Messiah." And I add, when I read the Gospel, "You are the promised anointed one," because our word Messiah comes from the word for anointing, which was — let's remember — a Davidic figure; it was a Davidic priest-prophet. The anointing. But he adds, "the Son of the living God." That's what's new here: the recognition that this is the Son of the living God — in other words, at the very least an emanation of the Most High. I'm not attributing complete incarnational theology to them yet; an emanation of the Most High. This is the Son of the living God. Now this was an astounding observation, and an observation made in the face of the whole panoply of pagan gods, many of whom were referred to as sons of gods. But here: "You are the Son of the living God." Peter, in the midst of a pagan place, has been given the grace to recognize that he is in the presence of someone who is not only vastly more than all the more-thans we've had before — Solomon, Joshua, Moses — but actually is not a dead God at all, but is the living. He's actually in the presence of the living. This is an astounding observation. And Jesus is, I'm glad to say, likewise seems to be astounded. "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. You didn't work this out yourself. This is not the continuation of a course of studies that has led you to this conclusion. You have seen something special that cannot be taken away from you." Once you've seen that, everything else is going to be relativized. "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven." And I tell you — now imagine him saying this in the presence of this pantheon, with all the gods on it, a rock carved with all these gods in it — "I tell you that you are Peter, you are the stone, and on this rock" — in other words, either pointing to himself or pointing to Peter; it's not entirely clear which — "I will build my Church." In other words, it's with you that the living Church, the Church of the living God, not one of these ghastly pantheons dedicated to fake gods linked to death — it's on you that this is going to be built. "On this rock I will build my gathering together, my Church, my calling out to be the people of God. And the gates of Hades will not withstand you." will not withstand this. The notion is that here he's referring to the underground river, the strange well at the bottom of the Pantheon. Actually, what we're doing here is going to undo the whole of the pagan sacred. It's so much bigger than simply being a fulfillment within expectations of religious figures from Israel. There's something more universal, more huge going on. And you, Peter, are going to be the rock. He says, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, or whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." And here he is referring to the text from Isaiah in which the keys are taken from a bad master of the palace — Shebna the master of the palace — and this may be a way of him referring to the scribes and Pharisees, with whom we've been arguing, all of whom were very keen on working out what to bind and what to loose. "I will thrust you from your office, you will be pulled down from your post. On that day I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah, will clothe him with your robe," blah blah blah, "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open and no one shall shut; he shall shut and no one shall open. I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his ancestral house." You say "fastened like a peg in a secure place" — I'm not sure whether that's Peter the stone being chucked into the rock, which is why, as I say, I'm not quite sure whether the rock is Jesus and Peter is a stone. There is ambiguity in the different Aramaic words behind those. It doesn't matter. The overall picture is clear: instead of that whole pantheon of fake divinities, the living God is going to make someone as obviously unreliable, obviously impetuous, and obviously not particularly stalwart or firm as Peter — that is going to be how he is going to make the true rockitude, if you like, of his revelation available to us. So here we celebrate with joy how Jesus allows his disciples to understand that yes, he is the Son of the Living God, and therefore it's not only Israel but the whole of the sacred pagan structures of the world that he's going to undo from within, and that it's going to be done on the shoulders of rather incompetent people like ourselves, who are going to get it wrong and need to be forgiven. We're only going to understand it when they've got it wrong. Peter only ever uses that power once, in what we can tell in the book of Acts, when he unbinds the Gentiles. And then Jesus tells them to keep quiet about the Messiahship. He doesn't want the word to get out that he is the Davidic heir, because he needs to enact that And he will enact that going up to his death in Jerusalem, bringing alive all the references to that. He doesn't want any false pictures of that to get abroad before he's ready. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.