[img]http://www.catholica.com.au/sunday/images/Y-not_an_640x166.gif[/img]
August 23 2020
Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
Is 22:19-23
Thus says the LORD to Shebna, master of the palace:
“I will thrust you from your office
and pull you down from your station.
On that day I will summon my servant
Eliakim, son of Hilkiah;
I will clothe him with your robe,
and gird him with your sash,
and give over to him your authority.
He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
and to the house of Judah.
I will place the key of the House of David on Eliakim’s shoulder;
when he opens, no one shall shut
when he shuts, no one shall open.
I will fix him like a peg in a sure spot,
to be a place of honor for his family.”
Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8
R. (8bc) Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
for you have heard the words of my mouth;
in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;
I will worship at your holy temple.
R. Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.
I will give thanks to your name,
because of your kindness and your truth:
When I called, you answered me;
you built up strength within me.
R. Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.
The LORD is exalted, yet the lowly he sees,
and the proud he knows from afar.
Your kindness, O LORD, endures forever;
forsake not the work of your hands.
R. Lord, your love is eternal; do not forsake the work of your hands.
Rom 11:33-36
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord
or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given the Lord anything
that he may be repaid?
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen.
Matthew 16:13-20
Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and
he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter said in reply,
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Then he strictly ordered his disciples
to tell no one that he was the Christ.
Today I invite our Catholic readers to be Protestant for a day, just for the sake of an exercise in reading this gospel passage without paying special attention to Jeshua's unique promise to Peter that he personally would be the rock foundation of the church. If you by-pass that point, would there be anything left? In other words, what do Protestants see in this promise?
First, they see Peter responding to Jesus challenge: "But who do you say that I am?" in the name of all twelve. What thrilled Jeshua so much was the insight and the faith commitment that they had at that moment. And it is this solid faith, developing and growing at last in the minds and hearts of those close companions, that will be the solid foundation, the rock on which the communities will be established.
That Peter had some role as leader and spokesperson of the group is clear to anyone even if they only read the four accounts in a cursory fashion. But that his person or his faith would be singled out in this short statement and intended to carry all the consequences laid upon it through history the Protestant sees as so improbable as to be unacceptable.
Matthew is not describing the structure of the communities but the dynamic force, the energy that is at their core, that will stand strong against the assaults of the evil one down through time. That insight, which is not the result of human philosophising but a gift of the divine, underpins the total commitment of the individual disciple to Jeshua as God's anointed one. That is the energy that can bind two or three together "in his name" and weld a mass of people into one community.
This force is threefold in its make-up: first there is insight, enlightenment, a clarity of mind and heart to see the divine in Jeshua bar Joseph; then there is the hope that stirs as a new taste in the bitter ashes of our disastrous world - a hope that leads to trust that indeed all will be well; finally a burst of colour as it flowers in compassionate love for every other, for every single one of our sisters and brothers - excluding no one.
All twelve disciples were enlightened on that day. Their wondering undoubtedly continued but beneath it, just beyond their reach, there was a knowledge and a conviction of the undeniable truth that God was in this man, this very human 'son of man' (which is the way he insisted on referring to himself), and through him God was at work transforming our ideas about what it is to be human.
"But," he told them, "don't go talking about this out there because they're not ready for it yet."
Neither were the twelve for that matter. Jeshua chose the moment to confront them with the other side of this mind-blowing new enlightenment. He began talking about what lay ahead..., but we'll keep that for next Sunday. Sufficient now to have in mind that not Peter alone but all of them were revolted at the shocking series of events Jeshua sketched for them.
There are two ways of reading this famous gospel passage: the Catholic way and the Protestant way.
As the great inscription around the ... of the Vatican basilica declares: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam, the Roman tradition essentially rests on this declaration of Jesus which is seen as the conferring of leadership authority on Peter as the rock on which everything is established.
In breaking with this tradition the reformers focussed on Peter's personal declaration of his conviction that Jesus was the messiah, the anointed one, the beloved 'son of the real god, the living God'. It is this individual and personal conviction professed in faith that makes the church firm and secure. As long as Peter, and everyone who has followed Jesus ever since, holds that conviction then the community cannot fail.
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dsb/matthew-16.html