Twentyfirst Sunday in Ordinary Time A
August 21, 2011
Responsorial Psalm: 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8
Reading II: Romans 11:33-36
Gospel: Matthew 16:13-20
A
Another long week of reflection leads eventually to some insight. This is another passage in the Matthew gospel which is roughly inserted into Mark's narrative for the purpose of describing or defining Peter's role.
Three images are used: rock, keys and tieing/untieing. It seems that Jesus gave Simon this special name "Peter" just so he could make this pun and declare him 'the rock on which I will build my church'. I wonder have we kept to the metaphor closely enough. Strictly Jesus builds on the rock: the rock is only the foundation. It would be a mistake to think that Peter is the church or even the builder. Foundations are usually not seen at all.
Then the keys. This is the surprise to me today. Everyone says they are equivalent to the keys to the city, and then conclude that he who has the keys controls the city. He is the one who locks the gates. He determines who comes in or goes out. No doubt this is valid enough, but the problem with it is that the business of locking the gates at night and opening them in the morning belongs to a lowly worker, the gate-keeper, the custodian, the guard. Is this what Jesus meant to be Peter's job? I don't think so.
There is a long-standing (ancient?) tradition of honouring someone with the Freedom of the City, and as a symbol they are given the keys to the city. It is a supreme honour because it says the person is free to come and go, and to open the gates for his friends to come and go.
A simple question: When Jesus gave the keys to Peter, did he expect Peter to lock the gates, or to unlock them? Image is everything. The gospels work nearly exclusively in images. Metaphor and symbol are the proper language for spiritual things. The image we have of Peter, rising out of the many deliberate sketches scattered through the gospels, is of a generous, spontaneous, big-hearted man, enthusiastic and blustering at times, weak and frightened at others, who made more mistakes than all the others - because he didn't hold back but dived in head-first. Is this the image of a controller? Would you make this man the gate-keeper, the guard of your city?
Or does the role of welcoming host and father suit him better?
I am very aware that we cannot push such ideas too far. On the other hand, we have lived for a long time under the impression that the power of the keys gives the pope the power to control, to govern, to legislate, to censure and to exclude. I am trying to think of a significant instance of the pope, any pope, joyously opening the gates. Yes, John XXIII of course. Was his way of using the keys more in line with the intention of Jesus? It certainly bore wonderful fruit in an enthusiastic outpouring of energy and flowering of spiritual life in the community.
If the popes are currently prisoners of a controlling and corrupt bureaucracy in the Vatican, as many knowledgeable people say is the case, then the church has a big problem. The individual who joins the liturgical community on Sunday also has a problem in deciding what point of the gospel proclaimed as God's Word of Life they can respond to with a commitment of genuine faith.
While the liturgical celebration is not the place for analysiing texts, the Word proclaimed must still be received with an intelligent and critical understanding, for otherwise it is not heard or received at all. Blindly saying "I believe" to empty formulas is sick. For many the key point will be other than infallibility.
Perhaps those gospel images of Peter as a very fallible man, a feeling man, an ordinary working man will lead us to realise that what is said of Peter goes for all the apostles, and their successors. Jesus is the way, the truth and the light; the rest of us are very fallible.
The refrain of 'Holy City' is playing in my head:
Beside the tideless sea;
The light of God was on its streets,
The gates were open wide,
And all who would might enter,
And no one was denied...