Patrick Comerford
Sunday next, 23 August 2020, is the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XI).
The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are in two pairs, the continuous readings and the paired readings.
Continuous Readings: Exodus 1: 8 to 2: 10; Psalm 124; Romans 12: 1-8; Matthew 16: 13-20.
There is a link to the Continuous Readings HERE
Paired readings: Isaiah 51: 1–6; Psalm 138; Romans 12: 1-8; Matthew 16: 13-20.
There is a link to the Paired Readings HERE
Introducing the Readings:
What’s in a name?
So often, a new name marks a new beginning in life or in ministry.
Think of how Saul becomes Paul, Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel. In the creation stories, Adam names all the created living things (Genesis 2: 20). Samuel’s ministry begins when God calls him by name. In some church traditions, people often took a new or additional name at Confirmation or on joining a monastic community.
In the first reading, the name given to Moses is a hint that we are about to read a dramatic story of people being drawn out of misery and oppression into liberation and participation in God’s promises. In the reading on the following Sunday, Moses asks God his name, and is told, ‘I am who I am’ (verse 14), ‘I am’ (Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν).
In the Gospel reading, Simon becomes Peter, and a symbol of the rock or foundation of faith on which the Church is built.
As Saint Paul reminds his readers in the New Testament reading, we are being called to be ‘holy acceptable to God.’
Whenever I hear the Leonard Cohen song ‘Love calls you by your name,’ I am reminded of how the Prophet Isaiah quotes God addressing the people as both Jacob and Israel and then says: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine?’ (Isaiah 43: 1)
Is God calling you by name?
Exodus 1: 8 to 2: 10:
We have spent some weeks reading through the stories in Genesis of the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel), and, in recent weeks, the story of Joseph and how the people went down to Egypt.
We now turn to Exodus, in the time after Joseph has died (Exodus 1: 6). The people of Israel have multiplied, as God promised Abraham. Pharaoh stirs hope hatred against the descendants of these immigrants, and forces them slave labour, using them to build ‘supply cities’ (store houses) and as forced labour.
Despite all this, the people of Israel ‘multiplied and spread’ (1: 12). The Pharaoh then orders the Hebrew midwives to kill male new-borns. But the midwives are in awe of God, or feared God (1: 17) and explain their inability to obey these strictures, claiming the Hebrew women are so ‘vigorous’ (verse 19) that they give birth before the midwives arrive.
The people continue to grow in numbers, and Pharaoh next orders ‘all his people’ (1: 22) to throw all Hebrew boys into the Nile.
The story of Moses then begins in Exodus 2: 1, where he is born to parents who are both of the tribe of Levi. His mother sees he is ‘a fine baby,’ and hides him for three months. But when she can no longer hide him, she makes a basket, places him in the reeds in the river.
The Hebrew word translated ‘basket’ (2: 3) literally means ‘little ark.’ This looks back to the story of Noah and the salvation of all life through the ark; but it is telling us that in saving Noah, God saves the Children of Israel, foretelling of God’s presence with the Ark. The basket, made like a miniature Nile boat, is placed ‘among the reeds,’ foreshadowing the crossing of the Sea of Reeds or Red Sea.
The baby is found in the basket in the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter while she is bathing in the river. She sees the baby is a Hebrew boy, but still she saves his life. Moses’ mother becomes the child’s nurse, and as he grows up Pharaoh’s daughter adopts him as her own son and names him Moses, ‘because I drew him up out of the water.’
How does Pharaoh’s daughter know that Moses is ‘one of the Hebrew children’ (verse 6)? We are not told that Moses was circumcised, but we are told that his mother ‘saw that he was a fine baby’ (verse 2). What did she see? One traditional rabbinical interpretation says that she saw that he was circumcised and knew that there was greatness in store for him. It was said that being born circumcised was an sign of other-worldly perfection that characterised someone who would speak face to face with God.
The Midrash lists Moses among seven special people who were born circumcised: Adam, Seth, Noah, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Job (Midrash Tanchuma Noach 5). Another Midrashic source provides a longer list: Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Balaam, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Zerubabel and Job.
We do not learn the name of his father Amram and his mother Jochebed until later (see Exodus 6: 20). Pharaoh’s daughter gives him the name Moshe to the infant thor Moses because she ‘drew from the water.’ The Hebrew word for ‘drew him (mishitihu) sounds like the word ‘Moshe.’ How did Pharaoh’s daughter give the child a Hebrew name? Did she speak Hebrew?
Rabbinical tradition gives Moses no less than ten names: Yered, Avigdor, Chever, Avi Socho, Yekutiel, Avi Zanoach, Toviah, Shemayah ben Nethanel, Ben Evyatar and Levi. But throughout the Bible he is referred to only as Moshe or Moses.
In Egyptian, Mose also means ‘son of,’ and it was often part of a name, as in Tut-mose, ‘son of Tut.’ So, Moses is to be brought up as an Egyptian prince.
Psalm 124:
Psalm 124 is a psalm of thanksgiving, using – as so often in the Psalms – a rapid succession of different images.
The people have been in danger of being swallowed up or swept away, as in a flood, a prey to the enemy’s teeth, captured in a hunter’s trap.
The images do not coalesce into one single metaphor. Rather, they combine to express a mood – in this case, the sense of sudden release from danger.
Romans 12: 1-8:
In this reading, the Apostle Paul reminds us that before God, in our worship and obedient discipleship, we are like a living sacrifice that is ‘holy and acceptable’ to God and perfect.
Saint Paul insists that we must now think of ourselves as better than anyone else, or think of others as the world thinks of them. All of us are members of the body of Christ, and each of us has particular gifts. Together we are ‘one body in Christ’ and each is dependent on every other.
For the benefit of the community, God gives us different gifts. They include ‘prophecy’ or inspired preaching, ‘ministry’ or serving the material needs of others, teaching, encouraging others in the faith, giving and generosity, diligent leadership, being compassionate, and being cheerful.
Do we recognise the gifts of others? Do we affirm them and encourage them to use those gifts within the church and within the community?
Do we recognise our own gifts, and accept and use them in humility and with gratitude and cheerfulness?
Matthew 16: 13-20:
This Gospel reading includes Christ’s words to the Apostle Peter: ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church …’ (Matthew 16: 18, NRSVA). The debates about the interpretation of this one phrase and the following words have not only divided Christians in the past but have stopped us from discussing the full implications of a very rich passage, full of many meanings.
This Gospel reading is set in the district of Caesarea Philippi, then a new Hellenistic city west of Mount Hermon, on the slopes of what are known today as the Golan Heights. The city was built on the site of Paneas, which was known for its shrine to the god Pan.
Herod the Great built a temple of white marble there in honour of Caesar in 20 BCE. Herod’s son Philip inherited the site 18 years later and named it Caesarea Philippi, honour Caesar as a living god and himself.
The cave at Caesarea Philippi was seen as a gate to the underworld, where fertility gods lived during the winter. The rock was filled with niches for these idols, and the water of the cave were seen as a symbol of the underworld through which the gods travelled from the world of death to the world of life.
Christ is alone with the disciples at Caesarea Philippi when he asks them who do people say that he is. Herod thinks that he is ‘John the Baptist’ (verse 14), although John had already been beheaded. Elijah was expected to return at the end of time. Jeremiah foretold rejection and suffering.
But Christ who does Herod say he is, or who do other people say he is, are less important questions than who do the disciples say he is. Is he a prophet, a spokesman for God, a harbinger of suffering and rejection? Or, is he something more than all these?
Simon Peter offers an insight and answer of his own: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’ (verse 16).
Christ acknowledges this vital insight. Peter is blessed (μακάριος makários), as people in the Beatitudes are singled out as being blessed (see Matthew 5: 3-11). This is an insight that comes not from human knowledge but through revelation from God the Father (verse 17).
Then, in word play, Christ tells Simon Peter he is Petros, his nickname Peter, and on this petra, rock, are the foundations of the Church (ἐκκλησία, ekklesía), the assembly in which all are equal.
In the past, Protestant theologians have put forward strained arguments about the meaning of the rock and the rock of faith in this Gospel passage. Some have tried to argue that the word used for Peter, Πητρος (petros), is the Greek for a small pebble, but that faith is described with a different Greek word, πητρα (petra), meaning a giant rock.
They were silly arguments. The distinction between these words existed in Attic Greek in the classical days, but not in the Greek spoken at the time of Christ or at the time Saint Matthew was writing his Gospel. Πητρος (Petros) was the male name derived from a rock, while πητρα (petra) was a rock, a massive rock like Petra in Jordan.
Other words related to these concepts include the word λιθος (lithos), used for a small rock, a stone, or even a pebble – it is the Greek word that gives us words like lithograph and megalithic, meaning Great Stone Age – and πάγος (pagos), which in Ancient Greek, means ‘big piece of rock.’
In classical Athens, the ekklesía (ἐκκλησία) was the assembly of the citizens in the democratic city-state in classical Athens. The Athens met as equals twice a year at the Theatre of Dionysus, on the southern slopes of the Acropolis. The Septuagint uses this word ekklesía for the Hebrew qahal or congregation (see Deuteronomy 4: 10, 9: 10, 18: 16, 31: 30; II Samuel 7; I Chronicles 17). Matthew is the only one of the four gospels to use this term.
Hades (ᾍδης or Ἅιδης) was the Greek god of the dead and his name had become synonymous with the underworld or the place of the dead. Death shall not destroy the Church, whether we see this as the death of Christ, the death of Peter and the other disciples, or our own, individual death.
Christ gives Peter the keys, the ability to unlock the mysteries of the Kingdom, or the symbol of authority in the Church. To ‘bind’ and ‘loose’ are rabbinical terms for forbidding and permitting in a juridical sense. They were used the previous week in the story of the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15: 21-28).
The reading concludes with Christ sternly ordering the disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah.
Reading the Gospel reading:
There are only two places in all the four Gospels where Christ uses the word for the Church that is found in this Gospel reading, the word εκκλησία (ekklesia): the first use of this word is in this reading (Matthew 16: 18), when Christ relates the Church to a confession of faith by the Apostle Peter, the rock-solid foundational faith of Saint Peter.
His second use of this word is not once but twice in one verse two weeks later [6 September 2020], in Matthew 18: 17. It is a peculiar word for Christ to use, and yet he only speaks of the Church in these terms on these two occasions.
In total, the word εκκλησία appears 114 times in the New Testament (four verses in the Acts of the Apostles, 58 times by Saint Pauline in his epistles, twice in the Letter to the Hebrews, once in the Epistle of James, three times in III John, and in 19 verses in the Book of Revelation). But Christ only uses the word twice, in these incidents in Saint Matthew’s Gospel.
The ekklesia (ἐκκλησία), the assembly of the citizens in the democratic city-state in classical Athens, met twice a year at the Theater of Dionysus, on the southern slopes of the Acropolis. The Acropolis is the highest point in Athens. It stands on an extremely rocky outcrop and on it the ancient Greeks built several significant buildings. The most famous of these is the Parthenon. This flat-topped rock rises 150 metres (490 ft) above sea level and has a surface area of about 3 hectares (7.4 acres).
Immediately north-west of the Acropolis is the Areopagus, another prominent, but relatively smaller, rocky outcrop. In classical Athens, this functioned as the court for trying deliberate homicide. It was said Ares (Mars) was put on trial here for deicide, the murder of the son of the god Poseidon. In the play The Eumenides (458 BC) by Aeschylus, the Areopagus is the site of the trial of Orestes for killing his mother.
Later, murderers would seek shelter here in the hope of a fair hearing. Here too the Athenians had an altar to the unknown god, and it was here the Apostle Paul delivered his most famous speech and sermon, in which he identified the ‘unknown god’ with ‘the God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth’ (Acts 17: 24), for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (verse 28).
This is the most dramatic and fullest reported sermon or speech by the Apostle Paul. He quotes the Greek philosopher Epimenides, and he must have known that the location of his speech had important cultural contexts, including associations with justice, deicide and the hidden God.
The origin of the name of the Areopagus is found in the ancient Greek, πάγος ( pagos), meaning a ‘big piece of rock.’
Another word, λιθος (lithos) was used for a small rock, a stone, or even a pebble – it is the Greek word that gives us words like lithograph and megalithic, meaning Great Stone Age.
When you see breathtaking sights like these, you understand how culturally relevant it was for Christ to talk about the wise man building his house on a rock rather than on sand (Matthew 7: 24-26) – a Gospel reading we have missed this year in the Lectionary readings that take us through Saint Matthew’s Gospel Sunday-by-Sunday.
Ordinary domestic buildings might have been built to last a generation or two, at most. But building on rock, building into rock, building into massive rock formations like the Acropolis, was laying the foundations for major works of cultural, political and religious significance that would last long after those who had built them had been forgotten.
And so, when Christ says to Peter in this Gospel reading that the Church is going to be built on a rock, he is talking about the foundations for a movement, an institution, an organisation, a community that is going to have lasting, everlasting significance.
In the past, Christians have got tied up in knots in silly arguments about this Gospel story. Some of us shy away from dealing with this story, knowing that in the past it was used to bolster not so much the claims of the Papacy, but all the packages that goes with those claims. In other words, it was argued by some in the past that the meaning of this passage was explicit: if you accepted this narrow meaning, you accepted the Papacy; if you accepted the Papacy, then you also accepted Papal infallibility, Papal claims to universal jurisdiction, and Papal teachings on celibacy, birth control, the immaculate conception and the assumption of the Virgin Mary.
And that is more than just a leap and a jump from what is being taught in our Gospel reading this morning. But to counter those great leaps of logic, Protestant theologians in the past put forward contorted arguments about the meaning of the rock and the rock of faith in this passage. Some have tried to argue that the word used for Peter, Πητρος (Petros), is the word for a small pebble, but that faith is described with a different word, πητρα (petra), meaning a giant rock, the sort of rock on which the Greeks built the Acropolis or carved out the Areopagus.
But they were silly arguments. The distinction between these words existed in Attic Greek in the classical days, but not in the Greek spoken at the time of Christ or at the time Saint Matthew was writing his Gospel. Πητρος (Petros) was the male name derived from a rock, πητρα (petra) was a rock, a massive rock like Petra in Jordan or the rocks of the Acropolis or the Areopagus, and the word lithos (λιθος) was used for a small rock, a stone, or even a pebble.
And Saint Peter is a rock, his faith is a rock, a rock that is solid enough to provide the foundations for Christ’s great work that is the Church.
How could Saint Peter or his faith be so great? This is the same Peter who in the previous Sunday’s Gospel reading (Matthew 15: 21-28; 16 August 2020) wanted Christ to send away the desperate Canaanite woman because ‘she keeps shouting at us.’
This is the same Peter who two weeks before (Matthew 14: 22-33; 9 August 2020), tries to walk on water and almost drowns, and Christ said to the same Peter: ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ (verse 31).
This is the same Peter who, in the week before that (Matthew 14: 13-21, 2 August 2020), was among the disciples who wanted to send away the crowd and let them buy food for themselves (verse 15).
This is the same Peter who seems to get it wrong constantly. Later in this Gospel, he denies Christ three times at the Crucifixion (Matthew 26: 75, 6 April 2020). After the Resurrection, Christ has to put the question three times to Peter before Peter confesses that Christ knows everything, and Christ then calls him with the words: ‘Follow me’ (John 21: 15-19).
Saint Peter is so like me. He trips and stumbles constantly. He often gets it wrong, even later on in life. He gives the wrong answers, he comes up with silly ideas, he easily stumbles on the pebbles and stones that are strewn across the pathway of life.
But eventually, it is not his own judgment, his own failing judgment that marks him out as someone special. No. It is his faith, his rock solid faith.
Despite all his human failings, despite his often-tactless behaviour, despite all his weaknesses, he is able to say who Christ is for him. He has a simple but rock-solid faith, summarised in that simple, direct statement: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’ (verse 16).
Reflecting on the Gospel reading:
Who do you say Christ is?
Who is Christ for you?
I spend much of my time off in Lichfield, where I once worked and where I had a profoundly life-changing spiritual experience when I was in my late teens. George Fox, the founding Quaker, once walked barefoot through the streets of Lichfield. He also challenged his contemporaries with these words: ‘You may say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?’
Who is Christ for you?
Is he a personal saviour?
One who comforts you?
Or is he more than that for you?
Who do you say Christ is?
It is a question that challenges Saint Peter in this Gospel reading. Not who do others say he is … but who do you say Christ is?
Peter’s faith is a faith that proves to be so rock-solid that you could say it is blessed, it is foundational. Not gritty, pebbly, pain-on-the-foot sort of faith. But the foundational faith on which you could build a house, carve out a temple or monastery, or a place to seek justice and sanctuary, rock-solid faith that provides the foundation for the Church.
There are other people in the Bible and in Jewish tradition who are commended for their rock-solid faith, including Abraham and Sarah (see Isaiah 51: 1f).
It is the sort of faith that will bring people into the Church, and even the most cunning, ambitious, evil schemes, even death itself, will not be able to destroy this sort of faith (verse 18).
Throughout the Bible, as people set out on great journeys of faith, their new beginning in faith is marked by God giving them a new name: Abram becomes Abraham, Jacob becomes Israel, Saul becomes Paul, and Simon son of Jonah is blessed with a new name too as he becomes Cephas or Peter, the rock-solid, reliable guy, whose faith becomes a role model for the new community of faith, for each and every one of us.
Why would Christ pick me or you? Well, why would he pick a simple fisherman from a small provincial town?
It is not how others see us that matters. It is our faith and commitment to Christ that matters. God always sees us as he made us, in God’s own image and likeness, and loves us like that.
The faith that the Church must look to as its foundation, the faith that we must depend on, that we must live by, is not some self-determined, whimsical decision, but the faith that the Apostles had in the Christ who calls them, that rock-solid, spirit-filled faith in Christ, of which Saint Peter’s confession this morning is the most direct yet sublime and solid example.
Apostolic faith like Saint Peter’s is the foundation stone on which the Church is built, the foundation stone of the new Jerusalem, with Christ as the cornerstone (Ephesians 2: 20; Revelation 21: 14).
It does not matter that Saint Peter was capable of some dreadful gaffes and misjudgements. I am like that too … constantly.
But Christ calls us in our weaknesses. And in our weaknesses, he finds our strengths. So that, as the Apostle Paul reminds us in the Epistle reading, the Church is then built up by the gifts that each one of us has to offer, ‘each according to the measure of faith that Christ has assigned’ (Romans 12: 3).
Our weaknesses can be turned to strengths if we accept the unique gifts each of us has been given by God and joyfully use them, lovingly use them, in God’s service, for building up his kingdom.
Let us not be afraid of our weaknesses. Let us not be afraid of the mistakes we inevitably make. But let us accept the gifts God has given us. Let us use those to build up our faith, to build up the Church, and to serve Christ and the world.
Matthew 16: 13-20 (NRSVA):
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14 And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 17 And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ 20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green (Year A, Ordinary Time)
The Collect of the Day:
O God,
you declare your almighty power
most chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
Mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace,
that we, running the way of your commandments,
may receive your gracious promises,
and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Collect of the Word:
O God,
fountain of all wisdom,
in the humble witness of the apostle Peter
you have shown the foundation of our faith:
give us the light of your Spirit,
that, recognising in Jesus of Nazareth the Son of the living God,
we may be living stones
for the building up of your holy Church;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Lord of all mercy,
we your faithful people have celebrated
the memorial of that single sacrifice
which takes away our sins and brings pardon and peace.
By our communion
keep us firm on the foundation of the gospel
and preserve us from all sin;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Suggested Hymns:
Exodus 1: 8 to 2: 10:
13, God moves in a mysterious way
679, When Israel was in Egypt’s land
Psalm 124:
642, Amazing grace (how sweet the sound!)
553, Jesu, lover of my soul
537, O God, our help in ages past
Isaiah 51: 1-6:
512, From you all skill and science flow
481, God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year
102, Name of all majesty
136, On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry
545, Sing of Eve and sing of Adam
Psalm 138:
250, All hail the power of Jesu’s name
358, King of glory, King of peace
21, The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want
Romans 12: 1-8:
517, Brother, sister, let me serve you
408, Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest
567, Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go
520, God is love, and where true love is, God himself is there
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
358, King of glory, King of peace
301, Let every Christian pray
438, O thou who at thy eucharist didst pray
639, O thou who camest from above
597, Take my life and let it be
313, The Spirit came, as promised
247, When I survey the wondrous cross
531, Where love and loving–kindness dwell
Matthew 16: 13-20:
460, For all your saints in glory, for all your saints at rest (verses 1, 2j, 3)
668, God is our fortress and our rock
659, Onward, Christian soldiers
528, The Church’s one foundation
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
No comments:
Post a Comment