Proper A16: The Burden of Freedom
Jesus brings the apostles to Caesarea Philippi, a town that stood as the antithesis of Jerusalem. Herod the Great built this coastal city just years before to show his superiors in Rome that great, imperial life was possible in the boonies of the Middle East.
And with this imperial flavor, this coastal town was also a potpourri of religious observance. As such, it seems peculiar that Jesus would bring his apostles here at all. Perhaps the evangelist wanted to have Peter exclaim the greatness of the Christ in this polytheistic setting to show the universality of Christ's Lordship. Maybe Jesus, in the plethora of answers he might anticipate to the question, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" wanted to contrast them to the variety of religious practices in that resort, commercial town. One might ponder whether by bringing the Apostles out of the region of regular Jewish practice, the Apostles might feel freer in their thinking and discourse. Indeed, maybe Peter's response,"You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." could only be safely uttered outside Jerusalem and Galilee.
I think it's both ironic, yet somehow fitting that Jesus brings the Apostles outside a land that eats, lives, and breathes the covenant of Abraham to a place and situation where the Apostles might be able to loosen up a little, so that they could begin to think outside the box.
Now just as an aside, Moses' sister was a genius! She too found herself with an opportunity to "think outside the box."
Her mandate was really quite simple. All she really was expected to do was to stand "at a distance, to see what would happen to (her infant brother).
But She not only makes sure her brother is safely retrieved by Pharoah's daughter -- she somehow makes herself part of the scene so that she can parlay her mother back into the picture (with wages!!) to nurse her own son.
I don't know about you, but if I were that little girl, I'd be scared stiff.
Her world was a world conformed to the reality of an oppressed people in a foreign land. Yet by grace, ingenuity, or maybe sheer ignorance or luck, she allowed herself to be somehow transformed from this reality, so that she could consider other options, that is, so that she could become renewed of mind.
Returning to the matter of Jesus and the Apostles in Caesarea Philippi on one level, their conversation doesn't stray too far afield. The answers of the Apostles are not far flung. Their comments fall within the context of the covenant for the most part,
"Some say (Jesus is) John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
Peter's response however is out of the ordinary,
"You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Messiah. Maybe. And as such it might be safe to assign Jesus a more common, prophetic title like "Son of Man." (That is, "Messiah," as servant of the people of Israel, as a son to his Father, in this case the Kingdom of Israel.)
"Son of the living God," however, was something "over the top."
Now we take this accolade almost for granted. We've been brought up with a pretty consistent theology of the Trinity. So for us, it is a "no brainer." On another level, we have our baptismal theology that impresses upon us the concept of an immanence -- of a closeness with the Father as Sons and Daughters of God. One would assume that through the closeness of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and others in the Torah, our Baptismal understanding of God's intimacy would have carried down to the Jews of Jesus' day. I'm not sure why that concept didn't prevail. Maybe they felt so oppressed for so long, maybe it was hard to keep that aspect alive in those circumstances.
So the question is: Are there things about our times and our world that make us overcome by the ways of the world?
Is it too idealistic to think that we can be spiritually transformed? Is such an idea even worthwhile?
Is a humanistic "rapprochement" all we can hope for? (And I'm not "dissing" secular humanists when I say this.)
You know the drill.
Now while I have a hard time with the fact that I'm not in control of the world around me, within my life, I have choices. Living life on life's terms does not mean rolling oneself up in a ball and playing dead. Living life on life's terms means accepting the things I cannot change and changing the things I can -- allowing myself to "be transformed by the renewing of (my) mind -- by
Not just the fellowship of this worship, but by the fellowship within the broader community of believers.
(Now, I'll just drop this bomb and move on, because I am, like you, nowhere near to or comfortable with its implications.) Never mind the sometimes far flung practices of our different Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic brothers and sisters. It has become the practice of Christians of all stripes to relish our isolation -- even to institutionalize it. Ironically, the Christian community is at its most isolated on Sundays, between the hours of 8 and 11 am. It has become perfectly normal for us to think of our separated worship as acceptable. Even preferred.
There are many other challenges to Christian fellowship, but I would sum up the principal limitations as mere timidity and a lack of energy or enthusiasm. It's not that we don't want it. We just don't have the "Umph," to go get it!
Finally a word or two on the authority vested to Peter -- the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and loosen. I don't know what it is about people that they yearn for less government yet more church. They want the church to be the last word on discipline and morality rather than the first. Our image of the keys tends to focus on magisterial authority and not magisterial freedom.
This was a unique challenge for me within the Roman Church and the sacrament of Reconciliation. The burden wasn't the challenges I placed upon the penitent. The burden was my commitment to be there for them in the midst of challenges often of their own making.
Why do we remember the binding part and forget the loosening part? Aren't the burdens of loosening as important and compelling as those of binding, especially when we recall that incident in the synagogue at Nazareth, cited by Luke in Chapter 4, verses 14-21, when he reads from the scroll of Isaiah 61:1-2 about preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, release for the oppressed, and the proclamation of a year of the Lord's favor?
God willing, let us one day become a community of believers comfortable with the perspective and discernment that the same Spirit that moves us and frees is the same Spirit that moves and frees others, even when we don't understand what they are being called to do.
