Homily for Sunday, 24 August 2014

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 22:19-23; Psalm 128:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

This homily was given at Anglin House at the Cardinal Flahiff Basilian Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada. Many thanks and blessings to the women religious and to my Basilian confrères of the Cardinal Flahiff Centre who took part in this celebration of Sunday Mass.

“Who do people say the Son of Man is”? And then “who do you say that I am”? These are questions about identity. To understand just how significant Jesus’ questions about identity, his and ours, were when he first asked them of his disciples, it may help us to understand the geographical setting of the Gospel reading we hear today.

Let us place ourselves in Caesarea Philippi, about twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Caesarea Philippi had been the pagan town of Paneas, named for the Greek god Pan. Philip the Tetrarch, son of Herod the Great who ruled this region on behalf of Rome in Jesus’ time, rebuilt Paneas and renamed it for Caesar Tiberius, hence Caesarea Philippi.

This region gives context to several of the pagan references in our Gospel reading. Peter answers Jesus’ question about his identity: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Of course, Peter is correct. And yet the Roman emperors were often referred to as “sons of God.” But Jesus is greater than any emperor on earth; not merely the son of Jupiter or any other Roman deity but Son of the one God; “of the living God”; our God.

Jesus blesses Peter with the keys, a sign of authority in pagan societies of the time. However, Peter did not earn this authority as an emperor might have. Authority is given him by “the Son of the living God”; given him by Jesus Christ. Peter is now no ordinary authority with just any keys; he is made under Christ’s authority a “son of the living God.”

“On this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it,” Jesus says to Peter. The “rock” and “the gates of Hades” may have referred to a cave in a rock near Caesarea Philippi that pagans understood to be an entrance to “Hades”; the netherworld; the home of the dead or simply a metaphor for the wild and unknown, of which Pan was god in Greek mythology.

Again, Peter is given great authority as leader of the community of Christian disciples, the Church. But this authority; Peter’s new identity as a “son of the living God” is not from him. It is from God through Christ and is only effective in service to the community; the Church. Not the pagan gods, not Peter by his own efforts, but the Church in Christ will prevail even over death itself.

And so here, in the pagan context of Caesarea Philippi, we hear in today’s Gospel several great statements of identity: Christ’s identity; Peter’s identity; but also our identity.

Who were people in Jesus’ time expecting him to be? Perhaps even the Jewish people who believed that Jesus was the Messiah were expecting their Messiah to be a great prophet after Jeremiah or Elijah, or a fire-and-brimstone preacher of the need for repentance after John the Baptist, or the one to overthrow the oppressive Roman regime. Perhaps, if the non-Jews near Caesarea Philippi were encountering Jesus, they may have thought him to be a kind of god, like Pan, who kept the wild; the unknown; “Hades” at bay.

“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks his disciples. For a moment, when it matters most, Peter gets it right: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter is not only correct as to the identity of Jesus, but he is correct as to his own identity and also our identity.

What do I mean by this? If someone were to ask us, “Who do you say that you are?” would we be bold enough to answer, “I am a son or daughter of the living God”? This is who we are!

But would we not more typically answer the question of our identity; of who we are most fundamentally with responses such as: “I am a Basilian. I am a Catholic priest. I am a Loretto Sister. I have been professed or ordained for x number of years. I am a scholar. I have been involved in high school or university education or administration. I am retired,” and so forth…

All these answers to the question of our identity are true. But if we were to answer the questions, “Who do you say that you are; who do you say that I am,” with “We are sons and daughters of the living God,” would not some think our response to be somewhat triumphalistic? And yet if, at our core, we identify ourselves as any less than sons and daughters “of the living God,” we are selling our God-given human dignity, the dignity and identity given us by our Christian baptism, short.

We are sons and daughters “of the living God.” This is only triumphalistic, a statement of misplaced pride, if we believe that our being Christian; our living up to our identity as sons and daughters “of the living God” is a solo effort. It is not. We are sons and daughters “of the living God” in community; as Church. Our religious community life is a sign of this broader community of sons and daughters “of the living God, the Church. Peter did not make his confession of faith alone; he did not identify Jesus as “the Messiah, the son of the living God” alone and by his own strength, but with God’s grace and with the support of the community of disciples.

And so the authority; the blessing Jesus gives Peter is not to him alone. It is the authority and blessing given to the Church; to the community of disciples whose identity we share with the earliest Christian disciples and with all Christians from all the ages, on earth and in heaven. And so we are blessed with this identity; blessed with this authority from “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” whom we confess in faith.

“Flesh and blood has not revealed this to [us], but [our] Father in heaven… The gates of Hades shall not prevail against” Christ’s Church; against us, Christ’s community of sons and daughters “of the living God.”