Readings of the day: Isaiah 22:19-23, 6-7; Psalm 138: 1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20
Two images stick in my mind when I hear today’s readings from Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew: One of keys and the other, of clothing.
The image of keys is the more obvious one of these two; it is explicitly included in Isaiah and in Matthew. In Isaiah, the chief steward of the royal house of King Hezekiah—like Hezekiah’s Prime Minister—is Shebna. And Isaiah condemns Shebna for many wrongful actions, abuses of his power. Today’s reading from Isaiah skips over a few lines that lay out the prophet’s charge against Shebna: He has tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade King Hezekiah to ally with Egypt in a revolt against Assyria (historically, the Assyrians had invaded Israel and Judah and made Hezekiah their puppet king, some years before Babylon would invade the same territory). And Shebna had built monuments to himself, including his tomb, in high places where his self-importance would be most visible.
So Isaiah says that Shebna will be “pulled down from [his] post” and his role at the right hand of the king—the robe, sash, and keys—be given to “Eliakim, son of Hilkiah.” Isaiah uses the images of a peg and of keys. The peg is the symbol of stability: Eliakim would bring stability and prosperity to the reign of Hezekiah and his successors in the royal line of King David. But the keys are a symbol of power. And, as I think we all know, power can be used for good or not-so-good purposes.
Isaiah’s handing over of Shebna’s keys to Eliakim is a bit ironic, considering what we know happened to Hezekiah and the House of David after him. Hezekiah would refuse Shebna’s advice that he ally with Egypt against Assyria, but he would ally with Assyria and essentially become a puppet king of the Assyrians. And his successors would fare even worse in trying to play one power among Israel’s neighbours off against the others and failing to trust in Israel’s God alone for Israel’s peace, stability, and prosperity.
But then the Gospel of Matthew presents us with the same image of keys as the prophet Isaiah does to speak of Eliakim’s rise within the royal court of Hezekiah. In Matthew, it is Jesus’ apostle Peter who receives the keys: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says to him.
For Jesus to give the “keys of the kingdom of heaven” to Peter, of all people, is as curious (if not more) than when God, through Isaiah, gives the keys to the kingdom of David and his successors to Eliakim in place of Shebna. Not long before this point in Matthew’s Gospel, if we remember from last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Peter asks Jesus to be able to walk toward him on the stormy sea. But then he becomes afraid and sinks. Jesus calls Peter out, “You of little faith, why did you doubt”?
Today Peter repeats the cycle of bold statement—bold profession of faith—by God’s grace, followed by being surprised, unnerved we might say, by his own boldness, and then retreat from it, afraid of what such a profession of faith means for him. We do not hear the retreat, the fearful reservation part of the episode to which our Gospel introduces us today. We only hear Peter get the answer right, as he so often does and which is why Jesus entrusts him with so much; why Jesus gives Peter the “power of the keys.” Peter says what every other disciple of Jesus knows is true—what we all know by faith to be true but, people of little faith that we are, hesitate to say it: Jesus is a herald of the kingdom of heaven like John the Baptist, a prophet like Elijah, Jeremiah, or “one of the [other] prophets.” But he is more than they are. Peter says quite rightly: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
But even at this point, we have a clear sense that, for Peter or for any of us as Jesus’ disciples, first this is not the end of the story or the destination of our process of discipleship. And, second, like Peter, none of us can make this astounding profession of faith without God’s grace. Jesus says just that to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
In a few moments, sisters and brothers, we will pray the Creed. But do we ever pause, after we have prayed the Creed, and hear Jesus say to us, “Blessed are you… For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”? I invite us to try this at this Mass: Pause briefly after the Creed, before we offer our Prayer of the Faithful, and hear, imagine Jesus blessing us just as he blessed Peter after his profession of faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Because we know that this is not the end of the story, for Peter or for us. Almost as soon as Peter professes his faith in “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” if we continue to follow Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus leads Peter, James, and John up the Mount of the Transfiguration. There, the three apostles see a vision and then hear Jesus predict that he will die and rise for us. Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, are men, women, and children “of little faith.” Jesus will die and rise for all of us who, like Peter, may be able to make an astounding profession of faith, as long as it is on our terms. The very next thing Peter says to Jesus after, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” after the end of today’s Gospel reading, is, “God forbid it, Lord” that you should die like this! “God forbid it” that I should profess my faith in a Christ, a God who will suffer for me, for my sin, for every time I am afraid of the bold words that, by God’s grace, escape from my mouth, and I retreat from them. “God forbid it, Lord,” that I will go so far as denying even knowing you, yet you will restore me to grace, remind me of why you gave me the keys and the power to bind and loose on earth what is bound and loosed in heaven!
“God forbid it, Lord”—But the Lord does just that, through each of us. Not long after Peter’s profession of faith, the gift of the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” and then Jesus’ Transfiguration, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus gives the same power to bind and loose, the same gift of participating with God in the restoration to grace, the salvation of the whole world, to all of us, sisters and brothers!
And this is where I want to go back to the beginning of what I have said here today, to my image of the keys but then also of clothing. Specifically, who here has ever bought clothing for an infant or maybe a teenager—those times in our lives when we grow physically (and in other ways) the fastest? When we buy clothing for somebody who is growing quickly, it is wise to buy clothing a few sizes too big for that person, so that they will grow into it.
This is what God, through Isaiah, does for Eliakim in the Book of Isaiah from which we hear today. This is what Jesus does for Peter in our Gospel reading today. This is what Paul speaks of to the Romans, as if he is unwrapping a gift of divine clothing that is too big for him or the Roman Christian community in the present moment: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways”! Actually, Paul is saying to us, to the Romans, that the clothing God has just bought for us will never fit us quite right (Sorry!). It will always be a bit (or a lot) big on us, this clothing of God’s grace that saves us. But then some baggy clothing is quite fashionable these days, right?
In the time of Isaiah—and Matthew picks up on this image when Jesus gives Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven”—keys were not so much the pocket-sized ones with which we unlock doors. For a king or royal official like Eliakim, the keys that they would receive would be part of their royal clothing: Large, decorative, and slung over the shoulder. So the robe, the sash, and the key given to Eliakim in Isaiah are not really two separate images or analogies—that of keys and that of clothing—but the same one.
God gives Eliakim the robe, the sash, and the keys that are too big for him in that moment. Jesus gives Peter a gift that, despite his astounding profession of faith, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is too big for him in that moment. Peter will have to grow into those clothes and those keys. He will have to experience his frailty, his own “little faith,” most poignantly as Jesus dies on the cross and Peter denies ever knowing him.
We, too, dear Church, will have to continue to grow into the same clothing and the same keys that, for the moment, are just a little (or a lot) too big for our “little faith.” Still, though our “little faith” helped by none other than God’s grace, God enables us to profess with the astounding boldness of Peter the creed that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
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