August 21, 2011,
Pentecost 10, All Souls’ Episcopal Church
For of him, and through
him, and to him, are all things …
One of the things we learn in life is the importance of
context. Everything has a context. For example, when I
was just 18 or 19 and someone said to me: “If you
haven’t had one of those yet at your age, you really
should,” I would expect to have a fun adventure.
Nowadays though, when my doctors says those exact same
words, I might still be in for an adventure, but ‘fun’
isn’t the first adjective that springs to mind. Context
is everything, and the contextual setting of today’s
Gospel reading is essential to fully understanding the
passage. Jesus and his disciples were in Caesarea
Philippi. Let me fill you in on a few details. The
region was known in earlier centuries as a center for
the worship of the Canaanite deity, Baal. Later, it
became famous as the birthplace of the god, Pan, after
whom it derived its name, ‘Paneas.” Under Roman
occupation the area was given as a gift to Herod the
Great, the King who had the babies killed in hopes of
killing the Christ. Herod was so pleased with his new
possession that he ordered a pagan temple erected there
in honor of the emperor. Finally, the place came to be
called Caesarea Philippi in further honor of the Caesar
at the direction of the Jewish King Philip, himself
named after the Macedonian Greek father of Alexander the
Great. (Did you get all that?) This was the setting and
this was the context in which our Lord Jesus asked his
disciples about his identity.
St. Peter responds by proclaiming that Jesus is “the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus declares that
Peter is able to know this truth because of divine
revelation: “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto
thee, but my Father which is in Heaven.” He then
announces that the ‘gates of hell’ shall not prevail
against his church which is built upon a ‘rock solid’
foundation. Finally, he announces that he shall give
them the ‘keys of the kingdom.’
So, here we are in Caesarea Philippi. This was a place
where pagan worship abounded. There were everywhere
altars covered with blood and fur, and there were
various temples dedicated to assorted deities chief of
which was Pan, the nature god, with his pointed ears and
goat-like appearance and his cloven hoofs for feet.
There were volcanic caves there from which smoke and
steam emerged, and they were thought of as entrance ways
to the underworld. One cave, the birthplace of Pan, was
called the ‘gate of hell.’ Caesarea Philippi was very
much a meeting place of cultures and religions, Roman,
Greek, and Jewish among them. This is where Jesus asks
“whom do men say that I am?” The disciples gave the
usual answers based upon what they had heard. They gave
him the ‘word on the street,’ the conventional wisdom.
In this place known for the worship of the nature god,
Pan, whose name means ‘all,’ all of the natural wisdom
of the world does not offer a clear and full account of
the Christ of God. Our Lord then changes the topic and
asks his disciples: “But you, who do you say that
I am?”
Our Lord Jesus asks each one of us this question today.
Each of us may ask whether Jesus means the same to us as
he meant two years ago or twenty years ago. Was there a
time when you awoke each new morning thrilled to just
walk with your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in a life
newly dedicated to God? Is it still that way now? Do you
continue to have that sense of walking with Christ as
God’s servant or has the Lord Jesus been relegated to a
strictly advisory role – that of a Senior Partner whose
name is still on the door but who no longer oversees the
day by day operations of your life? I am not accusing
but merely asking in hopes that you might spend five
minutes pondering all this after the sermon.
When Peter declares that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son
of the Living God,” our Lord says that this knowledge
has been given as a divine revelation from the Heavenly
Father. Please take note that Jesus the King does not
ask the disciples this question of his identity when
they are in the Royal city of Jerusalem. The Son of God
does not ask his disciples his question when they are in
the Holy Temple, in his Father’s House. Instead, he
asked them in Caesarea Philippi where earthly powers
gathered and cultures clashed in a place which offered a
veritable buffet of religious choices. This sounds like
any major North American or European city today in a
world in which various religions, ethnicities, cultures,
and traditions all are aware of each other and in this
digital age increasingly so in a way that is both
immediate and impossible to ignore. Jesus asked his
disciples who he was to them, and this is the place he
did it. He required that they look inside themselves and
answer his question in a place where they were
surrounded on all sides by the very Gentile world to
which they would take their good news and where they
would lay down their lives while proclaiming that good
news. You see, Jesus doesn’t ask his disciples this
question when they’re in Sunday school or in Youth Group
or at Bible Study because it is precisely when you’re
away from home and on your own in the big city, in
strange and frightening places, that you find our what
you really believe about God and the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a spiritual kingdom. In his
First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul makes it
abundantly clear that our resurrected body is a
spiritual body. Heaven is real and a Kingdom of spirit
and spirit is eternal. Spirit is not subject to change.
The world in which we live is subject to change, and so
the keys of the kingdom are for us. Heaven does not need
to be locked or unlocked, but we do. Heaven isn’t bound,
but we are, and more often than not we’re bound by knots
we have tied ourselves. It may feel sometimes like we
are stuck in our place in life where nothing ever
changes. In fact just the opposite is true. We are here
alright, but this is precisely where everything changes.
The Bible is clear on this point: God’s eternal Kingdom
of Spirit is not subject to change. However, in this
life everything changes. Not only does everything
change, but everything changes constantly. (The amazing
thing is that we notice this at all.) There is no real
permanence here. Here impermanence is the rule. I could
spend several minutes just reciting verse after verse
from the Bible on the topic of the impermanence of this
world, of how the grass withers and flowers fade and
moth and rust corrupts. Mind you, when we affirm that
everything changes, just remember that we are only
referring to things, and that God is not a thing, and
God is not subject to change. Spirit is not a thing and
Spirit is not subject to change.
If
everything is subject to change in a world where nothing
stays the same and impermanence is the rule, how can I
promise to love somebody until we are parted by death?
How can I promise something so permanent in a world
which by definition is impermanent? Here is how we
respond to that. The fact that impermanence is the rule
is exactly why we make vows in the first place. Think
about it – it would not be necessary to make vows at all
if everything stayed exactly the same and nothing ever
changed. Moreover, you do not make any promise to remain
permanent in a world of constant change. That would be
an impossible promise and therefore ludicrous. You do
not promise at your wedding to keep everything the way
it was when the papers were signed. What we promise is
to love. We can promise to love because love is not a
thing. St. Paul writes that love is eternal. St. John
writes, “God is love.” Love is not subject to change.
Emotions come and go and impressions change; feelings
are fickle and so are we. We may grow distant and we may
even shut love out but love itself remains. In fact, it
is love which brought this whole changeable world to
creation in the first place. We promise to love, and we
make that promise to the God who is Love. This love
which is eternal grounds us in what is permanent and
becomes for us the key of the Kingdom. The love which
unites in absolution and in blessing unlocks and
unfetters us so that we may know ourselves in that love
as citizens of the Kingdom.
Jesus tells us that the gates of hell shall not prevail
against his church. Perhaps some of us upon hearing this
imagine ourselves safe and secure in heaven where the
devil and his armies cannot get to us no matter how hard
they try. It’s a lovely image and comforting too, but it
is not what is being conveyed in this reading. Instead,
a gate, as in a city gate, served a purely defensive
purpose. It kept aggressors from you. If you “possessed
the gate of your enemies” it meant you occupied their
city. A shield was mostly (though not entirely) a
defensive weapon but it was meant to take you forward
into battle. A gate, however, was strictly a
defensive instrument. So, if we are talking about “the
gates of hell,” then hell must be on the defensive. It
is hell that is under siege, defending against us. We
are on offense. We are moving forward; we are on the
march.
Every time forgiveness is offered and absolution is
received the gates of hell come tumbling down. Every
time we seek peace and pursue it on higher ground the
gates of hell come tumbling down. Every time you hug
your children and assure them that you love them and God
loves them, the gates of hell come tumbling down. When
prayers are offered and praise is sung to God, when
enemies, unbound, embrace as friends; when candles are
lit to dispel the darkness in place of curses, and when
sins are confessed by a heart broken open and ready for
service, the gates of hell come tumbling down.
~ Father Petley.
