21st Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A - Hearts Burning Within

The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Ordinary Time

Isaiah 22:19-23

Isaiah I: shape up or else; exile is coming 1-39
Isaiah II – Book of Consolation, Comfort. People in captivity, discouraged and tempted to drift 40-55
Isaiah III: going home 56-66 Trito Isaiah; struggle for a new temple and new leadership

Last week we were in the third part of Isaiah; this week we’re in the first part. The first 39 chapters are warning Israel that the exile is coming. They better shape up and mend their ways or something really bad is going to happen. That’s the message of these chapters.

Chapters 13-23 are oracles against various nations: Babylon, Assyria, Philistia, Moab, Syria, Egypt, etc. An oracle is a a priest or priestess acting as a medium through whom advice or prophecy was sought from the gods in classical antiquity. The product of a person’s oracle (also called an oracle!) means a response or message given by an oracle, typically one that is ambiguous or obscure.

The nations in these chapters would, at one time or another, harass the Jewish people. Even though God was going to work through these nations to try and get Israel’s attention, it didn’t mean that God condoned those nations. It’s somewhat analogous to Judas – God worked through his actions to further salvation history but God certainly couldn’t approve of those actions.

The passage today comes in the midst of oracles against the nations and just before this passage is the story of Sennacherib, King of Assyria and the invasion that he is planning. Right in the middle of that, we get this story about Eliakim and Shebna.

Shebna is described as master of the palace, a position with great authority. It’s clear that power has gone to Shebna’s head. In verse 16 it talks about Shebna digging a tomb for himself that sounds like it rivals a royal tomb. In itself, this wasn’t that remarkable but scholars conjecture that the real problem was that Shebna was probably covertly cooperating with the Assyrians to facilitate an invasion and overthrow of the king. So he was anticipating being made higher even than a master of the palace. And he was going to do that through treason.

Verses 15-18 feature God telling the prophet to go to Shebna and expose his treachery and let him know what God intends. Remember: the role of a prophet is to hold up a standard of behavior and let people know what might happen if they don’t conform to that standard. Isaiah was to bear a message to Shebna showing him what God might do but giving him opportunity to change things.

In verse 20 there is an important phrase “on that day.” Anytime this occurs, particularly in the prophetic books of the Old Testament, the language is shifting from historical events to more prophetic language. It envisions the end of time when God returns to establish his kingdom on earth. So the verses that follow are bigger than what will happen to Shebna.

Verse 21 reads like an investiture ceremony. The person receiving the authority will be immensely powerful.

One lesson we might draw from this story is that our actions have consequences, even when we think we might be hiding them from God or justifying them to ourselves. Is there something you’ve been trying to hide from a God who knows you more intimately than you know yourself?

Matthew 16:13-20

During Ordinary Time, I’ll cover the Old Testament and then the Gospel readings as a pair so that we can better see the connections.

This is the fourth of five weeks in this section of chapters 14-17 which talk about the slow recognition and acknowledgment of Jesus for who he is. It parallels chapters 11-12 which talked about the rejection of Jesus.

This passage touches on Christology and Ecclesiology – who is Christ and what is the church? Catholics often refer to this passage as “the Petrine promise.” The debate on this passage usually centers on whether or not it establishes the Roman papacy. Roman Catholics will argue that the passage undeniably gives Peter some sort of primacy and authority amongst the Twelve. Whatever that looked like in the early church is a far cry from what we know today as a papacy that developed over the centuries. And we can’t look at Peter’s role here without pairing it with the story at the end of John’s gospel where Peter is repeatedly told to feed Jesus’ sheep – a position of service.

Eastern Orthodox churches interpret the “rock” as Peter’s faith whereas Roman Catholic interpretation is Peter himself. So the Orthodox churches have primates, which is a presiding bishop, but only for a general locale. Even Catholics that were joined very early on took a very different approach to interpreting this passage.

John Paul II wrote an encyclical in 1995 which was a document on ecumenism and he called on Roman Catholics along with Protestants and Orthodox to reassess the papacy in the light of the need for Christian unity (Ut Unum Sint: On Commitment to Ecumenism). There he said “believers in Christ, united in following in the footsteps of the martyrs, cannot remain divided. If they wish truly and effectively to oppose the world’s tendency to reduce to powerlessness the Mystery of Redemption, they must profess together the same truth about the Cross.”

This has long been a contentious passage. Although not as widely recognized as an issue in the church, it does perhaps rival Luther’s declaration on faith and works as a key point of division.

In verse 13 Jesus asks his disciples what other people are saying about him. We are an individualistic culture. As individuals we derive meaning from our distinctiveness. So in our culture, people by and large don’t look to others for their identity.

Jesus’ was a culture that derived meaning only from the group. The group helps the members know who they are. You were not anyone apart from your family group. This is why being expelled from the family is so dire – you lose your entire identity.

What Jesus is doing here is taking the pulse of his identity. Who does the group say I am?

For his enemies, knowing this man as Jesus of Nazareth was to know everything about him. Nathanael in John 1:46 even asked “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” To know the village and the family is to know everything.

When we read this today, we assume that Jesus knows the truth of who he is and is testing his friends to see if they know. In cultural context, it was more likely that Jesus is reassessing his identity. Remember last week’s story where the Canaanite woman challenges Jesus to expand his horizons. He begins this process by looking to the group. Perhaps we can see this at work in our own culture as teens come of age and very often identify themselves within their peer group.

In Mark’s gospel, Herod hears about Jesus and says that he’s John the Baptist come back from the dead. This must have been a belief that gained some traction over time as shown in verse 14.

It was widely held that Elijah would return (tradition and scripture hold that he was taken up in a whirlwind and did not die) to herald the advent of the reign of God. Jesus appears announcing that the reign of God was at hand, thus establishing this connection.

Matthew alone throws in Jeremiah, probably because he was a prophet who suffered intense persecution and rejection. Matthew has a general interest in Jeremiah as a pre-figure of Christ and mentions him several times in the gospel.

Now that Jesus has taken the large group pulse, he queries his inner group: what do you guys think?

And of course Peter pipes up to speak in the name of everyone. Matthew also throws in the phrase “son of the living God.” Perhaps by the time Matthew is writing, Christians have come to understand that Jesus’ version of Messiah was far different than Jewish expectations of a military liberator. Perhaps Matthews adds this phrase to correct any false impressions about what it means to be a Messiah.

We might be tempted to imagine Peter speaking verse 16 with absolute certainty and clarity. Or we might imagine him blurting out a half-formed thought that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Next week we’ll see even Peter doesn’t have quite the sense of what a Messiah encompasses.

Only Matthew has verses 17-19. Flesh and blood refers to the whole of a human being in all our weakness. He’s blessed not because he makes the acknowledgment of who Jesus is but because that knowledge was something given him by God.

In verse 18, Jesus renames Peter as “Petros,” a Greek word meaning a small rock often found in a pathway. From now on we can call Peter “Rocky.” And this may also be a reference to his personality – being a bit rocky and prone to cause trouble! Jesus goes on to say “upon this rock.” There he uses the Greek word petra which means a solid mass of rock, like a cliff, suggesting something far more solid than a single human being.

In verse 19 Jesus promises him the keys to the kingdom and the power of binding and loosing, which echoes verse 22 of the Isaiah passage. Later on, in Matthew 18:18, Jesus gives this power to all the disciples. Controlling the keys is a sign of authority.

These terms binding and loosing can refer to a number of things:

Laying down rules and making exemptions to those rules
Imposing and lifting excommunications
Forgiving and not forgiving sins
Performing exorcisms
The general idea is that God will ratify and stand behind what Peter (and the others) enact.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen Jesus do healings, feed thousands, walk on water, and calm storms. Who do you say that he is based on your own experience?

Old Testament / Gospel Connection

How are the Old Testament and Gospel readings connected? Each week I will offer my views on this but I encourage you to first read the passages and look for your own connections!

For the past few weeks we’ve had some really magnificent readings, especially in the gospels. We’ve seen Jesus feed a multitude with almost nothing. We’ve seen him walk on water and calm the storms. And we’ve seen him expanding the notion of his mission to do a miracle for a Gentile woman. Honestly, today’s readings feel like an abrupt letdown. I suppose if the institutional church is central to one’s spiritual life, then maybe Peter’s institution at the top of the hierarchy is the pinnacle of things. But these readings were challenging for me on a number of levels!

An apparent connection is authority. In Isaiah, the abuse of authority causes a leader’s downfall. But the Messianic notes imply that the Messiah will exercise a wholly different kind of authority. In the Gospel, Peter recognizes Jesus as the Messiah and Jesus then exercises his authority to delegate that authority.

Perhaps one of the subtle lessons in this pairing is an implicit warning about abuse of authority. A church leader may abuse their authority but ultimately God will call us all to account. Sometimes it is hard to exist in the tension of that in-between time but we might recall parables from previous weeks about patience and final judgment. Today’s reading from Romans seems to reinforce this idea.

Romans 11:33-36

See detailed background on Romans here.

In chapters 9-11 Paul is going to draw heavily on the Old Testament to explain how God’s resolve to include Gentiles in the chosen community seems to have ironically excluded the very people who were initially chosen to form this community – the Jewish people.

Also in these chapters, Paul has spent all this time detailing deep and winding theology. But in the end, it’s all straw in the face of who God is. Paul concludes this section with rousing rhetoric, a Hymn of Praise. It portrays God as Giver – and the only thing we can give the Giver is praise.

The interesting thing about this hymn is that it is not christologically based, as are most of Paul’s hymns; that is to say, it is not centered on Christ. This one seems to flow directly out of Jewish thought, which is entirely fitting given the subject matter of chapters 9-11.

In verse 33, Paul is praising God for God’s willingness and ability to include both Jews and Gentiles. God’s ways are beyond human comprehension. If God chooses to move salvation along in this manner, who are we to argue against it? What God has done in hardening the hearts of the Jews and including the Gentiles will not yield to human attempts to understand.

Paul then looks to the Old Testament to reinforce this idea; again, fitting since he’s been talking about the Jews. He quotes Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:11.

In verse 36 Paul emphasizes the absolute dependence of all creation on God. Everything derives from God, is sustained by God and strives towards God. This verse is very similar and may be the source of the doxology in the liturgy of the Eucharist.

Think of something you are struggling to understand in your spiritual journey. How do these verses shed light on that?

If you wrote a hymn of praise to God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, what would it say?

Questions to ponder

What do these readings say about how to live day in and day out as Christians?