21ST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A
I will give the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Binding and loosing refer to the authority to make judgments. It was something Jesus did all throughout his ministry.
He would bind certain things; like loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus bound these commandments as being most important.
And, he loosed others. Things like ritual purification or customs and practices that had been used to separate or exclude people – he didn’t ignore, but loosened them. Not that they aren’t important, they’re just not as important as the things he bound us to.
And, Peter receiving the keys of the kingdom meant that Peter and the Church now have this authority; the authority to discern the will of God and to act on it. The point here is that what the Church does – the decisions it makes, the grace it expresses, the stands it takes, the truths it teaches – matters to God.
When the Church wrestles with a controversial issue, or tries to speak the gospel message to someone who has been alienated from God or provides hospitality to a stranger or teaches the faith to a child or cares for those in need, it is not just playing Church. It is acting out God’s future – the kingdom of heaven – in the here and now. It is participating in the very life of God.
You see, I think that Peter was on to something when he said that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. I think he knew what the Church tends to forget sometimes – that God is a living God. God is not frozen in the past, not bound by the customs or memories of the good ol’ days. God is living, moving and working in the world in ways that are new.
And as the Church, we have to keep up with him. We have the power to be voices of grace and mercy and love; voices of reconciliation and forgiveness – of justice and of compassion and of wholeness. We have more than the power – we have the responsibility.
We may not always feel like we do. There are plenty of voices, both outside and inside the Church that would have us believe that the Church doesn’t matter anymore, that we’ve lost our credibility and authority. And in some ways we have – most of it because of our own doing.
But it may also be because we’ve lost the position of power we once enjoyed. And in the gospels, positions of power are always suspicious places to be in. But because we’ve lost a lot of that power, it frees us to focus once again on the only question that really matters, which is, who is Jesus for us today?
This matters in the life of the Church and its members. It matters in the life of this community and the lives of those who through the miracle of technology are connected to us in far flung places. It matters to the many who for good reason have written off the Church; who have found acceptance and in other places and other people.
And it matters in some small way in the life God and God’s kingdom here on earth.