Living with Uncertainty
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time Scripture Readings
On the surface, our gospel passage is very familiar. Peter recognizes Jesus, and Jesus, in turn, gives Peter primacy in the Church, right? But what’s going on underneath? Matthew sets the scene in Caesarea Philippi, at the foot of Mount Hermon, the site of a pagan temple dedicated to the god Pan. They’re in the north of Galilee—far from the faith and culture of Jerusalem. They’re in the borderland between Israel and pagan land, between faith and idolatry. It’s there, in that ambivalent environment, that Jesus asks his disciples to identify him—not Jesus the Jew or Jesus the rabbi, but Jesus the manifestation of something greater. Opinions are diverse. Maybe he’s John the Baptist, beheaded by Herod but returned from the dead. Maybe he’s Elijah, the prophet whose return would herald the salvation of Israel. Maybe he’s Jeremiah come back to preach repentance and woe.
Then the pointed question comes. The other opinions came from people who either observed Jesus or heard stories about him. But the disciples lived with him. You know well how when you live with someone, there are no secrets. Intimacy isn’t optional. It’s out of that context that Peter responds to Jesus’s pointed question: “But who do you say that I am?” Ever the brash, compulsive one, Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” We hear that and think that Peter was saying the same words we understand. He wasn’t. Peter had a very different understanding of “Christ” from ours. For him, the Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed, was an earthly king sent by God to restore Israel’s supremacy. And being a son of God didn’t imply divine birth, but divine favor and blessing. And, standing at the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi on the fringes of the pagan sanctuary, he called on the “living God,” of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob in contrast to the dead beliefs so evident close by. The point is that Peter, confident as he was, had no clear idea what he was saying. Peter did not understand. Do we?
In response to Peter’s statement, Jesus bestowed on him a commission. He gave his disciple, Simon, a new name. When a person in authority gives another a new name, that not only manifests the authority, but indicates a new role or position and a new identity. Jesus called Simon כֵיפָא (kēpha) in Aramaic, meaning ‘rock’, or πετρος (petros) in Greek, and rendered as Peter in English. Although some have held that Simon’s profession of faith is the true rock on which Jesus built his church—his קָהָל (qahal), his ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia), his assembly. However, most agree that by giving Simon that new name, Jesus intended to indicate that the person was the rock. The commission that follows is further indication of Jesus’ intent.
Giving Simon Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven—the reign of God—is a direct reference to the commission we heard about in our first reading. Eliakim son of Hilkiah is being made master of the palace. It’s the office of the royal steward, who oversaw the royal household administration and served as chief of staff or prime minister. He was given, as symbols of his authority, large ceremonial keys to the house of David. It indicated his authority to permit or deny actions within his control in the king’s name. Eliakim replaced Shebna, who was removed from office in disgrace for using the authority and power of his office for his own benefit rather than the household’s. The power wasn’t his own, but was loaned to him by the king. Yet power corrupts, and Shebna made the mistake of believing the power was his. We see this all the time when public figures forget who they are and where their prestige comes from. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, actor Woody Harrelson said, “It’s fine and dandy for people to tell you, ‘You’re great.’ Nothing wrong with that. Moment you start believing it, that’s when things are getting [messed up].”
So, Jesus commissioned Simon Peter to be steward of the assembly of Christians in direct parallel to the office held by Shebna and Eliakim, son of Hilkiah. Over the centuries, we’ve seen that some of Peter’s successors have served faithfully as Eliakim did, while others fell into the trap of believing the hype about their power and greatness and followed in the footsteps of Shebna, the disgraced. Yet both sorts were recognized as Bishops of Rome and tenants of the see of Peter.
We humans want—no, we demand—clarity. We want simple truths that we can rely on. The Council of Trent and all the other Church Councils down to Vatican II thought that’s what they were providing. They piled up statement after statement, guideline after guideline, only to find, in time, they’d created and left behind as much uncertainty and confusion as they’d cleaned up. Is that all that surprising, since from the very basis of the Scriptures themselves, we find dichotomies: between Shebna and Eliakim, between Pan at Caesarea Philippi and Yahweh in Jerusalem, between Simon the rock and the rock of faith, between the good popes and the self-serving popes.
We find that Saint Paul himself provided an example to teach us how to live as people of faith in a world of contradiction. He struggled to reconcile the faith of the pagan Greeks with the rejection of it by his own people, the Israelites. We see the same things they did: public servants commissioned to administer for the good of all helping themselves; people given political power for the sake of all, using it not just to enrich themselves but to hurt and destroy the community they were empowered to serve; members of the assembly of believers turning on the very people the community was established to encompass. How did Paul address this conundrum? He wrote, “How inscrutable are [God’s] judgments and how unsearchable his ways.”
It’s not as if God is messing with us to keep us confused. It’s just that our expectations of life and of God are unreasonable. Perfect clarity in thought, in understanding, in belief, and in the way forward is unobtainable. Not even our own life is understandable, except in retrospect. Hidden in today’s readings, we can find a very Zen lesson—like the sound of one hand clapping. It’s a lesson about finding peace within contradiction. Growth does not come from clarity and certainty, but from the willingness to sit contentedly with uncertainty, imperfection, and contradiction. It comes with the willingness to take on a new identity and role when we’re given it, even when we don’t fully understand and especially when we doubt our ability to carry it out. We, too, are given those keys to the kingdom. We, too, falter. We, too, hesitate. We, too, complain, “Why me, oh Lord?” We know the answer; Paul told us. “How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! … To him be glory forever. Amen.”
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