Priest-in-Charge
Rev. Dr. Christopher I. Wilkins
January 19, 2012
Dear People of Christ Church,
How does God show up in your world?
Well, we're up to one response, so we'll keep this question going for one more week. Actually, I have several responses to this question in-house, because it was part of the Annual Meeting's discussions. Some of us find God a bit difficult to find or attend to. A few of us find God to be crystal-clear and easier to understand than our own selves. Most of us find God to be difficult, necessary, and loving. Be it as a strict but forgiving parent, a challenging but merciful monarch, the indefinable feeling of being at peace and being beloved, or a fellow-suffering companion on the way, God is real to us in as many ways as there are us to be real to. That is, to me at least, a comforting thought.
Another comforting thought is that God's mystery and eternity is enough to welcome home our dead, even as we mourn their passing and celebrate their lives.
Yet one more comforting thought comes from today's (that is, Wednesday's) church celebration: The Confession of St. Peter. Yep-this one gets a whole day all to itself. Pretty much everything else Peter's involved with, liturgically, he has to share with others, whether it be "Who-will-save-me-from-this-body-of-Death?" Paul or those saints who spent the first Pentecost appearing to be drunk with wine. But Peter gets his Confession Day all to himself.
What does he confess? Not his sins; he hasn't really committed any just yet. He will, while Jesus is being tried and murdered. Bitter was his weeping and self-loathing at that time, and his repentance was great. But at this point what Peter confesses is who he believes Jesus is (see Matthew 16). Wanting to know if anything is getting through, and wanting to block an untimely release of the truth, Jesus asks his closest followers "Who do people say that I am?" Some say Elijah, some say the prophet, some say John the Baptizer come back from the dead, some say the last prophet before Mohammed, some say the guide to Tim Tebow's quick legs and throwing arm-you get the idea. But, when Jesus asks them, "Who do you say that I am?" Like the slow kid in class who finally knows the right answer and can't wait to share it, Peter shouts out: "You are the Messiah, the son of the living God!"
Good answer-and, since timing is everything, Peter's reward is a lot. As part of the constant backfilling that constitutes the gospels' justification for what the church was already doing, Matthew's gospel has Jesus tell Peter that, because of his faith, he (Peter) is now the rock on which he (Jesus) will build his new community (that is, the church). I don't think he had in mind all these copes, mitres and cathedrals, but never mind. Jesus also tells him that "what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven".
Ok, I'll bite. What does that mean? What kinds of things might usefully be bound or loosed now and for all eternity? One could read this with legal overtones, giving Peter (and his fellow apostles and successors) the right to decide who's in the church and who's out, what are and are not the laws of God, and even who gets through the pearly gates and who gets to go down to see Old Hob. But I think that's a misreading-a profound, disturbing, self-serving, long-lived and deeply entrenched misreading.
No, for me binding and loosing apply to such things as wounds and chains. We bind wounds, to enable healing. We loose chains, to enable freedom. On these two actions hang the second of the two great commandments: love thy neighbor as thyself. If each of us, and anything calling itself church, were to concentrate on these two tasks: binding the wounds to body, mind and spirit; and loosing the mind-forg'd manacles and bands of solid iron that chain us down, we'd be close to what Jesus in this gospel has in mind for his followers, churched or otherwise, to be doing.
If what we have, as church, is not in some way or other dedicated to such ministry, we might be missing something.Yours,
