Week 21

 

 

'Be yourself. Everybody else is taken. And no one else can do the things you do,' sings Melinda Schneider. The lyrics of this lovely song, composed for Melinda's dying father, affirm some fairly obvious truths. Each of us is graced by God and entrusted with a particular mission. Jesus was uniquely graced and uniquely entrusted with a mission to make God present among us. He was utterly true to himself and his mission and he allowed others time to discover for themselves his real identity and the nature of his God given mission. If the mission was to succeed, then 'people' needed to look beyond their preconceptions about him and accept him as God's anointed one, as son of the living God.

 

Even a surface reading of the gospel reveals that Jesus' identity is a key issue for Matthew's community, as it is for us. In the very first verse of the gospel, he is presented as the anointed one of God, the Messiah or Christ. Before his birth, the reader knows him as 'Emmanuel', God with us. What the narrator asserts at the outset, certain characters in the story come slowly to understand as the narrative unfolds. Jesus' fearless teaching and his healing ministry bring the crowd to recognize him as a prophet in the tradition of Elijah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist.

 

The power of God at work in Peter leads him to a deeper understanding of Jesus' identity. No matter that Peter has faltered in the past and will falter again, even to the point of denying any knowledge of or association with Jesus. Insight is a gift, and God can work wherever there is openness and goodwill. Peter has both in abundance. Jesus declares him 'blessed' on account of his openness to God's revelation. In a characteristic play on words, he names Peter as the 'rock' on which he will establish his new community, his 'ecclesia' or 'church'. Rock is an ambiguous gospel image: rock denotes solidity and reliability and yet when seed falls on rocky ground it fails to thrive. There is a caution here.

 

As leader, Peter is entrusted with the very particular mission of unlocking for the new community the treasures of their tradition. In next week's gospel story, Peter the 'rock' will become a 'stumbling block' to the realization of the mission, a reminder that leadership has nothing to do with status or control and everything to do with listening and truly hearing the word of God.