August 21, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Isaiah 22:19-12 + Romans 11: 33-36 + Matthew 16:13-20
As many times as I have heard these verses and studied them,
something new always pops out when I sit still long enough to listen.
This time around, two things came to my attention:
only in Matthew’s Gospel is the word “Church” used with Peter’s confession,
making it perfectly clear that this is not about Peter, but about us.
The second thing that came to mind was that this business of the keys
is about authority not power.
The two are not the same.
The problem with the man in the first reading is that he confused the two.
He had authority, but he thought it was all about power,
so he used his authority to exercise power for himself,
and that was the end of him.
This year, and especially last week,
we are celebrating one hundred years of what Matthew speaks of in his Gospel.
We sit in this grand church made holy
by the sacrifices of those who put it here and our own to keep it here.
The men and women who were here one hundred years ago may well have imagined and hoped that we would be here, but I wonder if they thought it would look like this?
This celebration of our centennial is about more than looking back with wonder
at how they did it, how they got around, how they managed to survive on this inland sea of grass, and what they managed to build.
This celebration of our centennial eventually must lead us to look ahead at what it will take to have another celebration one hundred years from now.
The reason we are here with a past to celebrate is because those men and women were not part-time Catholics, and matters of convenience never entered their thinking when it came to their faith and how it was celebrated.
Closer to the early church and the ideal of Jesus Christ, there were free riders
because membership was expensive.
It offered sacrifice and stigma, but also significance and satisfaction.
In the past hundred years, we have accumulated a lot free riders
who slow things down and lessened the efficacy of the mission.
Calling oneself a Christian is not the same as calling oneself a disciple.
In this part of the world, being a “Christian” is expected and easy,
but becoming a true Disciple of Christ is something else again.
It means being part of the mission, digging into your pockets and into your calendar.
Believing in Christ is not what is required.
Believing Christ is.
Those old timers hitched up the team, loaded up the kids, and took off across streams and grasslands when they heard that Mass was going to happen somewhere.
I doubt that they cared one bit about how long it took, whether Father had an accent, or what kind of music there might be.
Christ built them into “church”, and that church is what we are.
Day by day we ought to worry about whether or not we are worthy of what we have inherited.
We feel proud of having built one big church.
They built ten times as many in two decades.
What those men and women had to pass on
was authority, not power. They had no power.
The trouble these days is that we do,
and then we get more interested in power than in authority.
When that happens, everything is more important than faith and church,
because we want more power.
And so, getting a better job and making more money
is more important than what we do with it.
We educate our children first so that they can make money, be secure and have stuff
if there is any time left, and it’s convenient, they can learn about church and faith.
Authority is not won by promotion, but by prayer and tears.
Authority is maintained by self-surrender and courageous sacrifice.
We recognize people with authority because they have suffered, sacrificed, and risen up with courage from challenge and defeat.
We recognize people with authority
because they are not interested in themselves first.
In the synagogue of his home town,
the people recognized authority in Jesus, not power.
They listened and some followed him because of it.
That is what Jesus would give to us,
and that is what church will be built upon for the future:
sacrifice, suffering, courage, and prayer.
These are the ingredients of authority,
exactly what Jesus has to offer those who recognize him as Peter did.
Take a look at the cross again. No hint of power there,
only authentic authority, against which nothing can prevail.