Pentecost XII
In one of the non-Gospel readings appointed for this Sunday, Paul writes to the Romans: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God -- what is good and acceptable and perfect."
Tossing away our common notion of 'perfect' for the moment (Paul generally means 'complete'), and turning to the Gospel reading, we find questions of identity to the fore.
Jesus asks the disciples what the word is on the street re: other figures known to the people, and who/which is this 'Son of Man' figure. Important person! They try on a few known characters -- John the Baptist in the wilderness might be important; Elijah and Jeremiah certainly were chief among the prophets; that's the word. People are talking, trying to understand where these people all fit together in the proclaiming of the kingdom of God. "Ah, "says Jesus, "but who do you think I am?"
Ah, says Peter: you are something else quite different. Like those, but also Other. Anointed.
Often called 'the Confession of Peter' - which occasion gets its own Feast Day in the church calendar - this text is also familiar to anyone who has had experience with the Roman Catholic Church's history. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome (the Pope!) has often been made to rest on this seeming endorsement. You are the Rock! And on this Rock I will build my Church!
Simon gets his nickname -- The Rock (Petros) -- and a more simplistic reading would seem to find Jesus giving the keys to the celestial car to Simon the Rock. You've got power, man! It's serious! Almost like a reward for guessing a secret identity. Take the keys! Take it out for a spin!
Reading this 'reward mentality' into the story is almost as unhelpful as reading the primacy of the Bishop of Rome (Simon Peter's successors after his martyrdom) into the keys to the kingdom image.
I mean, the point might simply be ...that glimpsing, naming, and responding to the kingdom of God among us (Emmanuel-God-with-us) - discerning God's will, so to speak - gives us all a heck of a lot of power.
It is simply naming a powerful spiritual truth -- and a hard but invaluable lesson to learn -- that whatever we bind and grip tightly is in fact held on to tightly, likewise with that which we hold carelessly or easily. What are we holding on to that might be let go?
In what of all this is actually the will of God? (The way things are when they head toward healing and wholeness?) After all, to read this as a reward or power trip for Peter is not terribly spiritually edifying for anyone. Power trips are the way of this world. Be not conformed to this world and its ways, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Bind what needs to be bound together; loose what needs to be set loose. Spiritual things and temporal things are intimately connected.
The point of the (/any) church is to embody this healing, transforming mission of divine will in this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds in Christ Jesus -- this is what has happened to Peter. Peter's encounter with Jesus is more important than articulating a guess about his identity -- this encounter transforms him and renews his mind with what Paul elsewhere calls the Mind of Christ.
These sorts of solid encounters with divine reality -- encounters with what is truly solid and lasting in a changing cosmos -- are what calls people out of their ways and means ('church' in Greek means 'those called out') to be transformed, and to participate in the transforming of all around them.
Buildings are not ultimately solid, not even when made out of Rocks. It is the way of the world that looks for solidity where nothing lasting is to be found. Be not conformed to this way, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind by encounters with the Mind of Christ.
In this, is power. In this, is to touch eternity. In this, is what it means to last.