August 17, 2008
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
Sacred Sorting
In today’s reading Peter is put forward as the one who “gets it “ about Jesus before anyone else. It was not a function of personal insight or brilliance, but rather a revelation. Think of it as Peter’s personal burning bush.
As a result he gets the “keys of the kingdom” so to speak and moves to the head of the line in Discipleship class.
So, clearly Peter’s confession of faith at Cesearea Philippi is a big deal and it is what earns Peter his new name…It’s changed from Simon bar Jonah, meaning Simon son of Jonah to Peter. Receiving a new name as a result of a spiritual insight or on the heels of spiritual struggle was a common practice in ancient Jewish times. It is in part where our tradition of naming at the time of Baptism arises, when we ask, “By what name shall this child be known?” or in the Catholic tradition where a confirmation name is taken as a symbol of one’s new identity in Christ.
Following closely on Peter’s blurting out what the Spirit laid on his heart, Matthew has Jesus make a reference to the Church. Even though all the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke as well as the often times odd one out, John’s Gospel record this event, only Matthew connects it to the life of the church. Indeed the ONLY reference in any of the Gospels, the only appearance of the word CHURCH comes in this passage and in the 18th Chapter.
And here is where we begin to focus our attention as the text builds very carefully.
After Peter is called the Rock, Jesus says the powers of Hades will not prevail against it. IN other translations it’s called the powers of death. Back when it was still politically acceptable to sing Onward Christian Soldiers, we could harmonize about how the gates of hell will never, ‘gainst that church prevail. We have Christ’s own promise and that cannot fail.
The passage sets the church in the context of conflict; the conflict of the later part of the first century of the Common Era when the oppression of the Romans was at its zenith and the Jewish community struggled with the spread of Jesus message to the Gentiles.
A contemporary analogy is the church’s call to prophetic witness in matters of peace and justice; for example calling for an end to the war, advocating for equal marriage and ending racism.
So, it’s in the context standing against oppression that the next verse, usually lost or ignored on the heels of Peter’s Confession, comes. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Everything in this morning’s lesson and indeed most of what’s in this chapter culminate in this verse on binding and loosing.
These verses are the foundation of ethical discernment for the emerging Christian community and for Christians of all time, according to Mark Alan Powell. And they refer to a practice of determining the application of scriptural commandments for a specific situation. Jewish rabbis “bound” the law when they determined that a commandment was applicable to a particular situation, and they “loosed” the law when they determined that it was not applicable under certain specific circumstances.
If we were just talking about the Ten Commandments it would be fairly easy, but there are actually 613 Commandments in Hebrew Scripture. 613 times a Thou Shalt or Thou Shalt not proscribes behavior. Needless to say it was common for arguments to break out and for disagreements to ensue about how certain laws should be understood.
Here’s an example. Is one guilty of stealing if one finds something, and keeps it without searching for the rightful owner. When is such a search required, how extensive must it be?
The Talmud states, “If a fledgling bird is found within fifty cubits of dovecote, it belongs to the owner of the dovecote. If it is found outside the limits of 50 cubits, it belongs to the person who finds it. (Bava Batra 23b).
It occurs to me that some of our forbears in faith had WAY too much time on their hands.
But anyway, this business of binding and loosing is, in this text, given to Peter, and in the 18th chapter I spoke of a moment ago it is given to all the disciples. This connection to Church and to you and to me as disciples of a different age is, according to Matthew about binding and loosing.
We have the sacred responsibility of figuring out what this book means, what commandments we are going to hold on to and which ones we will let go of. Most of us, myself included, have no idea what the other 603 are after the Big Ten, but we are clearly in trouble with bacon and football.
If we took all 613 commandments every woman in this place would have to share extremely personal information about her body on a regular basis because women were considered unclean during their monthly cycle.
This text is about the sacred responsibility of figuring out what this book means, how we are going to interpret it, understand it and preach about it and live it. And while it is Peter who gets the place in the front of the line in the process, it is quickly given to the other disciples in the 18th chapter. And if it is given to eleven it is given to us as well.
Binding and loosing the law is not about dismissing scripture or picking and choosing the parts we like while ignoring the parts we don’t, though Christians of every theological persuasion are guilty of that from time to time.
Rather we are to take it all seriously if not literally and discover it’s meaning for us today. It’s is challenging territory to traverse.
Folks feel pretty clear in their belief that killing is wrong, but I can tell you from experience that belief is put to the test in the intensive care unit when a family agonizes about whether or not to discontinue life support and they wonder if they are killing their loved one. They struggle to understand what that commandment means for them in those moments of confusion and pain.
It’s easy to take a stand against stem cell research or other medical interventions that make use of fetal tissue until the promise of a cure is there for someone you love. As Director of Pastoral Care at a teaching and research hospital I had a front row seat on the Ethics Committee and I can honestly say that the greatest debates about medical interventions were deeply personal. It was never an academic debate about what was right or wrong or a dispassionate conversation about life support. It was real people, real families and real medical professionals trying to figure out the right thing.
As a pastor and as a chaplain, it is clear to me that our forbears in faith could not foresee the complexity of medical decision-making in a technological world. And so, it falls to us as people of faith to figure out what we believe.
In a similar fashion, it’s easy to be dogmatic in a belief that homosexuality is wrong until someone you love tells you they are gay. I know some of you have struggled as I refer to Renee as my wife, preferring a more generic term like partner or friend, yet we are legally married. We went to a church, with a license in hand and were married by a UCC colleague. The United Church of Christ is a leader in the push for marriage equality. It takes courage for people to stand against generations of religious “tradition” and stand with a new understanding of the eternal word for our time. My own faith journey has taken me through the struggle with texts I heard all my life that condemned homosexuality, and because I take the authority of Scripture seriously I needed to figure out what I believed not only as a Christian but also as a preacher.
It’s easy to hold on to the belief that divorce is wrong…until it’s your marriage or that of someone you love that unravels beyond repair. It’s easy to be dogmatic about abortion until that very personal struggle comes home in your teenage daughter.
Whatever one may believe about the justifiability of the war in Iraq it becomes a different and personal matter when it is your child that is called up from the Reserves to Active Duty. There is a scene in Fahrenheit 911 where Michael Moore approaches members of the House and Senate who voted for the war and asks them if their children have signed up for active duty and were heading out to be part of the great Just war.
I am not talking about situational ethics here. It’s not about making it up as we go along doing what ever seems easiest at the time. When the hot button issues of our day come home to us in deeply personal ways, we are thrown into the ancient conversation of binding and loosing. It means we have to figure out what the Bible has to say and how we understand it. It is a sacred responsibility that belongs to us as the church. It doesn’t mean that we can make up an answer that suits us and it doesn’t mean that it is ours to figure out on our own.
It is a matter of discernment for the Church. Mark Allan Powel writes, “Matthew’s gospel provides a hermeneutic, a context, that recognizes the priority of certain scripture mandates. These include the Golden Rule, recognition of the divine preference for mercy over sacrifice, a prioritization of love for God and neighbor and an identification of the weightier matters of the law as justice mercy and faithfulness.
In a nutshell it means that it’s up to us. While churches do not usually have assemblies where they vote specifically on whether a particular scripture text is applicable to a certain type of situation, discussions regarding such applicability have been in the background for many formal and informal decisions.
Powell notes that certain church bodies have bound the commandment against murder as applicable to situations it was not originally intended to address. The virtually unanimous opposition to slavery in global Christianity represents a bounding of scripture, as recognition that the overall witness of scripture should be interpreted as denouncing behavior that was permitted in biblical times.
Churches have bound and loosed commandments, redefining their range of application without dismissing their original intent. Be fruitful and multiply, the first commandment given by God to humans is not read as text that encourages reproduction without limit. Jesus prohibition against saving money for the future has also been loosed for modern application, saving for retirement and children’s education.
The responsibility for discerning the meaning of Scripture and seeking its guidance for contemporary life situations, whether it is bound or loosed, belongs to the church, never to an individual and that includes the clergy. It is a community responsibility which every member of the church shares.
In the UCC, the local church shares it with the region and with the Synod. The Synod, a gathering of church members from all over the country come together and seek the guidance and direction of Scripture and Holy Spirit to speak to the issues of our day with faithfulness and integrity.
It is not “Cleveland” who makes the decisions and hands them down; it is the gathered members of the church. In fact staff members from the National Office are not even voting members of Synod. The resolutions are voted upon by delegates from every region and our own area minister Mike Penn Strah and conference minister Davida Crabtree are just a few of the faces that came together to seek God’s way and will, to discern how the law will be bound or loosed.
Gathering in this place, being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ is about joining this exciting, challenging and life giving conversation. As the United Church of Christ we have a distinct voice in the Christian community, a voice that needs to be heard with clarity and integrity. It’s up to us to decide what we believe and what we are going to do about it. It’s our sacred responsibility.