22nd Sunday A

Today’s gospel is a continuation of last week’s and a closer look at the two of them together begins to reveal a very interesting pattern. It’s no accident that Matthew, having presented Peter last week as the rock on which the Church is built, has Jesus say to him today, ‘Get behind me Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’ The ‘rock’ has, within a few lines, become a stumbling block and, in presenting us with this paradox Matthew is saying something very important about the dangers and demands of leadership in the Christian community. Because today’s story is not the only occasion when something like this happens to Peter. He may be the rock on which the Church is built, but the Gospels are littered with examples of how, time after time, Peter gets things wrong. And this pattern is no accident. It’s a major theme of the New Testament. Today’s example with its ‘this must not happen to you Lord’ is a classic one, but there are many others.

There is, for example, the washing of the feet at the Last Supper when Peter refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, to be told that, if Jesus does not wash his feet, Peter can have no part in him. And when Jesus tells the apostles that night that they will all run away and abandon him, Peter protests loudly in front of everyone that even if all the rest leave him, he will never do so, only a few hours later to deny three times that he even knew Jesus. And then there is Peter’s assault on the high priest’s servant in the Garden of Olives, an action which went against everything Jesus stood for and drew from him the words, ‘Peter, put your sword away. Am I not to drink the cup that the father has given me,’ words clearly reminiscent of today’s story. And there are other examples, too, like when Peter, missing the whole point of the transfiguration wants to set up three tents or when, in the midst of the storm on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus says to him, ‘You have so little faith Peter, why do you doubt?’

But powerful as these examples of Peter’s inability to grasp the full meaning of what Jesus was saying and doing are, for me the most powerful of all is in Chapter ten of the Acts of the Apostles. There Peter has a vision in which he sees a big sheet filled with every kind of animal, bird and reptile being lowered to the ground. God then tells Peter to kill and eat, to which Peter replies – and remember, this is God he is speaking to – ‘Certainly not Lord, I have never yet eaten anything profane or unclean.’ Peter may be the rock on which the Church is built, but God has to tell him, not once, but three times, ‘What God has made clean you have no right to call unclean’ before he is willing to accept it, the whole vision, of course, being about the fact that the Gospel is not just for the Jews but for everyone. And even after the debate around this issue has been resolved at what is called the Council of Jerusalem in 48AD, Paul on one famous occasion has to reprimand Peter for failing to implement the decision made by the apostles in Jerusalem and refusing to eat with Gentiles. So what’s all this telling us?

Well, it’s flagging up for us some of the issues surrounding authority and the way it is exercised in the Church. A person may hold a position of authority, for example, but it does not mean they are always right. And even when they are right, Jesus’ comments on the religious leaders of his own day are valid in every age: Do what they tell you because they occupy the seat of Moses, but don’t do what they do because the do not practise what they preach.’ The dangers of power and authority are always with us and in the second reading today St Paul puts his finger on their root cause when he tells the people of Rome, a city built on power, not to model themselves on the world around them,the world of the Roman Empire, but to let their behaviour change, modelled by their new mind. And yet, sadly but not perhaps surprisingly, this has not always happened in the Church, where despite everything Jesus says about wearing longer tassles and broader philacteries, people in every age have succumbed to the temptations of power. Instead of modelling themselves on their new mind, the mind of Christ Jesus who came, not to be served, but to serve, Church leaders down through the ages have ignored Paul’s words and patently modelled themselves on the world around them. And so bishops and cardinals have, at certain moments in history, become princes, living in palaces. Popes have become earthly rulers with great lands and the armies needed to defend them. And where, for example, did we get titles like ‘My Lord’ or Monsignor from except from the very world around us Paul warns against. That’s why – if I can let you into a little secret – earlier this year I turned down the bishop’s invitation to become a Canon. Apart from the fact that I am far too young for such a thing I have alway been against honours in the Church and, having confirmed with bishop Cunningham that that was what it was, had to remain faithful to that conviction.

So where is all this taking us? Well, if all we did was reflect on it and understand it, that itself would be worth doing I think. But there is more to it than that. One of the great challenges of our time is Church Unity and at the heart of the Ecumenical Movement is the issue of authority and how it is exercised. Many other Churches, perhaps not yet in Scotland, but certainly in other parts of the world, Anglicans, Orthodox, Lutherans and so on can foresee the day when unity under the bishop of Rome would be possible. But for that to happen, the way the papacy operates would have to change radically. And it can do so. Both Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI have recognized this and spoken about it on various occasions. The papacy has changed many times over the centuries, and it can do so again. In its present form it is quite recent and does not have to be the way it is now.

For this to happen, of course, their will have to be death and resurrection. Or, like Peter, when faced with this reality, are we going to say, ‘This must not happen, Lord.’



BIDDING PRAYERS

We pray again this week for Pope Benedict XVI. He is the latest in a long line of Popes going back two thousand years and, like many of those who have gone before him, he is called to lead the Church through challenging and sometimes difficult times. And so we ask God to give him all the blessings and graces he needs for this task and in particular that he will not succumb to the temptations of power which go hand in hand with the office he holds...................Lord hear us

And we also pray again this week for our own bishop, John. He is a humble man who did not seek the office he holds. He often talks, in fact, about how reluctant he was to take it on. And so we ask God to give him the courage he needs to be our bishop. We pray that he will be blessed with the gift of wisdom, enabling him to recognize and respond to the movement of God in our diocese so that, together, we can embrace whatever death and resurrection means at this time...............Lord hear us

When Peter tells Jesus in today’s Gospel that ‘This’ death and resurrection, ‘must not happen to him,’ he is speaking for many in the Church today who want to go backwards; who are afraid of what lies in the future; who prefer not to face the realities of the modern world, with its call to radical change; to death and resurrection; to lose our life so that we can find it; to take up our cross and follow Jesus. And so we ask God to lead us beyond this fear...............Lord hear us

The fear we speak of is rooted in our failure to understand that God does not think as we do. ‘Get behind me Satan’ Jesus says to Peter. ‘You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’ And so we pray for the wisdom we need to let go of our own thinking, move beyond what seems obvious to us and allow the Spirit to transform the way we think, until, in the words of St Paul, we have in us ‘the mind that is in Christ Jesus.’..Lord hear us

And we pray for all those who govern our country at both local and national level. The temptations of power are almost irresistible for many who originally enter politics with good intentions and a genuine desire to do something good and worthwhile. And so we pray for them all, especially those who represent us whether in East Ayrshire Council, the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, the Westminster Parliament in London or the European Parliament in Brussels..................Lord hear us

In the first reading this week the prophet Jeremiah complains about how hard it is to be a prophet. ‘I am a daily laughing stock’ he says, ‘everybody’s butt. And so we pray for all in positions of leadership or authority who are criticised no matter what they do. We pray for the insight to recognize that, by demanding perfection from those who can never deliver it, it is we ourselves who set them up for the inevitable failure we then complain about.............Lord hear us