21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 22.19-23, Psalm 137.1-3,6-8 r.8, Romans 11.33-36, Matthew 16.13-20
It can be difficult to understand the criteria by which Jesus chose his followers. The Gospels seem almost to go out of their way to press home how lacking in faith, charity and understanding they were, and what very poor instruments Jesus chose to build his father’s kingdom. Our first reading refers to the replacement of one unsatisfactory royal official with another. The writer previously hints at Shebna’s overweening ambition—pride coming before a fall—an experience with which peter was to become unhappily familiar. Ambition and power struggles were not unknown among the Twelve and have been part of the fabric of church life down the centuries.
Where does power in the church truly lie? Power has sometimes been equated with ordination, in a way that can render the clergy tyrannical and the laity infantilised. But power struggles are part of our fallen nature, and even in the most apparently collaborative faith communities cliques can form, “inner circles” whose members make it impossible for alternative voices to be heard or others’ efforts to bear fruit. The reluctance of parishioners to take up appropriate responsibilities is also a familiar feature of some parish life. We can be tempted to talk about the church as if it were split into “us” and “them”, forgetting that it is part of the call of all the baptised, not just theologians or the hierarchy, to develop the church’s understanding and practice of our faith.
The body of Christ is the whole body, in which we play distinctive roles, but no one is ever just a faceless number. The authority each one of us has derives not from our holiness or our wisdom but from the gift of faith given to us by the Holy Spirit. Each one of us holds a key to the kingdom.
