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Transcript of Homily
Uh-oh... he took notes for this sermon...
that usually means long.
..I don’t think it should be too long,
I’ll try.
Not to make it too long.
But... there are quite a number of ways
to look at this gospel.
First of all there’s the idea of binding
and losing.
Rev. Know-It-All comments on “binding
and losing”, that it was a phrase among rabbis to bind and to loose.
That it didn’t mean you could change
the law.... but you applied and interpreted it.
There was stricter and less strict interpretations
of law.
And that was something that rabbis did.
In a fact when Jesus said to Peter, “To
you I give the keys of Heaven, whatever you bind on earth is bound in Heaven.”
In a sense... He made Peter the rabbit
to the whole world.
He made a rabbi for the whole world.
Someone who would...interpret what God
meant.
And it doesn’t change it, but... applies
consistent.
Also... that idea of the keys to the kingdom
and we have the first reading about the transfer of the keys ot the house
of David.
In the royal house of David there was clearly,
what the called an albite... not an albite, but an albite, someone who
is over the house.
And it would be a grand viscera, a prime
minister, the kingdom of David had a prime minister, it was a continuing
and harisitaring position..
And Jesus appointed a prime minister for
His household, the church.
And it’s also an continuing office, turned
out to be a very consistent continuing office.
All those things... come into this passage.
However, a few months ago or weeks ago,
there was a picture of me in the bulletin standing in the gates of Hell,
remember that?
Our pastor standing in the gates of Hell...
Well, last February, I had the privilege
to go to the Holy Land and I have never seen this before, they took us
way up north, and what is actually Lebanon, but is now occupied by Iranian
soldiers, it was...
it was a little nerve racking because
on either side of the road there were signs that said, “Caution: mine
field.”
Soo...
Well, they took us up to this place called
“Bonyauce”, which is the source of the River Jordan.
And the Jordan springs out of a rock.
It is a huge rock.
It is about the size of this church, but
about five times as long.
And in that rock there is a cave, and that’s
the cave from which this spring originally flowed.
The ancients didn’t really have a clear
picture of, of life after death..
But they talked about the underworld...
where people’s souls had sort of a shadowy existence.
They called it hades, or in translation,
into earlier English, hell.
It doesn’t mean by what we mean by hell,
a place with little fellows in red union suits with pitchforks.
That’s not what it’s meant.
It was a place simply like Limbo..
It was a kind of limbo.
A place of shadowy existence.
And the ancients believed this cave had
no bottom.
And it went down into this underworld,
this netherworld.
And it was a very sacred place for them
Now the family of king Herod were devout
Jews... when they were in Israel
When they weren’t in Israel, they weren’t
so devout.
So this was across the border in what is
today Lebanon.
And so they, Herod, the grandson of Herod,
had built... Herod Phillipes, had built a beautiful temple right in the
mouth of this cave, dedicated to the Devine Caesar.
The ancient Romans believe that their rulers
were touched with the spark of divinity they thought they were divine...
then they assassinate one and appoint to another divine emperor
So... Phillips wanting to make sure he
was on the right political side of (? ???) Power built a beautiful temple.
To the divine Caesar... and it was right
in the mouth of this cave from which the River Jordan sprang.
And it was impressive... this beautiful
city of gleaming temples that just evoke the power of the family of Herod,
and evoke the power of the Roman emperors..
..and Peter and Jesus and the others...
in the eyes of the great powers... was inconsiciousal flees.
Anyone of these people... Herod or Augustace
could just squash them lik ea bug.
With impurity.
They were nobody.
We celebrate the feast of the Assumption
of our blessed Mother and the text talked about the quote of the Magnifica,
and in that text in the line, “He had looked at the lowliest servant”.
That word in Greek is interesting... it
really means “ordinary” in this.
We talked about this.
Ordinariness.
When Jesus says, “Come to me, I am meek
and humble of Heart”
He uses that same word, it means ordinary.
If you could go in a time machine and go
to Nazareth, you wouldn’t be able to pick Jesus and Mary out of a crowd
of two.
They were so ordinary...
In our world we exhaled the great presidents
and prime ministers and important people.. And movie actors.
But the Gospel of Christ exhaust the ordinary.
It’s the ordinary that is important to
God.
We think that, “oh no, you gotta be powerful.
You gotta be famous, you gotta be rich.”
God’s eyes is on the sparrow, not the
eagle.
Ordinariness, God loves the ordinary.
Like you and like me.
And when I realize how ordinary I am...
then the marvel of God’s love is even richer.
So...who was Peter?
He was nobody, he was ordinary.
He worked as a fisherman for a living..
I don’t think you get much more ordinary
than that.
I love the scene in the bible where Jesus
is walking along the shore after His public ministry has begun and there
was so many people crowding around Him.
Because it was rumor He could heal the
sick.
He asked Peter to get into the boat and
so they could shove off a few feet, so He could speak to the crowd.
Peter did and He wanted to reward Peter..
So what He did, He said, “cast out”
and of course Peter...
Peter was a professional...
And he said, to Jesus, “Well Rabbi,
if you want me to, I’ve been fishing all night. Not that that means anything.”
He caught so many fish that the boat began
to sink.
And I love the scene, he falls on his knees
in the boats, that boat was full of flopping fish.
Peter must have been ways deep in the fish...
That’s a pretty funny scene.
He was just an ordinary guy.
He ran off a few times, chickened out,
always saying, “I’m gonna be there for ya”
then he’ll say, “who, me?”
Well, you know the story....
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