Extra-Ordinary Time
28 June 2014
For those of you who are interested in the Church's seasonal colours you may well notice that we've now gone Green. In fact, after all the very busy time since before Christmas - with our blues and reds and whites and golds - through Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter you may be interested to note that we will be sticking with green for quite a while now. This season over the summer and leading up to Advent the Church is pleased to call: 'Ordinary Time'. So, I hope you are all feeling properly Ordinary and are prepared to remain Ordinary until the Autumn.
The official name for this season is Trinity. We are actually in the Second Sunday after our celebration of Holy Trinity now. Although, just to confuse things, we also celebrate today Saints Peter and Paul. So we could also have chosen Red (the colour of Saints and Martyrs). But that's another story! In fact, there are four main Church seasons: Hilary - in January; named after Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers whose saint's day is January 13th. Then there's Easter... Trinity... and finally Michaelmas. The feast of St Michael and All Angels - 29th September. Some of us may recognise those names as used, among others, by some of the longer-established universities, and also the Legal System.
The thing is, and you are probably rapidly reaching this conclusion yourselves, if you did not know it already, that whenever they are used, wherever they are used, in Universities, in the Judiciary, they are all rooted in the Church's use. Universities were created by the Church; nearly all learned people at some point in late antiquity and early medieval period received their learning from the Church. If you were lucky enough to go to school or university in those days - they were Church foundations. Meanwhile, where the Law is concerned, you would have studied and learned to practice your legal profession through the Church. And this is where it gets really interesting and how it relates to the Gospel passage found in Matthew 16.13-19. You see, not unlike the ancient Judaistic understanding, Christians from the outset understood that the right way of behaving in society was God-given and God-governed. In the Jewish and Christian traditional understanding no-one else was allowed to pronounce on matters of right and wrong except God and the Wisdom that was at the very heart of humankind's moral relationship with God. Well, when I say 'no-one'... no-one except those ordained by God to pronounce on matters of law and morality in human society. Which is why only those sufficiently practiced, proficient and professed in the teachings of the Church would be allowed to engage in such work. (Hence words like professor and profession.) And they could not act except under authority: The authority of God, of Christ and God's representatives on earth: The Pope, the King, the Queen. This, as we know carries on right down to our own day.
Which is why it seems to me slightly odd that we have our reading today. It's understandable that we celebrate St Peter and St Paul around this time - for which this reading is appropriate for St Peter. But it is nonetheless a reading that takes place within Ordinary Time. Because, actually, what Matthew has to tell us as regards Jesus' discussion with Peter and the disciples is far from Ordinary. It is so momentous, yet often goes unnoticed by the likes of you and me from one year to the next. Not, perhaps as momentous as those events which take place at Christmas and Easter and Pentecost, but nonetheless of extraordinary importance to us. We the people of Christ. Christians. For, in our reading we hear that Jesus is authorising Peter and the disciples - and through them the likes of you and me - to act on God's behalf. What is bound on earth is bound also in heaven. What is loosed on earth is also loosed on heaven. A wonderful poetic phrase but, in some ways, not a phrase that Jesus plucks out of the air. The notion of binding and loosing on behalf of God was a well-established legal concept in ancient judaism. It gave those who organised society through God's Law on God's behalf the right and the authority to do so.
So, what Jesus was doing in our reading was setting up an entirely different and parallel religious community: with the right to have God-given authority over God's creation. And this, completely separately from the decidedly rickety - Pharasaic and Temple-based Jewish authorities of the day. It was a daring, risky and ultimately lethal Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Christ and his followers from the political and religious structures of his day. An act of rebellion. A refusal to submit to many - though not all - of the religious, legal and social practices imposed upon a beleaguered people by people who, in Jesus' terms, no longer had the authority to act in God's name. No wonder we hear so often in the New Testament of the Ruling Jewish religious and political elite of the day getting 'a bit cross' with Jesus and his followers.
So, what do we understand from this for us today? Well, first of all, we can see that - contrary to what some people would dearly have us, society and the media believe - Christianity the faith that Jesus founded and inaugurated in his life and work - had, and still has, a profound effect on the world in which we live. Secondly - when people say the Church is irrelevant and should not go round poking its nose into politics and society in general - they are basically deluding themselves. Jesus has given his church every right to take an interest in such matters and, as far as I can tell, our authority to comment and act has not yet been taken away from us by God. And finally, even we ourselves - little us - have every right and authority to pray for things, to intercede with God, and to seek change and the greater good for others. Because that right and authority is God-given and is not about to be taken away from us - just so long as we continue to practice, seek to become proficient in, and profess the faith of Christ crucified, risen and ascended.
Amen.