21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Aug.

24, 2014
(Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20)

Shebna was identified as the master of the palace. That meant
he ran the affairs of the royal household for Judahs king, Hezekiah.
Because Assyria was threatening to destroy Judah, after already
having destroyed Israel, Judah began looking around for allies,
including Egypt. Isaiah opposed such foreign alliances and warned
against them. Shebna, as master of the palace, would have been in on
all the royal negotiations. The year was approximately 711 BC.
Isaiah pronounces, in the name of the Lord, that Shebna is going
to lose his high position of influence and be replaced by Eliakim. All
of Shebnas former authority will be handed over to Eliakim, who will
take over all of Shebnas former duties. The clearest modern analogy
(on a lesser scale to be sure) that springs to mind is this 40
th

anniversary since the events of Watergate ended in 1974. When the
power was taken from presidential domestic advisor John Erlichman
and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and given to Gen. Alexander Haig,
the fall for Erlichman and Haldeman was as great as Shebnas. Those
two men had the power of determining who got to see President Nixon
and who didnt.
In the same way Eliakim succeeded Shebna as the one who
determined who got the kings ear and who didnt. The key of the
House of David was the control over the palace of the king. It meant
both the power to admit some and to shut out others. The holder of the
keys had great power.
In the Gospel, Jesus goes with his disciples into the region of
Caesarea Philippi, which is about 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee.
The region of Caesarea Philippi was high above sea level (9100 feet)
and likely a refuge from the summers heat. Because the Sea of
Galilee is below sea level (about 700 feet), it can get quite warm in
summer, so a trip into the high country was perfectly understandable.
Scholars wonder about the question Jesus poses to his disciples
about who people think the Son of Man is. Whether, by this point in
the Gospel, they had begun to think of Jesus as the Son of Man is
unclear. The Son of Man is a term that emerges from Daniel 7:13
which speaks of one like a Son of Man, thus an apocalyptic figure of
some unknown moment in the future. That makes him similar to
contemporary expectations of a coming Messiah. The prophet Ezekiel
also used Son of Man to refer to mere mortals, without the apocalyptic
overtones of Daniel. In the eight previous references to the Son of
Man in Matthew, Jesus was always the speaker and usually was
referring directly to himself. So his question to the disciples does not
exactly come out of the blue. They know he has been speaking about
the Son of Man.
The disciples mention possibilities that have been suggested by
their contemporaries. Maybe even some of them thought the same
thing, pointing to John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the
prophets. Then Jesus asks Peter: Who do you say I am? Peter
responds: the Christ, the Son of the living God. With that Jesus
informs him that he is blessed because he has received this from the
Father.
After renaming him with the play on words of petros for Peter and
petra for rock Jesus grants him the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
The power he was given has been compared to that of a chief rabbi,
who was given the power to make authoritative decisions within the
church community.
Difficult to explain is the tradition that James became the leader
of the Jerusalem church. We have no way of knowing how or why
Peter ended up in Rome. That he died in Rome is fairly certain
according to tradition. In the end this whole passage raises many more
questions than it solves.


Fr. Lawrence Hummer