Mystic Congregational Church, UCC
Mystic, Connecticut
Sermon from August 21, 2005
“Sacred Responsibility”
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
Scriptures:
Isaiah 51:1-6
Matthew 16:13-20

I learned in seminary that a sermon is supposed to have a cute little story for the introduction and then three clearly distinct points and a conclusion that ties it all up in a nice little package that makes sense.  If one is so inclined, a few corny jokes may also be inserted at strategic points. 

I don’t have a cute little story for the opening of this sermon.  In truth, I’m not sure I have three distinct points either and I have no idea if it’s all going to make sense at the end.  Now that I have been here for a while, I feel safe in confessing to you that  I flunked preaching.  Twice. 

I really tried to come up with a story or a joke to get us into today’s text, but alas, nothing came to me.  So, I am going to just plunge us in , ask you to swim with me and hope for the best, asking your indulgence as we make our way to the meat of the matter, which comes in the later part of the morning’s lesson.

In today’s reading, Peter is put forward as the one who “gets it “ about Jesus before anyone else.  He has this great revelation about who Jesus is and it’s not a function of his personal insight or brilliance.  It is pure revelation, a holy gift.  Think of it as Peter’s personal burning bush.  As a result he gets the “keys of the kingdom”, so to speak, and moves to the head of the line in Discipleship class. 

So, clearly Peter’s confession of faith at Cesearea Philippi is a big deal and it is what earns Peter his new name.  It’s changed from Simon bar Jonah, meaning Simon son of Jonah, to Peter which, as we talked about before, means “rock”.  Receiving a new name as a result of a spiritual insight or on the heels of a spiritual struggle, as happened with Jacob, was a common practice in ancient Jewish times.  It is in part where our tradition of naming at the time of Baptism arises, when we ask, “By what name shall this child be known?”  or in the Catholic tradition where a confirmation name is taken as a symbol of one’s new identity in the body of Christ.

From today’s text, I like to think of Peter as the original Rocky, and the eleven as the Rockettes.  Following closely on Peter’s blurting out what the Spirit laid on his heart, Matthew does something that’s done in no other gospel—he has Jesus make a reference to the Church.  He tells Peter that he is the Rock on which the church will be built. Even though all the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke as well as the often times odd one out, John’s Gospel record this event, only Matthew connects it to the life of the church.  Indeed the ONLY reference in any of the Gospels, the only appearance of the word CHURCH comes in this passage and in the 18^th Chapter of Matthew.  I’ll get to that shortly.

                This is where we begin to focus our attention as the text builds very carefully.  After Peter is called the Rock, Jesus says that the powers of Hades or the power of death will not prevail against it.  In other translations, it’s called “hell”.  Back when it was still politically correct to sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers”, we would harmonize about how the gates of hell would never against the church prevail.  So the passage sets the church in a context of conflict.  In this context comes the next verse which we usually rush right over because we are so busy being impressed with Peter’s insight:  “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you lose on earth will be lost in heaven. “

Mark Allen Powell suggests that these verses are the very foundation of ethical discernment for the Christian community and, indeed, for Christians for all times.  It forms the basis of how we are to understand what it means to be in the world.  The terms are best understood with a reference to determining how the law was going to be applied in particular situations.  The rabbis would hear cases of disagreements and make a decision about which law applied or whether any law applied.  Jewish rabbis bound the law when they determined that a commandment applied and they “loosed” the law when they determined that it didn’t. 

If we were just talking about the Ten Commandments, the whole thing would probably be fairly easy and straightforward.  The truth is there are 613 commandments in the Old Testament.  613 times, the sentence begins with either “Thou shall” or “Thou shalt not”.  You can only imagine the kind of disagreements and conflicts that arose when people tried to figure out what to do.

Here’s an example:  Is one guilty of stealing if one finds something and keeps it without searching for the rightful owner?  When is such a search required?  How far should the search go?  The old rabbis stated (I’m not making this up), “If a fledgling bird is found within 50 cubits of a dove cote, it belongs to the owner of the dove cote.  If it is found outside of limits of the 50 cubits, it belongs to the person who found it.”  It occurs to me that these ancient rabbis had way too much time on their hands. 

This business of “binding” and “loosing”, in this text given to Peter and in the 18th chapter of Matthew’s gospel given to all the disciples, is really the most important part.  What it means is that it’s up to us to figure out what we do with what’s written in this book.  We have the sacred responsibility of figuring out what commandments we’re going to hold on to, what commandments we’re going to let go of.  I don’t know about you, but the other 603 commandments outside of the Big 10 are pretty much a mystery to me.

This text is about the sacred responsibility of figuring out what this book means, how we are going to interpret it, understand it and preach about it and live it. While it is Peter who gets the place in the front of the line in the process, it is quickly given to the other disciples in the 18^th chapter.  If it is given to eleven, it is given to us as well.  Binding and loosing the law is not about dismissing scripture or picking and choosing the parts we like while ignoring the parts we don’t, though Christians of every theological persuasion are guilty of that from time to time.  We have to take it all seriously, if not literally, and find that common thread that can help us be God’s people in the world.  It is a challenging territory to traverse.

Folks feel pretty clear in their belief that killing is wrong, but I can tell you from experience that belief is put to the test in every Intensive Care Unit of every hospital in this country when a family agonizes about whether or not to disconnect the life support of someone they love and the question of whether or not they are killing them comes to the fore.  Their hearts are wrenched in terrible confusion and pain.  They struggle to understand what that commandment means for them in those moments of confusion and pain.

It’s easy to take a stand against stem cell research or other medical interventions that make use of fetal tissue until the promise of a cure is there for someone you love.  As Director of Pastoral Care at a teaching and research hospital, I had a front row seat on the Ethics Committee.  I can honestly say that the greatest debates that we struggled with around medical interventions were deeply personal.  It was never an academic debate or discussion about what was right or wrong or a dispassionate conversation about life support.  It was real people, real families, real patients, and real medical professionals troubled in trying to figure out the right thing. 

As a pastor and as a chaplain, it is clear to me that our forbears in faith could not foresee the complexity of medical decision-making in a technological world.  So, it falls to u,s as people of faith, to figure out what we believe.

In a similar fashion, people can be pretty sure and settled in a belief that homosexuality is a sin until they learn that their child, their sibling, their best friend, or their parent is gay.  The faith that was so secure is sent into tailspin.  I was on the receiving end of that in my own family.  To this day, I have relatives who no longer speak to me or acknowledge my membership in my own family in any way.   The sinfulness of homosexuality was deeply ingrained in my family life and in the faith of my childhood.   My own faith journey has taken me through the struggle with texts I heard all my life, and because I take the authority of Scripture seriously, I needed to figure out what I believed as a gay woman, as a Christian, and as a preacher. 

It’s easy to hold on to the belief that divorce is wrong, until it’s your marriage or of someone you love that unravels beyond repair.  It’s easy to be dogmatic about abortion until that very personal struggle comes home in your teenage daughter. 

Whatever one may believe about the justifiability of the war in Iraq it becomes a different and personal matter when it is your child that is called up from the Reserves to Active Duty.   There is a scene in Fahrenheit 911 where Michael Moore approaches members of the House and Senate who voted for the war and asks them if their children have signed up for active duty and were heading out to be part of the great  Just War. 

I am not talking about situational ethics here.  It’s not about making it up as we go along doing whatever seems easiest at the time.  When the hot button issues of our day come home to us in deeply personal ways, we are thrown into the ancient conversation of “binding” and “loosing”.   It means we have to figure out what the Bible is and we have to take responsibility for how we will understand it.  It is a sacred responsibility that belongs to us as the church—not to us as individuals, not even to us as preachers, but all of us together.  It doesn’t mean that we can make up an answer that suits us and it doesn’t mean that it is ours to figure out on our own.

It is a matter of discernment for the Church.  Mark Allan Powell writes, “We need to seek a common thread that runs through scripture—a hermeneutic, a context, that recognizes the priority of certain scripture mandates.”  Matthew’s gospel includes the Golden Rule—recognition of the divine preference for mercy over sacrifice.  Matthew’s gospel recognizes a prioritization of love for God and neighbor, and an identification of the weightier matters of the law as always being about justice, mercy ,and faithfulness. 

In a nutshell, it means that it’s up to us.  While we don’t usually have meetings as churches to figure out which scriptures apply to which, the truth is that we do and we always have made choices about certain situations  and how we respond. 

Powell notes that certain church bodies have bound the commandment against murder as applicable to situations it was not originally intended to address.  The virtually unanimous opposition to slavery in global Christianity represents a bounding of scripture, as recognition that the overall witness of scripture should be interpreted as denouncing behavior that was permitted in biblical times.

Churches have also loosed commandments, narrowing their range of application without dismissing their original intent.  “Be fruitful and multiply”, the first commandment given by God to humans is not read as text that encourages reproduction without limit.  Jesus’ prohibition against saving money for the future has also been loosed for modern application, saving for retirement and children’s education.  We think about these things and we make decisions based on our understanding.

The responsibility for discerning the meaning of Scripture and seeking its guidance for contemporary life situations, whether it is bound or loosed, belongs to the church—a gathered community that needs to come together to work on the text while the text works on us—never to an individual, and that includes the clergy.  It is a community responsibility which every member of the church shares. 

In the United Church of Christ, we are privileged to be part of a larger community that pushes, prods, and helps us think beyond our own door.   The local church shares it with the region and with the Synod.   The Synod, a gathering of church members from all over the country, came together this summer to seek the guidance and direction of Scripture and Holy Spirit to speak to the issues of our day with faithfulness and integrity.   They made some controversial yet courageous statements that help us differently about what it means to be God’s people and what it means to live in a modern world.  It’s really about discernment. 

It is not “Cleveland” who makes the decisions and hands them down; it is the gathered members of the church.  In fact, staff members from the National Office are not even voting members of Synod.  The resolutions are voted upon by people like our own Sue Barker and pastor Linda Barnes.  Area ministers Kent Siladi and Lois Happe and Conference Minister Davida Crabtree are just a few of the faces that came together to seek God’s way and will, to discern how the law will be bound or loosed. 

Gathering in this place, being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ is about joining this exciting, challenging and life giving conversation.  As the United Church of Christ we have a distinct voice in the Christian community, a voice that needs to be heard with clarity and integrity.  It’s up to us to decide what we believe and what we are going to do about it.  It’s our sacred responsibility.   It’s about discernment.

                When we arrived at Synod, we were each given one of these little blue cards that talked about discernment: 

“As we engage in addressing the issues and concerns before us as a General Synod, let us …

… pray constantly, letting God touch us and speak to us

… seek clarity about the question we are being asked to consider

… seek to understand an issue’s historical and contemporary contexts, what biblical texts and faith traditions may relate to it, and our feelings about it

… listen carefully to what is being said by one another and respond thoughtfully and compassionately

… be open to other viewpoints and to alternative responses to an issue which may emerge

… consider seriously the character of the membership of the church and the needs of the world we live in

… be humbly bold

… speak the truth in love.”

It closes with this prayer:

“Oh God, Eternal Spirit, you have called us from east and west and north and south.  You have made us one people in this place.  We gather mindful of many others not present who are part of your Body throughout the earth.  We thank you for this opportunity to make new friends and discover new partners in the work of your Church.  As we prepare to reason together about the concerns before us, grant us hearts open to the leading of your Spirit and to one another.  Give us ears to hear the deeply felt yearnings of those gathered here.  Call forth from us a compassionate spirit that sees one another’s good as our own.  Give us the mind of Christ in whose names we gather and in whose Body we are one.  Amen.”