21ST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)

1st Reading                Isaiah 22: 19-23

Psalm                           138: 1-2a, 2bcd-3, 6 & 8bc (R. 8bc)

R:// "O Lord, your merciful love is eternal; discard not the work of your hands"

2nd Reading             Romans 11: 33-36

Gospel                        Matthew 16: 13-20

USE AUTHORITY TO SERVE

Friends, Pax et Bonum! Today is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A). 

Our first reading is from Isaiah 22: 19-23. Let us start with it. The text is about the removal of Shebna from office. However, I suggest we go back to ealier occurrences to understand the man, Shebna, and what he actually did. The first time we hear of Shebna is in 2 Kings 18:18, where he is listed as one of the three senior officials sent by King Hezekiah to negotiate with the Assyrian Rabshakeh when Jerusalem was under seige. This is proof that Shebna held the highest offices in the Judean royal administration. 

We also need to notice that in Isaiah 22: 15-18, God delivers a devastating personal oracle against Shebna specifically. What is the charge? Simple, Pride. Why? Shebna has been carving out a monumental tomb for himself in the rock above a Jerusalem. In Ancient Near Eastern understanding, and even today, the location and grandeur of one's tomb tells of a person's status, permanence, and his claim to belonging. The royal tombs of the Davidic dynasty were within the city walls of Jerusalem and one gets the privilege of being buried there by blood and lineage. What then is the problem resulting in Pride? 

Shebna, who is a non-Isrselite, maybe Syrian or Egyptian, given the absence of any Israelite patronymic in his name, has been carving for himself a tomb among the nobility of Jerusalem. He is apparently using his office to permanently inscribe himself into an aristocracy he was not born into. This is the abuse that God addresses and the cause of his removal from office. I think that should be a first important point for us to really think about. We do not need to use power to establish ourselves in places we are not supposed to venture into. Even power, though given, has a limit. We need to learn to work within the confines of the faculties we have been given. 

What was Shebna's position? Sheba is identified as "ʾĂSHER ʿAL-HABBĀYIT (אֲשֶׁר עַל-הַבַּיִת)". This means "the one who is over the house". This is a heavy position. In the royal household of ancient Judah, the ʿal-habbāyit was the chief steward. He is, to say, the prime minister of the kingdom, the official who administered the king's household and through it the kingdom's affairs. In 1 Kings 4:6, Ahishar holds the post under Solomon. In 1 Kings 18:3, Obadiah holds it it under Ahab. In 2 Kings 15: 5, when King Uzziah was struck with leprosy and confined to a separate house, his son Jotham, was described as ʿal-habbāyit. The ʿal-habbāyit was the king's chief representative, the one who acted with the king's authority in the king's name. That was the position of Shebna. He corrupted it and instead of using it for service, he used it for self-aggrandisement. For that reason, he will be removed, hurled away like a ball into a distant land (vv. 17-18). Remember that in Genesis 41: 40-44, when Pharaoh was installing Joseph over his house, he said, "You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command". The function is very identical. It is this authority that Shebna gets but he exercises it to bulld his own tomb. We destroy and forfeit an office whenever we make it about ourselves. The key belongs to the one who serves, not the one who carves tombs. 

There is a third detail to pay attention to. The text mentions that "I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; when he opens, no one shall shut, when he shuts, no one shall open" (v. 22). The person who receives the key is Eliakim. The one who possesses the key is the ʿal-habbāyit. What it means is that Shebna losses the position to Eliakim, and Eliakim becomes the new ʿal-habbāyit. What is the key all about? 

The word for key is MAPHTEAḤ (מַפְתֵּחַ), from the root pātaḥ, which means "to open". A maphteaḥ is literally "the opener", the instrument by which sealed spaces are made accessible. In the ancient world, the keys of large buildings like temples, palaces, and treasury vaults were not the small metal keys we know today. They were large wooden or metal bars, sometimes over a cubit long, fitted with pegs or teeth that would engage the pins of a corresponding bolt-lock. The keys of significant buildings were ceremonial as much as functional objects, carried on the shoulder as a visible sign of authority, in the way that a sceptre or a seal-ring was carried. When Isaiah says the key of the House of David will be placed on Eliakim's shoulder, he is describing the investiture ceremony by which the chief steward received the visible, public, physical sign of his authority. Everyone who saw the key on Eliakim's shoulder would know that this man speaks for the king. This man's word about access, who enters, who is excluded, carries the force of royal decree. The authority is irrevocable in its exercise. Whatever he says becomes the words of the king himself. 

Finally, Eliakim is supposed to be a Father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. The word used for Father ʾĀB (אָב). I want to suggest that that title is for pastoral responsibility. In Hebrew understanding, the king or royal who is described as a Father advocates for the weak, he defends the vulnerable, and he ensures that the household runs in a way that serves all its members. Remember that Job describes his own exercise of authority in a particular way, thus "I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know" (Job 29: 16). The father is the one who searches out the cause of those who cannot advocate for themselves. Clearly, Eliakim's authority is given to him, not to build his own tomb above Jerusalem, as Shebna did, but so that he can be father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The welfare of the people in whose name and for whose benefit the key is exercised will be the measure of the key being used in the right way. 

Let us take a few thoughts from the Gospel passage from Matthew 16: 13-20. It is interesting that the Gospel directly links the First Reading. I think before the author launches us into the text, he prepares us to understand a particular location within which the whole narrative is shaped. The place is Caesarea Philippi. 

Cesarea Philippi, called in Hebrew and Aramaic PANEAS (פָּנְיָאס), from the Greek Panias, was named for Pan, the Greek god of the wild, of shepherds, of the forests and mountain goats. The city was built at the foot of Mount Hermon, at the source of the Jordan River, where a massive spring, one of the largest in the ancient Near East, poured out of the base of a great rock face. The rock itself was riddled with niches and caves, and into these caves the Hellenistic population had carved shrines to Pan and other deities. Greek and Roman visitors threw offerings into the spring, which they called the BAAL-GAD in earlier Semitic tradition (Josh 11:17), the place of Baal, the Canaanite fertility deity. By the time of the Herods, the tetrarch Philip had renamed the city in honour of the Emperor Caesar Augustus and of himself, adding his own name to make Caesarea Philippi, thus "Caesar's city of Philip." Directly above the city, carved into the cliff face, was a massive temple to the divine Augustus, built by Philip's father Herod the Great. In the district of Caesarea Philippi, a Galilean Jew standing at the spring of Pan would have been surrounded by the cult sites of Pan, the sanctuary of Caesar-as-god, and the memory of Baal. 

It is within this space that Jesus asked "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" and "Who do you say that I am?". The location is the context for the answer. In the midst of a competitive marketplace of ancient divine claims, there is supposed to be a response. In that area, there is Pan, Caesar, and Baal. Peter responds, pointing out Christ as the "Son of God". 

In the commission, three distinct elements are mentioned. They are the rock, the gates of hell, and the keys. Let us focus on the Keys, because it directly links to Isaiah 22. 

"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven". Remember that Isaiah gave Eliakim one key (maphteaḥ, singular), the key of the House of David. Jesus gives Peter keys (kleidas, plural), the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The singular has become plural, and the scope of the stewardship has expanded from a kingdom to the Kingdom. To these keys is attached the authority of binding and loosing, thus "whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven". The terms DEIN (to bind) and LYEIN (to loose) are the standard rabbinic terms for halakhic authority, the authority to declare what is permitted and what is forbidden in the community's life under Torah. In Aramaic, the corresponding pair is ʾāsar and šĕrā. The rabbis used this language for the authority of authoritative teachers to rule on matters of practice. Jesus gives this authority to Peter, the authority to make binding decisions about the community's life and ratifies it at the highest level when he said what is bound on earth is bound in heaven. 

What it means for Peter is that he becomes, with the keys, the ʿal-habbāyit and speaks for his master. He becomes the leader as the chief servant (chief apostle). Like the ʿal-habbāyit, whatever he says in his authority as such, becomes the words of His master, the king. That makes a lot of sense for Papal authority.  

Pax et Bonum