In the early 1960’s, the blue-eyed boy of Roman Catholic theology was a man called Hans Küng. In 1968, he wrote a book called The Church which he sincerely hoped would serve as a theological basis for a reconciliation between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches; in fact, he actually dedicated the book to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey. As you might expect given the purpose of the book, Küng had quite a lot to say in it about Church unity, or rather the lack of it. But my favourite quote in the book about the disunity of the Church is this:

‘We should not try to justify these divisions, any more than we should try to justify sin, but suffer them…However great the misunderstandings, however understandable the historical genesis of the separation and the circumstances of the break, it should never, never among Christians, have come to a division in the Church. A division in the Church is a scandal and a disgrace. Anyone who did not actively try to prevent it, anyone who furthered it in any way at all must bear part of the blame – how much it is not our place to judge.’

And Küng is quite right, a division in the Church is a scandal and a disgrace. Christians, all Christians, should always actively try to prevent it, they should never, ever encourage it, or do anything to perpetuate it or deepen it. Whatever the reasons, it should never, ever come to a division in the Church because a division in the Church is a clear and unmistakable sign that Christians have failed to do the one thing we’re called to do above all other things; it’s a sign that we’ve failed to love one another as we should.

I think too that one of the worst, and saddest things about divisions in the Church is that it’s often the things that should unite us that cause our petty squabbling. For example, in the Eucharistic Prayer, which we use every time we come together to break bread in remembrance of Jesus, as he commanded us to do, do we not pray that God will “gather together into one in (his) kingdom, all who share this one bread and one cup”? And yet isn’t this thing we do at Christ’s command, one of the main causes of disagreements between Christians? We argue and fall out about what we’re actually doing when we eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of Christ; what is the bread and wine, what does it mean to speak of it as the body and blood of Christ? We argue and fall out about what to do when we do this in remembrance of Christ, what form should the worship take, how should we act when we take part in this service. We’re even so ridiculously petty as to argue and fall out about such a pathetically trivial matter as what we call the service. And these things do cause division in the Church because, of course, ‘we’ are always right, and ‘they’ are always wrong. But if you think about that attitude isn’t it tantamount to saying God is our side but not on theirs? An attitude that Hans Küng referred to in The Church as a sign of ‘pharisaical self-conceit, self-righteousness and impenitence.’

In this morning’s Gospel, we have another of those things that could, and should unite us because it’s something that comes from the lips of Jesus himself, but that, in reality, has and still does, cause Christians to argue and fall out. What does Jesus mean when, in response to Simon’s confession of faith that Jesus is the Christ, he says,

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” ?

Does this mean that the Church is built on Peter personally? That he holds the keys to the kingdom and that what he binds or lets loose on earth will be bound and let loose in heaven? Does it mean that the rock on which the Church will be built is Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as the Christ? Or does it mean that the Church is built on faith in Jesus and that all those who have faith, that is the Church as the Body of Christ, holds the keys of the kingdom and the authority to bind or let loose on earth?

When we link the first understanding of Jesus’ words with the very ancient tradition that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, in other words the first pope, it’s not surprising that the Roman Catholic Church has veered towards the first understanding of these words; that Peter is the rock and he holds the keys of the kingdom, and that this status and authority has been passed on to his successors as pope. But, as the Church has divided, it’s not surprising either that other denominations of the Church have preferred one of the other interpretations of Jesus’ words. So who is right?

We have to say that the most obvious way to interpret Jesus’ words is that Peter himself is the rock on which the Church is built. Peter is the obvious focus of Jesus’ words here. Peter’s real name was Simon and it’s at this point that Jesus gives him the name ‘Peter’, or Petros, in Greek. In the Greek there’s perhaps a play on words here between the name Petros and the word petra, or rock, and we could also argue about translation because Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Greek. But in Aramaic, the connection is more exact. Elsewhere in the New Testament Jesus calls Simon ‘Cephas’, as does St Paul in his letters, and Cephas isn’t a translation from Aramaic into Greek, it’s a transliteration of the Aramaic word for rock, kepha. So I think we have to conclude that the rock on which Jesus said the Church would be built, was Peter.

And this makes sense in light of what we read later in the New Testament. After his Resurrection, it was Peter whom Jesus charged with tending and feeding his lambs and sheep. On the Day of Pentecost, it was Peter who took the lead and publicly proclaimed Jesus as ‘Lord and Christ’. And the first half of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, shows Peter playing a central role in establishing the Church. So does that mean then that Peter himself held the keys of the kingdom and the authority to bind or loose things on earth, and that these things have been passed on to his successors as bishop of Rome, the popes? In other words, ought we all to be Roman Catholics? 

Well, in a word, ‘No’. Despite Peter’s role as the rock on which the Church was built, and his prominence in the early Church, the Church wasn’t then and never has been since, a one-man band. Peter may have taken a lead, but the early Church was governed by council. We know from the Acts of the Apostles that Peter was ‘sent’ to Samaria by other Apostles, and that he had to give an account of what he did to the Church in Jerusalem. In fact, Peter wasn’t even the leader of that Church. The Church in Jerusalem was led by Jesus’ brother, James. Peter often got things wrong. We know that he had to be corrected and even rebuked at times by Jesus, but we find the same thing happening later. In St Paul’s Letter to the Galatian’s we read about St Paul publicly taking  Peter to task for his hypocrisy and correcting him. And if Peter, the rock on which Jesus built his Church was subject to council and could get things wrong and was at times in need of rebuke and correction, how can we or anybody else in the Church claim that we are always right and that anyone who disagrees with us or who does things differently than we do, is wrong? How can we, or anyone in the Church show such pharisaical self-conceit, self-righteousness and impenitence? And yet we do, and so the Church has been divided, and continues to be divided, and those divisions show no sign of healing but continue to grow and deepen.

And whose fault is that but our own? It’s the fault of every single Christian who’s ever called or criticised or argued or fallen out with another Christian on account of our differences of understanding, interpretation, tradition or denomination, and that’s a word that should have never, ever had to be spoken in connection with the Church. We are all to blame.

The Roman Catholic Church regards itself as the one, true Church that is in direct continuity with the Church of the Apostles, at least in part through its understanding that the pope is the direct successor of St Peter. The Orthodox Church regards the Roman Catholic Church as at least schismatic, that is as a  Church that’s broken with the true Christian faith in some way, or even as downright heretical. Many Reformed Churches would tend to view the Roman Catholic Church in similar ways. The Church of England tries to steer a middle path between these extremes but in doing so doesn’t it at least imply that they’ve all got it wrong in some way whereas the Anglican Church has got things right? But given the arguments and divisions within the Church of England itself, we can hardly hold ourselves up as examples of unity and of Christian love to anyone can we? And these are just the main branches of the Church, it’s to say nothing of the thousands of independent Churches and congregations who’ve all come into existence and gone their own way because they think they’re right and everyone else is wrong when it comes to being a Christian.

There is only one in the Church who is always and infallibly right, and that is the head of the Church, Jesus Christ himself. If the Church is divided, if we argue and fall out with other Christians because we think that we’re right and they’re wrong, it’s us who are wrong, all of us. And the Church will always be divided as long as we differentiate between ourselves by calling ourselves Catholics or Protestants, Anglicans or Methodists, High Church or Low Church and such like. The Church will be divided until we can simply call ourselves Christians and treat one another with the love that befits that name. Because if we truly are Christians and do as we’re called to do, love one another as we love ourselves following Jesus’ teaching and example, we wouldn’t argue and fall out as we do, and then the Church wouldn’t be so divided. As Hans Küng said, we must all bear part of the blame – how much is not for us to judge. So let’s be more Christian with and to one another so that, when we have to stand before the one whose place it is to judge, he won’t judge us too harshly for the part we may have played in dividing his Church.

Amen. 

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Propers for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 12) 27th August 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Listen, Lord, and answer me.
Save your servant who trusts in you.
I call to you all day long, have mercy on me, O Lord.

The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray,
and to give more than either we desire or deserve:
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid,
and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask,
but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings

Missal (St Mark’s)        
Isaiah 22:19-23
Psalm 138:1-3, 6, 8
Romans 11:33-36
Matthew 16:13-20

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 51:1-6
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

This morning’s Gospel reading is one that I know a good number of people have some difficulty with. For one thing, Jesus appears at first to be reluctant to help the woman who’s come to him with her troubles; initially he seems to completely ignore her, in fact. And then there’s the language that Jesus uses when he does speak to her. To us, in our culture, calling someone a ‘dog’ is not a very nice thing to do. When we call someone a dog, we usually mean it as an insult and we’re saying that person is morally or ethically a bad person. We might use it to imply that a woman is unattractive too. So Jesus’ behaviour and language in this Gospel story seems quite out of keeping with our image of him as the Good Shepherd, the loving, caring Saviour of the world.

But, as with so many things that Jesus said, we can’t take this story at face value, have to read between the lines, and if we’re not going to be offended by Jesus’ behaviour and language in this story, the first thing we have to understand is that, when he speaks about not giving the children’s food to the dogs, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. The clue is in his statement,

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

So when Jesus then goes on to say,

“It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”,

he’s not insulting the woman, and nor by extension is he implying that non-Jews, that we, are dogs in any derogatory sense; he’s simply using metaphors to make a point. The house of Israel, the people of Israel are God’s children. The woman was a Canaanite and so she wasn’t one of God’s children, at least in the sense that she wasn’t of the house of Israel. So all Jesus is really saying here is that his mission was to seek out and save the lost children of Israel, not to seek out and save those who weren’t of the house of Israel, and he had to stick to his priorities.

And once we understand that, we shouldn’t have any difficulty with the language Jesus uses because, actually, it’s a very good way of making his point because it’s a situation that most people can relate to from their own experience. Lots of people have dogs don’t they? People love their dogs and often even regard their dogs more as members of their family rather than pets. It’s also quite common in homes where there’s a pet dog, for the dog, or dogs, to sit by the dining table at meal times in the hope, or perhaps the knowledge, that they’ll be given some food. But I don’t think even the most ardent dog lover would dream of snatching a child’s plate, a child’s food, from in front of them on the table and putting it down on the floor for the dog to eat would they? It just wouldn’t be right to take a child’s food away and give it to even the most beloved pet dog. It’s a matter of priorities. The dogs can have some food, but they can have what the children don’t want, or what they leave after they’ve eaten. The children come first; the dogs come after. So all Jesus is really doing here is using a very common real-life situation to make his point.

But once we get over our discomfort at Jesus’ language, there’s still the question of why the lost sheep of the house of Israel came first and to answer that question, we have to look at what’s sometimes called the history of salvation, God’s plan for how the world was going to be saved. And in answer to that question, the simplest thing we can say is that the Jews came first because that’s the way God chose to do things.

The Scriptures tell us that salvation comes from the Jews; Jesus himself said this in another encounter with a non-Jewish woman, the Samaritan woman at the well whom we read about in St John’s Gospel. But really, it’s quite obvious that it does. God chose Abraham to be the ‘father of many nations’ and promised that, because of his faithfulness to God, all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s descendants. In other words, all people would be blessed through the Jews, the people of Israel. Later, through Moses, God gave the law to the people of Israel so that they’d know how to be his people, how to live as his children should live. But as we know, the people didn’t keep the law and so the law became something of a double-edged sword.

One of the most puzzling phrases we find in all the Scriptures is St Paul’s term, the ‘curse of the law’. We’re not quite certain of what St Paul really meant by this but it seems to have something to do with the law bringing an awareness of sin. Of course there is sin even where there is no law because sin is sin, but without the law, how can people know that they’re sinners? So even where there is no law people still sin, but they don’t necessarily know that they sin and so they can’t be punished under the law. The people of Israel though, can’t plead ignorance of sin. They have the law, and they know that they’re sinners and so they can be punished under the law. These are some of the arguments that St Paul uses when he’s trying to explain the relationship between law and faith and how the Gentiles, who don’t have the law, can be saved through faith in Christ. We find them especially in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans and they are quite complicated at times.

So as the law and the awareness of sin that goes with it were given to the Jews, and because they can be punished for their sins in a way that Gentile sinners can’t, it’s quite obvious that the problem of sin under the law had to be dealt with first. So saving the lost sheep of the house of Israel had to come before the salvation of the Gentiles. Let me put it this way. If a school is getting consistently bad exam results year on year, there’s no point in blaming the pupils every year, you have to sort out the teaching and the staff first before you turn your attention to the pupils. One Forrest Gump in a class doesn’t mean everyone in that class will underachieve; one Forrest Gump stood at the front of a class trying to teach something they can’t really do or understand themselves, probably will mean everyone in the class will underachieve. It’s a matter of priorities, and common sense too if we’re honest. You deal with the root cause of a problem first, not the symptoms the root problem causes. God’s blessing was given first to the Jews so that, through them, all people would be blessed, but the Jews had got things wrong so how could they tell or show anyone else how things should be done?

And this is what we see in Jesus’ ministry and especially in his Passion and  Cross, him dealing with the root of the problem. How often do we read that something Jesus said or did or something that happened to him was said or done so that Scripture may be fulfilled? But the Scriptures that are being referred to in every instance are the Hebrew Scriptures, the sacred writings of the Jews. There were no Christian Scriptures at this time, they wouldn’t start to be written until after Jesus’ Resurrection. Jesus came to fulfil the Scriptures of the people of Israel, to fulfil the law and the message of the prophets and he came to do that, first to save the Jews themselves, and then, so that the blessing that God had promised to all people through the Jews, through Abraham’s descendants, could finally be given to them. Jesus’ message and ministry and his death and Resurrection confirmed him as the Messiah of the Jewish people. But it was his Resurrection that brought the Gentile world to faith. So he had to be the Jewish Messiah first before he could be the Saviour of the world. He had to save the people of Israel by dealing with the curse of the law before the Gentiles could be saved through faith.

In this morning’s Gospel, the Canaanite woman finally gets what she wants from Jesus because of her faith. And this is something we find a few times in the Gospels, Jesus granting the wishes of Gentiles on account of their faith, individual cases if you like of God’s promised blessing being given to non-Jews through the Jews in the person of Jesus. And we stand in that same tradition.

We’re non-Jews who’ve been given God’s promised blessing through the Jews in the person of Jesus and through our faith in him. The difference for us is that now Jesus’ ministry to the lost sheep of the house of Israel has been carried out. The children have been fed and we’re no longer dogs who have to wait for the scraps to fall from their table. By faith we’re God’s children too so we don’t have to wait for others to finish eating before we can be fed, we’ve got our own seat at the Lord’s table where we can sit and eat together with all God’s children whether they are Jews or Gentiles.

Amen.   

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Propers for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 11) 20th August 2023

Entrance Antiphon
God, our protector, keep us in mind.
Always give strength to your people, for if we can be with you even one day,
it is better than a thousand with out you. 

The Collect
O God,
you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace,
that we, running the way of your commandments,
may receive your gracious promises,
and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7
Psalm 67:2-3, 5-6, 8
Romans 11:13-15, 29-32
Matthew 15:21-28

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2, 29-32
Matthew 15:21-28