Of course, you're all following the news, I know. It's so discouraging, isn't it? Ferguson, Gaza, Iraq, and (now) Syria -- again. . . .
It all reflects such one-dimensional thinking. I mean it gives the impression that in the eyes of public officials from the militarized cop in the street to the POTUS himself, the only solutions to social problems are found in shooting, tear gas, torture, and Hell Fire Missiles? Solving social problems requires locking people of color behind "the Gates of Hell" referenced by Jesus in today's Gospel reading.
In every case, diplomacy and negotiation seem out of the question. In fact, it's a vanished art. Who needs it? After all, those damn "others" -- be they African Americans in occupied Ferguson, Palestinians in Gaza's mammoth concentration camp, or the ISIS militants -- can't possibly have legitimate grievances. They simply must be brought to heel by force -- shooting, bombing, and killing their children and youth. We're made to believe that alternatives such as dialog and working out problems by discussion and compromise are signs of weakness. So violence is the first resort. It's the order of the day in a world ruled by machismo, revenge, violence, and the law of the strongest.
When we're not bombing, we're building walls with locked gates. Our "gated communities" and locked doors wall us off from unsightly ghettos and the realities of the world's poor mostly non-white majority. Better to confine Palestinians in fenced off open-air concentration camps like Gaza, where there's literally no exit. Then from time to time you "mow the lawn," i.e. shoot the non-Jews like fish in a barrel -- even though most of them are children, women, and aged people.
Better to build a wall along the Mexican border and then lock the gates, throw away the key and pretend that such barriers solve the problem of farmers and their children driven off their land by globalization, poverty and gangs. Better to justify it all by invoking the Ultimate White Privilege: "I feared for my life!" (We whites are the only ones who can get away with that one.)
All that brings us to today's Liturgy of the Word. It's about God's interest in matters like those just enumerated -- about politics, oppression and the liberation of non-white people like Jesus, Gazans and residents of Ferguson, Missouri. It's about breaking bonds and opening the gates of hell so that every Inferno can be transformed into the Kingdom of God. It's about refusing to be discouraged even though the flow of history make Jesus' prayer, "They Kingdom come" seem like an impossible dream.
Start with today's first reading. There the prophet Isaiah has God telling a courtier named Shabna to step down in favor of a man called Eliakim. Little is known about either one. The reason for including the reading today is apparently to establish the day's central point that God is concerned with the world of politics, and that God is ultimately in charge of what happens in that sphere. There can be no separation of politics and religion in the divine dispensation.
The responsorial psalm continues the "this worldly" theme set by the first reading. It had us all singing "Lord, your love is eternal. Forsake not the work of your hands." Once again, emphasis on "the work of God's hands" reminds us of God's commitment to this world -- including ghettos, the Gazan concentration camp, and rich people making life unbearable for the world's largely non-white poor. The psalm goes on to praise Yahweh for divine kindness, truthfulness, encouragement of the weak, care for the impoverished, and God's alienation from their proud oppressors -- again all connected with life here and now.
Then in today's Gospel selection, we find a reprise of the very reading we shared last June 27th (just two months ago on the "Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul"). We practically know this passage by heart.
The reading centers on three titles associated with Jesus of Nazareth -- Son of Man, Son of God, and Christ. All three names are politically loaded -- in favor of the poor rather than the privileged and powerful.
Jesus asks his friends, "Who is the Son of Man in history and for us today?" (Scripture scholars remind us that the "Son of Man" is a figure from the Book of Daniel. He is the judge of all those who oppress the People of God whether they're Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Greeks or Romans. He is "the human one" as opposed to a series of monstrous imperial beasts which the author of Daniel sees arising from the sea against God's poor.)
So Jesus' question boils down to this: who do you think has taken the strongest stand against Israel's oppressors? Jesus' friends mention the obvious heroes, Elijah and Jeremiah. But in the end, they settle on a contemporary political prisoner in King Herod's version of Abu Ghraib. He's John the Baptist who was Jesus' mentor. (According to Jesus, John was the greatest of all the prophets of Israel.) He's the Son of Man, they say.
Having set that anti-imperial tone, Jesus then asks the question, "What about me? Who do you say that I am?" No question could be more central for any of us pretending to follow the Teacher from Nazareth. How we answer determines the character of the path we walk as Jesus' would-be disciples in a world filled with Fergusons, Gazas, Hell Fire Missiles and militarized cops. Our answer determines whose side we are on -- that of Messrs. Netanyahu, Obama and Officer Wilson or of the Palestinians, Iraqis and Michael Brown.
Matthew makes sure we won't miss the political nature of the question. So he locates its asking in Caesarea Philippi -- a city Herod obsequiously named for his powerful Roman patron. Herod had commemorated the occasion by minting a coin stamped with the emperor's countenance and identifying him as "the Son of God." Caesar was also called "the Christ," God's anointed. Good Jews saw all of that as idolatry.
So Peter's answer, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" has the effect of delegitimizing Caesar and his empire. It's also a swipe at King Herod. Peter's response couldn't be more political. Jesus, not Caesar is king, God's anointed, the Son of God.
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