How do we identify people and things?  There is a naming convention tied to experiences that we have as well as persons named whom we encounter.  My name is Thomas.  I don’t know how much that says about “me.”  I am writing a reflection right now on a computer.  That sounds fairly descriptive.  But how much “more” is there to both “me” and the experience of writing a reflection?  It seems that once we “name” something or someone we create somewhat of a comfortable “labeling” that allows us to function amidst associations.  We need this to operate in our world; however, there does seem to be a point where the comfortableness in how we identify the things and people in our world can “constrain” us.

Sometimes, we don’t allow something or someone to totally surprise us because we are pretty much “locked in” to how we perceive and identify things and people.  For example, as I walk into church on Sunday, I see the presider and automatically know that this priest is going to either inspire me or bore me to death during the homily.  Or, this guy Paul always couches compliments in sarcasm, so I know exactly how to “take” what he is about to say to me.  These perceptions based upon identification and naming of experiences and people can assist in our everyday life, but they also run the risk of being prohibitive regarding how we “interpret” something “out of the normal expectation” or even more dangerously, our ability to be “surprised” at all.

In today’s Gospel (MT 16: 13-19), we have Matthew’s account of Jesus asking the disciples “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  Unlike Mark’s account, Matthew does not have Jesus immediately reveal, after Simon’s testimony, that He must suffer and die.  Instead, Matthew takes the wondrous identification of Jesus the Christ confession by Simon as significant of Simon’s openness to what is being revealed:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my Church,

Jesus seems impressed by Simon’s identifying Him as the Christ, and goes so far as to say that this kind of “sturdy intuition,” i.e., this “rock” (petros) is precisely what will ground the “church,” or the community of disciples who would follow the Christ.  It’s a bit of an irony, in a way, that the “openness” to what is being revealed in a totally new way will become the bedrock of a community of followers.  Normally we would associate “openness,” or the ability to be surprised by something “new” and transformative with something other than “rock.”  But, perhaps there is an openness here that is not contrary to the commitment and faithfulness associated with the image of “rock,” but perhaps an enhancement of the image itself.

If we look to Peter’s first letter (1 PT 5: 1-4) , we hear him “exhorting the presbyters” (appointed leaders of the Christian community):

“Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly,
as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.
Do not lord it over those assigned to you, but be examples to the flock.
And when the chief Shepherd is revealed, you will receive the unfading crown of glory”

 Notice that Peter is using the word “constraint” that was mentioned earlier.  It appears that Peter is enjoining these leaders to “oversee” not by the imposition of things that would “constrain” the people, but rather by example.  So, we seem to have the over-identification and “naming” of authority in leadership indeed being challenged and transformed by the Christ Himself.  This Christ whom the early communities, and henceforth all of us, sought and seek to follow is one who leads by His very being.  The Way of Christ IS Christ.  There is no separation.  The naming and identification of Christ is not removed from the action of Christ.  The rigidity that we sometimes see in models of authority unfortunately tend to create a distance between people, similar to how the naming and identification of people and things for practical and functional maneuvering runs the risk of disallowing surprise and wonderment.

There is always surprise and wonder in the revelation of the Christ.  Just as Jesus is pleasantly surprised when Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the revelation comes from a spirit of openness to life that enables one to lean into a faith that challenges and transforms from within outwards.  There is always a context for the Christ, for the way God is coming to us at every moment in our lives.  And when we can name these events within the present context, in a spirit of wonderment, we are also “rocks” of faith that build up the community.

This flexible or intuitive “sturdiness” is paradoxical sounding, but it can also be envisioned as the radical invitation in the Gospel of the Christ.  Can we risk seeing the Incarnation of God in the Christ, and recognize that same Christ in our everyday lives, by allowing these Christ moments to “name” us.  Then, our authenticity can come from a sense of shared belonging to the “flock of God” in our midst, as Peter is saying in his letter to the presbyters.  We “tend” the flock by being a part of the flock, and the only authority that carries any weight (as in a “rock”) comes directly from the lived life of all of us in the community of Christ.

Inasmuch as today is the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, Apostle, it is indeed also a recognition of all of our “chairs” in the community of Christ.  We all are asked, “Who do you say that I am?” by Christ, in each other, and we respond to each other authentically only to the extent that we allow ourselves to transform and be transformed by each other.  Isn’t this what the Body of Christ means?  The “Chief Shepherd” in Peter’s letter, is revealed as the Christ in Its members sharing the life of Love in God.  And this means that there is always room for surprise and wonder because we are truly “tending the flock” each time we recognize and share a new revelation of Christ in our midst.

Peace

Thomas

The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth  woven and laced together in loving pattern  by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing  awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.