HOMILY – 21^ST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA CHURCH & FURMAN UNIVERSITY

AUGUST 24, 2008 – GREENVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA

May our Lord Jesus give us His peace.

Authors write.  God’s boss.  Looking at Peter through the windows.

Authors write.  The Prophet Isaiah says that the palace official Shebna will be removed and God’s choice of a leader (Eliakim) will be put in his place.  God speaks through the prophet.  God writes the story.  You, deposed, you, sit now on the throne.  God speaks, The author writes.  This is where the rightful term author-ity comes.  Authors write the story.

In this case the Jews are to hear that God is in control.  I depose, and raise up.  The history of God’s people is filled with unfaithful people being taken down and faithful ones being raised up.  Often it is the little ones that get raised and those who make themselves “big” who get taken down.  Look at Moses in the basket in the river, Mary of humble birth, or the bigness of Paul, chief murderer of Christians gets taken down, the bigness of goliath taken down by a stone, bigness in the Pharisees.  It goes this way in civil society as well because God is writing all of it.  So we humble ourselves that God may be exalted.  Watch out bigs.

God’s boss.  Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!

God has no boss.  God has no one giving Him advice, no one counseling Him and no one able to repay Him for life.  To God be all the glory and honor in everything we may experience, or do, or refrain from doing.  God is given glory in everything.  Amen!?  God’s boss.  Hah hah hah hah hah!

Looking at Peter through the windows.  There are several windows in churches that depict the times and role of Peter in salvation history.

Getting to know him can lead us to understand the expectations of God and what pleases God, how our humanity has a capacity to serve. 

One window depicts the last supper, another the 12 apostles, another the cup, grapes, bread, the cross.  But one window lets us in - very deeply - to Peter, our foundation, the keeper of the keys to the door of heaven, the one Jesus called rock.  That window depicts an upside down cross, the symbol of satan worshippers and Roman Catholic people.  Satan worshippers believe they have something greater than Jesus in Satan. Satan accuses God of not being God because of God’s failure to get us to conform to God’s will.  So they turn the cross upside down.  It failed they say.

Looking more carefully into that window with the upside down cross we remember that Peter suffered terrible humiliation and scourging like Jesus, and was about to be allowed to follow Jesus ultimately in the same death, when he spoke to his crucifiers, “I am not worthy to suffer in the same way as my Lord.”  So they crucified him upside down.

It is this courage, this openness to the stranger, this radical, impetuous man who we call the rock, is the one to whom Jesus gave the keys to the doors of heaven.  We will see him first, the doorman, then Jesus will present us to the Father.   Peter is faithfulness – prefigured.  “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Peter said.  Which one of us does not identify with him jumping out of the boat when Jesus said come! Only to become scared and selfish and begin to sink.  How we regret the 3 times he said I don’t know the man.  How many times has our life denied Him?

Today, God deposes and raises up.  Which one will happen to you or to me?  We have been deposed and miraculously raised.  To God alone belongs glory – not to me or to you.  Enjoy giving God all the credit and watch God use you to show Himself as God did Peter.  And look Jesus in the eyes in prayer and say it – YOU ARE THE CHRIST, THE LORD OF MY LIFE.  Say to Jesus, I will feed, clothe, shelter, heal, raise and lower where you will me to.  I will follow and live a life of GRACE.

Then, a church stands on ROCK.  Strong, loving and wise.