By Cordelia Fitzgerald (Rated G)
If there’s one thing that the human race, as a rule, doesn’t excel at, it’s communication. Our struggle with this basic need is so great that, even when God, in His perfection, gets involved, we still find some way of muffing it. Everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Old Testament can attest to the fickleness of the Israelites, who, whenever given a basic instruction (such as “don’t marry Gentiles”), always found a way to make it mean what they wanted it to (“Gentiles? God really meant…”). God, in His wisdom, met this issue with a strategy most parents probably want to emulate. He wrote His rules down. In stone.
Granted, immediately afterward, a man broke them. Literally. But that pertains not to this conversation. Suffice it to say, God chose a concrete way to reveal Himself to His people, proffering knowledge of Himself which had been obscured by the Fall. However, there lies an issue with the permanent statement of finite rules: they are limited. It is akin to showing someone a photograph (this is what I looked like, at this time, in these clothes, in this lighting) or enforcing a rule with children (“But Mom, you said not to hit him! I didn’t hit him; I just hugged him really hard!”). Yet children grow up, and the Israelites wended their merry way until they had lived themselves into the time of Christ.
Christ’s coming was the moment of God revealing Himself in a much more explicit way, since the tots had grown and were ripe for the next step, although most still weren’t able to comprehend or recognize the truths bestowed by Christ. When He asked His apostles, “Whom do men say that I … am?” He gets such diverse replies as John the Baptist and Jeremiah. However, when He asks them what they think, He gets immediate response from Simon, who blurts out a succinct description of the situation:
“‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven'” (Mt. 16:13-19, KJV).
This bit was worth quoting in full, since it is a crucial moment not only for Peter, but also in the relationship between God and His people. Jesus changes Simon’s name and gives him the keys to the Church that the gates of Hell will not withstand – after Simon makes this declaration. (He was not the only one to make this acknowledgment, but Christ didn’t respond to anyone else the way He did to Simon.) Not only that, but this task comes with a change of title. Simon becomes Peter: Kepha, Cephas, Petras, Rock. God has once more written His revelation in stone.
This new law-holder becomes the rock for Christ’s New Covenant Church, just as the Ten Commandments formed the base of the Old Covenant religion. There is, however, a glaring difference. The old tablets of stone were mineral, but the new Rock lives, breathes, passes on his office…. and talks back. The new Rock tells his children, “Yes, you were told no hitting, but see how that rule tells you not to harm your brother, and squeezing him too tightly harms him, too.” And when the child inevitably fails to get the point, a new rule appears. “DO NOT SQUEEZE YOUR BROTHER TOO TIGHTLY!” Of course, it is not really a new rule, but a clarification of the first. We crazies who (willfully or not) misunderstand who God is and what He asks of us need this clarification.
An end note is necessary. Christ bestowed these powers in direct response to Simon’s declaration of faith – He spoke to him in reply. He did not grant the power to predict the next Super Bowl winner (coming to a continent near you in about 1,900 years!) or the grace to never sin. In fact, Peter soon after failed in a major way when he denied Christ three times, yet Christ plumbed the depth of His love after the Resurrection and affirmed his mission by passing on the role of shepherd. Feed My lambs. Feed them the truth of God and His laws through the mouth of the Church, and do so through love. If you fall, do not use the old law to stone transgressors, but rather the new, living Rock to guide them with love. This love is firm, unchanging, forgiving, patient: the new conduit between the mis-communicating man and his God.
LogoSophia Magazine 