Matthew 16

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Where disciples gather these days . . . Note the sign.
If only God would raise a long-lost loved one from the dead to come to us and tell us about the hereafter; then we would truly believe. We need a sign! (Remember the story of Lazarus the leper?)
      Or if he would fill the sky with a great “I AM” in blood red, Verdana script, then we would change our ways and shed our doubts and the whole world would turn on a dime and follow. 
     We need a sign!
      Matthew 16 begins with temple teachers testing Jesus' claims by asking that he perform some act that would set him apart, that would validate his claims. Interesting proposition: “turn this water into wine and we'll believe your claims.”
      Jesus' reply is interesting: “Jonah was a sign to you all, and you didn't get it; you can't even read the signs around you!”
      Except, of course, those that predict the weather. Big deal.
      Signs are tricky things. When 9/11 happened, there were plenty of stories about people who “should have been in the building when it collapsed, but were diverted somehow that day and were thus saved.” Stories like this were taken as signs of God's angels watching over people. I didn't hear any stories of persons who were unexpectedly diverted into the Trade Towers that day, possible signs that God's angels were manipulating them to their deaths, but I imagine that both anomalies occurred in about equal numbers.
      We miss the sign of Jonah . . . and all those other signs that have become so mundane that our eyes focus beyond them, look for the extraordinary when all the sign we need is right under our noses.
      But then, the Pharisees and Sadducees weren't really looking for signs; they were setting a trap.
      Yeast replaces seed as a central symbol/image in this chapter. Seeds are scattered and sown, the good seed is ground into flour, the flour is made into bread, yeast is added to make the bread rise, become light and fluffy, tasty. Add yeast and it grows, permeates, changes the quality of the bread. So be wary of the yeast of false teachers, greedy corporate types, crass politicians, pornographers, advertisers of material goods, cheaters on their taxes, wolves in sheep clothing generally. Their yeast can grow in you . . . and may end up tasting good.
      Contrarily, leaven your bread with gospel yeast and it will grow and fill you.
      “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
      How can anyone today grasp the significance of the “handing over of the keys of heaven?” Understand it as the keys being entrusted to Peter and his successors as gatekeepers and you have a papacy. Understand it as a church appointed to be the dedicated successor to Christ's work on earth and you have a vast throng of people carrying the keys to the kingdom, opening and locking doors judiciously, thoughtfully . . . in the name of Christ.
      But just a minute! We need to talk about this for a bit. Does this extend us authority? obligation? privilege?
      Matthew 16 ends on a sombre note. Obviously written in hindsight, it recollects Jesus' predictions that he was not going to get away with what he was doing forever. Seems to me, it echoes the theme of handing over the keys; it's not the about the end, it's about a transition that's bound to come soon.
      “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
      And truly, I admit, I have no idea what this means. Except that there will very soon be an experience of kingdom that will overcome Jesus' followers and will change their lives for good, such that death will not be what it once was. What do you think? It reinforces the theology that kingdom is both now and not yet, a line of thought that still has me knitting . . . my brow. 
      (It's the only knitting I do these days.)
     We don't, after all, live in an imaginary nor an historic world; we live in this one.

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