Who Do YOU Say That Jesus Is?

Today’s reflection is from Sarah Hansman (she/her), a queer Catholic, a doctoral student in theological ethics at Boston College, a hospital chaplain,  and prison minister. Sarah is passionate about bringing together the worlds of theology, ministry, and community organizing. Her interests include the role of imagination in shaping moral agency and lay authority especially as it pertains to sex and gender, immigration, politics, and carceral justice.

The liturgical readings for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time can be found by clicking here.

At first glance, today’s liturgical readings speak boldly on power and authority. The gospel famously recounts Peter receiving the “keys to the kingdom,” becoming “the rock,” thus initiating a papal lineage that lives on to today. But when faced with any story about power and authority, especially when that authority can be wielded against LGBTQ communities, we must ask a few questions. Who’s authority? What kind of power? Where does it come from? And who can claim it? 

Consider the sequence of events in today’s gospel passage. First, Jesus asks the disciples who do people say that the Son of Man is? They have been following him for some time now, certainly long enough to know what people say about this teacher from Nazareth. They repeat back to Jesus the tales they have been told, the assumptions made, and judgments cast. They likely responded without giving it much thought.

We know this experience. Who do people say that we are? LGBTQ people know what it is to be labeled in ways that do not represent who we are. To have those labels be believed before someone gets the chance to know us. 

Perhaps Jesus nods knowingly, well aware of what people say and able to let all that wasn’t true of him slide off his back. Perhaps he let out a wistful sigh, wondering if it would always be this way. But then he turned to his friends, and asked a second, more important, question: who do you say that I am? 

Peter answers. Peter—not a religious authority but an illiterate fisherman—does not get his answer from theological arguments or a rigid adherence to tradition.  He leaves behind the assumptions that others make upon Jesus’s identity and needs no “flesh and  blood proof.” Instead, Peter trusts his experience, what he feels in his bones, the person in front of him that he has come to know and love. “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”

When Peter recognizes Jesus, Jesus does the same to Peter. He blesses Peter, calls him by a new name, and grants him the keys to the kingdom, saying: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Binding and loosing are linked to responsibilities of the priesthood: teaching, judging, and mediating forgiveness. To bind and to loose is the practice of applying scriptural teaching to contemporary situations. Ultimately, the power is one of moral and ethical discernment–what the law applies to and doesn’t. 

To bind: to cast actions, ways of being, and people as sinful—as has been done with the LGBTQ community for so long—is not an authority to be taken lightly. 

In granting this power to Peter, we can begin to gain insight into what Jesus thinks of how (and who) we bind and loose. Peter’s authority comes not from rigid obedience to the letter of the law but from trusting his experience, rooted in deep encounter with Jesus.  

When, as a church, our “binding” and “loosing” keeps people out, demonizes, and excludes, we make idols of ourselves and our interpretations. In a later chapter of the gospel, Jesus critiques the Pharisees whose teachings “lock people out of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 23:13). It is not up to us to “lock people out of the kingdom of heaven.”  God’s judgments are inscrutable and God’s ways are unsearchable as the second reading tells us. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Unfortunately, we forget this too often, and claim God’s judgment as a cudgel rather than God’s love as a liberating force. 

It’s easy for leaders to cast   judgment. A government scapegoats trans communities while simultaneously rescinding healthcare and equal protections. A Church fails to recognize queer identity and relationship. A parish asks its LGBTQ members to choose silence or judgment. 

And, it can be equally easy to believe the judgments–to trust the external authority rather than the living Christ, moving within us, who  affirms our experience, our love, our very being. Shame has a way of seeping into what we believe about ourselves. 

And so we must return to Jesus’s question. Who do you say that I am? “You” is written in the plural in the original Greek, which means that while we only hear Peter’s response, Jesus presents this question to all of his disciples, all of us. This is the question we are called to answer, each of us, every generation, again and again. For our God is a living God who lives and moves and has God’s being anew in every era.

Let us trust our own experience, our own authority, our relationship with Jesus. Let us live and work in community to refine our understandings of our own experience, authority, and relationship with Jesus. And allow him, in return, to bless us, to call us by name, to grant us the keys to the kingdom, to bind and to loose.