Some subversive women, Peter sort of getting it, and other thoughts for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time

I often use three questions to help shape our response to God: Whose are we? Who are we? What is ours to do? Our readings this week help us with these questions.

In Exodus and the story of Moses placed in an ark, we meet God working through subversive and disobedient women taking significant risks for this Hebrew boy. While the Pharaoh is un-named, which reduces his legacy to tyrant, the two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, are immortalized as those who protect life. God acts through all these women, including Pharaoh's own daughter, to completely outsmart Pharaoh and collapse his system from the inside out. What image of God might this offer us?

Matthew 16 marks a major turning point in this gospel. Caesarea Philippi is on a major trade route to Damascus. Near a headwater of the Jordan River, Greeks had built a temple to Pan three hundred years earlier and it became a centre for Roman and Greek worship, idolizing Herodian and Roman wealth and power. Herod rebuilt it to honour Caesar Augustus—who claimed the titles "son of god" and "prince of peace”. By Matthew's writing, it was the Roman occupation capital where legions celebrated Jerusalem's fall and the slaughtering, enslaving, and expelling of tens of thousands of Jews.

In this place of brutal power, Jesus asks, “In your conversations, who do people say I am?” Those responses saw Jesus as the one to free them from all this place stood for. Then Jesus asks, “In those conversations, who do YOU say I am?” And Peter responds with "You're the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

Peter got a lot right but still understood very little. I wonder what kind of messiah he saw in Jesus? Having seen him feed crowds, walk on raging seas, and heal people and communities, Peter recognized the Living God at work. Jesus lived God’s abundant mercy, compassion, and justice. Peter’s expectation was still shaped by imperial power, but Jesus’ aroha-love was changing his identity as a disciple from the inside out. On that Jesus would build his new community of those walking and living his way. How does this speak to us?

As we continue in this year of waiting, what experience do we have of God’s abundant generosity and compassion? How does this experience shape our sense of who we are? How open are we to receive it and to live it?

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