Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
August 27, 2023
Matthew 16:13-20

The video of the entire worship service from Trinity Episcopal Church is available on YouTube. The audio of the sermon is available on the Trinity Church’s sermon webpage.

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19).

Last week, Rabbi Peter Kessler and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Houston. Trinity Church and Congregation B’nai Israel have a long and storied relationship. Their congregation has worshiped in Eaton Hall. Those candlesticks were a gift from them. Trinity School’s first classrooms were at the temple when it was across the street. This tradition continues, and I am glad to call Peter a colleague and a friend. 

The most haunting part of the Holocaust Museum, I think, is the rail car. Right in the middle of the museum, they have a rail car like ones that would have been used to transport people, humans, to places whose names we must never forget – Buchenwald, Treblinka, Auschwitz. And when you stand there in the rail car, this feeling of horror starts to gnaw at you as you imagine them sliding those big doors closed and locking in people, humans. Those people, they were dehumanized. They were bound. 

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

It was those words from Jesus that I thought about as we stood there. I heard again the immense responsibility that has been given to God’s people to bind and to loose. To close or to open. To condemn or to liberate. Over the course of Christian history, this has been one of the most hotly contested passages in church politics. During the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants spilled ink and blood against one another, trying to prove to one another that they, and only they, possessed the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Because that is power. The power to bind and to loose. The power to close or to open. The power to condemn or to liberate. 

Though we don’t quote it often, probably because we don’t know the Bible as well as we should, this has seeped into modern Christian thought. Like Peter, we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And that’s right. But that often means we want the power without the responsibility.

In other words, this passage, and the power that goes with it, has gone to our heads, and not to our hearts. 

It’s worthwhile to stop here for a moment and talk through what this passage is actually saying. Because it’s terribly confusing. Simon, also known as Peter, says the right thing. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Jesus says back to him, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” This is a pun. The word for “rock” in Greek is “Petra,” like, “Peter.” And the word, “church,” in Greek, “ekklesia,” just means “assembly.” Church just meant a people who had gathered for a specific purpose. It didn’t even have a religious connotation, it was just what you call a group of people. It didn’t mean an institution with professional clergy, and buildings, and committees, and newsletters, and pot luck lunches. Church, for Jesus and Peter, was just people.

“On this rock I will build my church.” Jesus wasn’t talking about building up things, he was talking about building up people. That, that is the heart of the matter. Our purpose, as good church people is to build each other up. To loose them, if you will. To loose their potential to become fully alive in God. Not to build up our own egos but to build up each other in love. That’s what this whole passage is about. By acknowledging that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, Peter becomes fully alive, fully human. And when you’re fully alive, fully human, you can see the humanity in someone else. 

That is the horror of the rail car. Dehumanized, bound, chained, locked in, the people in that rail car were treated as less than people. The Jews of Europe, and others, were bound because others were bound by hatred. And the people who were doing the binding, well, they lost their humanity, too. By degrading someone else, you degrade yourself. When people are loosed by love, they are free to love themselves, to love God, to love each other. But when people are bound by hate, they are bound to hate each other, to hate God, and to hate themselves. 

That rail car, it is more than a rail car. It is more than a historical artifact and a haunting reminder. It is the ultimate symbol of how a people, a society, can become so bound that they bind themselves.

But the rail car is not the only historical artifact at the Holocaust Museum, for there is also a symbol of loosing. It’s a boat. It’s a fishing boat from Denmark. In that very boat, good Christian people ferried thousands of Jews out of hate-bound occupied Denmark to safety in Sweden. Risking themselves and their own families, those righteous Gentiles loosed great love in the face of unimaginable darkness. 

And that’s what Rabbi Kessler and I couldn’t stop thinking about, and talking about. What we would have done back then? Would I, as a Christian, have the courage to loose? Would I have the courage to not count the cost and to man that boat under the cover of darkness? Would I be so persuaded by the love of Christ that I would be willing to lose everything for the sake of someone else? Or would I become bound? Bound to my own relative safety and security? Bound to my own self-preservation? Bound to hatred of people not like me? 

I could preach for hours and hours about this passage, but that rail car and that fishing boat tell the whole story. Two symbols, two potential paths for humanity. “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

I know, I’m awfully serious today. But this stuff means to much to me to pass off a quick, funny message for the sake of making us feel good. In fact, I don’t think that my job is to make you feel good. It’s not because I’m preternaturally sad or joyless. I think that my job, to the best of my ability, is to speak God’s truth; “cost whence it may, come what it will.”¹ I believe that these words from Jesus, these lessons, they’re not thought exercises. These words from Jesus, these lessons, have real world implications. I’m thinking of the tens of millions who were bound to hatred in the last century. I’m thinking of the millions and millions who are still bound today. They’re bound to their ideologies, they’re bound to anger. And because of it, millions more are bound to depression, and angst, and loneliness.² And people, real people, are dehumanized because we are bound up in our own insecurities. One of the first things you learn as a pastor is that people who are hurt, hurt other people. So I believe that is the job of the church, it is the purpose of good Christian people like us to heal. That’s what the word “salvation” means anyway. It doesn’t mean to save. It means to heal, like a salve, like salvation, like a balm for our souls, like being loosed from our shackles.

And the way to loose other people from their bonds is to first loose ourselves. By choosing to follow this God, like Peter, God will unleash the fullness of our humanity. This is what I ask you to do today; see yourself as fully human, as you are, as God made you. When you pray, when you think about things going on in the world, when you have to make decisions at work, remember first and foremost that you are a human made in the image of God. And because of that you have the awesome power and the even greater responsibility of binding and loosing. The words you say, the decisions you make, they have the capacity to bind or to loose, to harm or to heal. 

When we see ourselves as fully human, made in the beloved image of God, we will not shut the doors of that railcar, but instead we will crew that boat. And the gates of Hades – the evil, the terror, the horror of this world – will not prevail against us. Because we will be fully alive to Jesus, the Son of the living God. 

To sum it up, Saint Paul said it best – “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God– what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:7-8).

1. The Episcopal Church. “Sparrow, William.” Accessed August 24, 2023. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/sparrow-william/. ↩︎
2.  Brooks, David, and Illustrations Ricardo Tomás. “In a Culture Devoid of Moral Education, Generations Are Growing up in a Morally Inarticulate, Self-Referential World.” The Atlantic, n.d.
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