Hades' Gate

Propers: The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 21), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“May your offspring possess the gates of their foes.”

—Genesis 24:60

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus brings His disciples to a peculiar place, a haunted place—the district of the Panion.

If you can imagine the Holy Land, up in the north are mountains, with springs and snows that water the marshland and trickle down into the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan. Sometimes you’ll hear the Bible sing wistfully of the “dew of Hermon,” because in this way Mt Hermon waters all the lands to the south, down to the Dead Sea.

In the time between the Old and New Testaments, Alexander of Macedon arose to conquer the known world. He’s the reason that the New Testament is written in Greek rather than Hebrew. And as his armies passed through the nation of Israel, they found a spring at the foot of Mt Hermon in an otherwise remote and desolate place. They were so grateful for the fresh, cool water that there they erected a shrine to Pan, the half-goat Greek god of battle and abandoned wastes. It’s from Pan that we get our term “panic.”

From this spring grew a pagan city, a cult center dedicated to desert deities, known as the Paneas, and the region around it, the Panion. It was a city of invaders, a colony of Israel’s sworn enemies planted at the very head of the Holy Land. When the Romans took over, they gifted the Panion to the family of their puppet ruler, Herod the Great. And out of gratitude—or ingratiation—Herod Philip renamed the city Caesarea Philippi, which means “Caesar’s Place, from his buddy Philip!”

And so it is very odd, and somewhat ominous indeed, that Jesus gathers His disciples in such a place, here on the border between good and evil, between the holy and the profane. And in this district of hoofed and horned gods, He asks, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Ah, the plot thickens. You have to know your Bible for this one.

“Son of Man” is a term made famous by the prophet Daniel, who centuries earlier, during the great Exile from the Holy Land, joined with the other great prophets in proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, the Anointed One sent by God to gather home God’s people Israel and to inaugurate the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. But this Messiah wouldn’t be like earlier kings, the all-too-human kings of David’s royal line, who so often fell into idolatry and greed and lust. No, this would be a new sort of king, a true Christ, who would appear as a “Son of Man”—that is, He would look human—but who would, in fact, be so very much more. This Messiah, this Son of Man, would be God once again set foot on earth.

Daniel went on to give a timeline, a countdown until this prophecy was to be fulfilled. And he said that four great empires would arise, one after another, to conquer the Holy Land—before being felled themselves, and disappearing back into the sands of time. These empires were to be the Babylonians in Daniel’s own day; the Persians, who would set God’s people free; the Greeks, whom we’ve already mentioned; and finally a fourth empire, which would be felled by a Rock from Heaven, and given over to the saints of God.

Now, it didn’t take a genius to do Daniel’s math. As of our Gospel reading, the time of the Messiah had arrived, and the fourth empire had clearly shown itself to be Rome. All that now remained was for the Rock to topple Rome, and give her over to the saints. And here stands Jesus, in the very midst of Roman rule at Caesarea Philippi, calling Himself the Son of Man, the Messiah promised by Daniel from of old.

And Simon, bless his heart, he gets it right away. The others might suspect, but Simon just blurts it out: “It’s you!” he cries. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” Everything the prophets promised is coming true before his eyes!

“Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah,” Jesus replies. “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father in Heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter”—the Rock—“and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Jesus gives to Simon a new name, a new title, “the Rock,” which is Cephas in Aramaic and Peter in Greek, the name by which he will be known from now on. It will be his mission, Jesus says, to topple Rome and hand her over to the saints—which is exactly what Peter will do in the years following Jesus’ death and Resurrection. He will bring the Gospel to Rome, the Good News of the New Covenant, of forgiveness in Jesus’ Name. And that Gospel will spread from Rome to the far ends of the earth, to encompass the entire world. Through Peter, Jesus conquers the same empire that murdered Him upon the Cross.

Now, I must admit, when Jesus promises that “on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it,” I always had in my mind the image of something defensive, of the legions of hell crashing like waves breaking upon the rock of the Church, immovable, unflinching, patiently weathering the storm. But that’s not it at all. Jesus says, “the gates of Hades will not prevail,” and gates are something defensive. They’re something behind which hell hides.

See, in the ancient world, a city’s strength could be measured by the might of her walls. When danger arose, when invaders came forth, the people could hide within the protection of those impregnable city walls to wait out the duration of the siege. An attacking army would then assault the gates, gates being a natural break, the weakest point in the walls. If the gates held, the city held; if the gates fell, the whole city fell.

When Jesus says that the gates of Hades, the gates of sin and death and hell, will not prevail against His Church, He is not speaking of a passive Church under attack. He is describing a Church on the assault, rolling forward, unstoppable, inexorable, shattering the gates of death, overthrowing the whole of hell! The Rock of which Daniel spoke was not some immobile edifice but a meteor, a rock hurled from Heaven, crushing empires that were helpless to resist!

In this Church, on this Rock, Jesus conquers death. He does not passively wait for it but embraces it fully, plunges headlong into the land of the dead, battering down the gates of hell and overthrowing the damnation of our race. Jesus is not the victim on the Cross but the victor, Christ Victorious, from whom the devil hides, cowering in his black city, only to have his walls broken down, his gates shattered, and his wretched reign at last overthrown!

It’s not just that the Church will outlive death. It’s that we’re coming for death, and Hades hasn’t got a prayer.

That’s what happens here, brothers and sisters. That’s what Christians do together. Gathered as one into the Body of Christ, alive with the fire of the Holy Spirit, we conquer death here, every day. We baptize in the Name of the He who conquered death and hell. We loose the captives from their chains and proclaim the forgiveness of sin. We feed together on the Body and Blood of the Risen Lord that we might have eternal life within us. And we are sent out, forgiven, fed, and blessed—like lions breathing fire!—to be Christ for a world still very much in need.

And so I say to you that you are Peter. You are the Rock hurled from Heaven. And on this Rock Christ will build His Church. And the gates of Hades will not prevail.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.