Loosed

Absolution, by fanlay

Lections: The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 21), AD 2026 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

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

“Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

Our Gospel reading this morning kicks off with perhaps the most loaded question in the New Testament. At first blush, an answer might seem simple. Throughout most of the Hebrew Scriptures, “son of man” serves as an idiom for humankind. Just as the son of a duck is a duck, and the Son of God is God, so is the son of man a man. Not exactly rocket science. But the plot thickens once we hit the Book of the Prophet Daniel.

A latecomer to the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel purports to be the prophecies of a legendary figure some 500 years before Christ. Modern scholarship indicates that the book as we have it now was edited much later, in the second century before Christ, but it still appears to contain far older material repackaged for a latter crisis. You’ll see what I mean in a moment.

The Prophet Daniel lived during the Babylonian Exile, when the people of Israel, the Jewish people—Jesus’ people—lost their Temple, their King, and their country, and were dragged off by their captors as strangers in a strange land. His book is an apocalypse, a genre that uses highly evocative and symbolic imagery to describe the spiritual reality behind and beyond current events. People write apocalypses in times of crisis, to assure the afflicted that there is indeed an end of the world, a good one, and that this isn’t it, that we have far better things to come. Apocalypses give hope.

Daniel’s apocalypse tells of four great beasts, representing four foreign empires, that will each conquer Israel in turn. Yet after this, something wild, something amazing will happen. Daniel speaks of the Ancient of Days, a figure of God, handing over God’s own dominion and glory and power to “one like a son of man,” who shall inaugurate the Kingdom of God. And as you can imagine, this figure sparked excitement and fascination in Daniel’s readers.

Who could this be, upon whom God bestows all that God has and God is? Who would be worthy to stand before the Throne of the Ancient of Days, like a second God, heralding by divine mandate an eternal and heavenly Kingdom? Daniel calls Him “one like a son of man,” which implies that this figure appears to be human, yet further implies that He must also be so much more. Who is this Son of Man?

The most direct interpretation would be that the Son of Man represents the saints of the Most High, the faithful remnant of Israel, God’s own priestly people. They would regain their independence, regain their kingdom, after the end of the fourth beast, the fourth empire. But the Book of Enoch—another Jewish apocalypse, written about the same time as Daniel and every bit as popular—identified the Son of Man as the Messiah, God’s prophesied Anointed Priest and King, hidden in God’s eternal presence from before the world began.

So let’s imagine, then, that we are faithful Jews living in the time of Jesus. Everyone around us is reading the Book of Daniel, and for good reason. Daniel prophesied that four conquering empires would roll on through—the last one being toppled by “a rock not hewn by human hands,” whatever that might mean—before the revelation of the Son of Man. And we can count, can’t we? Since Daniel in the sixth century, we’ve seen the Babylonians, who were conquered by the Persians, who were conquered by the Greeks, who were conquered by Rome. We now live under the hobnailed heel of the Roman Legions.

Moreover, the Book Daniel initiated a countdown: a “week of weeks,” or 490 years, from the time of the eponymous prophet. That brings us to today—to right around the time when Christ was born. That’s why everyone was looking for the Messiah at Jesus’ birth. The Son of Man is due to come. He’s probably already here! Soon He will topple Rome and deliver her over to God’s saints as promised. The excitement must’ve been electric.

Enter Jesus. You know His story: an eccentric yet mesmerizing Galilean rabbi, famous for His healings, His exorcisms, His ever cryptic and captivating parables. As He gathers His Apostles and carries out His wonders, people begin to whisper; people begin to hope. A lot of them, I suspect, simply wanted to see what He would do next. It’s always something with this guy. And He doesn’t disappoint. Our Gospel reading this morning states that He comes into the district of Caesarea Philippi—and that’s a very odd thing for Him to do.

Caesarea Philippi, better known as Banias, is a haunted place, a pagan place. Centuries before Christ, the army of Alexander the Great had found a Canaanite shrine north of the Holy Land, and they dedicated it to Pan, the Greek goat-god of wild things and battle-panic. When the Romans took over, they doubled down, filling up the place with statues of pagan deities. It even had a cave to the Underworld, the supposed Gates of Hades. And here in this Gentile, non-Jewish, Greco-Roman space, Jesus asks of His disciples the question with which we began: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

Oh, this is it. This is what they’ve been waiting for. You can almost hear the eagerness in their voices. “Some say John the Baptist,” one exclaims, several of Jesus’ disciples having first been disciples of John. Others call out famous Prophets like Jeremiah, or wonderworkers such as Elijah, good guesses all. And then Jesus drops the punchline: “But who do you say that I am?”

Did you catch that? “Who do people say the Son of Man is? But who do you say that I am?” Here Jesus explicitly identifies Himself with “the one like a son of man.” No more ambiguity. No more dissimulation. He calls Himself the Son of Man, punctuated with “I AM,” the most sacred Name of God in Hebrew Scripture. This is a bombshell. And Simon bar Jonah—ever the brashest if not the bravest of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles—blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”

By Jove, he’s got it. Simon hits the nail on the head: gold star, head of the class. And in response, Jesus proclaims, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but My Father in Heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter”—literally Rock—“and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give to 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.” Man, the hits just keep on comin’.

There’s a lot going on here, but it all still ties back to the Book of Daniel. Jesus renames Simon “Peter,” precisely because Peter is the Rock who will hand the Roman Empire over to the saints. He is affirming, indeed fulfilling, the popular interpretation of the prophecy. Because if you don’t know anything else about Peter, you must know that He founded the Church in Rome, and that Church eventually converted the Empire. Peter conquers the kingdom that killed the Christ; he conquers it by making it Christ’s own.

That’s why Jesus took His disciples to this uncanny, pagan, Roman place. Because He is the Christ for them as well, the Messiah for us all.

As for that talk of binding and loosing, this is common terminology for rabbinic authority, for the power to rule on matters of religious Law. As the Ancient of Days gave His glory to the Son of Man, so now the Son of Man passes on that divine authority to His Church. Note that this is the only instance in the canonical Gospels of that word “church,” ἐκκλησία; literally the assembly, the congregation, those “called out.” Only God, remember, can forgive sin. But here Christ gives those Keys to His saints, to His Church.

That’s why, when pastors proclaim the forgiveness of sins, we aren’t doing that of our own authority or accord. Who cares whether I forgive you, sinner as I am? But empowered by His Holy Spirit, the Church speaks in persona Christi Christ’s own words of forgiveness. Just as Daniel’s Son of Man represented both the Messiah and the saints, so now we who are many have been made one in Jesus’ Body, one in His Spirit, one in the Sacrament of the Church.

The Son of Man makes us into Him, makes us into the sons and the daughters of God. Such is our absolution, and the whole of our salvation. “Who do you say that I am?” You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026