Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 23, 2020 – Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

At one point in her life, my mom decided that she wanted to be a member of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians. And just as they do here in this area, the place where she was living, they met in the local Catholic church. So, on the meeting night, she went early, and she found one of the applications and filled it out and put it on the table with other people’s applications. Everybody was milling around before the meeting began and two of the officers of the Ladies AOH went over to the pile and started leafing through the names. And one said to the other, rather loudly, “Who’s Madori?” I’m sure what she meant was which one of the people standing around that we don’t recognize is this woman who’s applying? What my mother heard is, “How dare somebody, whose name ends in a vowel, apply for membership in our organization?” My mother was very proud of her Irish heritage on both sides of her family. And so she immediately took umbrage that someone would say that, walked out without ever staying for the meeting, and never had any use for the Ancient Order of Hibernians for the rest of her life.

Binding and loosing is a thorny topic. What we heard this morning in the gospel, for a long, long while now has been what we call the “proof text.” During the Reformation, in the 16^th century, Protestant reformers took phrases out of the scriptures to prove their points, points against Catholic doctrine. The main doctrines that they attacked were the perpetual virginity and the immaculate conception of Mary, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the apostolic succession, papal infallibility, the power of the keys, that is, the power of priests to absolve penitents in the sacrament of Penance. The last three of those all are connected with the reading we heard this morning. The apostolic succession, that is, that our church descends, in an unbroken line, from the apostles, through every generation of bishops who are ordained to take the place of the apostles. Papal infallibility, which actually wasn’t defined as a doctrine until the nineteenth century. And the sacrament of Penance.

Because the reformers chose texts from scripture out of context to make their points, the Catholic counter-reformation did the same thing. And, although it is true that we can take quotations from scripture to bolster our arguments about something in our religion, using them as proof texts may be valid, but it’s very limiting. And that’s what happened to today’s reading. Because today’s gospel is not really about withholding absolution, it’s about including people in the church. That’s why it was set against that very strange story about Shebna and Eliakim and the keys to the house of David. Because that first reading talks about giving authority to someone to let people into the presence of the king. It’s a question not of loosing, but of binding, drawing people in.

So we have to understand that as the background for today’s gospel. And Jesus would not have used the word church the way we use the word church. In the Hebrew language, there’s a word qahal, which means to call out. What it called out was people to come out of their houses to assemble at the synagogue for worship or some important meeting. When rich Jews paid to have the scriptures translated into Greek for themselves, because they no longer read Hebrew well, the word that was chosen for quahal was ecclesia, to call out, same word. And from that we get the English word church.

In the episodes that just briefly came before today’s story, Jesus has one of several of His very awkward and acrimonious confrontations with scribes and Pharisees. And the scribes and Pharisees were the ones who had the authority to call people out for synagogue service. So what Jesus is saying to His group is that, you don’t have to worry if they won’t call you out for service, ‘cause from now on I’m establishing My own quahal. I’m calling people out. And you can call people out under the authority of those who believe that I am the chosen Messiah and the Son of God. How do we know that? Because, in the next chapter after this one, Jesus gives the same instruction to all the disciples that he gave to Peter alone. That they will have the authority to bind and loose.

But in today’s gospel, Matthew is retelling the story for his Christians, who are no longer welcome at synagogue service. Now, for them, all there is is the new calling out, the Christian church. And Matthew’s saying to them, you don’t have to worry about missing the old form of assembly, because here you are drawn by your belief, your common belief in Jesus Christ, into a new community.

Loosing, as opposed to binding, comes down to us as excommunication. Excommunication has been with us since the ancient church. All during the time when we were defining doctrine, from the 2^nd through the 5^th centuries, bishops would disagree with other bishops and would excommunicate each other all the time. Kind of silly, in a way, but they took it very seriously. However, the medieval church used excommunication as a way of controlling an otherwise uncontrollable monarchy. A most famous example of that is when Thomas Becket, the Bishop of Canterbury, excommunicates King Henry II. Henry has Thomas executed by his henchmen and then, in the final reel of the story, Henry II, the illustrious King of England, kneels outside of the tomb of Thomas Becket, takes his shirt off, and beats himself with a whip, begging to be forgiven for his sin.

One of the most notable forms of excommunication was the expression extra ecclesiam nulla salus – four words in Latin, a couple more in English – outside the church there is no salvation. That phrase was first spoken and written in the 3^rd century. That’s a long time ago. But it became conciliar doctrine, approved by all the bishops of the world, in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. However, at the Second Vatican Council, another approved council, just like those other councils, the bishops sat down and said let’s see what we can do with this phrase. Ecclesiam can’t be changed. NullaI can’t be changed. I can’t be changed. Let’s work on extra. What does “outside” mean?

And in paragraphs 12 through 14 of the doctrinal declaration on the church, this is what they said. Well, all people who believe in Jesus can’t possibly be outside the church because they have the same baptism as us, they follow the same Lord as us. The Jews can’t be outside the church because they have the heritage on which Jesus built His church. Muslims can’t be outside the church because they revere the same Lord Jesus we do, in a different way, and they follow all the same traditions that Moses established. And people who believe in God in a general way can’t be outside the church because they are looking toward, and having reverence for a final power. And those people who don’t believe in God at all can’t be outside the church if they live a genuine human life like God has called us to live, because if they knew or believed there was a God, they’d be doing that because God tells them to. Now they’re doing it because they think it’s the right thing to do. And so, what they did was to say that basically no one is outside the church except the person who chooses to be outside the church deliberately. And maybe even there, they could be some mistaken, or so mislead, or so hurt by the church, that it’s not their fault that they think they’re outside the church.

Incidentally, at that same council, the Vatican lifted almost all the excommunications the church ever had. There used to be over a hundred of them. They reduced it to a small list of very arcane things, for example, doing bodily harm to the Holy Father. You can be excommunicated for that. It’s interesting though, that after they reduced that list, somebody did try to take the Holy Father’s life. John Paul II, far from excommunicating the person, who wouldn’t have cared because he’s a Muslim, went to the prison where the man was being held for having shot him, and he forgave him, and gave him his blessing.

There are several conclusions that we can draw from this complicated history of binding and loosing. The first is that our official church has changed more in one century than it did in all the previous nineteen. Something is afoot. Secondly, the institutional church always must move very slowly to make sure it covers all of the spaces in revelation and in doctrine before making a change. The third is that no one should self-loose, like my mom did. Don’t decide for yourself that you don’t belong in the church. It may sound like a crazy thing, but all during my priesthood I’ve had experiences where people came to confession after a long, long time away, and said they felt they were outside the church because they had done something that got them excommunicated. I had to assure them that wasn’t true at all. But someone had told them, or they’d read an article someplace, that said they were outside the church, so they just shrugged their shoulders and said, oh well, I guess I am.  And finally, although the institutional church, for very good reasons, must move very slowly, we of the local church, we are the ones who are called out here for worship, must always do the best we can to bind as many people to ourselves as we possibly can.