Christ gives himself that death may be conquered – Isa 22:19-23, Matt 16:13-20

Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross parish.

Have any of you spent the last fifteen minutes wondering what Shebna did?  Shebna, who Isaiah talked about in the first reading, in not so glowing terms.  Shebna, who loses his role as master of the royal palace, a kind of chief steward or major domo for the king, and instead of severance pay gets thrust from his office, pulled down from his station, and stripped of his garb of honor, which gets handed over to Eliakim, his successor.  What did he do to deserve that?  Well, our reading began at chapter 22, verse 19.  If we’d have started at verse 15, we’d have heard all about it (and we’d also have heard rather more gruesome curses against Shebna than the ones we did!). 

Shebna built a tomb for himself.  He chiseled out a tomb for himself in an exalted place.  We also learn that Shebna built this tomb for himself away from his ancestral burial site.  We don’t know for sure, but we can probably guess that Shebna diverted money or land rights from the king’s coffers to pay for a lavish tomb for himself in a prestigious location.  And this, ironically, costs him not just his job, but his life.  Shebna lived at a time when few or no Israelites believed in meaningful life after death.  But, Shebna thought he could find a way to ‘beat the system,’ to outwit death.  Yes, he would die, he would be no more, but he would be remembered.  People, for generation upon generation would walk past this lavish tomb in a prominent location and point it out to their children, “look, there’s the grave of Shebna!”  “Who was Shebna?”  “Oh, he was very important.  Why, look, you can tell by how grand his tomb is!”  He would die, but his reputation, his fame, his prestige would live forever, or so he thought.

Even if Shebna hadn’t have been caught out and deposed, it wouldn’t have worked anyway.  The most lavish of Jerusalem tombs would have been destroyed centuries later by the Babylonians.  The very next verse after our reading ends reminds us that while Eliakim (who seems to have been a perfectly satisfactory steward) and was, for a while, a “secure peg in a sure spot,” there would come a time when the peg would become loose.  Good steward, bad steward, both would be just as surely conquered by death, and no-one, not even the king they served could do anything about it.

But, Jesus can.  And Jesus did, and Jesus does.  Like David, Christ the King hands over keys to the one who would serve as chief steward in his kingdom, to the one who recognized him as Christ, as anointed king.  He hands over the keys not of an uncertain kingdom that would eventually come loose; he hands over the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  He hands over the keys of the Church, still assailed by the gates of the netherworld, but never allowing those gates to prevail.

We are assailed by death, by the threat of our mortality, by that fear which drove Shebna to such duplicitous lengths.  We do witness the death of our loved ones and we do grieve.  But we also hope.  Because we know that Christ died that we might die no more.  We know that in rising from the dead, Christ proclaimed with his reclaimed life that death need have no lasting power over us, that death would no longer be allowed separate us from his presence.  Christ’s kingdom promises what David’s never could: immortality.

Christ’s kingdom promises not freedom from death, but freedom through death: that by living lives that confess our faith in Christ, by taking up our cross and following after him, we would discover what our living God has in store for us.  We would encounter our God of life, who revolts at death with as much grief as we do, and loves us enough to do something about it, loves us enough to send his only Son to reveal to us just how mighty that love of His is; so might that even dreadful death is impotent in its face.

Peter could only know that by gift of divine revelation, that’s what Jesus means when he says that flesh and blood could not have shown you this, but only our heavenly father, the gift that God acts to reveal Himself to us.  Peter must have been helped to receive that gift that night at sea, when he tried to walk on water towards Christ and as he fell discover himself saved and the other disciples proclaim Jesus to be the Son of God.  We too have been given that gift, God has given us the gift of being able to recognize Him in Christ, and we are helped to receive it as we recognize Christ’s presence in the Church, as well as in the least of these.

Jesus freely chose to have stewards in his church, to share the keys with fallible mortals, that we might make him known, loved and serve.  You’re probably familiar with the Advent hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.  One of the verses of that hymn describes Jesus as the “Key of David” – O come, thou Key of David, come, // and open wide our heavenly home; // make safe the way that leads on high, // and close the path to misery.  This hymn dares to imagine Christ not just as the new King David, but also as his key.  Christ is the giver and the gift.  Ours is to receive.  Christ give of himself, let himself be handed over that we might receive a share in his kingdom, that we might taste victory over death, that we might live forever, rejoicing not in a splendid tomb, but in the glory of life with the king of kings.