Λύω: I loose, or, I untie - Matthew 16:13-20

During your first semester at Virginia Seminary, you must choose to take either Biblical Greek or Biblical Hebrew. Ragan and I chose Biblical Greek, also called Koine Greek, which is slightly different from the Greek spoken today. We started by learning the alphabet and a few key vocab words. But then it came time to conjugate verbs, and our professor used the tried and true method of teaching the most regular verb first, the one that follows all the grammatical rules. In Spanish you might use cantar: to sing. In French you might use parler: to speak. In Koine Greek, you use λύω: I loosen, or, I untie.

In the month of August, you can pick any table in the refectory at lunch and you’ll hear students frantically practicing their conjugation. “Λύω, λύεις, λύει, λύομεν, λύετε, λύουσιν.” Our flash cards and other memorization techniques included a lot of tennis shoe imagery, as we tried to pin down just who was doing the untying, when they were doing the untying, and sometimes, if the untying was a sure thing or just a possibility. I remember finding it funny that the first verb I learned in a Biblical language was so mundane, because surely there couldn’t be that much untying of things in the Bible. Girl was I wrong.

Various forms of the verb λύω pop up all over the New Testament, but the meaning is not always as benign as taking off your sneakers. Yes, we find this verb when John the Baptist tells Jesus that he’s not worthy to untie the straps of his sandals, and again when the disciples untie the colt for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem. But we also find this verb when a sinner’s tongue is loosed, as in, removed, and when a man releases his bond to his wife, as in abandons her.

With such a spectrum of potential meanings, I was unsure how to approach today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus gives Simon a new name and a new charge. He is now Peter, the rock on which the Church will be built, and he is in possession of the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a pivotal moment in the story for Peter and for every disciple of Jesus Christ throughout history, including us today. In these few verses, Jesus tells us what the work of the Church should be. It is to bind on earth what will be bound in heaven, and to loose - there’s our verb again - on earth what will be loosed in heaven. Clear as mud, right?

Naturally, I turned to the scholars for guidance, but in this case, they weren’t much help. Folks who study the Gospel of Matthew, Biblical languages, and the Jewish sociopolitical landscape of the era have largely been of two minds about this concept of binding and loosing. Some have argued that the work of Peter and his church is to proclaim the Gospel such that those who hear it and bind themselves to it will be welcomed in heaven, and those do not, will not. It’s a real insider vs. outsider connotation.

Others believe that for Matthew, binding and loosing is about authority. We must bind people to God through Christ, and loose them from the clutches of the empire. I am not an expert in Biblical theology, but I am not convinced by either of these arguments. Instead of double knots and loose threads, we seem to be talking about pinning people down or tossing them out. I do not believe that the work of the Church is so violent. We seem to have strayed far from untying the strap of our Lord’s sandal.

Never fear. When scrolling through my phone to find a photo, I came across a screenshot sent to me by a friend. It’s a picture of a Baroque painting by a German artist named Johann Georg Schmidtner. It’s called “Mary, Untier of Knots.” It depicts Mary, the mother of Christ, floating amongst the clouds, surrounded by angels. She is standing on a serpent, and she is focused on undoing a knot in a long strip of cloth.

Some context is important here. The 12th chapter of the book of Revelation describes a woman giving birth to a son who is then threatened by the devil in the form of a dragon. (Dramatic.) Modern Roman Catholicism often considers the Woman of the Apocalypse to be a reference to Mary. Schmidtner certainly did. He depicts her at the end of the ages, trampling the devil while mindfully tending to her fabric.

This was the untying I’d been looking for. I imagined a 21st century Mary carefully undoing the knots in one of my mother’s thin golden chains, as if that chain represented my life, and when Mary finished untangling all my knots, I would ascend with her into the Kingdom of Heaven. I do not think the Church’s work of binding and loosing is about clutching and throwing away, either people or empires. I think it is the careful work of unlearning, untethering ourselves and our world from empires and reconnecting our hearts, strand by single strand, with the heart of God.

From time to time, I am asked why my church - and by this people can mean anything from Christ Church to all of Christendom - doesn’t do something about the state of the world. We see pain and violence and oppression in the world, and we desire an equally forceful resolution. Hold tight to and protect the oppressed and throw out the oppressors. Bring the sheep into the fold and toss the goats into the outer darkness.

But in our scriptures, these kinds of power moves are reserved for God. The responsibility of the faithful is more particular, more suited to the imperfect and messy body that will carry it out. The Rock on which the Church was built is less of a spotless gemstone on a pedestal, and more like a rough piece of gravel that tumbles along, being molded and shaped as it goes. The work of the Church is unfolding; it is slow, intentional, even delicate.

I cannot solve poverty with one big sweeping motion. But I can, am in fact called to, unravel myself from the story the world has told me about who deserves what resources, and work with my community of faith to knit a truer, more faithful story where the people in our neighborhood have what they need. The salvation of the world is God’s to carry out. The Church helps by untying it’s own knots that get in God’s way.

It’s no surprise to me now that λύω is the foundational verb for unpacking the New Testament in its original language. As Mary reminds us, we are all full of knots that need to be untied in order for us to glimpse the Kingdom of Heaven and move closer to it. Binding and loosing is a vital part of the the Christian life. It is the Church’s mission to extricate empire from our own daily conduct and connect threads of hope, generosity, forgiveness, and hospitality. And if you’re worried about where to start or about your work being too small, just remember that in seminary, we started with tying and untying our tennis shoes. Amen.