Last week my granddaughter and I were underneath St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. We had been inside to look up at Michelangelo’s soaring dome; above, looking down to the church floor and finally climbing hundreds of steps to the cupola where we gazed over the magnificent square . Now we were being led through the narrow, dark passages toward the tomb of the apostle Peter. A narrow sliver of light toward the back of a cramped space, a grayed small bone encased in rock: that is what we saw. But that’s not all we saw. Winding through the labyrinthine tunnel, we passed family tombs from the first days of Christianity. And hidden from the visitors above, we noticed frescoes with curiously suspicious pagan symbols. Did these indicate that, before Christianity became lawful in 4th century Rome, people had been buried there who worshipped other deities?
Jesus had said to his disciple and friend, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” This is a bit of wordplay: the words”Peter” and “rock” are derived from the same root. Yet Jesus was quite serious; appointing a flawed simple fisherman to lead the way after Jesus had departed. His command, of course, wasn’t meant literally. Yet as we navigated through the rock-hewn chambers beneath the basilica, the metaphor took shape and became quite real. We noticed how that small bone from Peter’s hand had become fused with the rock foundation.
Many years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spoke to his fellow Israelites, “you who seek the Lord, look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” Echoed and expanded by John the Baptist. who tells the big-wig Jewish leaders, “Do not presume to say to your selves, “we have Abraham as our ancestor; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham.” Perhaps Jesus had these two prophets in mind when he commissioned Peter. Not only would Jews be included in the household of God, but all the children of Abraham: Jews, Christians, Muslims. And more as well: from the very rock of the earth, God will embrace all her children.
This planet we inhabit is, as the television show called it, the third rock from the sun. It is our foundation, and we share it with every kind and stripe of human, all creatures great and small. Upon this rock God establishes the beloved community.
Before Michelangelo crested St. Peter’s Basilica with the mighty dome, he took on a task that other Florentine sculptors had rejected as impossible. An enormous marble block had been hauled to Rome years before, waiting to be transformed into a sculpture, There was only one problem with the marble. It had a deep flaw, a crack that, had the artist hammered the chisel in the wrong spot, the whole block would crumble into a thousand pieces. Michelangelo began his work. He is purported to have said that he was only chipping away the parts of the block that didn’t belong; that the statue was simply waiting to be freed. What emerged when he finished is perhaps the most famous sculpture in the world.
Michelangelo made the metaphor visible. From an imperfect piece of stone he created a perfect human figure. Just so does God see in each of us, flawed humans that we are, a beautiful soul, waiting for the divine artist’s hand, to reach in and find us.