Matthew 16.13-20 (NRSV): Peter’s
Declaration about Jesus
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of
Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of
Man is?’ 14And they said, ‘Some
say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of
the prophets.’ 15He said to them, ‘But
who do you say that I am?’ 16Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 17And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh
and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will
not prevail against it. 19I will give 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.’ 20Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell
anyone that he was the Messiah.
William Barclay has
been a source I have used in preparation for this homily.
My text this morning
is written in Matthew 16.13:
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he
asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’
Today’s
reading contains some of the most discussed verses in the New Testament,
especially the words of Peter in verses 16-19; but it is important to place
them into their context. It takes place in the district of Caesarea Philippi,
about 20 miles south of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus asks his disciples who people
say he is and they reply, John, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Then
Jesus asks them who they themselves
think he is and this is when Simon Peter replies: “You are the Christ, the Son
of the living God.” Jesus responds saying that it is God who has revealed this
to Peter and that Peter is the rock
on which the new Israel will be built and over which death will have no power.
In addition, Peter will be given the power to admit people into the kingdom
which is coming, because his teaching and disciplinary actions within the
community will be endorsed by God. Then he tells them to tell no one that he is
the Messiah.
Jesus
and the disciples had once more withdrawn from the crowds. The end of his
ministry was drawing near and Jesus needed more time to be with his disciples
and prepare them for their future ministry. Where they were was outside the
domain of Herod Antipas and the population was mainly non-Jewish and Jesus
would therefore have peace to teach the twelve. Jesus needed to know if anyone
really understood: was there anyone who, when he had left this fleshly life,
would be able to carry on his work?
When
we are faced with challenges, we need to withdraw, gather together with those
close to us and discern a way forward. There is a very real sense that this
happens each week when we gather together with the people of God, to receive
teaching and nurture to discern God’s will for us.
‘Peter’ means rock and here Jesus is once again using
the powerful tool of metaphor to do some important teaching. An informed Jew at
the time would have understood the image better than most of us today. The
rabbis applied the image of a rock to Abraham as the founder of their faith,
but never intended this to let people think that Abraham was more important to
their core understanding that God is the
rock (see Deuteronomy 32.4, 31, 1 Samuel 2.2, 2 Samuel 22.2 also Psalm
18.31). But it was permissible to call someone a rock and by doing so you would
be paying them the greatest compliment, because it would turn one’s mind to
God, who alone is the true rock.
In the light of this
Old Testament teaching, St Augustine drew the conclusion that Jesus was
referring to himself here as the rock, being the incarnation of God, and that
he was paying Peter a wonderful compliment. Barclay paraphrases, Augustine
suggesting that Jesus would have being saying something like: ‘...You are
Peter; and on myself as rock I will found my Church; and the day will come
when, as a reward for your faith, you will be great in the Church.’
It is important that
we understand the way people wrote over 2000 years ago: how people wrote a
hundred years ago is profoundly different to today and so going back that much
further needs careful consideration. It is therefore a mistake to read
important passages like this with uncritical modern western eyes.
There is also the
dimension that this metaphor refers to the truth – the foundation of the
Christian message – and this is the truth that Jesus is the Messiah; the Son of
the living God. It was God himself who had opened Peter’s eyes to this truth. 17And Jesus answered Peter, ‘Blessed
are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,
but my Father in heaven.’ We all know that reason, by itself
can be dangerous for it leads to the horrors and evils of things like Nazism –
and today people are realising that if one takes a fundamentalist approach to
rationalism and science this too, is dangerous. This is why the Church requires
us to find truth in the Bible, plus reason, plus the combined wisdom of the
ages. Within the Methodist tradition, we are required to add experience, because all these together
provide the checks and balances to ensure that we find what really is true.
Yet another
dimension is that the rock is a reference to Peter’s faith – which is also
central – because membership of the Church is by faith – and this gift from God
is part of the foundation of what it means to be a Christian. For our very
salvation is the free gift of God of faith that is offered to all, again within
the Methodist tradition affirming that all NEED to be saved, all CAN be saved,
and can KNOW that they are saved and all can be saved to the UTTERMOST. And all
this is by faith alone.
But the more literal
understanding also contains important truth – and this is that Peter himself is
the rock, because he is the first initial foundation stone of the whole Church
because he was the first to come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
Often the authors of the biblical
books use images to make a particularly important point and, as Barclay points
out, ‘... the details of the picture are not to be stressed; it is the point
which is being made ...’ Here, the purpose of the metaphor is to show how Peter
is the foundation in the sense that he is the one person on whom the whole
church is built because he was the first to come to understand who Jesus really
is. We know, from the rest of the New Testament, that Jesus did not mean us to
understand that Peter, literally, was the foundation. In fact, others are also
referred to as foundations: in
Ephesians 2.10 the prophets and the apostles are said to be the foundation of
the Church because it was upon their work, witness and faithfulness that the
Church was founded. This is why their works are included in the Bible. Paul
also refers to Jesus as the corner-stone,
or cap-stone, because Jesus holds everything together, and without him
everything would just fall apart. Peter, in his writings, speaks of Christians
as living stones confirming that all
those who believe are part of the building blocks of the church – part of its
very fabric. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, refers to Jesus as the only foundation as we read: ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than
the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.’ In our Gospel
reading, Jesus was not saying to Peter that the Church depended on Peter;
merely that the Church began with
Peter.
Matthew’s reference
to the Church is also not as many people would assume it is today – a
denomination or a building, but the gathering of the people of God – so Jesus
is here too saying to Peter (as Barclay paraphrases) ‘Peter, you are the
beginning of the New Israel, the new people of the Lord, the new fellowship of
those who believe in my name.’
Jesus then goes on
using an image of a fortress – ‘... the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it ...’ On the top of the mountain overlooking Caesarea Philippi, there
was a great castle. As Jesus was talking to his disciples, this could have
caught his eye and so he expanded his metaphor to include what it offered.
Within the fellowship of believers, we should feel safe and secure because
Jesus is holding everything together and Jesus and his ways should be the norm.
Hades was never, in
Jewish tradition, a place of punishment, just the place where the dead went,
and so the essence of what Jesus is saying here, is that his death and Resurrection
would mean the defeat of the power of Hades and death. This is the wonderful
good news that death is only tragic for those people left behind; because of
our sadness and the fact that we miss the person who has died; but for them,
they do not go to the place of death, but to the presence of our Lord, Jesus,
the Messiah – which (as Paul put it) is better by far!
We have the keys of
the kingdom, because we have been entrusted with the message of the Good News
that death is a lie, death is not the end, death has been defeated, because
there was a man in history, Jesus, from a town in Galilee, called Nazareth –
and he revealed God to the world and overcame death for us. When we make the
same discovery, together with Peter, we have the same privileges and
responsibilities to fulfil.
Today all people are
confronted with the same question: ‘Who is Jesus’? John Robinson’s writes:
Who this man was, was a man ... who yet stood in a unique relationship
to God, speaking and acting for him. He was ‘the man who lived God’, his
representative, his plenipotentiary to whom ‘everything was entrusted and yet
who was and could do nothing ‘in himself’’.
This mystery makes
perfect sense when we answer the question with Peter: Jesus is ‘... the Messiah, the Son of the
living God.’
Who do you say the Son of Man is? Amen.