This morning’s passage from Matthew’s gospel is rather obviously about who Jesus is. You probably picked that up when Jesus turned to the disciples and asked, “Who do you say that I am?” That’s clearly the question of the day.
But to address only that one question would be to ignore the interesting fact that, in a gospel passage about who Jesus is, Jesus spends most of his time on the subject of who Peter is, or more properly, on the subject of who Simon will be now that he is Peter.
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And 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. I 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.”
There may be a part of our brains that turns away from these verses when we hear them, because we’ve learned to identify them with the Roman Catholic pope. We may hear them and think about how much controversy there has been through the centuries over the pope’s authority. We may think of these verses as only useful if you are trying to establish a papacy or defend the one you’ve got in place. That’s perfectly understandable.
Or we may hear these verses and have one of those moments we could think of as “historical consciousness” when we are reading the scriptures. That’s one of those moments in which some of us—I do this, absolutely—will turn away from a scripture verse and think “That issue was important to the early church.” “This is one of those passages,” we may think, “in which we can hear Matthew’s community processing their relationship to Jewish tradition and establishing the authority of their own teaching and their own teachers within Judaism.” Fair enough. As I say, I do this often when I read scripture, because I think it is important to understand the historical context in which the scriptures, as far as we can tell, were composed.
But either of those responses—a moment’s reflection on the status of the papacy, a moment’s reflection on the early process of forming a Christian church within Jewish society—both of those impulses, as important as they may be, will distract us, if we’re not careful, from the crucial work of learning about who we are supposed to be. Because whatever Jesus is saying about building his church, whatever he is saying about Peter, he is ultimately saying about us.
You, my friends, are the rock. And upon this rock, Jesus has built his church. You may not be the first believers or the most central believers or the most convinced believers, but Jesus is founding the church in this day, on you. The gates of Hades will not prevail against you. Against us, together.
And so, if we are going to claim the exalted status of Peter, it might be important to understand why it is that Jesus has suddenly invested Peter with the keys of the kingdom. And there we return to the original question, the one this gospel passage is more obviously about. Simon becomes Peter, apparently, because he knows and is willing to say out loud that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Both the terms “messiah” and “Son of God” have long traditions for the people of Israel.
“Son of God” for us is likely to sound like a reference to the second person of the Holy Trinity. There is God the Father, and there is Jesus, who is God the Son, and there is the Holy Spirit. But in the Jewish scriptures “Son of God” means “King of Israel.” In the line of King David, the kings of Israel are adopted sons of God, not divine exactly but deeply connected to and, maybe we could say, “fostered” by God. “Messiah,” means “anointed one,” which in Greek is “Christ.” Again, the connection here may be more Jesus as God’s anointed king.
But let’s make that even more complicated. Scholars also attest that there were groups within first-century Israel who had a more direct sense that the messiah would be a kind of divine figure. Our understanding of Jesus as God may be pretty close to Simon Peter’s statement of faith, even if the full doctrine of the Trinity was not firmed up for a few centuries after this text was written.
I’m grateful, actually, that this key statement of faith is life-changing—Simon becomes Peter—and foundational—the church is built on this rock—and yet belief remains mysterious at its core. There is, Jesus points out, more than flesh-and-blood logic at work here. Belief is not merely something we learn or think. And Simon Peter is doing more than acing a test here, more than providing the correct answer. And our lives as Christians are also mysterious way down deep at our core.
Simon becomes Peter because in Jesus he has met the one Jesus calls “father.” Jesus himself seems almost surprised that this encounter between Simon and the Father has taken place. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,” he exclaims. Simon who has a mortal father becomes Peter who knows God as father. Meeting God in Jesus has allowed Simon Peter to know who Jesus is, and through Jesus to know who God is, and also now, who he himself will be.
And looking back on all of this from the twenty-first century, we have questions. We have disputes about the exact nature of the divinity of the Christ in scripture. We have a bitter history of mistaken beliefs, prejudices, about how Jesus as Messiah means that we are or are not connected to Judaism as Christians. Even knowing and cherishing the doctrine of the Trinity, we continue to wonder what it means for us.
And look, just next week we are going to hear that Peter doesn’t really understand what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah and the Son of God. In the next verse after the ones we are reading, Jesus will speak about suffering and dying and being raised from the dead, and Peter will rebuke him, and Jesus will call him “Satan.” Peter’s great belief in Jesus will have become what Jesus calls “a stumbling block.
So here we are with Simon Peter, laying claim to belief in ways that may surprise even us, and at the same time finding that understanding remains elusive. We are way over our heads in this relationship. Jesus is and always will be more than we can handle.
And yet we have the keys to the kingdom of God. Even our judgment, shaky as it may be, has a kind of eternal significance in the eyes of Jesus. Our moral decisions and our actions aren’t just part of a portfolio we are putting together to help us gain admission to heaven. What we do as the church is vital, part of the lived reality of the kingdom of heaven. We walk through this world with a kind of authority, because Jesus has identified himself with us.
Who you say that Jesus is, by allowing your life to change, by confronting the mystery of faith, by owning the full mystery of Jesus every time you cross yourself or bow your head or take communion—this is not just a haphazard practice that has fallen into your life as an echo of something more ancient. This isn’t a quaint remnant of religious conviction. This is your encounter with God.
It looks messy, this life of faith. It looks sometimes like it’s held together with theological chewing gum. And it is enough. While we bumble, we are held, actually, not by theology or history, but by God. The gates of hades will not prevail against this.
You were Simon. Every day still, you may wake up as Simon, or fall into being Simon. And every day Jesus will call out of you the statement of faith that you are blessed to make by the way your live your life, and sometimes even by what you think and say and learn and believe. And Jesus calls out to you daily, telling you that you are Peter. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Try not to make Jesus call you “Satan.” You are his rock as he is yours. Upon this, the church is built.
Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
August 27, 2023
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia