The Confession of Saint Peter
+ In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the Feast of the Confession of Saint Peter--and 'confession' here has the specific religious meaning of a statement of faith. The feast commemorates the event when, at the city of Caesarea Philippi, Simon bar-Jona explicitly declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God: and in Matthew's version of the story, which we'll hear this morning, Jesus replies to Simon's statement by making a pun on Simon's nickname. Simon is apparently called "Cephas," in Aramaic--the language Jesus habitually would have spoken--and "Peter" in Greek, the language in which the Gospels are written; but either way, the nickname means "rock," and so Jesus says to Simon, On this Rock I will build my church. It's a joke which has gotten a lot of attention over the last two millenia, and you can find it all written out in Latin around the top of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
The fact that Peter was killed and buried in Rome--or the likelihood that he was, I suppose I should say--never mind the astounding tradition that has grown up around the traditional place of his burial and around the church office which developed from his ministry--the mere association of this ignorant Galilean fisherman with the imperial capital of Rome is striking testimony to the powerful impact Jesus had on his followers. Luke, who takes Saint Peter and Saint Paul as the two main figures of the book of Acts, shows all the leaders of the early church speaking with a kind of reckless courage. That recklessness allows them to address any sort of audience when they need to to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ: and it is Peter's reckless courage in the service of Jesus which eventually brings him to his own crucifixion, and to his burial on the Vatican hill.
So what is it that Peter confesses, precisely? What is his declaration of faith in Jesus? After the disciples have reported several incorrect opinions about who Jesus is and what he is doing, Peter blurts out, "You are the Anointed one, the Son of the Living God." And for Matthew's gospel, at least, this isn't just a good answer, it's the ideal answer--so good that Jesus tells Simon that God must have revealed it to him. Thus in this story Matthew points out to us that Jesus is the Anointed one, the Messiah--that is, he fulfills God's promises to King David and the whole Jewish nation. At the same time, Jesus is "The Son of the Living God," and that title could mean anything from "he leads a morally good life" to "he shares in the nature of God." For that matter, "son of God" could even be used as a title for the kings of the Jewish nation, so that the second part of Peter's statement would just be another way of saying what he'd already said in using the title "messiah."
But if we've been reading Matthew's gospel carefully from the beginning, we'll remember those wise men who came from the east looking for "the Messiah, the one who is born King of the Jews," and we'll know that Jesus, even though he is a descendant of David, is not, and has never been, simply a human king. Rather, as Matthew's story about naming Jesus tells us, he is (in words borrowed from Isaiah) "Emmanuel," which means "God with us," and he is "Yehoshua," which means "God saves." And so at Cesarea Philippi, after Peter has said that Jesus is Messiah and the Son of God, Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that he has to go up to Jerusalem, and suffer, and die, and rise to life again on the third day. Suffering, death, and resurrection are what it means to be God's anointed one; they are what it means to be the Son of God. It is in suffering, death and resurrection that God is with us, in suffering, death and resurrection that God so powerfully saves.
So what the God the Father reveals to Simon is that a pair of titles that usually didn't go together can both be used to describe Jesus--and then Jesus goes on to show what that new combination of titles means. We could let the matter rest there, but there is one more point I want to note, a point that will be important next week when we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. That final point is that Simon does not do something to figure out who Jesus is--God reveals the secret to him. Nor do Simon and the other disciples do something to deserve their role as the Rock on which Jesus will build the church; in fact, they constantly misunderstand him, and at the end of his life they betray and desert him--while Jesus is being questioned, St. Peter swears that he has never heard of the man. Jesus chooses the disciples for his own reasons, and makes them into the people he needs. And-this is the important thing-what is true on the small scale about Jesus choosing the disciples is also true on the large scale about Jesus choosing us. The salvation that God accomplishes in the death and resurrection of Jesus comes to us as grace, as a gift, as love which we do not and cannot deserve. We don't have to do anything to get it. Over and over again, in classes and in conversations around campus, I hear people talking about what they need to do to be saved. There's nothing wrong with trying to be good, as a sign of our gratitude to God; but we do not go to heaven because we were good--we go to heaven simply and only because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Next week, in the story of Saint Paul, we'll see that basic truth of Christianity very dramatically indeed.
--John Wm. Houghton
+ In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the Feast of the Confession of Saint Peter--and 'confession' here has the specific religious meaning of a statement of faith. The feast commemorates the event when, at the city of Caesarea Philippi, Simon bar-Jona explicitly declares that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God: and in Matthew's version of the story, which we'll hear this morning, Jesus replies to Simon's statement by making a pun on Simon's nickname. Simon is apparently called "Cephas," in Aramaic--the language Jesus habitually would have spoken--and "Peter" in Greek, the language in which the Gospels are written; but either way, the nickname means "rock," and so Jesus says to Simon, On this Rock I will build my church. It's a joke which has gotten a lot of attention over the last two millenia, and you can find it all written out in Latin around the top of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
The fact that Peter was killed and buried in Rome--or the likelihood that he was, I suppose I should say--never mind the astounding tradition that has grown up around the traditional place of his burial and around the church office which developed from his ministry--the mere association of this ignorant Galilean fisherman with the imperial capital of Rome is striking testimony to the powerful impact Jesus had on his followers. Luke, who takes Saint Peter and Saint Paul as the two main figures of the book of Acts, shows all the leaders of the early church speaking with a kind of reckless courage. That recklessness allows them to address any sort of audience when they need to to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ: and it is Peter's reckless courage in the service of Jesus which eventually brings him to his own crucifixion, and to his burial on the Vatican hill.
So what is it that Peter confesses, precisely? What is his declaration of faith in Jesus? After the disciples have reported several incorrect opinions about who Jesus is and what he is doing, Peter blurts out, "You are the Anointed one, the Son of the Living God." And for Matthew's gospel, at least, this isn't just a good answer, it's the ideal answer--so good that Jesus tells Simon that God must have revealed it to him. Thus in this story Matthew points out to us that Jesus is the Anointed one, the Messiah--that is, he fulfills God's promises to King David and the whole Jewish nation. At the same time, Jesus is "The Son of the Living God," and that title could mean anything from "he leads a morally good life" to "he shares in the nature of God." For that matter, "son of God" could even be used as a title for the kings of the Jewish nation, so that the second part of Peter's statement would just be another way of saying what he'd already said in using the title "messiah."
But if we've been reading Matthew's gospel carefully from the beginning, we'll remember those wise men who came from the east looking for "the Messiah, the one who is born King of the Jews," and we'll know that Jesus, even though he is a descendant of David, is not, and has never been, simply a human king. Rather, as Matthew's story about naming Jesus tells us, he is (in words borrowed from Isaiah) "Emmanuel," which means "God with us," and he is "Yehoshua," which means "God saves." And so at Cesarea Philippi, after Peter has said that Jesus is Messiah and the Son of God, Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that he has to go up to Jerusalem, and suffer, and die, and rise to life again on the third day. Suffering, death, and resurrection are what it means to be God's anointed one; they are what it means to be the Son of God. It is in suffering, death and resurrection that God is with us, in suffering, death and resurrection that God so powerfully saves.
So what the God the Father reveals to Simon is that a pair of titles that usually didn't go together can both be used to describe Jesus--and then Jesus goes on to show what that new combination of titles means. We could let the matter rest there, but there is one more point I want to note, a point that will be important next week when we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. That final point is that Simon does not do something to figure out who Jesus is--God reveals the secret to him. Nor do Simon and the other disciples do something to deserve their role as the Rock on which Jesus will build the church; in fact, they constantly misunderstand him, and at the end of his life they betray and desert him--while Jesus is being questioned, St. Peter swears that he has never heard of the man. Jesus chooses the disciples for his own reasons, and makes them into the people he needs. And-this is the important thing-what is true on the small scale about Jesus choosing the disciples is also true on the large scale about Jesus choosing us. The salvation that God accomplishes in the death and resurrection of Jesus comes to us as grace, as a gift, as love which we do not and cannot deserve. We don't have to do anything to get it. Over and over again, in classes and in conversations around campus, I hear people talking about what they need to do to be saved. There's nothing wrong with trying to be good, as a sign of our gratitude to God; but we do not go to heaven because we were good--we go to heaven simply and only because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Next week, in the story of Saint Paul, we'll see that basic truth of Christianity very dramatically indeed.
--John Wm. Houghton