Matthew 16: 13-30
All Saints Oakham Morning Prayer 10.30.
There are always big questions being asked. Our media are full of big questions. Big questions needing big answers. You know the kind of big questions:
Can we halt climate change?
Will the Israeli settlers be stopped from moving into the West Bank?
What should our immigration policy be?
Will Russia ever withdraw from Ukraine?
Will England’s men ever win the football World Cup again?
Big questions needing big answers. The media talk and talk about what the big answer might be.
Big questions, the intractable questions of our day. They dominate our thoughts. And because things are not simple, many different people will have many different answers.
However big those questions might seem right now….. in the end they’ll go away
This morning – we consider the biggest question of all. The question that never goes away
The opening of the reading we have just heard from Matthew chapter 16 Jesus … asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
‘Son of Man’ is a description that is often used in Matthew’s gospel to describe Jesus. The phrase is first found in the Bible in the Old Testament in the book of Daniel describing a human being with divine authority.
So when Jesus says ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
He means: ‘Who do people sat that I am?’ Who do people sat that I am?’
And the answer? Well there were obviously plenty of different opinions around
14 ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
Now some of those answers seem to us – to be frank – a bit wacky?
John the Baptist? Jesus can’t be John the Baptist. For one thing John the Baptist has recently been beheaded by king Herod, Matthew has told us that very sorry tale in Chapter 14. And in any case, John the Baptist had baptised Jesus, they stood there together, they can’t be the same person.
Although to us it seems silly to suggest that Jesus and John the Baptist are one and the same, we should I think cut them some slack.
They lived in an era with no 24 hour news cycle, no phones, no social media, no newspapers, no photography. Most people would never have seen Jesus and John together. Most people were not at Jesus’ baptism. And most people had not heard John say… when asked if he John was the Messiah – that he was not -Or heard him say, as recorded in John’s gospel that he John was not even worthy to untie the thong of the sandal of the coming Messiah.
If Jesus was not John the Baptist, others thought him a reincarnation of one of the great godly men of the Old Testament…..
… Elijah … or Jeremiah or one of the prophets
All these suggestions are sort of right – identifying Jesus with historical figures who they thought the finest of men – committed to God, wise, prayerful, honest deliverers of unpopular messages, , unafraid to speak truth to power.
Suggestions that are sort of right … YET completely wrong.
We could have a nice long discussion about the plausibility of their various suggestions, about which prophet reincarnated he might be, or indeed about other contemporary figures who are compared to Jesus. We could have a long discussion about the many different views of Jesus in our contemporary world – a good teacher, a good example, an heroic martyr, and many more ideas.
But Jesus is not interested in that sort of intellectual joisting.
Instead He says – very directly:
‘But ….. who do you say that I am?’
To each of them – a personal question. Not … what do other people think? Not the opinion of anyone else about Jesus. ‘ ….. who do you each of you, say that I am?’
And it is of course Simon Peter, so often the first to react, who says it out loud ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’
There it is – bang out in the open.
Not just a unique ‘son of Man’ but the ‘Son of the Living God’.
Now we can be pretty sure that this is not a spur of the moment cry by Simon Peter. Simon Peter we know often blurts out something before thinking through the implications. But he has been brewing this answer for a good long time.
Back in John chapter 1 Simon Peter’s brother Andrew meets Jesus first, and Andrew says to his brother ‘We have found the Messiah’ and then Simon Peter meets Jesus for himself, and knows he must follow Him. Had the other disciples all previously thought that as well? How muddled was their thinking about their Master?
We don’t know for sure – but this is the moment – it’s out in the open: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’
Let’s look at what follows from that moment of clarity:
Three remarkable truths and encouragements:
- Jesus tells them that Simon Peter’s insight is not a human insight. It is God-given: 17 ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.
(And by the way it is a great Quiz Night question: ‘What was the name of the apostle Peter’s dad?’ Jonah – older Bible translations say Simon-bar-Jonah, which means the same as Simon, son of Jonah.)
But that’s an aside. The important thing: Simon Peter’s insight is God-given
2. Jesus renames Simon once and for all. And Jesus has a play on words for them. 18 you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church In Aramaic (the language in which Jesus was speaking to the disciples – Peter and Rock are exactly the same word). In Greek, the language in which the NT was first written down, they are also completely interchangeable terms – Peter and petros, the Greek word for Rock.
(and incidentally when He says the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. – the gates of Hades means physical death will not prevail against it. )
A statement by Jesus proved divisive across the Christian world for centuries. Some have read it to mean that it is Peter himself who is the Rock on which the Christian church is built, and on the leadership of his direct successors. And that since Peter by legend became Bishop of Rome, the bishops of Rome (i.e. the popes) are all his assumed successors as the leaders of the worldwide church.
On the other hand, a reading that makes more sense to many of us is not that it is on the individual, Peter, that Christ’s church is built. But the Church is built on the rock, the petros, which is Peter’s declaration of faith, Peter’s certainty that Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore Christ’s church is also built on the faith of all other Xtians who have followed across the years. Not ‘upon YOU’ Peter. But upon this ROCK of faith. That is our solid foundation.
- And the third thing? Jesus tells him 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.’
The Keys of the Kingdom – one of those Bible phrases which has entered common parlance. You have perhaps read a novel by AJ Cronin written in the 1940s ‘The Keys of the Kingdom’ and turned into a film – you may remember it. But we are not interested in a book title lifted from the Bible, rather what does Jesus mean when he gives the disciples the Keys of the Kingdom.
The keys to a house in those days were not like a small Yale in your pocket, they were huge like our church key. In a substantial house in those days the big key was carried around not by the owner but by the most important member of the household staff, the senior servant. It symbolised their authority to regulate the affairs of the household.
In this picture the leader of the household is for now Peter, who becomes the disciples’ human leader, he has the keys, under the authority of the owner, who is God himself.
And although Peter is not much good at being their leader up until now, we see Peter using that authority in early Acts when he declares what is acceptable and what is not permissible in the Kingdom e.g in his God-given dream at Cornelius’ house in Acts 10 – the gospel is for everyone – Jew and Gentile alike – and he goes off to Jerusalem to convince the other early Christian leaders about it.
Peter, and other Xtian leaders since have authority to lead, they have the keys of the Kingdom, but under God. The Church is built by Jesus, NOT by Peter, or any other Christian leader.
And there are three more things that follow from Peter’s great declaration that Jesus is the Son of the Living God. One of those three a little surprising:
- Then Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Surprising? You’d think Peter and the others would be bursting to tell their friends and their family, anyone who would listen. He is the Messiah. He is the Son of the Living God. But Jesus says ‘not yet’. Later at the beginning of Acts, after the Resurrection, we find Peter proclaiming the message loud and clear, fearlessly in public in Jerusalem. But for now, ‘not yet’, not yet tell anyone Jesus is the Messiah. Too much for the disciples still to learn, too much for Jesus to do to be ready.
And the other two consequences of Peter’s answer to the big question are not in today’s reading, they follow on directly in next week’s reading – the rest of Matthew chapter 16. But we’ll mention them now, so we get the whole picture.
- 21. From that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering …….. be killed, and on the third day be raised.’ It would not be a modern prophet, or a futile martyr, hanging on a cross at Calvary but ‘the Son of the Living God’. Only when they realised who He was could Jesus begin to help them understand the implication of the Cross.
And finally
- 24 ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. If Peter is correct, and Jesus is the Son of God, then of course He is the pearl of great price, and we must be serious about committing ourselves.
Who do you say that I am? It is still the biggest question of all? For us. It was important at the time for the disciples, when no one knew the real identity of this remarkable Jesus they were following. but why for us 2000 and a bit years later? Because it remains a personal question for each of us.
For some of us the answer has never been in doubt. Perhaps brought up in a Christian home, went regularly to kid’s church or Sunday school, would say the right answer, become confident in the answer, make it our own answer. Never veered. Others – well perhaps you are like me, I recall a real personal struggle when I was 17, 18 years old and someone first posed me this question. Who do you say that Jesus is? A real personal struggle before I decided and committed.
What of all those other answers to Jesus’ question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Elijah? Plausible – part right in a way, but in the end utterly wrong. And belittling to Jesus and to God Almighty. Plausible in a way but not Christianity.
What about contemporary answers to Jesus’ question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ Answers preferred by many who find them more comfortable – Jesus was a good teacher, a challenging moralist, a misguided martyr. Plausible – but in the end utterly wrong. Plausible in a way but not Christianity.
Jesus was determined that people should understand who he was.
Jesus showing them by all he did, by his teaching, in his final confrontation with the kangaroo courts that ensured his execution. And finally and most wonderfully of course in his Resurrection.
Why are we here this morning? Because we agree with Peter. What if Peter was wrong? Let’s be blunt, we’d be wasting our Sunday morning. We are not here for social reasons or friendship, we are not here for moral rearmament. We are here because Jesus has looked each of us in the eye as he asks us that question, and we agree that Peter’s answer is absolutely correct. ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’
Amen