Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-november-14
Matthew 16:13-20
Peter’s Confession of Christ
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
For my money, this is one of the most important passages in all of the gospels. For one thing, it seems to me to ask a question Jesus asks each and every one of us even 2000 years later. And how we answer that question is crucial to our relationship with God.
The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged on Hitler’s personal order in the final days of the second world war, once wrote that in the presence of Jesus, the only question we can legitimately ask is, “Who are you?” That insight from Bonhoeffer recognizes we are incapable of truly discerning the identity of Jesus unless it is revealed to us, as Jesus said, by the Father in heaven.
So how would you answer Jesus’ question? Who do you say he is?
I’m sure that some people who think of themselves as Christians would emphatically say, “That’s easy! Jesus is the Son of God!” But when you start asking follow-up questions about what that means, exactly — about the nature of the Trinity and the humanity of Jesus and what it means to be the Son of God, you start getting blank looks or puzzled faces. Some people will say that Jesus is the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, our Lord and Savior, etc. But of course, those are just metaphors.
What Bonhoeffer had in mind, I think, is that all of those ways of answering the question of ‘who Jesus is’ wind up being ways that we try to assign to Jesus the role we want him to play. We want to tell Jesus who he should be to fulfill our agenda for him — to tell him who we think he should be, instead of asking him to reveal his identity to us.
This passage begins with Jesus asking the disciples who people say he was. And the answers the disciples give – John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets – in a sense, they’re all wrong.
But as Dr. Gregory House said on the TV series that bore his name, some wrong answers are ‘wronger’ than others. All the answers the disciples give show that people hadn’t figured out that Jesus was the Messiah, but at least lots of them could see that he was an important religious figure. Some said he was a prophet, which meant he was an important spokesman for God – someone who spoke with an authority that came from God. So while people may have been confused about exactly who Jesus was, they seem to have understood that he was someone with the authority to speak for God.
And then, of course, Jesus asks the disciples, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
And that’s when Peter says that Jesus is in fact “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And for the first time, someone actually states who and what Jesus is: the Messiah. Lots of people seem to think that “Christ” was Jesus’ last name. But the truth is that the word Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word messiah. So this story is the first occasion in the gospels where one of the disciples actually states what we take for granted: that Jesus was (and is) the Messiah.
It’s significant that when Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus says that this isn’t something Peter had figured out himself, but rather is something that has been revealed by God. The Messiah turned out to be so different from people’s expectations that it’s unlikely anyone would have figured out who he was if God had not chosen to reveal that fact to the disciples.
Then Jesus gives Peter his new name, and Jesus says that Peter will be the rock – the foundation – on which he will build the church. And did you notice that as Jesus puts it, it is he himself who builds the church. It’s not the disciples who build the church, but rather Jesus acting through them. So the church is not a human institution, but rather a project of God in Jesus.
And as part of his new role, Jesus gives Peter the power to “bind” and “loose.” He is thus given the power to determine what is authoritative teaching for the church that Jesus would build. In a sense, Peter is appointed as a leader of the disciples, and of the church that Jesus would form. However, there is no indication in the New Testament that Jesus intended for Peter to be the first of a long line of leaders, as in Roman Catholic doctrine. There was only one Peter, but he was given great authority, and the exercise of that authority is also a major theme of the Acts of the Apostles.
It seems to me that it would be a mistake to leave this passage without thinking about the fact that, even after 2,000 years, people still struggle to understand exactly who Jesus is. Ask the question, and you’ll get a variety of answers – that he was just a wise Jewish rabbi, or an insightful scholar of the Hebrew scriptures, a reformer of ancient Judaism, or a great moral philosopher.
He was obviously all of those things, but even more important, he was and is the Messiah – God in human form, a person of the Trinity, the one who came to sacrifice himself, to reconcile us to God, and to announce the establishment of the heavenly kingdom.
Peter was the first of the disciples to whom this great truth was revealed – and he got the honor of being the first to announce it to the world.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for coming into the world in Jesus, for teaching and leading us, and for sacrificing yourself to make a new way for us to be reconciled to yourself. And we thank you for revealing the truth to us, and for inviting us to share that truth with all who will hear. Amen.
Have a great weekend, and may you worship God joyfully on Sunday,
Henry
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