Matthew 16:13-20
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And 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. 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.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
Sermon Text
Who is Jesus? This feels like an elementary question asked for kids in very young Sunday school classes. Without an answer, however, not much else matters – especially for the Christian. If we cannot give an answer to who Jesus is, then we are as lost as anyone else in this world. If we cannot properly answer who this God-man was, then what is the point in any other part of it? To know who Christ is, who we say Christ is, is essential.
Jesus was such a monumental figure in the history of the world that even secular bodies and other faiths have had to grapple with defining who he is. Whether it is in the Rabbinical texts that go out of their way to say that Jesus was not the Messiah, or the Qur’anic ones that establish Jesus’s unique prophetic role in Islamic teachings our two closest siblings in faith have texts which grapple with this question.[1] Looking beyond these siblings, you will often find that world leaders and thinkers have had to take up the person of Jesus and answers a simple question. “Who is this man who walked through Judah, and who is worshipped all these centuries later?”
The question is not unique to us looking back, it is something people who walked directly beside Jesus would have asked. The kid who ran around the streets of Nazareth, playing with other kids, but who would sometimes would say something a little too grown up. The teen helping his father in the woodshop, but who would disappear into a field to pray for hours. The man who came out of the desert one day preaching that the time had come for God to change the whole world. The same man who died just a few years later when he made a few too many people in power angry. That guy, the one they would soon claim was walking around again like nothing had happened, was someone everyone needed to try and define.
If we read our scripture today with the knowledge that a whole collection of scripture and several centuries of theology did not surround the person of Jesus when he asked his disciples what people thought of him, then their response makes more sense. The disciples do not have a list of acceptable answers for who this prophet they have been following is, existentially. They know he’s Jesus, they know he works miracles, and they know that they had to follow him when he asked them too. Beyond that, what is there to say about this mysterious figure?
Jesus asks them, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” This is, in itself, a title that Jesus often gives himself. While it is on one hand a confession of his own humanity, it is also hinting towards something divine. The Prophet Ezekiel was called, “a Son of Man,” to differentiate his humanity from the angelic beings he spoke to. Yet, the prophet Daniel also speaks about a “Son of Man,” a figure that would come alongside God in the final days of history to set the world right.[2] Shaped like a man, yet fully in the realm of the Heavens, this figure is not defined in Daniel in a way that takes any concrete shape. So, when Jesus says “Son of Man,” in reference to himself, he is telling his disciples that he is important, but letting there be some gaps they need to fill.
The Disciples fidget a little before they begin to list what people think of Jesus. “Some say you’re Elijah,” referencing a prophecy out of Malachi that Elijah would proceed the “Day of the Lord,” in which this world would end and a new one would begin. Other people apparently gave a different answer, “Some say you are John the Baptist.” John, cousin of Jesus and prophet who came in the Spriit of Elijah, had recently been beheaded, so the fact another miracle worker appeared after him may have made some think John had been raised from the dead.
I almost have to imagine that some other answers would have been given, though scripture records none of them. After Jesus has asked them what other people think, he turns the page on the matter. “Who cares what they say…” He seems to say, “What do you say I am?” Was there a pause, an uncertainty in the gathered people. Did the disciples have any idea how to answer? Whether stillness fell or the answer came abruptly, we know that the person who gave it was Simon Peter. “You are the Messiah. The Son of the Living God.”
Now, did Peter understand fully what that meant? To be a Messiah was to be the savior of God’s people, but did he know that Jesus was also coming to save the world? To be the Messiah was to be a King, and the King was called the “Son of God,” in the Psalms, but did Peter know that Jesus was literally born of the Holy Spirit? Likewise, did he know that this “Son,” was not created in the way most souls were, but had existed alongside God the Father for all eternity? Did Peter know that he had made a much bigger statement than just the fact he thought Jesus was going to clean house in Judea?
Hard to say. I think based on the rest of Jesus’s life, the betrayal that Peter and the other Disciples participated in by fleeing from him, and the slow realization they had of what the Resurrection meant, suggests that a few pieces were missing. Yet, even if Peter still had a long and troubled road ahead of him, Jesus does not take time to elaborate on his definitions. Instead, Jesus launches into some of the highest praise we could expect a person to receive.
“Flesh and blood have not shown you this,” in other words Peter has received this information through the Spirit and not through any cognitive ability of his own. He did not “figure out,” who Jesus was, God revealed it to him. “On this rock,” a pun, as Peter’s name means “rock,” I will build my Church. The term here, “ekklesia,” referring to a group of people called together, and not an institution. “And the gates of Hades,” that is, Sheol, the land of the dead, shall not overcome it.
If we can remove ourselves from the immediate context of Jesus talking to his disciples, there is something from this conversation we can and must apply to our own faith. The foundation of eternal life, the foundation of God’s church, the foundation of everything that will be in the World to Come, is found in the acknowledgement of Jesus as our savior. Not a perfect confession of Jesus’s salvation, not getting all the terms right, but in knowing that Jesus is the one who saves us, and knowing that Jesus is uniquely tied to God in the midst of his humanity.
I am a firm believer that theology is something that should not be kept away from folks sitting in pews. So many times we in the Church don’t talk about deep things, because we’re afraid that something too complicated will scare people off. I don’t think that’s true, I think that deep things are what we need, and I think that deep things breathe life into us in a way that the same shallow water never could. However, I also believe that there is a necessary truth that cannot be ignored. In faith, those things which are “needful,” for salvation, are as simple as can be. Faith in Jesus Christ, as our savior, professed and lived out. That is all that the Lord requires for us to be saved.
Our next month of worship is going to be spent digging into some harder to understand topics. Evil and the Trinity and Blessings and The End Times and so on and so on. Before we get complicated, though, we have to remind ourselves of something very simple. Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is the Messiah, our savior. Without whom we would be lost in sin and death, and through whom a gathered people has been brought out of all nations. This people, this Church, stands against death, and death can never overcome it. Praise God, profess his Salvation, and know that Christ who walked Judea long ago, is savior and messiah still today. – Amen.
[1] E.g. Surah Maryam; Sanhedrin 43
[2] Daniel 7
Teach us to Number our Days 