Solid Rock.

Matthew 16:13-20

August 27, 2017

I.

Jesus and the disciples are still sort of on retreat, way up north in Caesaria Philippi, outside of Jewish territory.  It is almost as if they have to be away from their own people and their leaders, institutions, and traditions, in order to get a clearer perspective.  For one thing they are more anonymous up here, with less distraction from either needy crowds or judgmental Pharisees.  Jesus is an alien in Gentile territory, a stranger and a foreigner.   

And it is up here, far from Jerusalem, on the top edge of most Bible maps of Palestine, that Peter makes his confession.  Not only would it have been safer to proclaim Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” in a place where no one would have batted a theological eye about it, but this confession requires some emotional distance from Judaism as well.  Because it is going against the direction in which Judaism was evolving, which was towards an increasing emphasis on studying, keeping, and commenting upon the Law.  In Jesus’ movement the direction is just the opposite: the letter of the Law, while certainly not being rejected, is subordinated to Jesus himself “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  

Peter and the confession of faith he now embodies becomes the solid rock upon which Jesus chooses to build his new community, the church.  His confession is something Peter receives directly from God.  Not because it is unprecedented and unheard of, but Peter is not a scholar but a fisher, a laborer.  He is speaking not out of years of careful study of texts.  He is simply reflecting on what he has experienced in the time he has spent with Jesus.  What Peter has witnessed Jesus doing are things that to his mind can only be done by “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Peter does not get this confession out of a book.  It is not handed to him by some religious authority to read aloud in public.  He doesn’t learn it in Sunday School or even at Princeton Seminary.  In fact, he doesn’t even get this terminology directly from Jesus!  There is no evidence that Jesus taught his disciples, “by the way, don’t spread it around, but just so you know, I am the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

No.  Jesus does not teach by delivering facts for memorization.  He teaches by doing things and letting his disciples reach their own conclusions about who he therefore must be.  This is the way he dealt with John the Baptizer’s disciples back in chapter 11.  They ask if he is “the One who is to come,” and Jesus doesn’t say “you betcha!”  He shows them what he is doing and lets them decide for themselves.

The basic insight here is that we know Jesus only through experience.  Stories and theology and doctrine can help us know what to look for… but they can’t help us know Jesus.  We only know Jesus when we see what he does for people we know, and we feel what he does for and in and with us.

The point of church life is not getting people to say what Peter says here.  It is to bring people to the kind of experience Peter has, leading them then to say what Peter says.  Way too much of Christian evangelism has been about getting people to say the words; real evangelism is about bringing people into the relationship and experiencing for themselves the life of the Lord Jesus.     

II.

The first thing that has to be cleared out of the way is the confusing and contradictory popular ideas and theories about Jesus.  That’s what Jesus asks here: “Who do people say that I am?”   What’s the scuttlebutt?  What’s the general opinion of observers? 

The disciples, who apparently have more contact with people than Jesus himself, testify that the general view is that he is “one of the prophets.”  Not that he was like a new representative of the Hebrew prophetic tradition, but actually one of the old prophets come back to life.  Almost as if he were reincarnated, or something.  Some even thought he was John the Baptizer somehow resuscitated (with his head reattached).  In other places he was called things like “Son of David.”  So the general view was that he is a figure from the past.  That’s what people were able to understand.  That’s how they framed him.  That’s the definitional box they placed him in.

And that makes sense because people from the past are easily defined and dispensed with.  We know them.  We know what to expect from them.  They don’t surprise us.  And they are very unlikely to say anything new and different, or demand anything out of the ordinary from us.

This ought to challenge us.  We live in a democracy.  People’s opinions are supposed to matter.  If we put it to a vote, and the people decide Jesus is really one of the prophets, then that’s what he is. 

But Jesus doesn’t appear to be moved by what people say about him.  He proceeds to ask the same question of the people who know him best.  He wants to know if they are influenced by popular opinion, or if their experience of him.  Jesus knows that the views of uninformed supposedly objective observers are irrelevant.  The only perspectives that matter about Jesus are those of people who are in relationship with him and following him.  

Peter, answering for the whole group of disciples, says something completely different from what the people said.  For Peter, Jesus is not from the stable, controlled, well-defined past.  Jesus is from the future.  He is the Messiah, the Promised One, the One Who Is to Come.  He is even the Son of the living God, which is also a title about God’s coming to dwell with and in us as eternal King.

Peter witnesses Jesus’ activities.  He experiences Jesus’ ministry.  He knows Jesus voice and touch in his own life.  And to him, this all points to and proves something emerging that is infinitely larger, greater, deeper, higher, and broader than just a few private moments.  Peter knows that in Jesus he is touching ultimate Reality.  He is in touch with what is True and fundamental about the world.  

It is like through and in Jesus, Peter is allowed to see the Source Code of the universe.  What he experiences is not just for him.  It is not just for the disciples.  But it is for everyone everywhere always.  Jesus pulls back the curtain and reveals what is most basic and fundamental about creation and life, which is that it is all about God’s overflowing, cascading, exploding love.

III.

Jesus commends and blesses Peter for rejecting the opinions of “flesh and blood,” which is to say the view of the majority of mortal, temporal people.  Knowing Jesus in this experiential way, directly and sensorily, is to know God’s living Presence among us.  And this is something that only God can communicate to us.  It happens by grace in the course of actively listening to and following Jesus.  We know Jesus by following Jesus, and in following Jesus we are led to the confession that Peter makes, that he is the life and destiny of the world.

This confession is the rock that will serve as the foundation of the new community of disciples.  We are a gathering of those who affirm that Jesus is the revelation of God’s love; he is our future; he is the way, the truth, and the life of the world.  Whatever God builds upon this foundation-stone will last even though it be attacked and assaulted by the gates, walls, fences, divisions, separations, judgments, and condemnations which characterize the realm of death and hatred.  Hell is apparently a “gated community,” artificially separating people by relative wealth, power, and status, by race, ethnicity, and gender.

But in Jesus Christ we touch the oneness and unity of everything.  He is the open gate leading the receptive to a place of abundance where there are no divisions, and where no one gets rejected except those who reject themselves by judging, condemning, and rejecting others.

Only disciples who know themselves to have been accepted and forgiven, who have removed condemnation from their behavior, are qualified to manage the keys of binding and loosing in heaven and earth.  Only those who have crucified their ego, and accept that Jesus is One who is to come, the promised future of the world, and who follow him and find themselves in him, may judge others, because in him their judgment will always be his, which is always Yes!  In him judgment is always welcome.  It is always peace and non-violence.  It is always forgiveness and renewal.  It is always humility and compassion.  

IV.

If we think that having these metaphorical keys is going to make us more powerful, then we are not following Jesus at all.  We have merely appointed ourselves the guards at the gates of Hell, keeping people in.  

No.  The keys Jesus talks about are given for opening the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven!  He gives us the power to bind the “strong man” of selfishness, greed, hatred, gluttony, fear, and violence.  If we constrict these evils in our own earthly lives, they will fall everywhere.  We who follow Jesus are at the same time always releasing into the world the love, healing, acceptance, communion, and love of God.

This confession that Peter makes is not just words.  It means that our submission to Jesus is so complete that his will becomes ours, his actions are expressed in our actions, his love shown in the compassion we have for all, beginning with the powerless, excluded, marginalized, and hated.  That is what it means to proclaim of Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”           

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