Upon This Rock

Here is a sermon I preached on Matthew 16:13-20.

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A minister dies and, resplendent in his clerical collar and colorful robes, waits in line at the Pearly Gates. Just ahead of him is a man dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, leather jacket, and jeans.

Saint Peter addresses this man, “Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?”

The man replies, “I’m Joe Green, taxi-driver, of Noo Yawk City.” Saint Peter consults his list, smiles and says to the taxi-driver, “Take this silken robe and golden staff, and enter into the Kingdom.”

So the taxi-driver enters Heaven with his robe and staff, and the minister is next in line. Without being asked, he proclaims, “I am Pastor O’Connor, head pastor of Saint Mary’s for the last forty-three years.”

Saint Peter consults his list and says, “Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“Just a minute,” says the preacher, “that man was a taxi-driver, and you issued him a silken robe and golden staff. But I get wood and cotton. How can this be?”

“Up here, we go by results,” says Saint Peter. “While you preached, people slept — while he drove, people prayed.”

All of us, I am sure, are familiar with theses kinds of jokes. So and so dies, goes to heaven, and stands before St. Peter for sentencing. The jokes are often funny, but the theology they present is usually horrendous. St. Peter is the gatekeeper of heaven, and entrance is dependant upon any number of arbitrary factors. Often it is simply how nice of a person one was. It is really astonishing, however, how deeply ingrained this mythical view of heaven is in our minds. Don’t many of us, however much we might deny it, expect some such scene upon the moment of our dying? Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but this entire mythical scene and all the jokes it has produced is based upon a bad misreading of one biblical text, which happens to be our gospel text this morning.

Jesus says to Peter, 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. This was taken to mean that Jesus made Peter the one who would decide who gets into heaven and who stays out, hence, the vision of St. Peter at the pearly gates. Also, the verse before it has been the occasion for lots of interesting interpretation: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. This single biblical verse has been the most commented upon and debated verse in the entire Bible. During the time of the Reformation, Catholics took this verse as Jesus’ inauguration of the first pope. This in turn elicited a flood of commentary by Protestants, trying to show why this wasn’t the case. Both sides, it has to be said, at times engaged in fairly desperate interpretive gymnastics.

So friends, we have a potent text before us this morning, one that has been the source of both theological mythology and deep church division. My goal this morning is to show you that it need not be either. This text is actually wonderful; it is rich and challenging, even dramatic. It is not so much about Peter, as it is about Jesus. So I will simply take us through it and try to get a view from the inside.  

Here at this place in the Gospel we have a major turning point in Jesus’ story. This text marks the end of Jesus’ Galilean ministry and the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem. The text says that Jesus came with his disciples to Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi was in northern Israel and would have been the northern most point that Jesus went with his disciples. After his visit here, Jesus would make the journey to southern Israel where he would enter Jerusalem to die. Caesarea Philippi, moreover, was a pagan city that worshipped the god Pan. So it is a dramatic place for this crucial episode to take place.

Up to this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has done a number of things. He has taught—recall the sermon on the mount—he has performed a number of healings, he has calmed a raging sea, he has fed thousands miraculously, and he has walked on water, to mention just some of the things he has done. But one thing he has not done is come straight out and explicitly say who he is and what his ministry is accomplishing. Jesus’ prefers to keep things more subtle and elusive. So he teaches in parables. The Kingdom of God is like…And he spends lots of time doing things, like healings, and feeding people. His disciples have slowly begun to catch on, they even at one point exclaim, ‘Truly you are the Son of God,’ but up to this point in the Gospel they are largely in the dark about the full scope of what Jesus is up to.

So before Jesus makes his journey to Jerusalem, before he goes to do what he alone can do, to do the central thing his Father has sent him to do, Jesus pauses and, in uncharacteristically straightforward fashion talks about his own identity: Who do people say that I am? And the disciples replied, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Jesus had created quite a stir in and around Galilee, and it was perfectly reasonable for people to think that a great prophet had once again come to Israel. Jesus’ popular identity was that of a prophet. His teachings and mighty deeds were certainly prophet-like.

But this answer isn’t enough, is it? What the populace can discern about Jesus doesn’t reach his truest identity. Flesh and blood isn’t enough to know who Jesus really is. Jesus isn’t just ‘one of the prophets,’ even though that certainly would be no small thing. So Jesus presses for a deeper answer: But what about you…who do you say that I am? He presses his disciples because if they are to be his true followers, they need to know who he truly is. Jesus is about to set his face to Jerusalem and walk straight into death. To follow him into this, the disciples need more than a popular understanding of Jesus. They need to know what his life is really about, who he really is, or they won’t follow Jesus to the cross.

Peter answers Jesus’ question. Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, Peter is the representative of the disciples. He embodies both their faith and their folly. Peter answers on behalf of the disciples, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Here for the first time in the Gospel of Matthew the title ‘Messiah’ is on the lips of one the characters in the story. Here for the first time, Jesus’ truest identity breaks through. He is not simply a prophet, but the Messiah. He is the long awaited salvation of Israel. He is the one who will bring God’s Kingdom. He is the one on whom all of Israel’s hopes have been set. He is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Here in this man, God’s very life has entered history and is drawing it to its conclusion. Here is what the populace did not understand. Here is Jesus as he really is, in his depth. 

And Jesus responds with what almost seems like surprise: You are surely blessed Peter, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. Knowing that Jesus is the Messiah does not meaning know a fact about him, it means surrendering our whole selves to him, and this not something we do by our own strength or decision. Peter did not ‘figure out’ that Jesus is the Messiah. Nor did he have some moment where God uploaded information into his brain. Peter simply found himself following Jesus in a way that only the Messiah can be followed. He found himself irresistibly drawn to Jesus; he found himself overcome by Jesus’ ‘Come follow me.’ In a very real sense Peter had no choice, for when the Messiah is in front of you, there is no time to choose, you must simply follow. If you think you have time to choose, you are not dealing with the Messiah. And so the confession about Jesus that arises from Peter is a gift from the Father from whom Jesus has been sent.    

Friends, I must pause here, and press this truth upon you. If you are a Christian, if you genuinely follow Jesus and so confess him as the Messiah, the Son of the living God, you must understand that this is not your own doing. Christian faith is not an achievement; it is not a personal decision; it is not a possibility that we possess. To follow Jesus is an act of surrender; it is not a choice we make, but our bowing before a choice already made about us. The follower of Jesus does not say, “Following Jesus seemed like the best option at the time.” No. The follower of Jesus says, “I heard his voice and realized that I must leave everything and follow him. No other option was possible.” If you and I understood this, how differently would we come to church! I think most of us come to church expecting little from God and a lot from ourselves. We sit there and take in the service, or lead it, critiquing this or that, ‘Oh that hymn was bad, oh the sermon was 7 minutes too long, oh that was a nice offertory.’ We do this because there is more unbelief in our hearts than belief, because we set our minds on flesh and blood. Friends, come to church with the expectation that God himself has summoned you, come with the expectation that here you will meet the Messiah before whom you must surrender your self and every human opinion and every human achievement. Come not because you are pious and a religious master, but because Jesus pierces you with his irresistible question, Who do you say that I am? Only then will you be blessed.

And now we can deal with the part of the passage that has caused so much trouble. To Peter’s naming of Jesus, Jesus responds with his own naming of Peter: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Or more literally, you are Petros and on this petra I will my church. There is a word play here on the word ‘rock.’ Peter’s name means ‘rock’ and Jesus says that he will build his church on this rock. Protestants have done everything they can to avoid the reading that the rock on which Jesus will build his church is Peter himself. They have said that the rock is not Peter but his faith, or maybe Jesus, or maybe Caesarea Philippi. But Jesus is clear, he will build his church upon the rock that is Peter with his confession. And as a matter of historical fact, Jesus was right. Peter was the leader of the apostolic church, and through him the foundation of the church was laid. Just read the book of Acts.

The real issue comes in the next verse: 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. What is Jesus saying here? The first thing to say is that Jesus repeats this saying later in the Gospel of Matthew, and he says it to all his disciples. So the meaning is certainly not that Peter or his individual successors have some sort of special authority over against other apostles. What Jesus gives to Peter, he gives to all the apostles. The second thing to be said is that the translation in your pew Bibles is wrong. There it sounds like Jesus is saying, ‘Ok, you call the shots, and whatever you say, that’s how it will be in heaven. Heaven is following you, Peter.’ The right translation is this: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven. You see, the binding and loosing has already taken place in heaven before Peter or any other of the apostles do anything. The promise Jesus gives to Peter and the apostles is that their own binding and loosing will be guided by God so that God’s decisions in heaven become known on earth. Jesus is not promising endorsement, but guidance.

Now what about this binding and loosing and keys? Most certainly, this is not about a simplistic notion of  “getting into heaven.” The keys are not keys to the pearly gates, they are keys to the storehouses of the Kingdom of God, which are meant to be unleashed upon the earth through the ministry of the church. And as a matter of historical fact this is what the apostles did. They went about the world proclaiming the Kingdom of God, proclaiming the Gospel, and through them, God’s decision for the earth was established. The church and her message emerged. And now we, after the apostles, look back to them to hear their message, because we believe that through them the binding and loosing of heaven became known on earth. That is why we read and preach Holy Scripture.     

And this binding and loosing? It is simply the Gospel, the message that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, that he has come to save us from our sins. Where this message is preached and believed, there the Kingdom of God breaks forth and God’s power is loosed. Where this message is not preached or not believed, there remains the bondage of sin and death.

But here is the most important point, friends. Having the keys to the kingdom of heaven, does not mean that we are in charge, that somehow we do anything less than follow Jesus and point others to him. Jesus has given the church a mighty and important task, but the task is nothing other than telling people about him, relying on his authority and his mercy. Indeed, if you read the rest of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes Peter and the other disciples into the foundation of the church, not through their might or wisdom, but through their failure. All of the disciples desert Jesus at the end of his life. They do not follow him to the cross. He alone forges ahead. Peter and the other apostles are indeed the head of the church, but they are so precisely as sinners. They are the head of a body of people who hang only on the mercy and grace of God, only on what Jesus makes of them through the salvation that he alone accomplishes. The first thing Jesus did after he declared Peter the rock of the church was to rebuke him for his lack of understanding and say, “Get behind me, Satan!” And there the church was to remain, behind Jesus, not ahead of him, and nothing but a sinner. So when the apostles founded the church, after the resurrection, it was founded upon the confession of sin, not on some triumphalism. The power of the kingdom of heaven given to these apostles is the power to cry out, “Lord, have mercy,” and invite others to do the same.

Friends, once again let me press this truth upon you. Here we are gathered as the church. Here we are with Bible opened talking about the message of the apostles. It is very easily to think how wonderful we are and how pious we are for doing so. But friends, even though we are given the awesome privilege and responsibility of carrying on the apostles message, let us never forget what the message in fact is. It is not a message about us, about what we do or have done or can do. It is a message about Jesus: You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And this message is not one that we can give to ourselves, it can only be received as the unimaginable and unmanageable gift that it is. Flesh and blood, our flesh and blood, is not competent to handle this message. Church for us cannot be a time where we rest secure in ourselves. We must come, like Peter, to be summoned by Jesus to account, Who do you that I am? And yes, Peter is our rock, but when we stand on him all we can do is answer Jesus. Amen.