Banner Logo

Sermon

Sermon Graphic


Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, August 24, 2014


The Family Business


Text: Matthew 16:13-20

Jesus was the mentor for His disciples. They traveled with Him, watched Him and listened to Him. He taught them and showed them how to do things. In many ways, it was like a father training his children to take over the family business. Periodically, the mentor has to stop and ask what they have learned. That is what Jesus did that day at Caesarea Philippi. He got the disciples together and asked them two questions. The first was,

“Who do people say that I am?” In other words, have you been paying attention to what is going on around you? And the second question is: who do you say that I am? In other words, have you been paying attention to me and what I am doing? When Peter gave the right answer, Jesus used this as a teaching moment. Let’s walk through this scripture and then talk about some key points.

It happened at Caesarea Philippi, a town in the far north, above Galilee on the southern slope of Mt. Hermon. Mt. Hermon is the mountain out of which the Jordan River has its source. I have been there. The town is called Banias today. There is a grotto there and a cave that in antiquity was thought to be the entrance to the underworld. The Greeks had worshipped the god Pan there during the days of Alexander. The Romans had built a pagan temple there. So a lot of worship of false gods had taken place there. Jesus chose the place carefully where He would pose the question of who He was.

Several of the disciples took a shot at Jesus’ first question. “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16:14) They had heard people recognizing that in some way Jesus was a prophet, and an end-time figure. His follow-up question was, “But who do you say that I am?” You can imagine a long pause, can’t you? The one who spoke for the disciples was Peter. And his answer was one that defined a historic moment. “You are the Christ,” he said, “the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew 16:16)

“You are the Christ.” The word Christ comes from the Greek word Christos. That is the word used in the original text, and it means “the Messiah.” Messiah is the Hebrew word which refers to the anointed one whom Jews were expecting God to send to fulfill their hopes and dreams. At the time of Jesus, that would certainly have included rescuing them from the rule of the Romans. That is why there were so many revolutionaries at the time who claimed to be the Messiah. But Jesus was a different kind of Messiah. He was the one sent by God to rescue the whole world from sin and death and to put an end to evil. And that is why, at the end of this passage, Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Christ. The people weren’t ready for the kind of Christ He was.

Peter understood that Jesus was more than the people expected. He said Jesus was “the Son of the Living God.” He didn’t say “a son;” he said “the Son.” And the Living God is the God who made heaven and earth and was still active and alive in the world then, and is today. Jesus was God in the flesh who had come into the world. People will tell you Jesus never claimed to be that. Well, that is false. He most certainly did, on several occasions, in several different ways. And ultimately, that is what got Him killed. For the leaders understood very clearly what Jesus was claiming, and it was, in their eyes, the worst of blasphemies. Jesus was and is—

Our whole faith stands or falls on the truth of that claim. And we make it unashamedly. Jesus commended Peter for this deep insight. And He praised Peter for the fact that the Father had revealed it to Him. He hadn’t made it up. He had been paying attention to what Jesus was doing. He had been thinking about how these things could be. And God the Father had revealed the truth to Him. Right answer!

Now the teaching moment began. “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...” (Matthew 16:18) It is a shame this text has been so argued over. The Roman Catholics have used it historically to argue that this is where Jesus legitimized the Papacy by saying He was building the Church on Peter, who later became the Bishop of Rome. The Protestants say, “No way,” arguing that it wasn’t Peter on whom Jesus was building the Church, but on the truth that God had revealed to Peter. When you check it out in the original Greek, you see that Jesus used two different words for “rock” in this statement. When He said, “You are Peter,” He used the word petros, which means “a rock.” And when He said, “upon this rock I will build my church,” He used the word petra, which means “bedrock.” So He was saying, “Peter, you are a rock, and upon this bedrock I will build my church.” There I go, getting into the old argument. But let me just say that as I stood at Caesarea Philippi and read this text, I looked up and saw a rock mountainside out of which was carved a pagan shrine. And it seemed as though Jesus was saying to His disciples something like, Peter has just uttered the truth revealed to him by God. He is a believer, and it is this kind of faith that is going to be the bedrock of my Church—not the rock of pagan idolatry you see on that hillside, but the faith in the one true God, my Father.

Whatever we make of all this, Peter did become the head of the Church. And his faith in Jesus as Son of the Living God took him to a martyr’s cross. And it is through the faith and witness of the martyrs that the Church has gone through explosive growth down through the centuries.

Jesus went on to say, “the gates of Hades shall not overcome [the Church].” (Matthew 16:18) I usually hear this interpreted to mean that Satan cannot destroy the Church. And that certainly is true. God has established the Church for His purposes, and He will never let Satan overcome it. Satan is trying very hard to destroy the Church. Today, at the request of our Archbishop, we will pray for the Christians in Iraq and Syria who are under attack by ISIS. Many have been killed for refusing to convert to Islam. Hundreds of thousands in Iraq have lost everything. They have fled to the mountains and are struggling desperately to survive the attacks of the militants. Many have fled Syria and are living in refugee camps in Lebanon. Jesus has promised that Satan will never destroy the Church.

But notice something about His words. He said, “The gates of hell shall not overcome the Church.” What is the purpose of gates? It is to keep people out, or to keep people in. Did He mean that anyone who had this faith could not be confined to Hell? Or did He mean that we, the Church, should storm the gates of Hell and will be victorious? Perhaps He meant both. Perhaps Jesus was saying, the job of the Church is to see that people get that saving faith (storm the gates of Hell), for if they hear the Gospel and respond, Hell has no dominion over them. We can trust that, even in Iraq and Syria, the blood of the martyrs will, as always, be the seed of the Church.

In the last part of this teaching at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus said,

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. [Matthew 16:19]

Here is another verse that has been controversial over the centuries. Does it say that the Church has the power to forgive sins and condemn people to Hell? Most commentators wouldn’t go that far. Instead, they say that Jesus has given the Church the authority to declare God’s will and God’s forgiveness. They also say He has given the Church the authority to make rules for itself based upon God’s revealed will, and even to excommunicate those who disobey God’s will. We see that in Matthew 18, where Jesus talks about how to discipline a troublemaker in the Church, and, “if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” In fact Jesus continued in that passage by repeating, “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:17-18)

Well I hope I have shed a little light on this important Biblical moment in the life of the disciples. I’d like to leave you with three points.

First, Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my Church.” It is not our Church. It belongs to Jesus. That means that Jesus has put us here for His purposes. He has chosen the people He wants to make up this congregation. And He has plans for us that suit Him. And one thing that should always be before us is that, if He wants something done, He will make it possible. He is the sovereign Lord for whom all things are possible. So once we discern what Jesus wants us to do, we can’t get out of it by saying, “That’s too hard for us.” As you work your way through God’s Word, you will see that God demands that His people trust Him. The Bible is full of stories in which the people thought things were impossible, but they trusted God and God made it happen. We don’t want to be people who thought something was impossible, so God moved on and did it through somebody else. We want to be people who trusted God, and whom God enabled to do things we will never forget. And those things become part of our witness as we are telling others of the greatness and glory of God.

If we are going to be such a people, we’re going to need to know what God is saying to us. And that is the second thing I want to highlight from today’s Gospel reading. God speaks to us. After Peter said who Jesus was, Jesus commended him, saying,

Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. [Matthew 17:17]

God is a communicator. He reveals things to us all the time. But we often fail to hear what He is saying. We often ignore Him. We often interpret in mistaken ways what God reveals because of our fears, desires, prejudices and preconceptions. But when we grab onto what God reveals to us, we are blessed. And that is what Jesus said to Peter. You are blessed, because you have heard my Father, understood, and believed.

Peter didn’t just pull this insight out of the air. He had been paying attention.

When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” He was asking them if they had been paying attention to God. And that is an important question for us. Are we listening to God’s voice, ready to understand and to act? In September and October, we will explore this phenomenon of hearing from God. I will preach a series of four sermons, and there will be daily scripture readings and questions for personal devotions. You cannot overstate how critically important it is for Christians and Christian congregations to hear and understand God’s will for them.

That leads to the final point I want to highlight about the Confession of St. Peter. Jesus has given us the keys to the kingdom. We should never lose sight of that. What we are about is not trivial. It is not our personal possession. No matter what we think Jesus meant by binding and loosing, He is telling us in no uncertain terms that what the Church does or doesn’t do is of critical importance. For just imagine. If we decided that the Church did not any longer need to share the Gospel in the world, how many people who would otherwise have heard it and be saved would be left out? Jesus is saying that our decisions have cosmic consequences.

The Church belongs to Jesus.

God speaks to us.

And our decisions have cosmic consequences.

This gets our attention. But it ought not to frighten us. It ought to thrill us and give us joy. For Jesus is inviting us into the family business. And a wonderful business it is.

©Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2014

Return to top

Sermon Archives