I couldn’t be happier with the Gospel we have just heard this morning because I think this is the perfect place for us to start our class on “how to share our faith with others” with Mark Mittleberg’s book. The passage of the Gospel we have just heard is known as “Peter’s confession”(as in “Confession of faith”): Peter acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah, “The Son of the Living God”. You may or may not know that this passage is generally considered as the center of the Gospel, literally: it divides the Gospel in two, and not only Matthew’s Gospel, the version we have this morning, but also Mark’s and Luke’s Gospel that report the same story. The idea is that this confession of Peter is the climax of Jesus’s itinerant ministry. Through his teaching, healing, miracles, the disciples (or at least Peter) come to recognize who he is (Jesus is the Messiah). Once this acknowledgment (or rather this confession of faith) is made, Jesus announces his coming sufferings and death, what it actually means to be the Messiah, and the journey to Jerusalem begins, a journey that will end with Jesus’s crucifixion (but we will talk about that next week).
What we need to remember for now is that this confession is very central and actually the story makes that quite clear, doesn’t it? Jesus, in a way, makes his own confession as well, his big announcement: Peter is this “rock”on which everything else stands. This is so important that actually this “function” of Peter becomes his own name: Indeed “Peter” is Simon’s new name, and “Peter” means “stone” in Greek as well as in Aramean (Jesus’s language, so we know the evangelist didn’t make that up). Of course, at this point, we may remember that in the Catholic Church Peter is considered as the first Pope, and we may feel that, as protestants, this is not so important for us. Well, first of all, in the Episcopal Church, we don’t have a Pope but we still have Bishops, and we believe they represent the Apostles and are, sort of, the keepers of the faith, so that is still important, and then I would also like for us to think a little bit about the fact that in a way, the Bible, or at least the Gospels, also rest on Peter’s shoulders, so it’s not just the church as the institution.
Let me explain that a little bit:
The earliest Gospel to have been written is believed to be Mark’s and Mark is also believed to be “the” Mark we meet in the Book of Acts who was Peter’s travel companion and interpreter, and so most scholars think that Mark’s Gospel is about Jesus of course, but from the standpoint of Peter’s memories recorded by Mark. And this is well acknowledged that Matthew and Luke use a lot of Mark’s materials in their own Gospel. So you see, even if we don’t believe in the Pope or we don’t believe that much in the church as an institution, still the Bible, or at least the Gospel, but then also a big part of the New Testament, comes from Peter, it was written, recorded because of Peter’s faith. And if you’re not sure about that, Jesus himself tells us that this is what Peter will do: Peter will be given “the keys of the kingdom” and he “bind and loose” all things. Now we often picture Peter at the pearly gate of heaven with this huge key ring and he is the one who let people in or send them to hell. Well, this is really not what it is about actually. In rabbinic tradition, to bind and to loose meant to interpret the Law: to look at the Scriptures and to interpret in each situation what was “binding” (mandatory) in the Law of Moses or what could be “loosed” (not mandatory, no more required), and we know that Peter did just that for Christianity: He “loosed” the requirements about food (see in the Book of Acts). But overall, it means that Peter will interpret God’s will: What has be bound or loosed in heaven, will be bound or loose on earth (and not the other way around, but this is a translation problem we really don’t have time for, happy to explain after the service!). The important thing we need to focus on is that the “key”Jesus talks about is a key of interpretation, not an actual key to open the pearly gate. It’s still a very good image: Peter indeed will interpret everything Jesus said and did and open the gates of the Kingdom of God by making us understand who Jesus is: he is the Messiah, the Son of God, and this truth will endure against all opposition (“The gates of Hades”). And so we have come full circle on our lesson today.
Now why does this matter to us, in our context? Well, again, we need to understand that Peter’s confession of faith is everything. Or at least this is the way Jesus wants it to be. Of course it is Jesus who does all the work of salvation, but it is Peter’s job to make it known, to make Jesus known. And this is important because it means that it is our role as well when we join the church: we have to make Jesus known the same way other people have made Jesus known to us.
Today, so many Christians are worried about being part of a dying church and indeedif we don‘t share our faith, the church is going to die. This is what has kept us going until now: one generation of Apostles and witnesses and Christians telling another generation of people about their faith. And as we will explore, there are many ways to share our faith, but if it all rests on sharing our faith like it was for Peter, then we first have to examine our personal faith.
What I think helps us understand what’s going on in our lesson today is to realize that the question Jesus asks would be better translated as: “Who are people saying that I am?” and then: “And you, who are you saying that I am” instead of “Who do you say“, it is not just a one time thing, it is in fact an on going conversation the Apostles have been having with people while traveling all the way with Jesus. This brings it closer to our context: We also talks about Jesus with others or hear what others say about Jesus. Now what do we learn from this conversation?
Here we see that people may see Jesus as a prophet, a holy man yet they still compare him to a figure of the past (“Eliajah”, “Jeremiah”) or they compare him to someone similar who has come before. For Peter though, what Jesus brings is radically new: He is the Messiah, the one the Jews have been waiting for for centuries to bring deliverance.Jesus does not just speak on God’s behalf, Jesus makes sense of everything (in the Scriptures and in our covenant/ relationships with God). Moreover, Jesus makes God present, he embodies directly God, he’s not just pointing out to God’s will (“Son of the living God“vs“Prophet”).For us, it may be hard to confess Jesus as the Messiah because we may not relate to this notion a lot, but if we understand Jesus as the One who is like no other one, who makes God’s presence known and who brings deliverance, then we are on the right track. For Peter, there is no one like Jesus (There is this touching story in the Gospel about Jesus giving a very hard teaching and then asking the disciples if they still want to follow him and Peter says: to whom will we go? (See John 6)). So we also need to reflect on our own story: What is it that makes Jesus unique for us? The thing is that, if we cannot articulate our faith for ourselves, then we won’t be able to share with others. So that’s why we have to start with that.
Now even more deeply, what we have to understand is that the question Jesus asks is not like a “pop quiz” or a “mid-term” with a right or wrong answer, even if Peter is praised for what he has to say. Again, it’s part of an on going, living conversation: How do we come to know Jesus and what does Jesus means to us? You know, when we ask somebody who we are for them, we don’t expect them so much to define our identity, we don’t expect them to say: “You’re a man or woman, with gray hair and brown eyes” or whatever. We know who we are, right? What we are actually asking is how we count for the person to whom we ask, we want to know what role we have in their lives. And generally, we expect to hear that we matter. In John’s Gospel we don’t have this passage with Peter’s confession but we see that Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves him (John 21) and I think this is the sense of this passage as well: Who am I for you? How do I matter?To that, Peter responds by choosing Jesus over everything else. It is helpful to realize that the scene is situated in Situated in Caesarea Philippi which was a site where many pagan gods and even the Emperor were worshiped. Here it is clear that, for Peter, Jesus comes before all gods and before the Emperor, that is before heavenly and earthly powers. And so this will be another thing to think about: If Jesus is the One, we have to put him first by making choices. We cannot only confess with our lips, we also have to confess with our our acts.
So I am going to stop here because this is a lot to take in and we will continue next week with the second part of the story. There is one last thing we need to notice that is very helpful though: If everything rests on Peter’s faith, Jesus insists that it is still the Father’s work: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Faith is not something we can give to ourselves but we have to receive it as a gift. So maybe that’s the first thing we need to do (and Mark Mittleberg talks a lot about that): We have to receive this gift. Maybe we don’t come up with many answers when we hear Jesus’s question this morning, and that can be fine too. It could be an invitation to start with a prayer. After all, when we share our faith with others, it’s not about sharing our own certainties, our own convictions, ou personal opinions about God, it’s about allowing God to use us and use our experience to touch others. So if the only thing we come up with this morning humble us, whether it is our lack of understanding or our lack commitment, it’s also a good place to get started. Peter had still a lot to learn as well.