Upon the Rock (Proper 16A)

 

Upon the Rock

23 August 2020

Proper 16A

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (OR)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Exod. 1:8- 2:10; Psalm 124;  Rom. 12:1-8; Matt. 16:13-20

 

Ground us in you, Loving God.  Place our feet firmly on the Rock of your Love.  Amen.   

Today’s Gospel tells about Jesus giving Peter a new name and what are called “the keys of the kingdom.”  In popular imagination, that means Peter has become the doorkeeper of heaven.  But that is not what today’s Gospel is about. 

The scene takes place in Gentile territory, near Caesarea Philippi, in the extreme north of Palestine in the foothills of Mount Hermon.  It is now known in Arabic as Banias, from its original name “Panea,” the City of Pan.  This Greek god, half man half goat, was always seen as drunk, playing happy tunes on reed pipes, and in a state of constant sexual excitement. The Temple of Pan was built on a face of exposed bedrock at the mouth of a large cave from which then flowed a spring, the headwaters of the River Jordan.  Pan’s Temple was built there because the cave opening looks like a spooky gate leading to the underworld, Hades.   

 

  

Jesus takes his closest followers with him on a day trip to a place that later Rabbis would rule as totally off-limits, a place seen as “Sin City.”  I imagine Jews at the time saying,  “What you do in Caesarea stays in Caesarea.” 

It is here that Jesus asks his followers, “Who do people say I am,” and “Who do you say I am?”  Simon replies, “You are the Messiah.  The Son of the Living God.”  Jesus says Simon’s recognition does not come from publicly available data, but rather from God speaking in his heart.   Jesus tells Simon who he thinks he is.  He gives him a new name:  Rock.  In the Aramaic they would have been speaking, the word is Qepha’.  It is where the name Cephas, one of the Greek names for Peter in the New Testament, comes from.    When you translate Qepha’ into Greek rather than just transliterate it as Cephas, it becomes Petros, our familiar name Peter. 

 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Rock of Israel, the one reliable thing they can cling to when all else fails, is God himself.  It is also the place where God puts you when he wants you safe, “the rock that is higher.”

“You are Rock, and upon this Rock I will build my Church.”  The Greek here uses two different words, one masculine (petros “stone”) and one feminine (petra “massive outcropping of bedrock”).  Jesus here transforms the image before them: Pan’s Temple on that bedrock in front of the Gates of Hades.  It becomes the Church of God built on a firm bedrock foundation, against which Hell itself cannot prevail. 

Roman Catholics have always insisted that it is the person of Peter, the role he plays in the Church, that is the foundation stone Jesus refers to.  For them, it is the Roman Papacy, an institution that over the centuries grew from Peter being the first bishop of Rome to a greater and greater primacy with monarchical overtones. Predictably, Protestants have always said the “Rock” at issue is faith alone, apart from works—Peter’s confession of Jesus as Son of God.   The Eastern Orthodox generally say that the Rock is divine revelation (“flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father in Heaven”). 

 

Jesus follows this with an affirmation of Church authority (“what you bind on earth, God will bind, what you loose, God will loose”) and ultimate success (“the gates of Hell shall not prevail against you”).  This leads most modern scholars from all these traditions to agree that the story in Matthew is indeed about the leading role of Peter in the early Church rather than about later papal presumptions, salvation through faith alone, or Eastern Christian mysticism.  

Within three decades of Jesus’ death, Christians were divided between Jewish congregations who saw James the Brother of Jesus as the heir to Jesus as leader, and gentile congregations who saw this in Paul, the missionary who had converted them. Matthew’s Gospel takes as leader Peter, the “compromise candidate” who was a companion of Jesus but who also supported the Gentile mission.

 “You are Rock.”  “Rocky” is more like it: Peter is impetuous, and usually follows his over-the-top extremes of devotion by abject failure.   In Mark, immediately after the confession of Peter, Jesus does not give him the keys to the kingdom, but rather criticizes him for trying to talk him out of his dangerous trip to Jerusalem: “Get behind me, Satan!”  (Mark 8:27-30; 31-33).   We read a couple of weeks ago of Peter’s silly misunderstanding of the Transfiguration.  Last week, we saw him walk for a couple of seconds on water through faith and then immediately, faith faltering, sinking into the waves.  During Holy Week, we see him sleeping through Jesus' prayers at Gethsemane, and then denying Jesus three times. 

 

But finally, after the risen Jesus has appeared to the women, Peter is the first male disciple (at that misogynistic time, the first legally acceptable witness) to see him.  One of the earliest fragments of early Christian tradition is preserved in St. Paul’s formulaic recitation, written just 25 years after the crucifixion, “For I passed on to you what was first passed on to me, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared, first to Cephas and the Twelve, . . . then to James and the apostles” (1 Cor. 15: 3-7).

 

All of us are like Simon standing with Jesus in front of the Temple of Pan.  We may be in awe and fear of what we see.  But what we see in front of us is not all there is.  Jesus is asking us, even today, “Who do people say I am? And who do you say I am?”  He offers us new names and the true identities for which we were created, but far from which we have wandered.  Listen that voice our heart, he says, promising victory against evil, confusion, disorder, and death itself. 

 

Faith is trust in unseen truth, and looks beyond the visible, beyond the temptations and distractions around us, beyond the Temple of Pan, the Gates of Hell, and our messed up lives.  Faith allows us to look at the wickedness and hatred all around and say, “This is not my circus, not my monkeys!”  Faith looks even beyond suffering and Death.  If we rely on our Rock, and build upon the firm foundation of God speaking truth in our hearts, then our unstable, unsteady selves, our “rocky” selves, will be transformed.  And together, as a beloved community in Him, we will be unstoppable in charging up the rocky slope, breaking down the gates of Hell and Death, and changing ourselves and the world.   

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.