Matthew 16.13-20

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16) | 27 Aug. 2023 | Matthew 16.13-20 | Richard O. Johnson |

When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 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.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16.13-20 NRSV)

“On this rock I will build my church.” This text is the first time the word “church” appears in the New Testament, and it comes without warning, without definition. That should tip us off that this word is key to understanding what is happening in this passage. This lesson is about the church. What does it tell us? I want to suggest five things this morning.

The church is of God

First, it tells us that the church is of God. “Blessed are you, Simon, Son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” The church is of God.  That’s easy for us to forget. Today, the church in our culture probably has as low a public image as has ever been the case. Scandals about clergy misconduct, bickering and fighting within and among different churches—all this makes it easy to believe that the church is just a human institution that causes more harm than good.

The church certainly does its share of messing things up. Of course that is nothing new! Next week we’ll continue the story of Simon Peter, and see that in the very next paragraph of Matthew’s gospel, he completely misunderstands Jesus‘ mission! Yes, the church is very human, very fallible, and it makes lots of mistakes.

But it is of God! Behind it all is God, pushing, urging, correcting, sometimes reprimanding. It’s the way God works in the world. When we get discouraged about the church, this text reminds us that the church belongs to God, and not to us. It is my church, Jesus says. It is made up of flesh and blood, to be sure; but flesh and blood is not the origin of it, and not the essence of it. It is of God.

The confession of Jesus Christ

Second, the passage shows us that the church is based on the confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. That confession is why the church exists. We exist to confess Christ! You know, there are many wonderful organizations in the world. There are service clubs, which do great things in the community. There are youth athletic leagues or Boy Scouts or Girls Scouts which serve young people. There are historical societies, professional organizations, chambers of commerce—all have their value. But the church has something that no other organization has. It has the confession of Jesus Christ.

I once heard a great preacher, a Methodist bishop, put it this way: “I’ve been a member of the Rotary Club for 30 years,” he said, “and I enthusiastically support all the things it does. But nobody at a Rotary Club meeting has ever talked to me about Jesus.” You see, that’s what the church does. That’s why it exists: to talk about Jesus, to confess Jesus, to know Jesus, to help us poor stumbling, bumbling humans to follow Jesus. We may do lots of other things as well, social things, humanitarian things, educational things. But our fundamental purpose is to know Jesus Christ, and to make him known. That’s what we do and who we are.

The gates of Hades

Third, “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” That’s a fascinating promise! It tells us that the church will endure. One of the fascinating things to me about church history is to see how many times over the last 20 centuries the future looked bleak. Sometimes it was outside enemies—principalities and powers from Nero to Hitler who tried their best to destroy the church. Sometimes it was internal enemies—quarrels and divisions that threatened to break the church into a thousand pieces and sometimes succeeded.

And yet the church is still here, still alive, still the place where Christ meets his people.  Ken Curtis puts it this way: “The more we grasp our Christian history, the more we learn to relax.” What he means is that when we study the history of the church, we see that through all the reverses and all the problems, God works his purpose out. In each age the church faces new challenges and difficulties and sometimes threats. But the promise of Christ is that the “gates of Hades”—that means the powers of death and destruction—shall never prevail against the church.  The church is part of God’s plan, and so God sees to it that the church endures. No matter how bleak things may look, we can be sure that the church will be preserved by the hand of God.

Now it may not always look the same! There may be changes, big changes. I love the line from Grundtvig’s great hymn: “Built on a rock the Church shall stand, even when steeples are falling.” Steeples may fall, buildings and structures may tumble, but the church of Jesus Christ will remain. We have Christ’s own promise, and it cannot fail!

Keys of the kingdom

Fourth, Christ says to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Now that’s a puzzling verse. It is where we get the familiar idea of St. Peter being the gatekeeper at heaven’s doors! But I don’t think that’s what it means. It has to do, rather, with the task the church has been given. Lutherans call this task the “Office of the Keys.” That means, Luther wrote, that Christ gave his church “the authority to forgive the sins of those who repent and to declare to those who do not repent that their sins are not forgiven.”

That runs counter to much thinking about the church today. Many people, even many Christians, see the church as an institution of fellowship, service, education. And, of course. all those things are true, and more. But at the very heart of the church’s existence is this matter of forgiveness. The church was established to be the agent of God’s forgiveness.

For Martin Luther, that was at the heart of the gospel. We human beings, he said, are sinners. The world today tells us in so many ways that this is not really so. I recall an on-line discussion with some other folks about the nature of sin, and one of the participants wanted to do away with the word. He suggested that it would be better to think, not about “what is sin” but about “what is harmful.” The problem with that, of course, is that it is entirely self-centered. “Sin” is understood as what harms me. And it therefore doesn’t really need forgiving; I simply need to stop doing it.

But I’m in bondage to sin! I cannot free myself!There is no hope for me, unless I can be forgiven—forgiven, not by myself, not by anyone else, but by God. “Against you, you only, have I sinned,” cries David. Sin separates us from God, and the only way to repair the separation is for God to forgive me.

Offering that forgiveness is the incredible task of the church. Each Sunday we confess our sins. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We then hear the absolution, the declaration of forgiveness. And that’s the key that Jesus talks about in this text. That word of grace and mercy opens the chains, unbinds us, sets us free from the past, from our sins, from our bondage! If that isn’t opening the kingdom of heaven, I don’t know what is!

So, the church’s purpose, then, is to exercise that ministry of forgiveness. It is to unbind those who are bound by sin—and that includes us all. It is to unlock the chains, to proclaim, through Word and Sacrament that there is forgiveness with God, there is mercy; and to speak that word of mercy on behalf of Christ.

Caesarea Philippi

Now the final point. There is a very important detail here that can easily be overlooked. This story of Simon Peter’s confession takes place where? Not in Jerusalem, not in Galilee, but in Caesarea Philippi. That was a city right on the edge of Israel. It was a Roman city—you can tell by the Latin name. Archaeologists tell us that in this period it was almost entirely Gentile, secular, worldly. What a remarkable place for this confession to be made! And what a remarkable reminder that the church belongs in the world. It does not belong in a religious enclave, shut off from everyone else. It belongs in the world, where sinners are, where people are hurting, where people are troubled, where people do not know Jesus Christ, or where they scoff at him. That’s where the church finds its mission!

One ancient symbol of the church is a ship.  Some Scandinavian churches have a replica of a ship hanging above the nave, and some church buildings themselves are built to resemble a ship. What does that imply? At the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry you will find on display the gigantic 30-ton steel propeller taken from the Queen Mary. The great ocean liner itself has no need of the propeller; it is tethered permanently to cement docks in Long Beach, open to public visitors. It once was a mighty ship which sailed the seven seas. But is an ocean liner really an ocean liner when it sits in a puddle? It is a museum, perhaps; but no more a ship.

It is the same with the church. The church is only a museum if it is tethered to the shore.  The church’s purpose is in the world. The church’s purpose is to set sail in the world. That symbol of the church as a ship is a wonderful one; but we must always remember that a ship is meant to go on a voyage, not sit in a harbor. The adventure of faith takes place, not just here on Sunday morning, but tomorrow in your workplace, in your family, in your neighborhood. You are the church, sailing into Caesarea Philippi and all the world. You are the way the good news of Jesus Christ, the promise of God’s mercy, touches the world.

“On this rock I will build my church.” When you were baptized, you were brought into this church, this church of Jesus Christ, brought in not by your own doing but by Christ himself.  Here you learn to know Christ, here you confess your faith in him. Here you continue to meet him, week by week, in Word and Sacrament. Here you find your sins forgiven. And here you launch off on that wonderful voyage of faith that we call the Christian life. Blessed are you! You are the church!

—

Pastor Richard O. Johnson

Webster, NY

roj@nccn.net