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Genesis 17:1-8 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”
Genesis 32:24-30 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Matthew 16:13-20 13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 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. 18 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. 19 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.” 20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
The Blessed Confession
Have you ever noticed that questions are asked at important moments in life? At a wedding the officiant asks, “Understanding that God has created, ordered and blessed the covenant of marriage, do you affirm your desire and intention to enter this covenant? Next week we will baptize a baby, we will ask the parents do you desire your child to be baptized? Do you promise to live the Christian faith, and to teach that faith to your child? When someone joins the church there are questions about their faith. When I was ordained, I was asked a series of questions. When we ordain and install elders in the church there is a list of questions they are asked.
Questions often force decisions and elicit confessions. We will see that in our scripture today but before we delve into it, we need some background on exactly where Jesus and the disciples are. They are twenty-five miles north of the Sea of Galilee in Gentile territory. Here Herod the Great, who was the king when Jesus was born, built a temple in honor of Caesar Augustus. Herod’s son, Philip enlarged the city and renamed it Caesarea Philippi. This was a center of worship for the pagan god Pan. The river flowing from an underground stream was seen as an opening into Hades. Not exactly the place you would expect Jesus and the disciples to be. In this place of pagan religion, can the disciples see beyond the monuments to Caesar and the reminders of Herod the Great’s power? Here in this city full of pagan shrines Jesus proclaims that the gates of Hades will not prevail against his church.
Jesus asks two questions. First, who do people say he is and then who do the disciples you say he is? This is considered a turning point in Matthew’s gospel. I want us to look at three things today. The answers given to Jesus recorded in scripture, how those questions are answered in our world today and how they are answered by us.
Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say I am?” They answer, “John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” The people view Jesus respectfully but inadequately as one in a long line of God’s messengers to Israel who preach repentance and judgment. They fail to discern the full depth of Jesus’ identity. Rather than seeing into the future of the kingdom, they are looking into a mirror of the past.
Now let’s ask the question today. Who do the people of our world and culture say Jesus is? The Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet. Atheists and agnostics will admit he was a wise man, a great moral leader, a good person, but that’s as far as they go. Some see him as a social reformer, a champion of individual freedom and worth, or a mystic. Just like the people of Jesus’ time, they view him respectfully but inadequately.
C. S. Lewis puts it this way in Mere Christianity, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic—on a level with the man who said he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice: Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Next Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus blesses him and says, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Can you hear how this fits in with our Presbyterian doctrine of predestination? Peter does not and cannot know this on his own. Jesus tells us that this was revealed to Peter by his Father in heaven. Peter’s discernment of Jesus’ identity was a gift from God. We can confess Jesus with our lips but if we do not know Jesus in our hearts, if God has not been revealed to us, our words mean nothing. Romans 10:9 tells us, “because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” It is not enough to just say the words, they must be part of our identity and our actions must follow our words. True faith is deeper than words, it penetrates the very soul. It is not that our actions save us; there is nothing we could ever do to earn our salvation but if we are saved then we will be changed people and our actions will follow our words. When Christ is rightly confessed, lives are redefined. We discover who we are only after we discover who Jesus is.
Jesus is the savior, the one who rescues a world in peril. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Israelite hope and desire for the perfect king who would bring peace, wisdom, righteousness and prosperity. God, who at Jesus’ baptism proclaimed, “This is my beloved son” has put it into Peter’s heart to recognize Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter’s confession is the foundation of faith and others build on this rock when they also confess faith.
Let’s talk some about confession. Every week we have a Prayer of Confession that we say together. This type of confession is an admittance of wrong-doing, of our sin. The type of confession we are talking about with Peter is different. This meaning of confession here is to declare faith in or adherence to something. The Reformed faith of which Presbyterians are a part is a confessional faith. This means we have formal standards that serve as authoritative guides to our doctrinal beliefs; they are a guide to scriptural interpretation and function as a basis for church beliefs. The very first confession of the early church was quite simple. Jesus is Lord. Three little words but they contain a wealth of meaning. Over time as people questioned exactly what this meant creeds and confessions were written to help people understand. The first one is the Apostle’s Creed, which we say most weeks. It wasn’t written by any of the actual apostles but it is from the very early church. The Nicene Creed was written in 325AD in response to theological debates about the nature of Christ. Was he truly God, was he divine? The answer in the creed is a firm yes. The Presbyterian faith was originally governed by the Westminster Confession of Faith written in 1646. These and many other creeds and confessions are found in the Book of Confessions. When we affirm our faith every week we are confessing it.
Back to Jesus’ questions. Now it’s our turn. Who do we say Jesus is? Everything in the Christian life hinges on our answer to that question. Our identity, our mission, our obedience, even our hope. Our answer defines our destiny. And if our heart answers as Peter did, it is because God has worked in us. We say Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, our Savior and our Lord. This is our foundation, our bedrock. As the hymn says, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” In other words, when we listen to our culture, we are on sinking sand. When we hold true to scripture, we are on solid rock. Remember the old Prudential insurance slogan, “Get a piece of the rock.” They used the Rock of Gibraltar as their symbol. Rock is solid, foundational. We start from the strong certain knowledge that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and we build our identity from this. We are called by God the Father to be his sons and daughters and we are blessed as Peter was blessed by our encounter with the living God.
Jesus went on to say that the gates of Hades would not prevail against His church. I read an interesting interpretation about this while I was studying this passage. The author suggested that a gate is a defensive structure. A defensive structure is used when someone is mounting an offense against you. So, when Jesus talks about his church struggling with the forces of evil, Jesus just assumes that the church will be on the offensive. He assumes that Hell will be counting on their gate, in a defensive position. And when it does, that gate will not prevail. If Jesus builds the church than there is nothing, nothing that can prevail against it and win.
What the church does—the decisions it makes, the grace it expresses, the stands it takes, the truths it teaches—matters to God. God will not abandon the church and God works in the church to keep it faithful and through the church to give faith to the world.
After Peter’s confession, Jesus changes his name. The fisherman becomes a foundation stone. Names were very important in Jewish culture. Names spoke of people’s identity. Our Old Testament readings today consisted of two renaming stories. First, when God entered a covenant with Abram and gave him the name Abraham because he would be the father of multitudes. Second we heard of when Jacob wrestled all night and was renamed Israel. He became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob’s new name designated the Israelite people from that time through slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the kingdom and forward to Jesus’ time. In each of these cases a new people was born.
In our reading from Matthew today, Jesus renames Peter and declares the foundation of the church. In the Catholic tradition at confirmation, children take a confirmation name in addition to their own. When many women are married they take their husband’s last name as their own. Two families are united by marriage. Name changes are significant because they are often changes in identity, they change who we are and how we relate to others. We don’t change our names but our identity is shaped when we call ourselves Christians and Presbyterians.
The disciples said people thought Jesus was a prophet. Peter said he was the Messiah. Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Let us confess our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior by singing, “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.”, verses 1-5, number 442 in your hymnal.