Jesus said to his disciples: “But you, who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus replied: “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And so. I now say to you: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Matthew 16: 13-20
The readings for this twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time offer us a number of insights and associated challenges. In the lead-up to today’s first reading from Isaiah is an account of how God dismissed Shebna from his position of “Master of King Hezekiah’s Palace” and replaced him with Eliakim, whose name meant “God establishes stability”. Shebna was so full of his own importance that he had a large tomb built for himself in a prominent, high place. The irony was that he was killed and made ready for his tomb much sooner than he anticipated. His position as “Master of the King’s Palace” was handed to Eliakim, who was endowed with supreme authority, with power to grant and deny access to the king. Isaiah spoke of God’s placing on Eliakim’s shoulder “the key of the House of David” and shaping him as “a peg” to hold firm and bolster the kingdom over which he was appointed as Prime Minister. Isaiah attributed to God a reference to Eliakim in the third person but made it clear that he was appointed by God: “Should he open, no one will close, should he close, no one shall open.” (Isaiah 22: 22). In today’s gospel-reading, we hear an echo of these words of God about Eliakim. They are to be found in Jesus’ endorsement of Peter following his recognition of Jesus as Messiah: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be considered loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16: 18-19). The only discordant note here is that Matthew attributes to Jesus the word “Church”, a word that would have been totally foreign to Jesus. It is used in none of the other three Gospels and was first used by Paul in his letters. It was derived from the Greek word ekklesia, meaning a gathering of people. In today’s gospel-reading, it is clearly an anachronism, inserted by the writer of Matthew’s Gospel.
A message that emerges clearly from The Gospel of Matthew is that Jesus’ disciples took a considerable amount of time to come to a realisation of just who Jesus was. Some of them would have heard accounts of the voice from heaven that was heard when John baptised Jesus in the Jordan: “This is my Son, the Beloved, my favour rests on him.” (Matthew 3:17) All of the disciples would have heard of how the Baptist had identified Jesus: “The next day, seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said: ‘Look, there’s the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I spoke of when I said: A man is coming after me, who ranks before me because he existed before me. I did not know him myself, and yet it was to reveal him to Israel that I came baptising with water.’ John also declared: ‘I saw the Spirit coming down on him from heaven like a dove and resting on him…’ (John 1: 29-32). From the time the disciples started following him, they saw how he cured the sick and disabled and cast out devils. They had also witnessed how he had fed a crowd numbering “about five thousand men, to say nothing of women and children” from five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14: 21) and, shortly afterwards, saved Peter from drowning and calmed the sea and stilled the wind. (Mattew 14:32) It was only then that the disciples in the boat acknowledged him for who he was: “Truly, you are the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:33)
Today’s gospel-reading complements this one, which we heard two weeks ago on the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The event which Matthew describes here is located in the city of Caesarea Philippi, built by Herod’s son Phillip who had been appointed as ruler of Northern Palestine. Phillip named the city after himself and Caesar, to whom divine status had been attributed. What’s more, the city had become home to a panoply of temples and religions. So, it was not by coincidence that Jesus had selected this city as the location in which his role and identity of Messiah might be made clear.
Jesus opened the conversation with his disciples with a non-threatening question about the gossip his disciples might have heard around the traps as to who he was. They responded with a list of the names of prophets who were thought to have come back from the dead. But when Jesus turned the tables on them and effectively asked: “Well, what do you make of me? Who, do you think, I am?” they probably felt like sinking into the ground beneath them. But Peter, noted for his rashness, rescued them all with: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” While Jesus had, in fact, given them a hint by framing his question in the third person and claiming for himself the title “Son of Man” from their Scriptures, they were still, for the most part, stunned. That title “Son of Man” actually revealed that he had come to discover the meaning of the mission he had been given by God.
Just as the disciples had taken time to discover who Jesus really was, so Jesus had taken time to fully appreciate the mission to which God had entrusted him. He expressed gratitude to Peter for remembering and giving voice to the conclusion to which the disciples together had come in the boat on the lake on the night he had calmed the storm around them. Even Jesus was buoyed up by the consolation and confirmation Peter had expressed to him on behalf of all his close disciples and Jesus recognised that what Peter said was inspired by the Spirit of God.
The episode contained in today’s gospel-reading confirms that part of the human journey consists in growing into our understanding and appreciation of the vocation we choose under the guidance and inspiration of God’s Spirit. That requires openness to God’s Spirit and time for prayer, reflection and discernment leading to ongoing commitment to living the choice we make.
But that is not the whole story. That Jesus confirmed Simon Peter in leadership is testimony to the fact that he does not require those he appoints to leadership to be paragons of perfection. He was clearly stating that even though human frailty can sometimes mar the efforts, not only of leaders but of all of us would-be disciples, God’s power can lift us out of our mistakes and regenerate us to reach out to all around us with compassion, mercy, forgiveness and tolerance.
Worthy of note is also the fact that, as Jesus challenged and pressured the religious authorities of his day to loosen the control they put on ordinary folk by their nit-picking approach to laws relating to purification and Sabbath observance, so in giving the keys to Peter and his successors, he was empowering them to loosen restrictions which drain struggling people of life and freedom.