Ordinary 21 Year A

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O God our Strength and our Redeemer.

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“Jesus said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’”

One wonders if there was a silence, the sound of crickets, as the disciples were confronted with this question.

And then the silence was broken by Simon Peter. In one of those extraordinary moments of clarity that seem to come to Peter amid all his later bumbles and failures, he says, “You are the Messiah – the Christ – the Son of the living God.”

This is such a fleeting exchange, and we know that Peter goes on to make so many mistakes and failures, right up to his heartbreaking threefold betrayal on the night of Jesus’ arrest. But here he stands in his best self, in this moment of bright clarity that enables him to name Jesus as the Christ. It is the first time any of the disciples names Jesus that way.

Jesus blesses him – his very own beatitude – “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!” And then renames him, and with that renaming, as so often in scripture, there is a commissioning, a new identity. “I tell you, you are Peter – the Rock – and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

There’s perhaps even a little humour or irony here. This decidedly un-rocklike disciple, who gets things wrong and will get things wrong again, is named Rock.

Here Jesus foretells a future community – an ekklēsia – a gathered people built so firmly and strongly on the confession of Peter that the gates of Hades, all the dark powers and oppressive voices of the world, will not stand against them.

The gospel tells us that they are gathered at Caesarea Philippi. It’s not obvious to us, but this was a place layered with political and religious power. It had once been the site of a shrine for the Greek god Pan, and Herod the Great had built a magnificent temple there in honour of the Emperor Augustus. Later the city itself was enlarged and renamed in honour of Caesar.

So Caesarea Philippi bore the stamp of empire in its buildings, its name and its history. Rome claimed that its emperors were agents of divine power.

And in this place – of all places – Peter names not Caesar but Jesus as Messiah, Son of the living God.

God’s larger purposes are being named in Jesus the Christ, and in Peter and the disciples – purposes which contest, and still contest today, the claim that the oppressive powers and structures of our world will define and control all outcomes.

Jesus expressed this alternative reign, this alternative purpose, in his words and healings, his feeding of hungry people, his exorcisms, and in creating a community that participates in God’s reign.

For Peter – and for us, who carry Peter’s inheritance, his spiritual DNA – to say that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, is to assert that ultimately we will not be beholden to the powers and structures that limit and bind our humanity. It is also to say that we will shape our living according to the pattern Christ gave us.

But what does that look like?

In discerning what Jesus meant when he said, “On this rock I will build my church,” as with so much of scripture, we need to reach across cultures, across languages, across history, across our own deeply formed assumptions.

I’m pretty certain Jesus didn’t imagine some of the versions of “church” we’re familiar with today, with our complex institutional structures. Nor, I suspect, did he imagine us coming and sitting in pews facing forwards once a week, then disappearing off into our regular but disconnected lives until we intersect again for an hour on another Sunday.

The Greek word ekklēsia in Matthew’s gospel, which we translate as church, means an assembly, a gathering of people. It was a word used for assemblies in civic and political life, and Matthew is the only gospel writer to use it.

But Jesus calls this gathering “my” ekklēsia – my assembly, my community – identified with him and built on Peter’s recognition of him as the Christ.

Such a community would be profoundly different from other gatherings, because we are followers of Jesus – patterned after the one whom Peter saw healing, feeding people, setting them free, breaking down barriers and lifting burdens.

The challenge, of course, is that the struggles we face can seem so immense and systemic.

Wars and rumours of wars; deepening inequality; the climate crisis; political movements built on fear and division; racism and suspicion of those who are different from us.

What difference can we make? What does it mean to be the church in the midst of all this? I think our calling – our identity as a people built on Peter the rock – remains clear.

Peter the rock, who named Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, and who knew his blessing. Peter who recognised the one who fed hungry people, who healed people and set them free and broke down barriers to belonging. Peter who was commissioned.

Like Peter, it is still our work and our calling in the world, and in this season, to pattern our way of being in the world on Jesus’ way of being.

What are people hungry for today? What needs healing? What are the barriers to belonging?

We don’t have to solve all of this. We don’t have to imagine that the future of the kingdom of God depends upon us. But we are called to be the ekklēsia of Christ in this place – the community that continues to recognise Jesus as the Christ and therefore tries to pattern its common life after his.

So we heal where we can heal. We feed where we can feed. We make room where people are excluded.

We pick up the phone and call someone who might be feeling alone; we check in on our friends and workmates; we have cups of tea with each other; we refuse to participate in the racism and fear-mongering that divides and demoralises our society; we give what we can to those who need it. We show up for one another. We pay attention to creation and to the consequences of our decisions, including our spending and our voting.

These may sometimes seem like small things in the face of immense problems. But they are acts of faith. They are the ordinary practices of a people who have decided whose reign they belong to.

Long ago, in the shadow of empire at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

That confession became the rock on which Christ promised to build his church.

And here we still are.

We are that ekklēsia, that gathered people, still learning to pattern our lives on the Christ whom Peter recognised.

And Christ’s promise remains:

“The gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Amen.