Now grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Who do people say that I am?
Jesus asks the disciples who people say that he is, and the answers he gets—some of them make some sense, and some of them really don’t. The first one given is John the Baptist. Now this one doesn’t really pass the sniff test, but he didn’t ask them what makes sense; he asked what people are saying about who Jesus is. And so one of the things they’re saying is that Jesus is actually John the Baptist—and not just John the Baptist, but John the Baptist recently beheaded for telling the truth to King Herod, come back to life.
It’s a strange answer, because Jesus and John the Baptist were almost exactly the same age. Remember that the Blessed Virgin Mary went to visit Elizabeth, her relative, and Elizabeth was already six months pregnant, and it was the in-the-womb John the Baptist who leapt for joy at hearing the voice of the Blessed Virgin Mother. And so they’re relatives, born at almost the same time. So it doesn’t really make sense. But still, people were saying that maybe this powerful prophet John the Baptist has somehow been reborn in Jesus.
A more reasonable answer is the second one: that perhaps this Jesus fellow is Elijah, who has come again. Remember that when Elijah leaves in the Old Testament, he doesn’t actually die. Instead God sends chariots of fire, and Elijah gets on board and is carried up into heaven without dying. So the idea here is that Elijah went up into heaven without dying, and so now he has come again at the end of the age. It’s time to usher in this new messianic kingdom, and Elijah the prophet has returned to point us in the right direction about this coming kingdom of God. Reasonable—but not correct.
And then there are those saying that maybe Jesus is Jeremiah come again, or one of the other prophets, because Jesus does seem to speak the word of God in a powerful and authoritative way. If Jesus is speaking with authority, then maybe he’s somebody from the Old Testament we already know has the authority to say those things.
Who do you say that I am?
But then Jesus turns and asks them a different question. Instead of “Who do people say that I am?"—those other people, the ones who aren’t here—he turns to the disciples, looks at them, and says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Simon Peter has the temerity, the guts, the impetuous nature to look Jesus in the eye and say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
What a claim! Because this is a claim that is going to get them in trouble. Among the Jews, to say that there is a son of the living God was something they could not accept. Among the Gentiles, to say that a Messiah has come is to say that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. This is a dangerous thing for Simon to say. But it is also true.
You know, at the end of days you are going to come to meet Jesus face to face, and when you do, you are going to be asked a question like that. You are going to be asked, “Who do you say that I am?” And ultimately no one can answer that question for you. You are the only person who can give the answer that is in your heart. Either Jesus is, in your faith, really the Christ, really the Son of the living God—or he is not.
Actions speak louder than words
And yet if we are honest with ourselves, if we take a good hard look at our own lives, if we think about the way we live and the things we do and the words that come out of our mouths—we are not often blessing God. We are not often living in a way that tells the truth that Jesus is the Son of the living God. In fact, if we take a careful, close look at the way we live, we deny Jesus Christ—his Messiahship, his being the Son of God—every day.
Not just every day; every hour! Every hour our sin testifies to what we really believe is the truth about Jesus. Our sin testifies against our faith. It would be easy to say, “Then you believe in Christ? Well then, why do you steal or commit adultery? Why do you dishonor God with your lips? Why do you tear down others, and so commit murder in your heart?” If you have any question whether you are a sinner who denies the reality that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, you need only look to the Ten Commandments and examine yourself with some honesty.
So when Peter gives his famous answer, it would be easy to imagine a rebuke instead. Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It’s beautiful—the confession of Jesus Christ, the true confession of our Christian faith. It would be so easy for Jesus to say, right on, Peter, well done. But it also would have been just as easy for Jesus to rebuke him immediately.
Think about it: Remember the reading from two weeks ago? Peter, if you know that I’m the Son of God—then when I called you out to walk on the water with me in the midst of the storm, and you said, “Lord, if it really is you, command me to come out onto the water,” and I said, “Come,” and Peter got out of the boat and started to walk on the water—he made it a couple of steps, and then he realized he was walking on water, and he wasn’t really able to do that, and he began to sink. His faith was not as strong as that statement might lead you to believe.
Or just look back to last week’s reading: if you know that I’m the Son of God, why were you one of the disciples gatekeeping access to Jesus just because the person asking for help wasn’t Jewish?
There are plenty of examples from the recent past in this story where St. Peter could easily have been rebuked because the way he lived did not match the quality of his confession. Oh, Peter, you confess Christ so eloquently—but we know that your heart isn’t perfectly in it.
And yet Jesus does not rebuke him. He doesn’t point out Simon’s inconsistency and weakness. Instead he does something even greater: he hands over the keys of the kingdom.
The Nickname
Because this confession is not something Peter discerned by his own power or understanding. He did not come up with this on his own. He didn’t think this over, sit down and go, hmm, well, you know, carry the three, add plus C at the end—ah yes, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” No—it was revealed to him by God the Father. This faith that he is able to confess is not his own, not an achievement he has made, but a gift he has received. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, Simon, but my Father in heaven.
You are now to be called Peter—and the word Peter does mean rock. “You are Peter, and on this rock”—the rock of your confession—“I will build my church.” Not on Peter himself; Peter is a shaky stone. We’ve seen that in his recent past, and we also see it in what we know is his future. Yes, Peter will steadfastly, boldly say, “Lord, even though all will abandon you, I will never abandon you.” And Jesus says, “But you will deny me before others three times before the cock crows.” And he does.
If confessing Christ were up to your cleverness or your courage, you’d fail the test. In fact, you do fail that test every day, just like Peter—by your sin, the words you speak and the actions you commit and the thoughts of your heart, you deny Jesus Christ. But on this rock—on the confession of Christ given by Simon Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”—that is where Christian truth is found, where faith meets life.
And consequently, the church is not built on the quality of our believing; it is built on the object of our believing. It’s not about how strong your faith is, how well you confess Christ, or how consistent your life is with the God whom you trust and believe in. Rather, it is that the one whom you trust is faithful. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is faithfully for you.