A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on August 23, 2020 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Matthew 16:13-20. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 16th chapter:
Now 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, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
When we say things that are true, it shouldn't surprise us. When we say that the sky is blue, no one walks around going, Hey. Wow. Did you hear that? The sky’s blue? Isn't that great? When we say that there's been a traffic accident no one says, Oh, did you hear about the traffic accident? It was wonderful to see. When we hear about the weather, no one goes, Man, can you believe there's a tornado outside? This is fantastic. When we say things that are true, no one is surprised.
But there is a truer truth than any truth that has been spoken before. And that is that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God. That truth is always true. Even if the sky should turn purple, even if an automobile accident should turn beautiful, and even if a tornado should build a house out of debris, this will still always be true. But this truth can't be apprehended by mere knowledge. You can't just go along your way and and figure it out, like why the grass is green, which has to do with the chlorophyll that's in it, or why the wind blows, which is pressure systems moving across the face of the entire planet. You can't just figure out that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God. It must be revealed to you by faith. It cannot be revealed to you by teaching someone, it cannot be revealed by goading them into belief, it cannot be revealed to them by arguing with them. It must be revealed by faith.
So it is that we find Peter today, having this truth revealed to him by God the Father. Peter indeed makes the most True Confession that ever has been made that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God. Now you might say well, you know, it's not exactly fair that Peter figured this out so quickly. I mean for Pete's sake, Jesus had just been asking who the son of man is. And now he asks who he is. Well, it should be fairly obvious where he's going. Not true. You see, the son of man is a phrase that first appears in Daniel. We're in one of Daniel’s visions. He sees one like a son of man coming before God, the Ancient of Days, and receiving from him an everlasting reign and rule. What that basically means is that he saw a human being, a man, flesh and blood, receiving dominion and authority over everything. Certainly, this is no mere man, for only God could have an eternal reign, but he is certainly a man and is God. Now being good Israelites and being good Jews, they had looked at that and said, Well, this son of man must then be the Messiah, and now we know we are looking for a man to come along and rescue us. It just was that their view was a little short-sighted. It was bound by temporal restrictions.
In their minds, the Messiah was one who had rescue them from the Earthly things like the Romans or plagues or famines. And in truth, what this son of man does is rescue them from the Eternal things like hell and Damnation. Still, as wrong as they were, they knew that they were supposed to be looking for him and there were all kinds of rabbis and heroes and other mighty men that had arisen over the generations. And a lot of them, people thought these folks were the Messiah. They looked at this one and they said, This has got to be him. Look at him. He's amazing. And, one by one, every single one of them died, every single one of them proved that they could not bring Israel into a kingdom that will last forever.
Instead, Israel would fall time and time again, usually to the hands of the oppressors. So when Jesus asks, Who do the people say the son of man is, he's not asking necessarily about himself. He's asking, What do all of these people think? What are they looking for? Well, some say John the Baptist. Is this son of man? Well, we know what happened to John the Baptist, don't we? Died, beheaded. Others say Elijah. Well, I mean at least with Elijah we have the idea that he was taken up into heaven and didn't actually die. But Elijah did not usher in an eternal Kingdom for Israel. Others would say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. Well, and again, we know what happened to the prophets, not just killed but killed by the people they were sent to witness to. It's amazing that all these people could have been thought to have been the Messiah, but each one of them fell far short either by their own deeds or by the people.
Well, now Jesus looks at his Apostles and he says something that we have come to expect because we've heard this so many times. But if you put yourself into the shoes of the Apostles, you couldn’t expect the question. Now he's not saying, revealing to them, I am the son of man. He says, So, they think the son of man could have been one of those guys. Okay, fine. Now, who do you say that I am? So now it's not just the people, it's not just the crowds that have been gathering. Remember we've had the five thousand men and all the women and children who were fed. They have crowded around Jesus, 15-20 thousand people who know that Jesus is over in the Gentile lands, and he's looking at all these crowds who have heard about Him and are coming up to him and he's asking his apostles, Who do all these people say that the son of man is? And they say, Well the people say it could be this guy or this guy or this guy, but notice they don't say Jesus.
You would expect that, wouldn't you? You would expect that someone in the crowd would have spread the message, figured it out. Jesus is the son of man we've been waiting for. But that knowledge had been restricted, it had been held back by the Father until Jesus asks the apostles, You've been with me, you've seen all the signs that I've done, you've heard all of my teaching, who do you say that I am? (And I always love it when Jesus says, I am, because now he is identifying himself with God even in this question.) Spurred on by faith, and perhaps because he has a big mouth, Peter is the first to speak up. And he says, You are the Christ. You're the Messiah. You’re the anointed one. You're the one we've been waiting for. You are the son of the Living God. Peter here makes a human confession that Jesus is of the same substance of the Father. He is God.
What an amazing confession: words that had never been uttered in the course of history, Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God. We should feel a little bad for Peter, because, right after this confession, he’ll try to stop Jesus from going to the cross and he'll get called Satan. But here, he’s great. Jesus loves it. He says, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. Fantastic job. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you; teaching, argumentation, reasoning with others, has not revealed this to you. Instead, it has been given to you by my Father who is in heaven. By him, you know who I am. By him, you know that I am God. Truer words have never been spoken.
This confession of faith is the rock upon which all things are built: the church and even the entire world. Jesus makes a joke in the next verse, a little play on words. The Greek word for rock is Petros. Petros, it's the word from which we get Peter, right? Like saltpeter is rock, right? Peter means Rock and his name in Greek is Petros and Jesus says I tell you you are Petros and upon this Petra, I will build my church. Now it's a joke, because in Greek words, have different genders, male, female, neuter. It's like that in a lot of languages across the entire world. Actually, English is pretty unique in that it doesn't have it. But here Jesus is taking the word Petros and making a play with it turning it to Petra. Is he saying that Peter’s a woman? Well, I guess if maybe if Jesus we to come today and made this joke, there would be plenty who thought have been saying something like that. But, no, he’s not calling Peter a woman. Instead, what we find is that the word is in the feminine. And so when Jesus says Petra ,making Peter's name feminine, he's not referring to the man, Peter. He's referring to the words that just came out of Peter’s mouth. Peter, you are the Rock, and upon the rock of your confession I will build my church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
The entire church is built on that idea that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And, again, if Jesus were just a man who died and stayed dead, honestly, we’d have no business being here. If Jesus never came up from the grave, well, we should all just leave, and in fact, if we were ever, for some reason, in some way, to discover the bones of Jesus, this Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, if we were to find him out in the desert, I would be the first to walk out the doors of the church and I never would come back again, because there would be no point. Why should we gather together to talk about the things that God would have you know, to talk about the sacrament of the altar, to talk about baptism. If Jesus is dead, if Jesus is dead He's not the Messiah; but Jesus is risen from the dead, never to die again, ushering in the Eternal Kingdom of Israel, an Israel that you have been grafted into, an Israel that God makes complete with you. Because this confession is true, that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God, where else could we be than here at this time? Where else would we want to be?
But because Jesus is the son of the Living God, this is where we have to be, because here it is that we receive from his hand all that He would have to give us. We just sang that great hymn Built on the Rock, and we find that the font and the altar and the reading and the preaching, in that hymn, are all there to give to us the gifts that God would give to you, the gifts that Jesus won through his perfect life, through his, death through his resurrection and ascension, and now gives to you. And it is all built on this confession, that he is the Christ, the son of the Living God.
And because we gather as the church, and because we gather to receive these gifts, Jesus gives us even more. In fact, he gives to Peter and the apostles, he gives to they who are the church, the keys of heaven.
I don't think Jesus had in his pocket a couple of keys that he carried around. In fact, keys really were only used for one thing, that was on gates, gates in which you can enter into the city and be safe and secure or gates which can be locked and you might be kept out in the darkness in danger. Keys back then were used for that purpose, and really nothing else, and they were big because the locks were big. It's not like they carried them around, like our little keys today that we have on our little key chains, that we can just dangle in front of us. We're talking keys.
And Jesus says I'm going to give you these keys and they’re to the kingdom of heaven. These Keys, what are they these keys? Well, we look at them every Sunday when we look at Peter's stained glass above us, the yellow one at the very top. Those keys are here always to remind us of what it is that the church does, that by one key we bind on Earth and it's bound in heaven and by the other key we loose things on earth and thus it is loosed in heaven.
In another place. Jesus says whatever you forgive is forgiven in heaven and whatever you do not forgive is not forgiven. And by those keys, the church exercises the gifts of God to forgive sins or to retain them. To forgive sins is to open wide the gate and welcome you into the kingdom where you indeed may be secure forever. But to bind sins, to retain them, to say you are not forgiven is to cast you into outer darkness. Perhaps the church should be exercising that key a little bit more often than we have. We normally call that excommunication. When people live in grievous sin and are unrepentant, or if they are even unrepentant over their little sins, it may be time for church discipline. But that key is there that the person might yet repent and come to the free forgiveness of sins. We never use this key to damn people on our own but we use this key so that, ultimately, hopefully, we can use the key of the free forgiveness of sins.
That's what Jesus is about. Jesus, being the Christ, doesn't wave his hand and magically cast away the Romans.Instead, he lifts his hands in blessing and forgives the sins of the crowds that are gathered around him. Jesus doesn't just wave his hand and make the earth sprout up life instead. He raises his hands in blessing and commands the earth to spit up her dead in to life everlasting. Jesus doesn't just wave his hand and cause floods to knock everything out of the way, but instead raises his hands in blessing and causes the waters of baptism to flood over you and to bring you into the kingdom, keeping out all evil that is in you.
Jesus is the Christ ,the son of the Living God, and if he says that he is going to do this for you, the no matter what else you may be facing, no matter what sins may sit in you, no matter how often, like a dog to its vomit, no matter what sins you return to time and time again, no matter how hard you try, you can't get rid of, if you come to Jesus in repentance, He always promises to use the key of forgiveness. Jesus will forgive you as many times as you come and welcome you back into the kingdom. No matter how many times you try to race out the gate, Jesus will bring you back. Jesus is the Christ. He's not here to destroy the temporal rulers that are over us, but is instead working and waiting until finally all enemies are under his feet and he rules over the entire cosmos as the king of all creation, that all may see him in his glory. May that day come swiftly for us. And until it does, may we find the rest we need in the church, built on the confession of St. Peter. For if Jesus is the Christ, then your sins are forgiven. He has made you into his people now and forever, even until the end. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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