The reading today is a pivotal passage in the Gospel. Up until now, Jesus has been teaching, healing, feeding and gathering an inclusive community of followers in Galilee. Opposition has started to form against him, and now the opposition is getting stronger and more organized.
In this reading, Jesus asks his closest disciples a point-blank question about how they see him, and what they understand him to be for their lives and the life of the world. And after this, he leads them step by step closer to Jerusalem, and to his arrest, execution, and resurrection.
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Reflections (of one of the disciples there that day)
Oh yes, I remember that day well.
I can’t think of a more overwhelmingly discouraging and despairing place to be – at least, for anyone who really longs for the kingdom of God to come on Earrth, and for the world to be set right the way it’s supposed to be for the good and well-being of all – than Caesarea Philippi.
Caesarea Philippi was a blatant, offensive, overwhelming religious and political shrine to all that was wrong in our time – and wrong maybe in most times of the world. To put it in terms you might understand, it was like having to bow to a TV-evangelist-turned-low-class-celebrity-turned-techie-guru-turned-millionaire-power-politician-and-all-his-cronies at its worst.
At Caesarea Philippi there was an ancient spring coming up from the mouth of a cave in the face of a mountain – a cave that went so deep into the earth that it was said to be an opening to the underworld of all the dark spirits, and was called “The Gates of Hades.” At its opening was built a shrine to the god Pan, the orgiastic god of material, physical, and carnal excess. All around it, in other niches on the rock face of the mountain were shrines built to a whole array – a whole dark army of other gods as well – gods and powers and pathways that people could follow, serve, sacrifice to, and even become addicted to primarily for the sake of personal fulfilment, security and happiness. And alongside all this – Rome was quite tolerant of any gods there were as long as they keep people privately happy and good citizens of the empire – alongside all this were great, ornate buildings and complexes erected by King Herod, and other members of his family to showcase Rome’s power and wealth, and drive home the point that Rome was the ruler of the world.
To people like us – and like you, who care about the kingdom of God coming on Earth, and about Earth finally becoming the place of well-being for all it’s meant to be, Caesarea Philippi was a display of what was wrong about the world and what always stands in the way – religions of personal self-centredness that allowed the injustice and oppression of Rome and other empires like it to survive and thrive instead.
Could there be a more discouraging place to be?
And yet – we should have expected it, it was exactly there that Jesus drew us into, and drew out of us the deepest, clearest and most energizing affirmation of faith that we had yet realized. It was like he almost needed the travesty of that place in front of us, to breathe a whole new life into us. To raise us up to a clarity of perception and purpose greater and more intoxicating than any we had known so far.
He did it by reminding us of our spiritual heritage. Not OUR heritage. But the heritage of GOD at work among us, through us, and in us as a people, and community, and tradition.
And reminding us – or maybe opening our eyes more clearly to than before, of his own presence with us, and what on Earth that meant.
First – he got us thinking about the Son of Man, with a simple question. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
Now, the Son of Man is a figure from ancient prophecy in the Book of Daniel. The Son of Man is a holy figure raised up by God at the end of a particularly evil age, who by God’s Spirit at work in him has power to help people see the truth of the situation, to challenge disorder and injustice, overthrow self-centredness and oppression of others, set things right, and raise up the ways of love for all that are the real kingdom of God. Jesus’s question in that place was a good reminder that even in the worst of times – maybe especially in the worst of times, God does not abandon the world nor his people in it, but acts through prophets and people who call them to follow the true way.
So, we said, “Some say John the Baptist was one of those figures.” They see that God – praise be his name – has raised up in our time for us, as God did in previous times for the faithful of old, a Son of man figure. Then we mentioned how others still hold up and revere Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
In other words, there’s a whole history of people like that, right up to the present day, who help us see God’s presence and purpose. And there are also more people than just us few disciples here who are open to this. There are all kinds of other people who remember those prophets and try to live by what they have shown us of God’s will and God’s way in the world. Not everyone has bowed down and bent the knee to what Caesarea Philippi showcases.
And then, the even bigger, more life-changing, discipleship-affirming question. “And what about you, then?” he asks. “Who you are, and where you are – who do you say I am?”
How could we not at that moment say without a doubt that for us he was – still is, always will be the messiah of life, Son of God, the One anointed by God as the incarnation of God’s Word, God’s will wholly lived out in human life, the True Human Being showing us and helping us to be what all human being has been meant to be all along.
Peter was the one to say – he always is, there’s always one who’s quick with the words. But we all felt it, and knew it. And we all felt so … so holy, when Jesus said – through Peter, to all of us, “Blessed are you, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven … “
There really was nothing about Jesus that made him the kind of hero human being the world teaches us to aspire to and to follow. There was not a hint of worldly success, or of power, prestige, possessions, or privilege about him. He was the opposite of all that.
But in the way he lived for the good of others, lifted up the poor and strengthened the weak, healed the broken and comforted the suffering, welcomed the outsider and gave himself for the well-being of others, he really was in himself the kingdom-come. W e just knew it deep in our hearts when we saw it … that you, Jesus, show us the way of real life on Earth that’s good for God, good for others, and ultimately good for ourselves as well. You are the one who makes the world right.
And that’s when the mind-blowing words came – words that changed us forever. Looking us straight in the eye, just him and us face to face, a small circle gathered in grateful openness to the presence of the kingdom of God in the very face of Caesarea Philippi, he said, “And as you follow me, you do too. As you follow me … and do as I show you to do … and love and care for others as you see me do … and give yourselves – even sacrifice yourself when called upon for the well-being of others, you too make the world right, bring the kingdom of God to be on Earth in ways that the Gates of Hades cannot undo or overcome or resist.”
Through Peter (yeah, the Rock!) to all of us he said that with the smallest pebble of faith in God and the kingdom of God within us, we are and we gather and will always gather a community of God’s love for all that not even the powers of death can overcome.
And isn’t that true? I mean, just look at yourselves the way Jesus looks at you. I mean this week of all weeks – your Peach Festival week, how can you doubt the commitment you have deep inside you through your communion with Jesus, to give yourselves in whatever way you can for the good of the world, and the good of others around you? All the different things this week that so many different members and friends have done, and are still doing today, to help make a difference for good and for God in the whole of the community around you.
And that’s only one week of the year. Just think of all the other things you and others do the other 51 weeks of the year as well. What a building of faith you have here! What a community of faithfulness to God and to Jesus and to the coming of the kingdom of God whenever and wherever and however you are!
And yes, (I know you want me to say something about this) there is that bit in the story about Peter (and all of us, really) falling in one fell swoop from building block to stumbling block, and Jesus having to say to Peter (and all of us) in the heat of the moment, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” We all have those moments when we start to feel how big the challenge is, when we start to worry about survival rather than service, when our own weakness overwhelms us, and we fall short of being really all-in disciples, giving all we can in sacrificial service for the well-being of all.
And it’s easy to be discouraged when we get that way. Feel the wind taken out of our sails, Wonder if maybe our time of good service is over. Or if it even ever was.
But I want to show you something. I want to show you the big picture. Literally a big picture – this painting in an illuminated manuscript of the late 14th century, a depiction of Christ giving the keys of the kingdom to Peter, by Lorenzo Monaco.
In vivid colour and beauty, it shows Peter in close communion with Jesus – looking deeply and lovingly at his Saviour and Lord, the messiah of God, and yes … down there in the corner is Satan – a little blue devil painted into the corner of the picture. So, yes, Satan and the tendency to fall short of perfectly full following of Jesus – and even of going astray from it, is there.
But look where it is. In the corner. The bottom corner. Behind and below Peter’s feet.
Yes, it’s a reality to live with. Part of the big picture. Always a part of who we are that we have to learn to accept and deal with. But it’s not its central theme, nor the central and dominating image.
And even with that slip into something less than full discipleship, Jesus never once gave up on us, or said we were no good to him. We carried on—we with him, and he with us, and we learned from the slip. Kept growing, and kept going as his disciples, as a people of God, as a community of faith, as servants of the well-being of all in the world.
Even with that little blue devil still and always in the picture, the big picture is still about the lasting relationship of adoration and discipleship between Peter (the symbol of all of us) and Jesus; the commitment of one to other; the communion of disciples and master; and the power that comes from this communion to live out God’s love for all, in ways that all the unjust powers and self-centred religions of any age are powerless against.
Thanks be to God, for the big picture we all are part of.
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