020723 Holy Communion St.Peter’s
1 Peter 2:19-25 Matthew 16:13-19
Today is the closest Sunday to St Peter’s day - our patronal festival. A day to be grateful for the way we are enriched by being here, a day too to look at Peter for hints about how we can better be God’s church in this place and at this time. Peter is a great saint - as much as anyone in the New Testament we see him changing and growing, but also flawed, fallible and forgiven. In our gospel reading we see a Peter whose heart is in the right place but he has a lot to learn, by the time he wrote our epistle he has the voice of a saint. How did he that happen.
The first time we meet Peter John the Baptist has just been arrested and Jesus is in Galilee, ‘From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.’
Perhaps he’d heard John the Baptist, certainly there must have been a restlessness, a hunger about him so that when Jesus called him to follow that’s what he did. He never turned back from this, always his desire was to follow Jesus - we know there were times when his courage or understanding failed, but his love never did.
Following Jesus took Peter to places he would never have gone to by himself, and they met all kinds of people - Jesus would talk to anyone - which itself tells you something about the Kingdom he preached - men, women, adults, children, rich and poor, fishermen, tax collectors, publicans, soldiers and civilians, zealots, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, foreigners, pagans and gentiles, Greeks, Canaanites and Samaritans - he didn’t seem to notice taboos - lepers, a woman with a flow of blood, cheats, thieves and lawyers, wedding parties, crowds and individuals, a woman from Herod’s household, and woman on the verge of being stoned for adultery Jesus would talk to anyone -in fact he was more likely to be angered by the religious putting up barriers to those they considered sinners than by the sinners themselves. He was not a conventional rabbi.
As he followed him Peter understood Jesus better. He found that where Jesus was the world was different, the world was truer to what it could be, Jesus carried an honest joy with him and shed it wherever he went.
In our gospel reading Jesus and his disciples are in Caesarea Philippi and he asks them, “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.
Sometimes we caricature Peter as a buffoon - enthusiastic but always putting his foot in it - but what he says here is both extraordinary and brave.
For me - probably many of us- the the word Messiah is a charged word - I think ‘Handel’ - wonderful, stirring. But of course that was not the weight it carried for Peter; for him the Messiah was someone much more dangerous.
He was thought to be God’s king anointed as spearhead of a resistance movement that would set the world to rights. There wasn’t one clear idea of his role, but many thought it would involve force and overthrowing the existing structures, for instance the Romans. This didn’t make them universally popular and when here had been would-be messiahs before it hadn’t ended well for them.
What Peter says to Jesus and what Jesus acknowledges as true is risky. Tom Wright puts it like this, ‘the disciples knew they were not only signing on to be part of a prophetic movement that challenged existing authorities in God’s name; they were signing on for a royal challenge. Jesus was the true king! That meant that Herod - and even faraway Caesar - had better look out.
The twelve trusted that if Jesus really was God’s messiah then nobody would be able to stand up to him.
But they misunderstood what Jesus was doing - he wasn’t interested in making Israel or anyone else top nation. Rather he is going to build a community consisting of all those who follow him as God’s anointed king, they will be the seed of the kingdom of heaven on earth. And this movement starts at Caesarea Philippi with Peter’s declaration.
Peter hasn’t grasped this yet so that’s why a few verses later he gets it wrong
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 simply cannot understand how this could happen to God’s messiah - it made no sense to him. This sounds like defeat.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
But Jesus has come to bring in the Kingdom of God - and that Kingdom must reflect the character of God so it’s a place of reconciliation place as well as of rescue - it can’t be built by compulsion.
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.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Peter didn’t get it at the time and it must have been hard for him to take Jesus’ rebuke so soon after his triumph, but he accepted it. Why? He answered that question on a different occasion
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Throughout Jesus ministry Peter tried failed learned grew, the same process continued once the Spirit had been given.
By the time Peter wrote his letter his understanding of the kingdom and the Messiah’s work had changed so that what he had said must never happen to Jesus When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, he now holds up as a model of behaviour for his readers.
What can we learn from Peter? Two things - First, the word that kept repeating in the life of Peter was follow. That’s what Jesus called him to do and for all his flaws that was a constant. And if we want to mature that, by the presence of the Spirit, is what we must do too. The closer we follow the more we will grow. Jesus alone has the words of eternal life. Second, the community of the church is to be a picture of the kingdom of God - our life as a community can reveal what God is like. An Indian Christian, Pandita Ramabai, said ‘People must not only hear about the kingdom of God, but must see it in actual operation, on a small scale perhaps and in imperfect form, but a real demonstration nevertheless.’
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