An Unlikely Role Model

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An Unlikely Role Model

Matthew 16:13-20
August 21, 2011

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, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of
the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus
answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood
has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you
are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades
will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,
and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you
loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the
disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

About six years ago, the larger church and really, the rest of the world
watched as the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church began the process of
choosing Pope John’s successor to the throne of Peter. And I remember
being fascinated by it, as I suspect many of us were, even though most of us
probably did not grow up Catholic, nor are we particularly attracted to that
tradition—in many ways, congregationalism and the UCC is about the most
opposite of styles that you could imagine in contrast to the hierarchical
Roman tradition. Still, it was interesting to watch, to see how something
that important was done in another Christian tradition, to hear the political
and regional and global impact of the choice—would it be an African, reflecting
the growth of the church in Africa? Or maybe someone reflecting Central or
South America, where Protestant Pentecostals are making inroads into a
traditional Catholic stronghold? Or maybe they would go back to Italy—it
seems as if there is an archbishop on every corner in Italy, and for some
reasons God seems to favor the Italians when it comes to being the
successor to Peter’s throne? No, instead, the archbishops chose a German
pope whose claim to fame seemed to have been that he once held the
position of Grand Inquisitor, though it is not named that nowadays, since the
whole idea of an Inquisition got some bad press a few hundred years ago. I’
m sure that Martin Luther and John Calvin turned over in their graves a few
years ago, when it was announced that Ratzinger would be the new pope.
There is a funny picture floating out there on the internet that has been
obviously been doctored up, and the subject line of the email goes
something to the effect “Changes in Rome with the new German pope” and it
shows the new pope at his first mass, and instead of holding up a chalice full
of communion wine, Benedict is raising up a pint of beer.

Well, with this Pope, if such a thing happened, it would probably be the most
radical thing coming out of Rome during his tenure—though I hope for the
larger church that isn’t the case. Obviously, for those of us who are
Protestants—and we are still a small minority compared to our sisters and
brothers in the Roman Catholic Church, and the smaller Orthodox traditions,
we have gone a different route. And one of the reasons the roads we have
gone down has been so different, why the split exists between Protestants
and Catholics, is actually is found in our different interpretations of the text
before us, though I suspect the disagreement came before the
interpretation, because most of the Reformers were not interested in
splitting from Rome as much as they interested in reforming the leadership of
the church in Rome. The text before us this morning is often the main
passage that Catholics have used to justify the papacy, the strong leadership
of the Bishop of Rome, a papacy and a recognition that have been around
almost since the birth of Christianity, in one form or another. The question
is this: when Jesus says to Peter that he is the rock on which he will build his
church, is Jesus creating an office, a centralized leadership which, as he says
here, which will control the keys to the kingdom, and, whose decision about
what is bound, what is loosed will settle the great moral issues of each and
every age? Certainly, there are those in Christendom, perhaps even a great
majority of Christians, who understand this passage to at least mean this,
though I suspect the interpretations would go deeper than that, because the
text, as almost all texts are, the text is to rich to settle for simply one
interpretation.

And we Protestants have generally not settled for that interpretation—we
have tended to dismiss the idea of the office embodied in a person, though
one can certainly make a very reasonable argument for understanding the
words here in that particular way. But for Protestants, we’ve tended towards
focusing on Peter’s confession rather than Peter himself in this passage—
what Jesus seems to be saying, we say, is that the kind of faith Peter
exhibits here is the kind of faith that the universal church will build its life
upon. “You are the Messiah, the Son, the child, of the Living God,” Peter
replies to Jesus when he is asked what the disciples believe about him. It’s a
teasing little passage, almost Socratic in its tone—Jesus asking questions of
his disciples, teasing out the truth by his inquiries about what others and
they believe about him —what do others think, what do you think? And
there is Peter, jumping in the mix, doing what is almost stereotypically a
Peter thing to do—to boldly, maybe impetuously, declare that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the Living God. It is that confession that we Protestants
point to—this personal belief enunciated by Peter that Jesus was the Messiah,
the one whose life and death would be the instrument of God’s love in this
world. And everything that flows out of Jesus comes out of that moment—
the confession brings with it Jesus words about the keys to the kingdom
being given to those who confess like Peter has confessed, and that we will
be given the right and, really, the great burden of loosening and binding in
this world, making the difficult decisions about what is right and wrong for
the church. Of course, get three Christians in a room together, and you will
get six different opinions on any given issue, but I think point remains—
Jesus hands the great work of the church, the great work of being his
presence in this world, he gives this work of doing the difficult work of
creating a “life together” to the actual people of the church, as crazy as that
choice now seems some two thousands of years from when these words
were written.

So, that would be the Protestant “take” on this passage— that is generally
how we Protestants, we who have protested the failings of the Roman
church, have tended to understand this passage. And yet, I want us to go
Catholic for a second, I want us to go to Rome for a second, just a second,
and to focus on the person of Peter more than the confession he makes—I
want us to look at who said these words, or at the very least, who the
church has given the role of being the confessor of these words.   I think
that if we forget who said these words, the one who did the confessing, so
to speak, then we’ll really have missed the power of this moment and maybe
more truth beyond the typical interpretations of the text, whether they be
Protestant or Catholic.

Peter—the disciple who would not shut up, the buffoon in the story, the guy
who usually trips over himself, and yet whose passion just seems to seep
through the words of the stories told about him in the New Testament—it is
Peter who confesses, who boldly goes beyond what others are saying to say
what perhaps the other disciples are now thinking. Or maybe he speaks only
for himself— we don’t know, really, whether he speaks for himself or for the
other disciples---but is as often the case—he is the first one to speak, and in
typical Peter mode, he becomes the living lesson Christ uses to make his
point.   There is Peter who walks on water, but sinks like a stone, like a rock,
when he loses his nerve, a few chapters earlier here in Matthew. There is
Peter who immediately after being handed the keys to the kingdom, is
equated with being Satan for contradicting Jesus prediction that he will die
and be raised again—“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to
me!” Jesus says to Peter 3 or 4 verses later.   And it is Peter whose betrayal
of Jesus is spelled out in excruciating, painful, heart wrenching detail, unlike
the betrayals of the other disciples, who also all ran out on him. I mean,
they all fled into the night, one way or another, when the Romans came to
get Jesus, but it is only poor Peter whose abandonment of Christ is foretold
by Christ and then painfully detailed in the Gospel accounts. Even in John’s
Gospel, where the mysterious “Beloved Disciple” is placed in the center, Peter
still continues to play a central role in the Gospel, even if only to do what he
is always doing—playing the clown so that the points that Christ and the
narrators are making come across in the text, in the stories.

Now, there all sorts of reasons why Peter may come off the way he does in
the Gospel accounts—maybe competing factions in the early church are
trying to define him, somewhat negatively at times, although they seem to
acknowledge his leadership one way or another. And yet they are ambiguous
about it, ambiguous about Peter as a leader—even Luke’s portrayal of Peter
has him on the wrong side of things, denying early entry of non-Jews into
the church in the book of Actss, until Paul came to argue his case and Peter,
also, experienced a vision that changed his mind. And to be truthful, there is
something to be ambiguous about—Peter really doesn’t come off all that
great. He may be passionate, but his passion is a liability as much as it an
asset, as such things are with people whose passion compels them to believe
wholeheartedly, without the accompanying humility that ought to accompany
the great gift of passion. Still, Peter seems to be acknowledged as the
central leader of the church, more so than even Paul, whose presence fills out
the latter part of the New Testament, and, one could argue, whose ideas
have more heavily shaped the later Christian story.

I bring this ambiguous portrait of Peter up for a couple of reasons, one of
which is to simply humanize the one who voiced this confession, to simply
remind us that Peter’s life is confusing mix of greatness and disappointment,
much like our own lives. Admittedly, I think the stories of how disappointing
Peter has been get told more often than the ways he lived up to the words
Jesus uses here, but I think maybe that is the point really, that the picture of
Peter here is meant to remind us of what greatness may look like, at least in
the eyes of the early church, and in the eyes of the Christ.   Peter, like all the
great characters in the Bible, comes off a lot more complex than we really
allow our heroes to be nowadays—you’re either a saint or a sinner, and, yet,
we have to admit that most of us, if any of us, don’t fit either one of those
categories neatly. Certainly our political environment feels tinged with that
kind of burden—you’re either for us or against us, and there is no middle
ground for us, or for our heroes or villains.

In shoving Peter to the forefront of its story, I can’t help but think that the
early church and the Christ is trying to tell us something, trying to hint at
some truth here about us, about the way the world really is. What I love
about Peter is this, or I should say, what I love about Peter’s life is what it
may say about my life, and our lives, and that is that maybe greatness can
come out of such mediocrity, such ambiguity, out of the mess of our lives,
out of the ways that we’ve been such shallow people at different point in our
lives. I mean, if God can take this mess of a life, this Peter whose greatness
and many shortcomings fill the pages of the Gospels, if God can take a life of
someone who not only confesses that this Jesus is the Christ, but who will
then later deny even knowing who the Jesus of Nazareth, is outside the very
prison where they were holding his Master, if God can make this one great,
then maybe God can make all of us great. Maybe that is why the early
church catalogs the sins of Peter with such tenacity—yes, perhaps to humble
their leader, but to remind us whom God makes great in this world, despite
themselves, despite their many, many failings and shortcomings.

And, now I want to get all Protestant on you again with this text—we’re
shifting from Rome to, well, nowhere in particular, being decentralized
Protestants that we are. If people like Peter are handed the keys to the
kingdom of heaven, if it is not so much Peter who is handed the keys but
people like Peter, full of shadow and light, ambiguous, great, disappointing
people like you and me, then maybe we are also handed the hard work of
loosening and binding on this earth, the burden of carrying that set of keys
as well. Again, these terms like “loosening” and “binding“ are used in the
work of discerning what is right and true, and they were often used by the
rabbis of Jesus’ day in naming what the great thinkers were tasked with
interpreting the Jewish law—how can we remain faithful to God and yet be
faithful to the moment, to the realities we find ourselves within this moment
in history? Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it?

And the fun doesn’t stop there, of course—we can never seem to agree on
much, can we, on what should be loosened and what should be bound in this
world, what is wrong or right, and that, of course, is nothing new, though we
Protestants have the art of opinion down to a rare art. Adulthood—its
tough, isn’t it? But that is fine—I don’t think agreement on what is or is not
right matters as much as we think it does—what matters is what is
happening to the person doing the difficult work of carrying the keys, of what
God is doing in the transformation of that life, our lives, in our work of
loosening and binding in this world, as we allow God to make us great
people, as great as Peter was, with all the baggage he brought with him on
the journey, with all the baggage we bring with us on our journey. If God
can do this with Peter’s life, and with his passion and tenacity, and also with
his impetuousness, maybe God can do something with us, with you and me.
Greater miracles have happened, haven’t they?