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Sermon: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 21st August 2011
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am
Readings: Exodus 1:8-2:10; Psalm 124; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20
With every good story there is always the climax, where the story has been heading all along. With Jesus, of course, the climax is the story of his death and resurrection. But any good story has some smaller climaxes along the way which fill in some of the details. These smaller climaxes can help us understand more of what the story is all about.
And this is what we have in our reading today from Matthew 16. It’s a small climax in the much bigger story of the life of Jesus. We are about half way through Matthew’s gospel when we reach this dramatic point. Matthew has told us many things about Jesus so far and this event helps to draw the story together, to give us a new focus, to help us to understand what the story is all about. We must remember Jesus’ message was a politically dangerous message. After all, he did die for what he preached. And it was helpful to the disciples [as well as being helpful to us] to understand what is going on and what the story of Jesus is all about.
But we need to begin by noticing where Jesus and his disciples are. They are in the region of Caesarea Philippi. Caesar, of course, is a Roman name and Philip refers to the great king of Macedon who was the father of Alexander the Great. The point is that this is not a Jewish area. This is far to the north of Israel. This is about as far away from Jerusalem as Jesus ever gets in the whole of his ministry. And its not until he arrives in this area, far away from the listening ears of the Pharisees that Jesus feels free to raise the politically sensitive issue of his identity.
The disciples had seen Jesus preach to the crowds. They had seen some amazing miracles, They had seen Jesus feed thousands of people with very little food, and the time had now come for them to come to some conclusions about who he was. This is always the most important question. What we decide about a person affects our relationship with them.
For example, I have a very good G.P. He is great at diagnosis. And if anything is seriously wrong he has a network of some great specialists he can refer me to. But, because he’s such a good doctor its hard to get an appointment. So if I am really sick, I wait to see him even if it is a long wait, because I know it will be worth it. On the other hand, if its not too serious I go to the local medical centre. I don’t know who I’ll get but I’m not so concerned because its not that serious. But over the years, as I’ve got to know my G.P. better, as I’ve seen him in action, I’ve come to some conclusions about him, about how good he is.
And this is what is happening here with Jesus and his disciples. They had seen Jesus in action in some amazing situations and now he wanted them to come to some conclusions about him. In Phillipi they could meet privately. It was safe to have this discussion. But notice how Jesus made it easy for the disciples. He broke the question down into easy parts.
First, he asked “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Jesus used the vague title of ‘Son of Man’ about himself as a way of indicating the seriousness of the discussion. This wasn’t a hard question to answer because lots of people were talking about Jesus. “What do others say about me?” Its easy to talk about what other people think and believe because it doesn’t involve us. It doesn’t require a personal commitment. So they reported that some people thought that Jesus was John the Baptist. John had been killed by King Herod only a short time before. Both Jesus and John had a preaching ministry. Both of them spent a lot of time in the desert. So some may have thought that when they heard of Jesus that it was really John come back from the dead. People would have seen a similarity in their ministry. But the disciples knew the truth.
And again they reported that some claimed Jesus was one of the prophets or that he had a ministry similar to the great prophets of the Old Testament. No doubt Jesus had caused a lot of controversy. No doubt people had all sorts of theories about who he was. We see the same thing today. People still speculate about Jesus. Dan Brown, in his DaVinci Code, wants us to believe that Jesus was just a man, that he didn’t die on a Cross, that he married Mary Madgalene, and that he had a family and settled down in the south of France. Others have different theories. One says that he was a nationalist campaigning for the freedom for his homeland, others say that he was a social reformer, or a gifted healer, or a prophet addressing the social needs of his day. One theologian has claimed that Jesus is purely a mythic character created by Mark, and that Matthew and Luke took up the story and embellished it.
All these theories have the same assumption, that we have fundamentally misunderstood this man Jesus. They claim that because of recent archaeological discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can come to new conclusions about Jesus. Yet the amazing thing is that these writers come to such divergent conclusions about Jesus. Rather than answering ancient questions they seem to have increased the confusion about Jesus.
On the other hand, the recent archaeological discoveries have shown that the gospels are very reliable in reporting the social and religious climate of their day. It would seem odd that such historically reliable texts would, in the end, be telling the story of a man who never existed. So none of these answers about Jesus, either ancient or modern, seem to get us very far.
But then Jesus asked his disciples “So who do you say I am?” This is a far more confronting question. And in reply, Peter gave an equally bold answer, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In other words, Peter is calling Jesus Israel’s long hoped for Messiah, the true King of Israel, the king who was to restore the nation. This was very dangerous talk. Herod, the current King of Israel believed that he was God’s messiah. He was making every effort to complete the Temple in Jerusalem so that he could claim the title of Messiah. The Messiah was supposed to come at the climax of Israel’s history, and Herod wanted the job.
But Peter recognised that the title rightly belonged to Jesus. And Jesus not only accepted the title, he drew out the full implications of what he was about to do. From what Jesus is about to say it indicates what he thought of himself. From his own words Jesus doesn’t see himself as just a prophet or just a social reformer, or just a revolutionary. His agenda is even bigger. In just a few short sentences Jesus mentions the establishment of his church, the overthrow of Hades, the keys of the kingdom, and the binding together of Heaven and earth. This is a huge agenda. What’s being described here is a whole new world order. Much more than mere social reform. Where once heaven and earth were divided and alienated, a new reconciliation is now planned – humankind reconciled to one another, heaven and earth in a new and loving embrace. This is amazing language but the disciples should have expected something like this. They would have known Isaiah 11 very well. It looks forward to the coming messiah –
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse ;from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord—
And look at the kind of new world that will result The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
This is creation like we have never experienced it. But in more practical terms look what happens to the people. He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.
Here is a binding together and a reconciliation of God’s people. It is a very different world to the one the disciples knew. In their world, power was found in the power of the sword, the power of Rome. And Rome would tolerate no other political power, no other Lord and King. This was a world where Caesar was both King and Lord. He could have no rival. No wonder Jesus had to take his disciples to a lonely place where they could talk about these things. To declare who Jesus really was, was an act of treason, it was to say that Jesus is Lord, and not Caesar, and certainly not Herod. Today, of course, we don’t have those restrictions. We are free to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. But it makes the question of who Jesus is no less important. If we see Jesus as just a man, just an inspired teacher and healer, then it doesn’t matter too much what we think of him. But if we conclude that he truly is the Christ, the Son of the living God then it makes all the difference in the world for then we put out trust in the true king of the world and we hope for the new world, the new creation that’s to come.