Standing Under the Scriptures
September 5, 2011 - Special Notice

“Let us boldly go where we have never gone before.”

Dear Fellow Voyagers,
 
This Notice is provoked by our Gospels for the last two Sundays, Matthew 16.13-20 and Matthew 16.21-28.
 
“Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder” has an application also to Scripture.  It means that the halves of an inherently single passage ought not to be separated.  For the full meaning of the passage can be seen only in terms of the whole.  The compilers of the Common Lectionary, which at All Saints’ we have been following, did so divide Matthew 16.13-28, appointing the first half for Sunday before last and the second half for last Sunday.  This has implications for our commitment as a class to stand under the Scriptures, a commitment which obligates us not only to avoid importing our own ideas but also to be fully open to a passage’s meaning.

This obligation of ours has particular relevance here.  In this passage Jesus asks the disciples, and also us, the critical question, “Who do you say that I am?”  And on our answer as on theirs everything depends, not only our conduct but our very being, our hope in life as in death.  To be sure, in the preaching of the last two Sundays we heard much about the passage.  But under the circumstances it could not help falling short.  And I, having been titled All Saints’ resident theologian for going on seven years, bear an accountability for any such Scriptural short-changing.  The following is what has been given to me to say about the passage, which contains not only Jesus’ critical question but Peter’s confession in response and Jesus’ acclamation of it, Peter’s immediate lapse, and Jesus’ emphatic correction of his and other human views of both messiahship and discipleship.

It opens with Jesus’ seemingly innocuous question to the disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of man is?”  The disciples straightforwardly answer with what they have been picking up from the crowds: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other prophet.  But then Jesus turns the question in its full force on them: “But who do you say that I am?”---the word order in the original Greek warrants this emphasis.  This question is decisive for them and for us, as already noted.  

It is Peter who is moved to say, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Jesus acclaims his response as having come from God, since “flesh and blood” could not have revealed it to him.  And to what has come in this way to Peter he attributes the utmost importance.  “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it.”  Further, “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.”  What more than this could he have said?

We should take note of the role that Jesus’ acclamation played historically.  The church in the centuries after Constantine saw in it the basis for the “petrinity” of the papacy, the status of the pope as the successor of Peter, traditionally the first Bishop of Rome.  Accordingly it attributed to the pope and to his hierarchy the power of binding and loosing, with all the consequences that flowed from that.  There was a case for doing so.  But it is also possible to take the rock on which Jesus will build his church (in Greek petra, cf. Petros, Peter) as referring to God’s enabling the recognition of Jesus’ identity by Peter in his human limitations, and thus also by us in ours.  This was the Protestant contention.  And it may be justified by the rest of the passage and its representation of Peter’s fallibility.

For Jesus, following his acclamation of Peter’s confession, sets forth what being the Messiah entails: going to Jerusalem, suffering many things from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, being killed, and on the third day being raised.  And in the face of this Peter reverts to a human way of looking at things.  Taking Jesus aside he admonishes him:  “God forbid, Lord, this shall never happen to you.”  To this attempt to tell the Messiah how to be the Messiah, Jesus responds, as he must, with the utmost emphasis: “Get behind me, Satan.  You are a hindrance/stumbling block (Gr. skandalon) to me.  For you are siding not with God but with men.”  (Note: The underlying Greek of this sentence is not readily translatable.  Basically it means thinking in human terms rather than God’s.  As for the appellation Satan, it can be taken not literally but in its root meaning of adversary.)  Thus Peter, having been exalted to heaven, is now brought down to hades (cf. Matthew 11.23).

We should not fail to note the utter honesty of the Gospels’ portrayal of Peter and the other disciples: not as paragons to be emulated but as regularly failing to understand, or actually misunderstanding, what Jesus is telling and showing them.  In we may see a redemptive purpose, namely to let us know that despite our own slowness to comprehend we are capable of the kingdom.

In the rest of the passage Jesus, having corrected Peter’s explicit misapprehension of messiahship, corrects potential misapprehensions of discipleship, by the disciples or others.  It is not what the world sees as easy.  Instead it requires denying oneself and taking up one’s cross and following him.  But, as he continues, there is really no alternative.  “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?  Or what shall a man give in return for his life?”  And in attempting to save one’s life one will only lose it.  But, on the other hand, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  Moreover, when the Son of man comes “with his angels in the glory of his Father…he will repay every man for what he has done,” a repayment which must include rewarding those who have followed him.   Nor is this merely a distant prospect.  For “There are some standing here who will not taste death before the see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”  And we may take this as in some sense applying also to us.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted