Sermon - 12th Sunday After Pentecost (8/23/2020)
Is. 51:1-6; Ps. 138; Rom. 12:1-8; Mt. 16:13-20
Many of you have heard about the wildfires in California, which are particularly severe this year. Of all years, this would have to be the one. I saw a photograph from California this week that pretty much sums up what this whole year has been like. We’re trying. We’re trying to keep up our connections to one another, to do what we need to do to stay safe and still live as much of a normal life as we can, and then one more thing comes along and sweeps it all away.
Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” In a time when the gates of hell seem to be prevailing in so many ways, where is the rock that we can hold onto? The rock that is guaranteed to hold out through the worst that evil can do? What can we trust and rely on when everything around us is crumbling and falling apart?
So many of the things that used to seem rock solid are suddenly not there for us any more. The ability to go to the store or to go anywhere, really, and not to have to worry about contracting a disease. Going to a Nats game, and watching them win – neither of those is happening now. But more important things too. Seeing family and friends. Traveling. Going to church. Going to work, for many of us. Having work, for some of us. Knowing that, if we do get sick, those who we love will be with us no matter what. Until a few months ago, those were all things we could count on. Now, not so much.
And while the changes we’ve experienced since March have been quite dramatic, to be honest the rocks of certainty that have been central to many of our lives have been giving way for quite a while now. To take just one example, it wasn’t that many years ago that the church played a much more central role in the lives of many people and of our whole community. What was once the rock that anchored many people’s lives is now barely even noticed by many of our neighbors, our friends, even our children.
In fact – you may disagree on this, but it seems to me that a lot of the discord and vitriol in our public life in recent years is a reflection of our collective anxiety about the loss of the rocks on which many people’s lives were built, the loss of certainties, the loss of stability and predictability.
Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Jesus builds on a rock that endures and that we are promised will always endure. What we build, the rocks on which we build, they come and they go. Nothing that we build lasts forever. And yet Jesus says he will build his church, his faithful community, on a rock that is indestructible.
So what is this rock? In the gospel passage today, the disciple Simon is the first to confess that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited anointed one of God, the fulfillment of God’s promises to God’s faithful people. And in response, Jesus tells Simon he is now Peter, a name that means “Rock,” and “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
Some have thought that this means Peter himself is the rock on which Jesus builds the church. But Peter, as he is portrayed in the gospels, is, well, let’s say he’s not exactly a stable person. One minute he promises Jesus he’ll stand by him forever no matter what, and before the night is over – exactly as Jesus predicted – he denies Jesus three times. One minute he wants to walk on the water and the next minute he’s sinking like, well, like a rock. If you’re looking for a rock of stability that can withstand any storm, Peter is probably not your guy.
More likely it is Peter’s confession of faith – the faith that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel – this faith is the unshakeable rock, the faithful North Star of our lives. The faith that God not only keeps God’s promises but has kept them, that in Jesus we see who God is and what a human life completely faithful to God looks like – this faith is the rock on which Jesus builds a community that the devil cannot defeat.
The problem is that nobody – not even Peter himself – yet knows what being the Messiah really means. The very next thing that Jesus says, as we will read in next week’s gospel, is to tell the disciples what being the Messiah, what being a human completely faithful to God is going to look like in this world – and Peter is going to want no part of it. One minute Jesus calls Peter the Rock, the next minute Jesus calls Peter Satan … you see what I mean about Peter not being a very stable rock.
But as far as Peter is concerned, Jesus is the Messiah, and Messiahs don’t get crucified. What Peter does not yet realize is that Jesus is going to show us fully who God is – that God clings to nothing, holds back nothing, in order to express the love and the compassion and the mercy that God is. And that therefore nothing can stop God, not the cross, not the fires of hell, not the loss of anything that seems solid and certain. Peter doesn’t understand this yet – not until he experiences the cross, then Easter, then the risen Christ returning to him with forgiveness and a new call to the mission – then Peter will understand.
But for the moment, Peter – whatever his faults, and he had them, whatever his lack of understanding, which was profound – Peter had faith that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Peter had no idea what certainties he would have to let go of, what false hopes he was still clinging to, what crosses he would have to bear. None of us know these things. But Peter had faith that God is faithful to God’s promises, that God’s promises are being fulfilled in Jesus, and that’s the faith – and only that faith – that sustained Peter through all of his trials.
The prophet Isaiah had already seen that God is faithful no matter what, and that faithfulness is a rock that can withstand anything. In beautiful and haunting images, we read this morning:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
and look at the earth beneath;
for the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment,
and those who live on it will die like gnats;
but my salvation will be forever,
and my deliverance will never be ended.
Peter confessed the faith that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise of a salvation and a life that will last even when the heavens go up in smoke, even when the earth wears out like an old T-shirt full of holes, even when we die alone and forgotten – even then, even when everything we thought was dependable has washed away, even then God is faithful.
And so we may be anxious and afraid about many things but not about God’s care for us, and God’s faithfulness to us. This an help us not to be anxious or afraid of anything else. This is the faith that cannot be shaken or defeated – the faith that God’s mercy and love are deeper and more reliable than we have begun to imagine.