A Chip Off the Old Block

Mark 8:27-30; Matthew 16:13-23

What a question!  In the “Cotton Patch Gospel,” when Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” the silence was deafening.  They all look at their feet, the floor, the trees, each waiting for the other guy to answer.  Most of them eventually start to look Peter’s way, and after a long, thoughtful pause (Who do people say that I am? Who do people say that I am?  Etc.), Peter struggles to give an answer – “Uh…We covered this, didn’t we?”

What a thing to ask a person – Who is this guy, Jesus?  It’s the simplest and the toughest question on the final exam, all rolled into one.

Actually, it’s a two-parter, isn’t it?  When Jesus asks part A, “Who do people say that I am?” the disciples finally respond with various answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  Certainly Jesus has points of contact with all of these popular understandings of him.  Nevertheless, “they all operate at the surface and represent a failure to discern the depth and fullness of Jesus’ identity.” 

Tom Long explains -  “To the popular mind, Jesus is déjà vu: John, Jeremiah, Elijah, or whoever.  We’ve seen all this before.  Nothing about Jesus is new, unique, or challenging; he is merely one of the old prophets recycled.  The people have turned Jesus, who is a window to the kingdom of heaven, into a mirror.  They look at Jesus but see only the reflection of religious ideas from their past.

But these partial, one-sided, and finally mistaken understandings of Jesus held by the people of his day simply serve as a backdrop for the true and full confession of Peter – his final answer to part B:  ‘Who do you say that I am?’  Jesus asks the disciples, and Peter steps forward as spokesman: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’” (Long, Matthew, 184)

“How did Peter know the answer?  Was he a theological genius, the smartest pupil in Jesus’ master disciples class?  No, Peter was only, in the truest sense of the word, a “gifted student.”  Peter’s discernment of Jesus’ identity was, in every way, a gift from God and not a human accomplishment.” (Long, 185)

Now after blessing Peter, Jesus makes a promise to him (found only in Matthew).  The verse goes like this:  “and I tell you, you are Peter (in Greek, Petros), and on this rock (in Greek, petra) I will build my church.”

Since, in the original Greek, Petros and petra both mean “rock,” it’s easy to spot this statement as a pun, a play on words:  “Your name is ‘rock,’ and on this ‘Rock’ I will build my church.”  So one interpretation is that Peter is the rock, the foundation, upon which Jesus is going to erect his church.

However, some interpreters have resisted this interpretation, mainly because it gives special importance to Peter and seems to reinforce later Roman Catholic claims about Peter as the first in a long line of popes.  These interpreters have pointed, among other things, to the fact that Petros is masculine and petra feminine.  This grammatical difference, they’ve argued, indicates that Jesus is referring not to Peter, but to some other “rock” on which he will build his church – maybe on Peter’s faith, or on his confession, or, perhaps, on Jesus himself.

But there’s another possibility - Barbara Brown Taylor points out the following:  “You are Petros,” Jesus says to him, “and on this petra I will build my church.”  It’s the same word he uses twice, the masculine and then the feminine form of the word for rock, but there is a subtle difference between the two.  Petros – the name Jesus gives Peter – means a stone or a pebble, a small piece of a larger rock (i.e., Rocky), while petra means a boulder, a mother lode, a great big rock.  So that makes Peter a chip off the old block, a piece of the rock, against which the powers of death shall not prevail.

It is nothing that he is or says or does all by himself that wins him the keys to the kingdom; he is blessed because his answer is God’s answer, and he is a rock because he is a chunk off the Rock of Ages, and it is on this relationship that the church is built, not on any virtue of Peter’s – or yours, or mine.  Peter is chosen, but not because the right answer has occurred to him.  On the contrary, the right answer has occurred to him because he is chosen, because Jesus in his unsearchable wisdom, his inscrutable way, decided to pick a bull-headed, big-hearted, fallible, stubborn, never-say-die rock upon which to build his church.

Peter may not exhibit the flawless character, the intellectual profundity, the spiritual depth I would prefer in the founder of my church, but I will tell you this:  I am really glad to hear that he is the one in charge of heaven’s gates.  [Someone like him may understand someone like me – someone who sometimes struggles with living out my faith.]  Or someone who goes ahead and says things and then regrets them, or makes brave promises, like, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you,” (Matt. 26:35) and then loses heart, saying not once but three times, “I do not know the man” (Matt. 26:74).

If Peter is the rock upon which the church is built then there is hope for all of us, because he is one of us, because he remains God’s chosen rock whether he is acting like a cornerstone or a stumbling block, and because he shows us that blessedness is less about perfectness than about willingness – that what counts is to risk our own answers, to go ahead and try, to get up one more time than we fall. (Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven, 49-50)

This passage concludes with a mysterious message:  Jesus sternly orders the disciples not to let the secret out that he is the Messiah.  Why?  Why would Jesus not want his disciples to spread the good news?  According to Long, “The reason is that there are two ways to distort and misunderstand Jesus: One is to get the word about him all wrong; the other is to get it half right.  At this point, the disciples have it right, but only half right.  They know that Jesus is truly the Messiah, but they do not yet understand the companion truth: Jesus, the Messiah, must suffer and die.  If they were to become evangelists at this moment, they would proclaim a half truth – a cost-free gospel, Jesus without the cross.  The disciples do not yet understand this.  Until the story is complete, then, they are to remain silent; later they will be commanded to tell the whole truth to the whole world (Matt. 28:19-20), but on this side of the cross, they have only half a truth.” (Long, Matthew, 184-187).

Final exam time, folks.  One essay question, in two parts.  Who is Jesus?  What do people say?  What do you say?  We’re each here in this church because someone in our lives shared with us the good news about the love of God in Jesus Christ his Son.  We know what “people” say.  But there finally comes a moment when you have to speak for yourself.  What do you say?  What do I say? 

Fred Craddock says his own statement is something like this - “I believe Jesus is the expression of who God is.  Do you want to know what God is like?  Jesus is what God is like.  Jesus is the revelation of God’s nature.  You see, it is not enough to say, “I believe in God,” or “I believe there is a God.”  People hate in the name of God.  People kill in the name of God.  People are prejudiced in the name of God.  What kind of God do I believe in?  This kind: I believe in the God who is presented in Jesus Christ, not just some vague little feeling that crawls around in my heart.

What is God like?  Here’s the answer: Jesus.  Do you remember the time when there was a crowd gathered to hear Jesus and they were a long way from home and hungry, and Jesus fed them?  That is what God is like.  Do you remember when he took those little children on his lap and blessed them and talked to them and talked to their parents?  That is what God is like.  Do you remember when the leper came up to Jesus and said, “Please help me,” and he was made clean and healed?  That is what God is like.

Do you remember that time when Jesus was with the disciples and they were arguing about who was the chairman and who was the greatest?  [Later on, before the Last Supper,] Jesus took a towel and a bowl of water, knelt down in front of them, and washed their feet.  Do you remember that?  That is what God is like.

Do you remember when he took that old cross on his shoulder and started up the hill to Calvary?  That is what God is like.

There is a lot in the Bible I don’t understand, Craddock concludes.  But I do believe that Jesus is God’s Messiah, the Son of God.  And I think today is a very good time to say it.”  (Craddock, The Cherry Log Sermons, 39-41)