Confession of St. Peter
Shelagh Balfour

Act 4:8-13; Matthew 16:13-19

Sixty-four years ago, St. Peter’s was incorporated as a parish in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land. At that time, the city of Winnipeg was expanding and the diocese had mapped out a plan for establishing parishes to meet the needs of new neighbourhoods. St. Peter’ was to be the parish for the neighbourhood of South River Heights. Parish boundaries were set, a temporary building was erected, and the first service of worship was held in January of 1956. Incidentally, that “temporary” building is our parish hall today.

There has been a great deal of change since 1956, in this neighbourhood and the city around it, in the diocese, and in St. Peter’s. In fact, over the last 60 years, the Christian church worldwide has seen a tremendous amount of change and we sometimes find ourselves wondering where it is all going and where this small, faithful community fits within it. I believe our Gospel this morning tells us that the answer to that question rests in who we believe Jesus to be.

Today is the first Sunday that takes us outside of Christmastide. In her book The Liturgical Year, Joan Chittister writes that Christmas is not a single day in December but a season that takes us from Christmas Day all the way to the Baptism of Jesus, which we celebrated last week. Over this Christmas/Epiphany season, or Christmastide, we are given a progressive revelation of just who the child Jesus is. Donna, in her Epiphany sermon, and Mary last week, have pointed to the importance of this revelation: Jesus is far more than the vulnerable infant in the manger. He is the long awaited Messiah, the One who inspires us to live as he has lived. He is the light to which the whole world is drawn. Jesus is God’s child, the Beloved in whom God is well pleased.

From Christmas to Epiphany, then, our gaze is slowly being shifted from the helpless infant in the manger to the Anointed One, sent to fulfill God’s specific and costly mission to redeem the world. In Joan Chittister’s words, “[The season] brings us to recognize who it is that we ………….will, in everything we do in life this year, either accept or reject.” (p.82) Which brings us today to the question Jesus asks.

Each year at St. Peter’s, on the Sunday closest to January 18, we celebrate the confession of St. Peter. Both because it falls in January close to our anniversary date and because it is about St. Peter for whom the parish is named, it has become an annual celebration of our life as a parish. Our birthday, if you like. But what exactly is the confession of St. Peter, and why does it warrant a celebration in the life of the whole church? And why is it placed in the calendar directly after the weeks of Christmas and Epiphany, after those progressive teachings about who Jesus is?

What makes this day important is that it shows the moment when the disciples are asked to buy into the story. This is where their journey with Jesus becomes personal, where individual commitment is required. Jesus will shortly be turning toward Jerusalem, toward conflict, suffering, and death and he needs to know his disciples are with him. He asks them “who do you say that I am?”, and it is on their answer that his church will or will not be built.

In this pause before the final journey begins, Jesus asks his disciples who the people are saying he is. These are the regular folks, the crowd, the you and me kind of people. He’s not asking what the religious or political authorities are saying – he probably doesn’t need to – but what the people who come out to see him are saying.

The answers the disciples give all reflect an assumed relationship to God’s long-term plan for the people of Israel. Some people believe Jesus is Elijah or John the Baptist; that is, they see Jesus as the forerunner, the one who will come to announce God’s immanent return. Others suggest Jesus is another of the prophets. It would not cross their minds to consider, as the Gentiles might, that Jesus was a new style of philosopher or that he was a “great moral teacher”. The crowds may not be sure who he is but they are sure that Jesus is God sent. He is in some way connected to God’s promise to return and dwell with God’s people.

Jesus then asks his disciples a second question “who do you say that I am?” And Peter makes his famous confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”. Jesus responds, “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”.

When Peter said “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” neither he nor the rest of the disciples really knew what he was talking about. They might have thought they knew, each with their own idea of what Messiah looked like and how his reign was to unfold. Along with the rest of Israel, they would have been steeped in centuries of Scripture and tradition that offered models of what Messiah meant. Along with the rest of Israel they would be longing for the promised return of God that would end tyranny and oppression and inaugurate God’s kingdom. They would have heard hints in Jesus’ teachings, even direct references to God’s inbreaking kingdom.

At the same time, Jesus didn’t act much like someone who was going to drive out oppressors and set the people free from the tyranny of Rome. So really, in that Spirit filled moment when it was given to Peter to say “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”, what it meant remained shrouded in mystery. And it could not be otherwise.

Time would show that God was doing a wholly new and unexpected thing in Jesus. Here was a Messiah no one could imagine, including the disciples. We see that a few verses later in Matthew as Jesus begins to tell his disciples his path as Messiah will lead him to Jerusalem and suffering and horrible death. Peter says “absolutely not! God forbid!” This was clearly not what Peter was thinking when he said “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”. And yet, Jesus said, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church”.

There have been different assumptions over the centuries about what Jesus meant by this. Central to all of them is the play on the word ‘rock’. Peter means rock so, one assumption is that on Peter himself the church somehow will be built. Another assumption is that the ‘rock’ Jesus was referring to was Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah. An effective play on words can certainly hold multiple meanings and it seems reasonable to me that Jesus could mean both; that the church would be built on Peter, and on Peter’s confession. Together, these offer a powerful, and scripturally supported, picture of what it means to be the church.

The image of rock is widely used in Scripture. It is used frequently in reference to God. “Our rock and our redeemer”, for example. God our rock is our strength, our refuge, our sure foundation. It is on God that, not just his people, but the whole created order is built.

Rock or stone is also used in reference to Jesus. In the passage from Acts that Erin-Brie read this morning, Peter quotes psalm 118, “Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.'” In other words, Jesus was Messiah and the people killed him. But through his death, Jesus has become the cornerstone of his new people, the church. This image is repeated within the Epistles. So, if God is the foundation of the church, and Jesus is the cornerstone that holds it all together, how is Peter the stone on which the church is built?

Through his confession. By being the first to make the confession that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, Peter became the first stone in the new church that Jesus was building. In the first letter of Peter, the author calls believers to come to Jesus “a living stone………, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house”. What it is that makes a person a living stone in the church Jesus is building is belief that he is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Belief that through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus conquered death and inaugurated the kingdom of God. Peter, however imperfectly, had a glimpse of this, and with his confession, the first ‘living stone’ was laid for the church.

Through Christmas and Epiphany, we have heard the stories that reveal who Jesus is. Our gaze has been shifted from the infant in the manger to the Anointed One sent to fulfil God’s costly mission of salvation. As with Peter, the time must come for each of us to buy into the story, to make our individual confession. God’s new people are not part of ‘a spiritual house’ because we were born into it, or because we follow the right rules and rituals. It is because we confess “You, Jesus, are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” and because we are willing, by the grace of God, to do our best to live our lives by that confession, that our stones are added to Peter’s stone. We take our place in the church that Jesus Christ builds from all peoples and nations.

It is an awesome thing, then, to be a member of the Anglican Parish of St. Peter in South River Heights. Our saying ‘yes’ to Jesus is a costly move in and of itself. Because we are saying that now we live in God’s kingdom, not the kingdoms of the world. We live by a different set of values, for a different purpose. We have a different Lord who is, we believe, Lord of heaven and earth. Like Peter and the disciples, we only have a hint of what this means, but that is to be expected.
Baptism, the sacrament by which we become members of the family of God, has been called a “once in a lifetime event that we will spend the rest of our lives living into”. By God’s grace, we grow together, year by year, learning to live the Gospel together, calling one another back to faithfulness when we stray, and regularly renewing our commitment to “the Messiah, the Son of the living God”.

One of the ways we grow in our understanding of who Jesus is, is by learning together. Along with other events throughout the year, St. Peter’s regularly offers an extended study during Lent. For the next three seasons of Lent, the parish has committed to studying the Making Sense series by David Lose, beginning this year with Making Sense of Scripture. These studies are an excellent way to deepen our understanding of who Jesus is, what he did, and what it means to be his church; and I commend them to you.

Jesus said, “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”. We give thanks to God that, by Peter’s confession, he became the first stone in God’s new church. Let us join our confession to Peter’s, and become living stones in the house God built.