Twelfth Sunday
after Pentecost (Proper 16A)
August 23, 2020
Text: Matt. 16:13-20
You
can only know Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and come to
confess Him as such, as the Father reveals Him to you. Flesh and blood cannot reveal this. You cannot logically think your way to
Jesus as Savior and God. You cannot feel
your way in your heart to Him. You may
have many thoughts and feelings about Jesus, and they may even be good (as in
positive) thoughts and feelings, but apart from the Father’s revelation, they
will always miss the mark. This is to
say, Jesus is not whatever you think and feel about Him. He is a real Person, a real Man, and real
God. He is who He is. You don’t get to make Him up in your
own image so that He does and says the things you want Him to do or say,
supports your causes, agrees with your agenda, tolerates what you want Him to
tolerate, damns who you want Him to damn.
Whoever such a Jesus may be, he is not the one true God and Savior of
the world. He is an idol. Jesus of Nazareth is the eternal Son of the
Father, God of God, and the Son born in time to the Virgin Mary. He is an objective reality, which is to say,
His being is not dependent on you. He
is who He is, whether you like who He is, or not. By nature, Old Adam chafes at this. Because it puts Jesus outside your
control. To know Him and confess Him as
He is, therefore, requires a revelation from God Himself. That is, God must speak and define this Son
whom He has sent, and what He has sent this Son to do. Which is what the Father does by His Spirit,
who is active in the Preaching and Works of Jesus, to reveal Him, and bring you
to faith in Him.
Thus
the two questions are distinct. “Who
do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matt. 16:13; ESV), and “who do
you say that I am?” (v. 15). People
say all kinds of things. They reason and
feel their way to a savior of their own creation. Everyone who witnessed Jesus in His earthly
ministry knew He was either something sinister or something great. Many of the Jewish leaders were of the
opinion that He cast out demons Beelzebul (Matt. 12:24). The people in today’s survey were more
charitable. Some thought John the
Baptist had been raised from the dead.
Herod himself was a proponent of this theory. Others knew the promise that Elijah would
come again before the great and terrible Day of the Lord (Mal. 4:5), whether
the man himself, or someone in the power and spirit of the great prophet. Maybe Jesus is this Elijah? Or maybe He is Jeremiah, or one of the other
great prophets reincarnated? Clearly, He
is some sort of prophet, and Moses did promise God would raise up a Moses-like
prophet to whom all Israel should listen (Deut. 18:15). Maybe Jesus is that prophet. But notice that none of these options propose
Jesus as God’s promised Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, or that
He is the Son of the living God.
It
is not that different from the varied opinions people hold today. Some regard Jesus as a sinister threat. His religion, they believe, is responsible
for most, if not all of the violence and hatred in the world. Now it is fashionable to topple statues of
our Lord and His saints as examples of white supremacy, as tools of oppression. Satan must be giddy. But most people (I think it is still
safe to say), have a mostly favorable impression of Jesus. He was a great man. A moral teacher. A visionary.
A revolutionary. The
personification of love. As we define
love, of course. He is a prime
example of spirituality. But
again, in whatever way we want Him to be.
This is why you will hear from the lips of so many, the phrase “I just
can’t believe in a Jesus who would” say or do whatever they don’t want Jesus to
say or do. Or, “My Jesus would
never”… fill in the blank with whatever that person’s Jesus “would never.” I hope I never hear either of those phrases
from your lips. If you’ve ever said
something like that, repent. That is
idolatry. It is blaspheme. And be honest. Examine yourself. Because of this I am certain when it comes to
any son or daughter of Adam and Eve… You’ve thought it. The real Jesus has made you cringe. You wish He didn’t say some of the things He
says. He embarrasses you. He wounds your pride. In brutal, crushing honesty, He tells you
that you are a sinner, full of unrighteousness and all manner of filth and
shame, and that apart from Him, you are lost.
Yes, you’ve thought it. Repent.
There
is the Jesus of your thoughts and feelings, who is a false god every time. Or there is the Jesus revealed to you by the
Father in His Word. He has rough edges,
this Jesus, and He is not concerned to live up to your expectations. He says what He says, and He does what He
does, and it is always a scandal to those living securely in the flesh. But He is the only Savior, the Christ, the
Son of the living God. He is the only
One who touches the unclean and heals them and restores them to community. He is the only One who gives sight to the
blind, hearing to the deaf, mobility to the lame and to paralytics. He is the only One who bears your griefs and
carries your sorrows, who is wounded for your transgressions and crushed for
your iniquities. He is the only One who
casts out the demons, who takes your sin and your filth and your death into
Himself and kills them by His own death on the cross in your place. He is the only One who raises the dead to
life. And the proof is not only Jairus’
daughter, or the widow of Nain’s son, or Lazarus. Elijah and Elisha both did similar miracles,
after all, and all of these had to die again.
The proof is Jesus Himself.
He is risen from the dead.
Still! He is risen from the dead,
never to die again, and that is how He will raise you.
That
is the real Jesus. That is the Jesus
revealed to you by your Father in heaven.
And that is the Jesus you confess, not when you draw upon your own
thoughts and feelings, but when you say what the Apostles said, what the Father
reveals in the Word. That is the Jesus
you confess when you say the Creed. Only
the Father could enable you by His Spirit to say that about Jesus and
about our Triune God.
And
it is upon that revelation from the Father, that preaching, that confession,
that our Lord Christ builds His Church.
That is the rock. Peter is not
the rock. A little Greek goes a long way
here. There is an important play on
words you miss in English. Jesus says to
Simon, “you are Peter,” Πέτρος, stone, “and on this rock,” πέτρᾳ,
rock as in cliff or ledge or crag, “I will build my church” (Matt.
16:18). The difference is between a
stone you can pick up with your hands… not likely to build a Church, literally
or figuratively, on that… versus a solid rock foundation for a great
building. The play on words gives plenty
of honor to Peter as the one who made this confession as the Father had
revealed it to him. If anything, the
Lutherans don’t give enough credit to Peter.
But he is not the rock. He is the
rocky one who stands on the rock, the little stone that comes from the great
rocky mountain. He stands on the
confession. And the confession is that
of the real and true Christ, the Son of the living God. You might as well say the Rock is Christ
Himself! And it is against that
confession, that Lord Jesus, that the gates of hell will not prevail.
Not
the opinions of men, not your own fleshly conceptions of who Jesus should be,
not even the hellish fiend himself, the devil, can bring down the Church built
on Christ, the Cornerstone, or the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets,
which is to say, the Holy Scriptures.
And that means COVID can’t prevail, either. Or the collapse of American society. Or governors, or the Supreme Court, or
whoever wins the next election. Or
nuclear holocaust. Or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.
Or anything else in all creation.
Because
Christ is risen! The confession is
Truth. Waves beating against Gibraltar
will have more success in their endeavors than the evil that beats against this
Rock, the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And
this releases you! It releases you from
your sins. It releases you from your
false Jesuses. It releases you from
death and condemnation. Jesus gives the
Office of the Keys to His Church to bind and loose. You know about this Office from the
Catechism: “The Office of the Keys is that special authority which Christ has
given to His church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to
withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.”[1] The preaching of the Gospel is the Father’s
revelation of Jesus Christ as your Savior. And this is what looses you, what frees
you. Those who follow a Jesus of their
own making remain in bondage. They are
all tied up. Those who believe in the
Jesus Peter confesses, and the Church along with Him, are freed from the jaws
of hell. The Church is built wherever
sinners believe this Gospel, whenever sinners are loosed from their sins. The Church is built on the preaching of Christ
crucified and risen for you.
Who
do people say that the Son of Man is?
Many and various things. “But,”
Jesus asks you, “who do you say that I am?” You confess what the Father has revealed to
you here and now in our Holy Gospel.
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. You are my only Savior from sin and
death.” It is not a product of human
reason or a feeling deep down in your heart.
It is the objective Gospel that is preached to you. So you believe. And so you confess. And you are blessed. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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