Thirteenth Sunday
after Pentecost (Proper 16 A)
August 27, 2023
Text: Matt. 16:13-20
“I
believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my
Lord, or come to Him.”[1] Flesh and blood, fallen and bound as it is in
sin and death and unbelief, cannot reveal that Jesus Christ is Son of God and
Savior. God must do it. God must reveal it, and so bring me to
this conviction. The Christian faith is
no mere human opinion. Peter didn’t make
it up, nor was he persuaded into the faith by rational argument. His confession is from God. The Church’s confession is from God. When you confess the Creed, and actually
believe the words you are speaking, that is God working in you,
revealing Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, in His Word. “For flesh and blood has not revealed this
to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17; ESV).
How
did the Father reveal it to Peter? Well,
Peter witnessed the miracles. Peter
heard the teaching. Recall, if you will,
the miraculous catch of fish, and Peter’s penitential response, “Depart from
me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). “Do not be afraid,” the Lord responded
(really a Holy Absolution); for “from now on you will be catching men”
(v. 10). There was the Sermon on the
Mount (Matt. 5-7), and the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and all those who
were sick and afflicted or oppressed by demons (Matt. 8:14-17). The calming of storms, walking on water, the
cleansing of lepers, paralytics taking up their beds and walking, the blind who
now see, the deaf who now hear, the dead raised up, and so many poor hearing
such good news. The Word and the
Signs. Peter didn’t know it yet, as he
would know it on Pentecost and thereafter, but the Spirit of God was in the
Word and the Signs, the Father’s revelation of Jesus the Son. And Jesus, the Son, revealing His Father as Peter’s
Father, the disciples’ Father, our Father who art in heaven, who
loves us, and who sent His Son to save us.
The Father reveals the Son. The
Son reveals the Father. The Spirit
proceeds from Father and Son, creating in us new hearts of faith in the Son,
who has reconciled us to the Father.
Flesh
and blood cannot reveal this to us. The
Father reveals Jesus as the Son to us in the same way He revealed Him to
Peter. The Word and the Signs. For us, it isn’t typically miraculous
healings or spectacular displays of the Lord’s authority, like the obedience of
wind and waves, or the feeding of the multitudes with five loaves and two
fish. But it is the preaching of this
Gospel, the very Words of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is the Signs of Baptism and Supper,
miracles as profound as any recorded in Holy Scripture.
Confession
of the Creed… Confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God
(Matt. 16:16)… flows from this preaching and these Signs. Confession flows from faith which is born of
God in Word and Sacrament. This is what
St. Paul is talking about in Romans 10: “‘The word is near you, in your
mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is
justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (vv. 8-10). Faith speaks.
Paul is not preaching that the act of confession merits justification or
salvation. Of course not. But he is simply pointing out the bare fact
that faith does not remain silent. You
believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, your Savior, and so you confess
Him. And the confession is not something
you make up in your own heart. That
would be relying on a revelation from fallen flesh and blood. No, the confession is what you have been given. It is joining your voice with that of the
holy Christian Church throughout the world, and across the ages, in confessing
the Creed.
“Jesus
is Lord” was among the very earliest formulations of the Creed. It is an echo of Peter’s confession, “You
are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Really, it was a life and death situation. Caesar demanded that he be acknowledged
and acclaimed as Lord (be warned… given enough time, earthly governments will
always make that claim!). The Christians
confessed Another, to whom Caesar himself was accountable. Arrested, bound, dragged before secular
authorities, on pain of death, they were commanded to renounce Christ and burn
incense to Caesar. If they did,
they would be released, simple as that.
If they did not… if they persisted in confessing that Jesus is
Lord, and Caesar is not, they would face all manner of torture and
gruesome death. There is no question
what mere flesh and blood would choose.
But confession is born of the Father’s revelation of the Son by the
Spirit. And so, Paul writes to the
Corinthians, “no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is
accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1
Cor. 12:3).
It
is a life and death situation when you confess the Creed. The words you now say grew out of the basic
confession, “Jesus is Lord.” The Old
Roman Creed, confessed at Baptism, developed into what we know today as “The
Apostles’ Creed.” In the heat of
theological controversy, the Church Fathers expanded the articles of the
Apostles’ Creed into what we now know as “The Nicene Creed.” And further controversy gave rise to “The
Athanasian Creed.” Taken together, these
three creedal formulas are known as the “Three Ecumenical Creeds,” ecumenical
because they confess the faith of all orthodox, biblical Christians. Ironically, even Christians who claim to
profess no formal creeds, by happy inconsistency, do essentially confess these
Creeds. (And, incidentally, everyone
has a creed. “Creed,” from the Latin credo,
simply means “I believe,” so if you believe anything, that is your creed. And if
you don’t believe anything, whatever you may be, you are certainly not a
Christian. Also, let me just say
here that it is exceedingly dangerous to despise the three formal Creeds of the
holy Christian Church, which are simply a concise summary of Holy
Scripture. It comes perilously close to
denying the holy faith delivered to us in the Scriptures, so let’s have none of
that talk amongst us!) So you, whether
you are formally speaking the words of the Creed in unison, in united voice,
with your fellow Christians, or informally confessing the content of the Creed
in your own words to someone who needs to hear about Jesus… flesh and blood has
not revealed this to you, but our Father who is in heaven.
And
this is the rock, this confession, upon which Jesus Christ builds His
Church. And it is against the rock of
this confession that the gates of hell will not prevail. There is a play on words, here, in the Greek,
which is not apparent in English Translation.
We know that the name “Peter” means rock. That is, Πέτρος in Greek, “stone,” perhaps
significant and heavy, but something you could pick up with your hands. “(A)nd on this rock I will build my church”
(Matt. 16:18). Now the word for rock is πέτρᾳ
in Greek, and that is a boulder big enough to be the cornerstone of the
house. A stone is a chip off the old
boulder. Peter is a rock, sure enough. But he receives his Christian name (“Stone,”
“Rock-man”) in relation to that which was revealed to him by the Father, the
rock of his confession upon which Jesus builds His Church. That confession stops up the gates of
hell. Because that confession…
the preaching of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God… is the Father’s
revelation to others that brings them to saving faith in Christ, His Son. It rescues them from hell, and brings them to
eternal life.
Now,
Jesus gives to Peter and the disciples, to His Church, not only the authority
to bar the passage to hell, but also to unlock heaven. That is, He gives the Office of the
Keys. “(W)hatever you bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven” (v. 19). That is, when you
forgive the sins of repentant sinners who believe your confession of Jesus
Christ, the Son of the living God; and when you withhold forgiveness from the
unrepentant as long as they do not repent; this is just as valid and certain,
even in heaven, as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with them Himself. Because He has, and He does, through His
Church, and through His ministers. The
key of holy Absolution looses sinners from all that binds them to death
and hell, and unlocks the door to heaven and eternal life. Church discipline, on the other hand, binds
the sinner in his guilt, and locks the door to life and heaven, until
the sinner repents of his sin and is reconciled to God in Christ. This is the fruit of the Church’s preaching
and confession. On our own, we are
damned. Jesus Christ is the Way to
eternal life. Jesus Christ is the Key to
heaven.
Now,
how do you know this? How do you know
the preaching is true? By the Great
Sign… the Sign of Jonah (Matt. 16:4).
For “as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the
great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). The Great
Sign of Christ, who was crucified, dead, and buried, but who is
risen, and lives, is displayed for you in your own watery descent into the
abyss with Him, and your coming out again to life and light. And in His crucified and risen body and
blood, given you to eat and to drink, for the forgiveness of your sins. You hear the preaching. You see the Signs. It is the Father bringing you to faith in His
Son by His Spirit. And faith
speaks. You confess. And blessed are you. Your confession is the rock. It is the confession of Peter, and of the
Church throughout the ages. In fact, the
Rock is Christ Himself, for He is the whole content of the confession. He is the Cornerstone (Matt. 21:42) upon
which the Church is built. The apostles
and prophets are the foundation (Eph. 2:20).
And you, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to
be a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5).
Little Peters. Stones from the
Rock. The rock is the confession. The Rock is Christ. And against that Rock, indeed, the gates of
hell can never prevail. In the Name of
the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
