Proper 16, Year A
August 25, 2002
Christ Church, Covington

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18).


Jesus does not tell too many jokes in the Gospels (in fact, I can’t think of another), so the joke that he tells in our Gospel reading today may be unique. In fact, it doesn’t even quite rise to being a joke, and may be (strictly speaking) a pun. The disciple Simon has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and in response Jesus has given him a new name, Peter. The joke is that Peter means “rock”, and that it is on this rock that Jesus will build his church. In other words (to paraphrase Jesus), “You are Rocky, and on this rock I will build my Church”. Whether or not the disciples groaned at the pun we are not told.

Commentators from the earliest times have given different interpretations of this verse. Some have understood the rock to which Jesus refers to be the faith which Peter has just confessed. Others have understood the rock on which the Church is built to be Jesus himself. Yet others, led on by the word play that is present in the verse, have understood Peter (quite logically) to be the rock.

There is a record of controversy here, on account of the Christian tradition of identifying the apostle Peter with the Church in Rome. As the argument goes, the Church is built upon Peter and his successors, the Popes or Bishops of Rome, who have a continuing primacy amongst the bishops of the Church. The verse has been stretched even to argue for an infallible Papacy. It seems only prudent for an Anglican priest to point out in all charity that this last is indeed a case of stretching, for in the next breath Jesus is rebuking Peter with the words, “Get behind me, Satan” (Matt. 16:23). Peter doesn’t sound very infallible in faith and morals, does he, after a stinging rebuke like that? And again, it seems clear that Jesus in the Gospels shares his mission with the disciples as a whole, and not simply with Peter (Matt. 28:18-20; Jo. 20:21-23). He may be the leader, the chief, but he has many colleagues, even some (like Paul) who correct him (Gal. 2:14).

So much for the proverbial elephant in the living room. Jesus’ words to Peter, even if punning, are profound, principally because they remind us of the importance of people. Peter is the rock, and it is out of such living stones that the Church is built. Faith is not confessed by institutions, or passed on by them over time, but instead is confessed and passed on by human beings like Peter and the other disciples. The Church is not a building or a set of rules of governance, but an assembly of actual people. If the Church is the Body of Christ, its members are the People of God.

Notice that the human dimension that we may take Peter to represent doesn’t reduce faith to an individual concern. If Peter is the rock, it is a Church, an assembly (for that’s the meaning of the word), that Jesus builds upon him. The Church, as the Prayer Book says, is “the blessed company of all faithful people”. The passing on of the faith itself, through baptism and preaching and laying on of hands; through ordination and Sunday School teaching and praying with others; all of this and other personal acts of faith creates a community of faith stretched out in time and space. It is this community that our Creeds call the Holy Catholic Church of Christ, and each of us has a ministry within it and a vital role in its living embodiment in persons.

The effect of faithful ministry isn’t limited by either time or space. If you’ve been to Rome and to St Peter’s Church, you ought to have some sense of the continuing effect of faithful personality (even one quite removed in time) on the present day practice of faith. Or if you’ve been to Canterbury Cathedral, you may have discovered the simple stone that marks the place of Thomas Becket’s martyrdom, and wondered at the presence of a person that continues to mark a place.
“And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the
living.
So T.S. Eliot (Little Gidding), in another context, noting the continuing impress of a faithful life, in an influence that goes beyond our understanding.

It’s also true to say that some personalities loom large in the life of faith, for each of us. God the Holy Spirit is alive and active in people. Faith is not an abstraction, but takes shape in actual people we know, fellow saints and pilgrims. So who is the Peter of your life? Who have been your companions and colleagues on the way? Who has confessed the faith in your presence and formed you in the faith? Who has been the one to point for you to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Who has been for you the rock on which the Church has been built? I see as I look around I see the living stones out of which the Church is shaped and formed, the rock to which the Church is safely anchored. God uses people to call us to faith, and continues to make his spirit available through the ministry of faithful folk.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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