Who Do You Say That I Am? SALT's Commentary for Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Thirteenth Week after Pentecost (Year A): Matthew 16:13-20

Big Picture:

1) This week we continue our chronological walk through the Gospel of Matthew; fourteen more weeks to go until Advent. We are (more or less) in the middle of Matthew’s story.

2) So far, Matthew’s narrative has focused on Jesus teaching, healing, and feeding — all to the amazement of the crowds, who speculate about who he may or may not be. “What sort of man is this?” his own disciples ask each other, a fitting summary of the reaction of just about everyone who meets him (Matthew 8:27). But the readers of (or listeners to) Matthew have an advantage the disciples and crowds do not, for right out of the blocks, Matthew announces exactly who Jesus is: “the Messiah,” God’s “Beloved” (Matthew 1:1; 3:17). The fact that Matthew’s audience knows more about Jesus’ identity than the disciples and crowds do creates an atmosphere of dramatic irony, and an ongoing tension in the story: Will they realize who he is?  In this week’s passage, Jesus calls the question. Who do they — and who do you — say that I am?

3) This week’s passage is Part One of a two-part sequence. This week is about Peter declaring — and Jesus confirming — that Jesus is the Messiah. Next week is about what “messiahship” is really all about (spoiler alert: it’s not what Peter thinks it is!).

4) The setting of this exchange makes an important difference. Jesus and his entourage have just entered “the district of Caesarea Philippi” (Matthew 16:13). Note the name: Caesar-ea. These Roman settlements were located near a temple built by Herod the Great, dedicated to Rome and the Emperor Augustus, the first Emperor of the Roman Empire — and a man, please note, who added to his title the striking phrase, Divi Filius: “Son of the Divine.”

Scripture:

1) Against this imperial and theological backdrop, Jesus asks his disciples: Who do people — and who do you — say that I am?  The speculation among the crowds reportedly varies: perhaps Jesus is John the Baptizer returned from the dead; or Elijah, heralding the end of the age; or one of the other venerable prophets of old (Matthew 16:14).

2) But what do you say?  Peter’s answer seems to get it right: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). “Messiah” literally means “the Anointed One,” the promised deliverer, ordained and commissioned by God to save God’s people. Jesus enthusiastically confirms the answer, and Peter, no doubt, is elated. Remember, they’ve just arrived in Caesarea Philippi, the site of the temple dedicated both to Augustus, the alleged Divi Filius himself, and to the imperial oppressors under whom the Jewish people have suffered for so long. The contrast is vivid: Against Caesar, you are our Messiah, the true Divi Filius!

3) But then Jesus “sternly orders” them not to tell anyone. Why? It would seem this is partly because he plans to reveal his identity later on, since the claim is so offensive to imperial and religious powers alike; indeed, as it turns out, the claim eventually leads to the crucial charge of blasphemy at his trial (Matthew 26:63-66). But it also may be because what Peter and the other disciples mean by “the Messiah” isn’t what Jesus means at all. As we’ll see next week, for many in those days, “the Messiah” was the one who would deliver Israel by military victory. But for Jesus, messiahship doesn’t mean out-Caesar-ing Caesar; it means reversing Caesar’s way of arrogance, violence, and oppression into its opposite: the Way of humility and restoration, justice and grace.

4) Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Deliverer — but he comes into Caesarea Philippi on foot, not on a warhorse, accompanied by a rag-tag group of ordinary men and women, not an angelic army. Here is the living child of “the living God,” born among docile animals, humbly dressed and unarmed, walking boldly into imperial territory — where the mighty Augustus stands in his temple, larger than life, eyes cold as stone.

5) Jesus has an altogether different kind of kingdom in mind. Indeed, though Jesus declares that Peter (Greek, Petros) — either him personally or the testimony he’s just given — is “the rock” (petra) on which the church will be built, in the very next episode, when Peter rebukes him for suggesting that true messiahship involves suffering and death, Jesus calls him “Satan”! (Matthew 16:23). The upshot here is that the church itself, even as we endeavor to follow Jesus the Messiah, will wrestle with what “Messiah” truly means. Next week, Part Two of this important struggle will unfold.

Takeaways:

1) This is a perfect week — particularly when paired with next week’s passage, in which we hear “the rest of the story” — to reflect on what we mean when we call Jesus “the Messiah,” and what it means to follow him. Jesus is a king who subverts conventional kingship, a deliverer who means to save us from our self-centered obsession with our own deliverance, and a teacher, as we’ll see next week, who introduces us to the “deeper physics” of love and generosity that really make the world go ’round.

2) The shallow physics of empire, of domination, of stone statues and self-aggrandizement, is everywhere — both then and now. But look deeper, Jesus says. It’s all built on sand. There’s a deeper physics, a deeper bedrock — and on that rock I will build my church. On the surface, it may not look like much: take Peter, for instance, this unremarkable fisherman, so bold and so cowardly, so insightful and so foolish, so faithful and so unreliable. But look deeper: he follows. He testifies. He struggles. He understands — and misunderstands. He believes — and disbelieves. And through it all, in fits and starts, he pursues the love and justice, the grace and mercy God created him to pursue. You see? Faith is a kind of pursuit. And on that rock — not the rock of Caesar, but the rock of humble, persistent pursuit, the living rock of faith — I will build my church!

3) This portrait of Peter is an open invitation to all of us to join the movement, to be a part of the community of the church, flawed and meager and courageous and beautiful as it is. As compared to the great monuments of empire, the church can certainly seem unimpressive. But the good news of the Gospel is this: at the center of the church is not an inert statue but a living person, the living child of the living God, calling us all to a deeper, more human, more excellent Way of Life.

4) And stay tuned. Next week, we hear the dramatic, counter-intuitive, mind-bending Part Two of what Jesus means by “the Messiah”…