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The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Grant, we beseech thee, merciful God, that thy Church, being gathered together in unity by thy Holy Spirit, may manifest thy power among all peoples, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen. (Proper 16)
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Scripture citation(s): Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20
A Sermon by
Fr. Stafford
on
Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20
✛
A Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
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“`…Whom do you say I am?’”
Today’s Gospel, from Matthew, is set at Caesarea Philippi (13). This is pagan territory, at the northernmost boundary of Israel. It is a town famous for its grotto, a cave and spring, where the Greek god, Pan, is worshipped. Pan is a Satyr, part human and part goat, with horns on his head and cloven feet; an image that early Christian iconographers associated with the Devil. Our words panic and pandemonium, are derived from Pan, who is known to induce sudden fear. Pan is also a fertility god, and the only Greek god who was not immortal. Caesarea Philippi, therefore, is an odd setting for the disclosure of Christ’s messianic identity by the disciple Peter. The town, with its ancient shrine and overt paganism, provides a sharp contrast to the person and ministry of Christ and the faith of Peter. Caesarea Philippi, I am saying, is representative not only of the gentile world but also the kingdom of man, and, therefore, a kingdom we, ourselves, inhabit because of our mortal nature, where we, also, enter into false sacrifice to gods, who, like us, are destined to die. Furthermore, I would offer that Christ at Caesarea Philippi is also a foreshadowing of the account of the resurrected Lord harrowing the souls in Hell, the Easter revelation of the Good News and Christ’s descent into the underworld, to the realm of departed spirits; that is say, to all preceding time and to those who have never heard the Gospel proclaimed and to those who have denied or rejected it. Most importantly, in Matthew’s understanding, the kingdom of this world is passing away. And, the reason for this is the subversion of the established order by Christ, who is both the bringer of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven itself. Christ, Matthew wants us to see, is the long awaited Son of David, the Messianic one, Jesus, the ultimate, true sacrifice, who frees humankind from its estrangement from the eternal and whose cross begins a final age, the reign of the kingdom of God. That in a nutshell is the context of today’s Gospel.
The problem is the kingdom of this world is in our way of seeing the presence of the kingdom of heaven, the Christ, in our midst. For example, think of this dilemma as similar to trying to see the stars overhead at night when you’re standing at Times Square. You can’t. The lights of Broadway and 42nd Street are too bright, the ambient illumination blocking out what you know to exist in the sky above you. The kingdom of this world – fear, violence, and death, in particular — are for us, I am saying, very bright, obscuring lights, whose illumination dull our sight, preventing us from seeing beyond the immediate and topical surface of this life. In today’s Gospel, true and full vision is achieved through revelation or spiritual awakening. And, it is this theme of revelation that I want to address this morning, more especially, our need for it in daily life. Why this need? Christians believe that we require God’s assistance to see the kingdom of heaven in our midst so that we might come to believe and come to accept the mantle of discipleship to walk with Christ our Lord through daily life. To understand this dependency upon God more fully, let us look at the disclosure that is the awakening revelation at the heart of today’s Gospel.
The example at Caesarea Philippi that Matthew sets before us is Simon Peter, who proclaims the true identity of Jesus as “…the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16). The Evangelist records Christ as saying Peter’s recognition is possible only by the grace and will of His Father in heaven (17). This confirms that Peter is seized by a truth that is not of human origin but is, instead, a spontaneous gift of God’s grace. Speaking of this phenomenon of faith, contemporary German theologian Karl Rahner says, “…man always stands…before a God of revelation, before a God who operates in history” (A Rahner Reader, ed. Gerald A. McCool, Crossroad, NY, 1981, p. 34). This is to say that the Christian God is often hidden in the fabric of daily life, in the rise and fall of nations. Peter, therefore, is each and all of us standing before the God we cannot see without help, a God whose will it is to enter into deeper relationship with us and this fallen world through the people, places, things, and events of daily life. God initiates this intimacy in order to transform us and human history with knowledge of the mystery of Himself. In Rahner’s theology “revelation is a saving Happening…” (ibid., p. 98), as he terms it.
The point of the Gospel and the point that I am making with you today is that to see God clearly, truthfully, and fully, especially in places and situations of daily life where we would not expect God to be – those places of Caesarea Philippi, for example — we, too, like Peter, in our discipleship with the Lord, need this gift of divine revelation/awakening. To know God, Matthew is telling us, we need the grace that only God can give, the help and vision that permit us to enter into a living relationship with Him, the knowledge that the world cannot give but the Truth from above that is a saving Happening. Therefore, before God, we are always powerless. The kingdom of men is blind and bankrupt. But, grace, the mystery that is also the Word spoken to the human heart by the Father tells of God’s own identity and power, permitting us to see as never before. Grace, I am saying, is a gift that lets us see through the bright lights obscuring a nighttime sky to the reality of stars overhead. Grace moves our eyes beyond the ambient light of misperception and prejudice, violence and retribution, fear and death in daily life — the mythologies, as it were, we so often hold as truths and to which we sacrifice not only one another but ourselves in a world that ironically looks a lot like the grotto of Pan, a world Christ seeks to deliver from panic and despair and to redeem unto the joy and peace of eternal life!
My eye doctor tells me that I can now have my cataracts removed any time that I want to have the surgery. He says, he will put in each eye, a new lens that he promises will change the way I see. For the Christian, revelation is that new lens of corrected vision God implants in us to heal and restore our sight, so that we may see as God sees in a world that sees as death and fear and violence want us to see. Revelation, I am saying, is a lens that helps us identify and focus upon the God of eternal life who is hidden yet present in our midst, the God we so often mis-perceive and mis-understand, because He is a God that is beyond our knowing and yet an intimate part of the ground of our being (dasein), a God who has nothing to do with death but everything to do with the transformation of it, to make of it a saving Happening. For the disciple, this is a God made known in Christ, an enigmatic figure who asks each and all this question, “`Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am?’” (13) — to which the world confusedly answers, John the Baptist, Elias, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets (14); as if to say, on our own, we do not know, we can only guess. Matthew is showing us today that we want to put God in categories of our limited sight, the constricted expectations of the kingdom of men by which we bind ourselves and one another. But, our God is nothing like anything known before. Only revelation answers the question of God’s identity and God’s presence in the world, revelation overturning our expectations and confounding our understandings, which we come to realize are little more than sincere pagan unbelief.
Most of us, unlike Peter this morning in his instantaneous discovery and recognition of the Son of God, are not people of much revelatory vision, especially of the sudden variety. And even sermons, which are intended by the Church to be sources of revelation, often fall short of being an awakening experience. Furthermore, Peter cannot sustain the truth of Christ’s identity which he confesses today, because what God has allowed him to see will be interrupted shortly by a return to unbelief, which is a constant problem and limitation for him until the time of Pentecost. Peter is still a citizen of the kingdom of this world, and the resurrection of the Messiah an incomprehensible experience that is to come. Since we are in Caesarea Phillipi this morning, I would interject that the music which Pan pipes seems to have its allure and hold over humanity, it being a comforting distraction of old, yet familiar tunes of mortal gods and false sacrifices, fear and death. It is the recurring song of our unbelief and captivity from which we need deliverance, a saving Happening. Perhaps, this is because human beings are creatures who at some level want to be under the power of illusion and magic, creatures, for example, vulnerable to induced, sudden fear, quite the opposite of Revelation, which always calls us to wholeness and the peace of God. Most of us, if asked, I would guess, would say that we are people in need of help when it comes to believing not only in God but what and who in life is right and true. Most of us have moments of spiritual awakening, glimpses or hints of another world overhead in which stars shine with the brightness and certainty of a God in heaven. But, most of us would also say that what revelatory experience claims us is gained arduously over the course of a lifetime, faith rising and falling between waves of belief and unbelief, more like Peter in the long term than what today’s Gospel might indicate.
For his faith, likened to a “rock” (petrus), (18), Peter is awarded by Christ, “…the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (19). This distinction amongst his peers, making him first amongst equals, is a little like what Mayor Bloomberg does when he awards the keys to the City of New York to someone he wishes to honor and single out because of their unique service or contributions. Peter, therefore, is given power and authority (19). What this really means awaits an answer that will come after the resurrection and ascension of the Lord of life Peter today proclaims. And, finally Christ commands the disciples to “… tell no one that he was the Christ” (20), the messianic secret that is a characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel, a secret that perhaps the kingdom of this world is unready to really hear. And, herein, rests the importance of what I am saying, that Christ is willing to make of our imperfect faith a rock, a saving Happening, a foundation of power and authority to a world whose base is death, a world that is ultimately resistant and hostile to the vision of the kingdom of heaven. The revelation that God initiates and gives the human heart, no matter if it is sudden and complete or gathered in incompleteness, piece-meal, over the course of a lifetime, is a vision that is not easy to bear, because it puts us at odds with our superficial world, the Caearea Phillipi of any name and location we inhabit, at odds ultimately with fear, violence, and death in the kingdom of men. It asks us to step out of this world and more into God’s world, living less for ourselves and more sacrificially; less of Pan, as it were, and more of Christ! The revelation at Caesarea Phillipi, I am saying, is the vision of eternity – mercy, compassion, justice, and peace – the Messianic Son of God and Son of Man, whose ministry, passion, death, and resurrection reveal that the kingdom of God is already-here-but-not-yet-fully-revealed. This is the joyous revelation that we’re not waiting for heaven anymore!
People come up to me after sermons and say, “I get nervous listening to you. I don’t know where you’re taking me.” So, let me relax any frayed nerves by stating where we are. We’re at Caesarea Philippi this morning, where God has revealed Himself in a saving Happening to Peter as the Christ. I have said three things. 1) Caesarea Phillipi is daily life, the place of unbelief and mythology. 2) God gives us grace to see in even the most pagan and forsaken of circumstances the hidden presence of the kingdom of heaven. And, 3) Our God is not the God of death. Christ dies that the power of death may be defeated. Here and now, with Christ, and in Christ, is the eternal kingdom that the gates of hell (18) can not conquer.
I conclude with three suggestions for visitors to Caesarea Philippi, three suggestions for Christians who stand before the Hidden God who reveals Himself in daily life. 1) Don’t get into the water of the grotto of Pan, the water of false sacrifice; fear, violence, death. But if you do, if you must, remember that Christ has living water for you of which to partake. Baptism is our entrance into the grotto of eternal life, our turning from the false worship of this world to the mercy, compassion, justice, and peace of the kingdom of heaven. Repentance is our continued turning or return to the eternal vision of the kingdom of heaven. Repentance is revelation that God is forgiveness. 2) Since I’m from the Midwestern prairie, I know a little about buffalo, the animal not the city upstate! An entire heard of buffalo has been known to panic when a mosquito gets in the ear of an old bull. Many animals die in the ensuing panic as the creatures stampede over a cliff. When you feel like panic, ready to run over a cliff; don’t. It’s Pan. Stop, take a deep breath and look for the bug in your ear. You don’t have to engage in the false sacrifice of yourself or others. Most fears are little more than something ridiculous in the ear. The love of God, remember, casts out fear. Surrender to the care of God is revelation that God is love. And, 3) We can’t sit around waiting for revelation to cause or stir us to believe. That is called quietism. Instead, act in faith, keep acting, and sincere belief will follow. Revelation is always a bonus, always a gift from God. Little actions count. Little actions of faithfulness in daily life become keys to eternity, revelation that God is salvation.
Repentance, surrender to the mercy of God, and action in the world – three revelations that help us answer the question Christ puts to each and every heart, “Whom do you say that I am?” Our answer is a saving Happening: You are the God who forgives, the God who loves, and the God who saves — our answer being also the blueprint and mission statement of Christian discipleship, a saving Happening for the kingdom of men!
