Sermon: Confession of St. Peter – 2023

18 January 2023

Text: Mark 8:27-9:1 (Acts 4:8-13, 2 Pet 1:1-15)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

St. Peter’s confession begins with a question from Jesus. 

It is almost like our catechism, in which questions are answered by our confession of faith.  Jesus quizzes His disciples: “Whom do people say that I am?”  They reply that there are a lot of answers floating around out there: John the Baptist, Elijah, or some other prophet.  Jesus follows up His question with “But whom do you say that I am?”  And Peter answers for the group: “You are the Christ.”  Jesus tells them to keep this confession to themselves for the time being.

St. Matthew’s account gives us a little more detail.  For Simon Peter’s answer had two parts: “You are the Christ” and “You are the Son of the living God.”  And our Lord’s disciple Levi Matthew, who was there, calls to mind what Jesus said back to Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 

In the Middle Ages, when theologians were reading a Latin translation instead of the original Greek, they thought Jesus was saying that Peter, the man, was the rock upon whom the church was founded.  But in the Greek, we learn that our Lord was doing some wordplay.  For when He gives Simon his nickname “Peter,” it is an adjective, not a noun.  In other words, Peter is the “rock man,” or maybe more like the English nickname “Rocky.”  For his confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, and that He is the Son of God – that confession of Christ is that rock which the church is built upon.

And we learn that God Himself, not “flesh and blood,” revealed this truth to Peter.  For maybe one could see how Jesus fulfills the prophecies and conclude that He is the Christ, but to conclude His divinity is not something that is obvious – since this is so beyond what our minds can conceive.  This had been revealed to Simon Peter.

Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus is the Son of God.  He is a man, born of Mary, but He has no human father.  His Father is God the Father.  And because Jesus is the Son, He teaches us to pray to “our Father who art in heaven.”  He is the Son of Man (an Old Testament expression for the Messiah), and He is the Son of God (bearing the full divinity of God).

The disciples, that is, the Twelve, were on their way to serving in the apostolic ministry.  And our Lord will empower Peter – and the rest of the Twelve, with the “keys of the kingdom of heaven.”  And we know about this “Office of the Keys” from our own Catechism:  “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  As we confess: “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” and “when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.”

For the office that our Lord bestowed upon St. Peter, the apostles, and their successors, is there to bless His people, to give them the Good News of forgiveness, life, and salvation, and to deliver it to them in its fullness.

And Peter’s good confession is our good confession, dear friends.  For us, it is natural to say that Jesus is the Christ.  In fact, we treat His Greek Messianic title as if it were part of His name.  But think about when St. Peter made this confession.  In those days, the children of Israel were hoping for the Messiah to come and liberate them, as Scripture promised.  But they thought this liberation would be political, in the form of overthrowing Rome and re-establishing the Davidic kingdom on earth.  Whether or not Peter understood then that Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world, we don’t know.  But we do know that this confession could have gotten all of them executed – if not by the Jews, then by the Romans.

And even today, dear friends, confessing Christ may not be safe.  You could face scrutiny from your family, abandonment by your friends, hatred by society, and persecution from the government.  Even now, there are Christians on death row for nothing more than making the same confession as the apostle Peter.  Our own Congress has sold us out and passed the so called Defense of Marriage Act, which compels Christian artists to violate their consciences by accepting commissions that are in opposition to their confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, whose Word is always true and infallible, whose kingdom indeed is “not of this world.”

St. Peter also confesses in his Second Epistle that this divine nature of Jesus, the Son of the living God, is not only about Jesus, but about the church, about us.  For he reveals to us, under the Spirit’s inspiration, that “He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”

And so, dear friends, we partake in our Lord’s divinity, in His Sonship of the living God.  We do this by hearing the inspired Word, by receiving the Holy Sacraments of Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution through the Office of the Keys, in which we are declared forgiven by virtue of our Lord’s promise and delegated authority!

And because of this shared divinity, we escape the world’s corruption – the degeneracy of our life in this fallen world and flesh, and the corruption of death.  As St. Paul teaches us: “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.” And He, dear friends, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, fulfilled the words of the Psalmist, “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”  And that same promise is for us!

St. Peter’s confession is the church’s confession.  It is our confession.  And as we confessed:

“What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.  We also believe, and so we also speak, as one who speaks oracles of God.  From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.”

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.