Who is This?

 

Texts: Isaiah 51:1-6; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

If you've read the latest edition of Trinibas Times you may have noticed a short review I wrote of a book by Bishop Tom Wright, the present Bishop of Durham, called Surprised by Hope.  In that book he records a conversation he had with the BBC producer of a series of programmes on the Life of Jesus of Nazareth.  According to Bishop Tom, there was a lot to commend in the programmes, but there was one glaring omission. 

Although the series majored on Jesus' teaching, and was particularly strong on what we might call Jesus' ethical teaching, there was no mention at all of the Kingdom of God, which, of course, is the central core of Jesus' teaching.  The first thing he said, according to St Luke was, "Repent and believe for the Kingdom of God is at hand."  And in this year of St Matthew's gospel, we hardly need reminding that a whole cluster of Jesus' parables were concerned to tell us something of what the Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it) is like.  So why the omission?

The producer explained to Bishop Tom that he had thought it best to omit Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God because on this subject Jesus had clearly got it wrong.  Two thousand years later we can see no evidence of any such kingdom coming on earth, the producer said, so it was kinder to Jesus to drop the subject, and concentrate on the significance of his ethical teaching which is still applicable today.  I suspect there are many, even inside the Church, who would have considerable sympathy for the producer's point of view, even though he is palpably wrong.  How could anyone suggest, looking back over the last two thousand years, that there is no evidence to support the view that the Kingdom of God has broken into our world?

Perhaps Bishop Tom was so stunned by such nonsense that he missed the obvious retort.  Surely he should have asked the producer, why, then, do you wish to spend so much time and money on making a television series about Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years after his execution?  If his only claim to fame is his ethical teaching, virtually none of which was original to him, why not a series on other ethical teachers like Socrates or Mandela?  And when Bishop Tom returned home, could he not have gone into the magnificent cathedral at Durham and asked again, "No evidence?"  Are not all the cathedrals and churches and monasteries and convents throughout the world concrete evidence of something more than a few pithy sayings about the ethical life?  The church schools and the seminaries, the hospitals and hospices, the art and music, the whole fabric of Christian culture of the last two thousand years – is none of all that evidence of something more than a good man who taught good things?

What about the changed lives, beginning with Peter and Paul and continuing down to the present day with people like Tuhoe Isaac, ex-Mongrel Mob president, who drew a crowd of 1,800 to the Dunedin Town Hall recently, precisely because Jesus of Nazareth turned his life upside-down and inside-out?  What about all the saints and martyrs, apostles and prophets we will remember shortly in our liturgy, including St Bartholomew whose feast day it is today?  And, yes, in all humility, what about us, gathered in this beautiful holy place in little Warrington offering our praise and thanksgiving to God through Jesus of Nazareth?  Are we not part of the evidence that Isaiah's vision of 700 years further back in history than Jesus is coming to reality, when he wrote that "the islands will look to [God] and wait in hope for [his]arm"?

Well, I could rave on for hours about the evidence of the last two thousand years to support the claim that the Kingdom of God has been breaking into this world during all that time.  But the point of this rave is to make the obvious comparison with the evidence available to Peter and the other disciples at the time of this episode in our gospel reading this morning.   And once again we should notice how brilliantly St Matthew has framed this passage.  What we now call chapter 16 of his gospel is all about evidence.  It begins with the Pharisees and the Sadducees (usually hostile to each other) ganging up on Jesus, demanding that he show them a sign from heaven.  They are in the same position as the BBC producer – they see no evidence.

Jesus, in effect, says they are too blind to see it, or, perhaps, too thick.  They can "read" the weather, but they can't interpret the sign of the times.  And he gives a veiled clue about his death, which goes straight past them, no doubt.  However, they don't have that problem alone.  There follows an episode between Jesus and his disciples where the latter fail to understand what he is talking about.  He reminds them of the feeding miracles – both the Five Thousand and the Four Thousand – clear signs from heaven – but they struggle to grasp that the bread is not the key point.  The key point is his identity.  What do those miracles say about who Jesus of Nazareth really is?

And in that state of confusion and misunderstanding they come to the region of Caesarea Philippi, where we catch up with them today.  And we know enough of St Matthew's approach to story-telling by now to pause and ask ourselves, why is that location important.  Why does he want us to know where the following question-and-answer session took place?  Because it had two previous claims to fame.  First, it was an important site for the ancient worship of the nature god, Pan.  Secondly, and more importantly, it was a centre of Roman imperial power.  Herod built a large temple there dedicated to the worship of the Emperor Augustus Caesar, and then Philip the tetrarch enlarged and adorned the town, and renamed it Caesarea in honour of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar.  At the time of Jesus it was also a garrison town, with many imperial troops based there.

Now we have the picture.  In a town dedicated to the Roman Emperor, the venue of a huge and impressive temple dedicated to worshipping the Emperor, Jesus stands with a motley collection of ex-fishermen and the like, and asks them who people think he is.  So the conversation is still about evidence, and signs, and what people are making of him so far.  And before we get to Peter's famous reply, it's worth noting what the talk on the street was.  Remember, this whole sequence, according to St Matthew, starts with a delegation of Pharisees, who believed in the general resurrection at the end of the age, and Sadducees who didn't believe in resurrection at all.

It seems that neither position appealed to the general populace.  They believed that certain individuals, people especially blessed by God such as the prophets, could return from the dead (a belief apparently shared by King Herod!).  According to the disciples this is the talk on the street: "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."  It's not simply that Jesus is another prophet in his own right, standing in a long line of great prophets; they apparently believe that he is one of the great prophets reincarnated and returned to them.  So that's not bad – Jesus has, in worldly terms, pretty good name recognition, and a pretty good reputation as a spokesperson for God.  But no one, it seems, had yet identified Jesus with the long-awaited Messiah.

Until now.  With none of the evidence of the last two thousand years to draw on, in a city reeking of paganism and imperial power, Peter identifies Jesus as "the Messiah, the Son of the living God".  How on earth could he have arrived at that conclusion at that time and in those unlikely circumstances?  Jesus tells us: this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.  There was no evidence, nothing that Peter could have seen or heard, as a witness in the ordinary sense of the word, nothing that he could have deduced or worked out using his intelligence, that could have led him to that point.  He got there by the gift of faith – it was revealed to him by the Father, by God.

And on that insight – on that confession of faith in the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth – that Jesus says he will build his Church.  Everything else that we associate with the Church, the Christian faith, follows from that statement by Peter.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.  Through him the Kingdom of God has drawn near and is growing among us.  That's why we're here today.

And that's why the BBC producer, however well-intentioned, got it completely wrong.