Matthew’s gospel has a prevailing concern for the evolving Christian community. In the New Testament, only Matthew uses the word church—once in Sunday’s gospel, 16.18, and once in 18.17.
The word church means the assembly or congregation, the people of the Christian community. The word in Greek is ekklesia, which translates the word qhl in Hebrew, again meaning the assembly or people of God.
Peter shows leadership among Jesus’ disciples in Sunday’s gospel. Peter is the one who identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the living God. In response to his expression of faith, Jesus blesses Peter and insists God has revealed this insight to Peter.
This blessing section, the right column in the gospel above, appears only in Matthew’s gospel and underscores Peter’s importance to the Church that is evolving in the A.D. 80s, when the gospel is written. Peter has a less exalted position in Mark’s gospel, which deliberately juxtaposes this scene in which Peter confesses his faith back to back with a scene in which Peter objects to Jesus’ prediction he will suffer and die in Jerusalem. Peter believes in an all-powerful warrior king, not a self-giving leader who will suffer the apparent defeat of death.
Mark’s gospel focuses on how Peter’s faith grows and deepens. Peter professes only a shallow faith at first. During Jesus’ passion, he overestimates his loyalty to Jesus, denies him, and appears for the last time in the narrative in tears of regret—a chastened disciple, one who grows from misunderstanding and denial to give his life to Jesus’ mission as an apostle and martyr.
The lectionary heightens Matthew’s positive emphasis by reading Peter’s confession and Jesus’ blessing this Sunday and waiting until next Sunday to read the negative scene.
- How do you answer Jesus’ question today? Who do you say Jesus is?
For Matthew, Peter’s confession is more than human insight. It is God who reveals Jesus’ messianic identity to Peter and the other disciples. In the words of his blessing, Jesus echoes his earlier prayer thanking his Father for hiding things from the wise and revealing them to infants (Matthew 11.25-27).
Indeed, Peter’s faith may be in infancy at this point in Matthew’s narrative but at the time Matthew writes in history, the A.D. 80s, Peter’s faith has led him to the ultimate act of faith and imitation of Jesus—martyrdom about A.D. 64. Jesus’ blessing affirms both Peter’s first faith and his ultimate act of faith. It places the foundations of the church on faith that is both God’s gift and our unfolding identity.
- How has faith in Jesus become part of your identity?
The play around Peter’s names identifies him as a follower of the crucified and risen messiah. First, Peter is Simon, son of Jonah, a relationship that points him out as spiritual kin of the prophet Jonah, who symbolizes resurrection.
When scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign, he says they will receive no sign but the sign of the prophet Jonah. “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth” (12.18-40).
Peter is also the rock (petra, in Greek) on which Jesus will build his church. The gates of Hades is a metaphor for death and suggests Peter’s martyrdom. Peter, whose first faith seemed as shallow as the rocky ground of the parable and who once denied any relationship with Jesus, is also the rock, a disciple who gives his life in following Jesus, who acts on his faith that death will not prevail against the promise of Jesus’ resurrection.
In the final saying of his sermon on the mount, Jesus says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (7.24). The house, an image of church, withstands rain, floods, and wind. The believing disciple is the sure foundation of the Christian community.
- What do you regard as the sure foundation of the church?
- What answers to who Jesus is have you outgrown? Who do you say Jesus is today?
- What do you want to be unchanging in the Christian community?
Matthew weaves allusions to the scriptures of Israel throughout his gospel. In Sunday’s gospel Jesus’ ministry has people wondering if he is John the Baptist, the prophet Elijah returned or Jeremiah? Each prophet preaches judgment. Each faces rejection and persecution, hinting rejection ahead for Jesus.
Elijah had to run for his life after he takes on Queen Jezabel and the prophets of the Canaanite god Baal in a prayer duel to end a three-year drought. No god burns the other prophets’ sacrifice when they cry out for rain. But when Elijah prays to the God of Israel, fire consumes his sacrifice and small rain clouds gather at sea. The drought ends, but Elijah must escape the queen’s vengeance (1 Kings 17-19).
Jeremiah’s life closely parallels Jesus’ life. When the king and people do not listen to his call to trust God and care for the poor, Jeremiah warns that God will fight against them and for the Babylonians. He wears a yoke to symbolize how Babylon will enslave Israel. He suffers the fate of the people with them, living through the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, only to be killed in Egypt, probably by his own people.
In Matthew’s narrative news that Herod has had the Baptist beheaded moves Jesus to withdraw to a deserted spot. Crowds follow and find him. He heals their sick and multiplies loaves and fish to feed first 5,000 Jews and later 4,000 Gentiles. For Peter and the disciples these are compelling signs that Jesus is the messiah.
- Who do you see suffering with people today in prophetic ways?
- How do you see the Christian community suffering with people?