House of Living Stones

Proper 16A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

‘On this rock I will build my church.’ (Matthew 16:18). The church in Rome and the doctrine of the primacy of Peter is built upon a single sentence uttered by Jesus in a place called Caesarea Philippi. Lutherans trace a straight line from the Roman Papacy to the financial and spiritual corruption that built the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, to the Protestant Reformation and the formation of a half dozen other Protestant denominations. Like Peter, Christians get the answer to Jesus’ question, ‘Who do you say that I am,” partly right. Jesus is the Messiah, AND, like him, they get it partly wrong. In the very next breath, Peter will tell Jesus to forget about going to the cross. (We’ll read that part of the story next week.) There’s a gap between words and our deeds.

We want the devotion without the transformation. We keep Jesus in our h.e.a.r.t. without the cross.
Peter’s partially right and partly wrong answer follows the outline of a familiar tragic pattern. Jesus followers throughout history like to commend themselves for confessing Jesus as Messiah, but they are less concerned about aligning their values, lifestyles, and community around the content of what that confession means. This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. We accept the love of Jesus but withhold that love from one another. Through the centuries, Christians create magnificent Basilica’s like St. Peter’s and elaborate hierarchies of religious control that, sadly, are better at building crosses than bearing them.

Jesus and the disciples are in Caesarea Philippi, about twenty-five miles north of their home base in Galilee, a favorite vacation spot for Roman officials. It probably felt like another planet. An ancient temple to Baal had once been there. When the disciple’s visit another complex devoted to the worship of a half-goat, half man deity named “Pan” stood before them. Just a few decades before our story the Roman emperor, Augustus, had placed governance of the city in the hands of Herod the Great. To express his gratitude Herod built a large temple made of white marble dedicated to his benefactor, Caesar Augustus. After Herod’s death, his son, Philipp renamed the city, Caesarea Philippi. It was a place that represented the power of the empire and reiterated the values of imperial theology: Caesar is lord, and Rome always wins at any cost.

It was here that Jesus chose to ask the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus and Caesar embody two radically different visions for the world. They weild dramatically opposite methods to building their respective kingdoms. Today’s gospel strangely mirrors of our own time. We are living in a Caesarea Philippi–like moment. Christian Nationalism preaches a Caesar-like Jesus whose church is controlled by white, cis, straight men. Cruelty, not compassion, is the coin of the realm, as we watch it play out in places like Springfield, Ohio this week, where Haitian immigrants are being rounded up, demeaned, incarcerated and deported. The Golden Rule—do unto others only what you would have them do unto you—is replaced by the iron rule, do unto others before they do unto you. In the face of this rising allegiance to a counterfeit Christ, the Jesus of history has a question for us: “Who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15). Our answer, of course, like Peter’s, is best measured, not in our words, but in our deeds.

Our gospel includes one of the relatively rare uses of the word ‘ekklesia,’ from which we derive our word ‘church.’ Jesus’ promise to build his church on Peter, ‘the rock’ inspires mental images of great big beautiful solemn and solid church buildings for people today. Yet, the word paints a different picture, not of a building, but of a people. ‘Ekklesia’ means ‘the called-out.’ Our summer-style liturgy highlights the contrast between these two meanings of ‘church.’ Here, we see the church is nothing but each other. It is the circle of ordinary people gathered in mystical communion around Christ’s table. So, the question becomes clear. What are we called out from? What are we called out for?

I think we find a clue in Jesus’ question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (16:13). Studying the gospel this week, I did a double take. To my way of thinking, ‘The Son of Man’ is a synonym for the Messiah. It would be as if Jesus’ question included the answer. ‘Who do people say that I, the messiah, is? Instead, Jesus’ self-proclaimed a title, the Son of Man, comes from the Book of Daniel which was popular in the 1st Century. Daniel chapter seven outlines a hopeful political vision of a hero called ‘the Son of Man’ who brings an end to the reign of oppressive empires.

Empires and religious hierarchies inevitably seek to control God’s grace. They attempt to turn grace into a commodity and the church into a franchise. God’s love becomes just another object of production which can be meted out or withhold according to whatever maximizes the power of church/state leaders rather than give honor to God. The problem for empires and religious hierarchies is Christ cannot be controlled or domesticated. There is always some surplus of Spirit that empire cannot fit into the box. The power of grace emerges from underneath, by people with nothing, who are willing to pay the cost of devotion and transformation. The flickering light of the gospel survives in human lives, bodies, minds, and souls inflamed by presence of the living God. It passes from generation to generation like a candle on a windowsill. It flickers but it is not fragile. It flickers because somebody keeps relighting it, and it’s almost always somebody the empire had already written off. (Tripp Fuller) This is the great Good News.

The light which cannot be extinguished or controlled is revealed, for example, in the words of the prophets who nurture and evoke a new way of thinking. When prophets see that the status quo is not working, they encourage what might be called holy disorder, a scenario in which the fundamental conditions and relationships of the group are disrupted. (Rohr) The process of allowing and creating holy disorder is surely what Representative John Lewis once called getting into “good trouble.”

For them, good trouble and holy disorder could draw forth better things—an entirely different consciousness characterized by more justice, more mercy, greater closeness to God. Jesus came to give us a way of being human that does away with empires that operate with violence and force. What Peter could not foresee, and what he got wrong (which we will hear more about next week,) is that God’s kingdom comes with a completely different kind of politics. Instead of a politics based on law backed with the force of sanctioned violence, the politics of God’s kingdom re-centers the law on love by way of the cross. “Violence cannot defeat violence. Hate cannot defeat hate. Fear cannot defeat fear. Domination cannot defeat domination. God’s way is different” (Brian D. MClaren, We Make the Road by Walking, pp. 118-19). “For Jesus’s earliest followers this declaration was a way of affirming that Jesus’s message of nonviolence, abundance, generosity, compassion, and inclusivity align with the very character of God” (Scott).

Jesus has given us the keys to this new kind of kingdom. Jesus gave the keys, not to a person, not to an institution, but to people called-out to love and serve God and to advance the kingdom of justice wherever they find themselves in the world. God continues to build on the rock that human builders have rejected. Peter, who, at times was himself a stumbling block, who at times was rocky soil in which faith withers, was also an example of what Jesus can accomplish in a through our hands and voices. None of us would choose this kind of Rock on which to build the church. But Jesus does. “In temples made with hands God the Most High is not dwelling…Christ builds a house of living stones: we are God’s own habitation. Where two or three will seek Christ’s face, he in their midst will show his grace, blessings upon them bestowing.” (Built on a Rock, ELW #652)