In the Marketplace of Gods
Text: Matt. 16:13-20
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus has many phrases and lessons that might make us scratch our heads and wonder what on earth He could possibly mean. Sometimes it’s in the parables; sometimes it’s a saying He tags on at the end of a lesson. Other times it’s a plain statement, but it takes us by surprise as it runs against everything we thought we knew. We have such a statement from Jesus today. At the end of our gospel lesson, after Peter’s great confession of Jesus being the Christ, the Son of the living God, we read, “Then Jesus strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ.” We’re used to the idea that His disciples are to tell everyone that He’s the Christ, the Messiah of God. Yet here He says that His Apostles should tell no one. Why?
The answer is in the beginning of our reading. It begins with Jesus and His disciples entering Caesarea Philippi, a prosperous trading colony, built by the Greeks in the land of Israel, then expanded by the Romans. As a trading city, it had people from all corners of every empire buying and selling goods, and, of course, talking and sharing ideas, philosophies, and religions. As such, it was filled with temples and shrines, some dating back centuries before the city was even founded; others built to worship the latest Roman emperors as gods on earth. In the middle of this swirl of ideas and religions, Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” There are obviously going to be different opinions on this, so the disciples give some of them. “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” When it comes to God, His chosen One, and the way He’s going to save people, there are as many opinions as there are individuals. This tells us that we mortals will always try to recast God and the way He saves in our own light, our own wants, our own wishes, our own demands. Or as the philosopher Voltaire quipped, “If God made us in His image, we have certainly returned the compliment.” This is precisely what we see in the disciples’ answers.
These are answers that aren’t too far off from what people would say today if asked “Who is the Messiah? What’s He all about?” There will be a variety of answers. Some will say that the Messiah, Jesus (if they dare to answer that directly) was a prophet, a teacher, a moral guide. He shows us how to shape up and live right enough to get good with God. He teaches nice things like love and compassion and mercy. He changes the mean old God of the Old Testament into a happy New Testament God. He favors those who happen to like the same things I like and He also happens to dislike the people and things that I dislike. You’ll get as many answers as people that you ask.
It gets even more complicated when you ask, “How does God save you?” You might get some vaguely spiritual answers: He teaches us right things. He helps us to be good enough for God to like us. He shows us how to be better, how to get rid of bad things in our lives, how to be happy. For those who have been paying attention, those answers, “spiritual” as they may be, still miss the mark. There’s even been a recent rise in more earthly-minded answers though, like Jesus teaches us how to be powerful or healthy or wealthy or wise. He shows us how to unite culturally and become a strong city or state or nation. Of course, this all neglects Jesus’ words that His kingdom is not of this world and that the wisdom He teaches runs counter to the interests of the world and its nations. But all of these answers, spiritual or earthly, are much like saying that Jesus is a prophet, which many religions claim; or that He’s a teacher, which nearly anyone, religious or not, would say. Even 2000 years later, fallen humanity still wants to remake God in our own image based on our own wants, desires, and imagination. And, much like those in Caesarea Philippi, everyone is expected to let all these answers be true, or else.
But Jesus is never only interested in what’s going on out there in general. Nor is He interested in right answers for right answers’ sake. So He turns the question in a sharply personal direction: “But who do you say that I am?” It’s that little word, “you,” that pins each of us down and makes us each answer for ourselves. There, in Caesarea Philippi, a marketplace city crowded with temples and shrines to gods and goddesses and emperors for people to choose from, Peter confesses the single blazing truth, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This confession rises above the chaos of the temples and becomes a singular beacon of light.
This is how Jesus wants to be known. He doesn’t want to regarded as only a great teacher of sublime insights and secrets of the universe. He doesn’t want to be known as a king who will just do what every other king does by punishing enemies and rewarding allies. He doesn’t want to be known as one God or one Lord among many gods and lords to choose from. He won’t save by might or by teaching people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. He won’t present just another path of becoming better and higher until you storm the gates of heaven. Rather, He wants to be known as the Son of the living God who came down in human flesh, not aggrandizing Himself as the Roman emperors do. He wants to be known in humility, in lowliness, coming down to His people in the depths where they’re trapped, where they’re captive, in order to deal with the captors that have held them: sin, death, evil, hell. He’s going to save His people by lowering Himself, even by dying, by doing all those things that the world and all its opinions would count as losing. Yet it is in this way that He will get the only victory that matters: conquering sin, darkness, and death. And for confessing this, Jesus says that Peter is blessed.
“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah!” But notice now that Jesus says Peter is blessed not because he was clever enough to figure it out or because he saw through the nonsense of the other gods and ideas in the marketplace. Rather, Simon Peter is blessed because “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” The truth about God, His Son the Messiah, and how He saves can only be revealed by God. No flesh and blood, no earthly mind, can reach this truth on its own. We’ve heard these truths in this very sanctuary—truth about God being Triune, three-in-one, on Trinity Sunday; truth about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, here on Christmas, during Holy Week, on Easter, and Ascension. And also today, God reveals how it is that He saves. Listen again to Jesus in our reading: “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.” Jesus saves by the forgiveness of sins; that is, the binding and loosing of sins, an authority given to His Church on earth. He binds the sins of those who don’t want forgiveness. He looses sins from those who want to be forgiven and set free. And as surely as that binding or loosing happens here, so it happens before God Himself in heaven. We know this binding and loosing in the confession and absolution spoken here. And what was done here in this sanctuary was also done for us before the throne of God.
This is how Jesus wants to be known. It’s what He wants our faith in His salvation to be founded on. So He tells the disciples not to tell anyone that He is the Christ until He has accomplished all of it. After He wins and seals this salvation with His cross and resurrection, after He proves His identity beyond a shadow of a doubt by rising from the dead, then the disciples will proclaim it, when who He is becomes known in brightest light, when all that is necessary for salvation is accomplished as He decrees “It is finished.” This is how Jesus wants you to know Him and confess Him. Blessed are you, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but your Father who is in heaven. In the name of Jesus, the Son of Man. Amen.
