THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PETER THE APOSTLE

Sunday 18 January 2026

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 16:13-19

 

Over there, behind the altar rail, next to the chair where I normally sit, there’s another chair that no one sits in. The Bishop is the only one who’s allowed to sit there. On most Sundays, it remains empty to remind us that, even though the Bishop isn’t physically present with us, he’s present in spirit, and all our worship and parish life take place under his pastoral oversight. Whenever he visits us, as he will next Sunday, he comes not as a guest or a stranger, but as our shepherd coming to his own, where we keep his chair ready and waiting for him.

 

The bishop’s chair carries great symbolic significance. In biblical times, Jewish rabbis traditionally sat in a chair to teach. The Gospels describe Jesus sitting down to teach—most notably as he delivers the Sermon on the Mount. The bishops of the early church likewise presided at worship and delivered sermons from a chair, which came to symbolize both the content of their teaching and their authority to teach. 

 

In the early centuries, the principal churches of the Christian world carefully preserved the chairs of their founding bishops. The priest Tertullian wrote in the late second century: “Visit the apostolic churches in which the very chairs of the apostles preside in their places. If you are near Italy, there is Rome.” According to the fourth-century historian Eusebius, the Church in Jerusalem preserved the chair of Saint James, and the Church in Alexandria the chair of Saint Mark. The Latin word cathedra, meaning "chair," is the root of the English word "cathedral," the main church of the diocese where the bishop has his principal chair.

 

Up until 1960, today’s observance was known as the Feast of Saint Peter's Chair in Rome. If you visit Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, you can see at the very back of the church the magnificent bronze sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini that encases the chair believed to be the one on which Saint Peter sat as the city’s first bishop.

 

The feast of the Chair of Saint Peter celebrated the apostle’s teaching authority, derived from our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and … I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” In Saint Peter’s Basilica, if you crane your neck and look up, you can read those words in the Latin inscription encircling the interior base of the massive dome.

 

Caesarea Philippi, the scene of today’s Gospel, is a long way, about 1,500 miles, from Saint Peter’s Basilica. It’s located in the northernmost tip of Galilee, among the rocky foothills of Mount Hermon. I visited the site about four years ago, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was clearly a major center of pagan worship. There, you can still see temples and shrines to the Greek god Pan carved into the face of a high cliff, above the large, gaping mouth of a cave, which was believed to be an entrance to the Underworld, or Hades. So, when Jesus says to Peter that the gates of Hades will not prevail against his Church, he’s very likely referring to this feature of the local landscape.

 

Peter has just confessed his faith: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” The Lord’s response needs a bit of unpacking. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” In other words, we can’t come to true knowledge of who Jesus is by our own unaided human abilities, but only by God revealing that knowledge to us. True faith in Christ is always a gift of God. 

 

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church …” Here, Jesus is engaging in a bit of amusing wordplay, employing a pun that doesn’t translate that well into English. In the Aramaic that he’s speaking, the name Peter, Kepha or Cephas, is identical to the word for “rock.” In Matthew’s Greek, the two words remain similar: petra for rock, Petros for Peter. It’s almost as if he said, “You are Rocky, the Rock!” His point is that, in contrast to the pagan cliffs of Caesarea Philippi, Peter’s confession of faith constitutes a rock-solid foundation for Christ’s Church.

 

“… and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Here, as I’ve mentioned, Jesus is probably alluding to the nearby cave believed to be an entrance to the Underworld. Some commentators also point out that this image is not one of the Church resisting the attacks of demonic forces from hell, but the other way around. As the Church spreads throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, its reach will eventually extend into every part of creation: in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Nothing, not even the gates of hell, can keep the reign of God and the Gospel of Christ out.

 

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven …” The keys of the kingdom symbolize the Church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament: what we do here every Sunday. Preaching the Gospel, administering Holy Baptism, and celebrating the Eucharist are the keys that open the doors of heaven to all Christian believers.

 

“Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Here Christ gives Peter, the apostles, and their successors, the bishops, divine authority to govern the Church on earth. It is their responsibility to make binding decisions for the Church’s life, teaching, and worship. And heaven will guide and ratify their decisions.

 

From Caesarea Philippi, Peter and the other apostles accompanied Jesus south to Jerusalem. Sometime after the Lord’s death and resurrection, Peter went to Antioch, in what is today southwest Turkey, where he stayed for seven years as that city’s first bishop. Then he went to Rome, where he served as bishop for about 25 years before his martyrdom during the persecution of Emperor Nero in about 64 AD.

 

In 1979, the Episcopal Church added January 18th to the calendar as the Feast of the Confession of Saint Peter. Today marks the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, ending next Sunday with the Conversion of Saint Paul. During this week, we pray not only for the healing of the divisions stemming from the sixteenth-century Reformation, but also for reunion between the historic Churches of the Christian East and West. 

 

The Confession of Saint Peter reminds us that reconciliation of the Church’s divisions cannot be built solely on good feelings and warm relationships, nor even on cooperation in shared pastoral concerns and social witness, valuable as those things are. No, before all else, genuine Christian unity rests upon the rock of the apostolic faith and teaching—the faith symbolized by Saint Peter’s Chair in Rome, and also by our own bishop’s chair here in this church.