PROPER 16, YEAR A

Sunday 23 August 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Isaiah 51:1-6

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples have just arrived in the region of Caesarea Philippi. This town lay in the far north of Galilee, near Mount Hermon, in the area now known as the Golan Heights. Its most prominent landmark was a shrine to the god Pan (and I’ll say more about that shortly). Four years ago, Elizabeth and I had the privilege of visiting the site of Caesarea Philippi on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

 

Here, Our Lord asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Jesus often refers to himself as the Son of Man, a phrase that simply means “human being.”) The initial answers are intriguing. “Some say John the Baptist; but others Elijah; and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 

 

Let’s look at those answers. By this time, John the Baptist was already dead. Yet Matthew’s Gospel reports that on first hearing about Jesus, King Herod said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist, who has been raised from the dead; this is why these powers are at work in him.” So, the rumor that Jesus was John the Baptist returned from the dead was already circulating in high places.

 

As for Elijah, many Jews believed that Elijah would return as a messenger sent to prepare the way for the Messiah. A verse in the Book of Malachi proclaims, “Behold I will send you Elijah the Prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”

 

And as for Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, many Jews were waiting for a figure called “the Prophet.” This expectation came from Moses’ parting words to the Israelites: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you—him shall you heed.”

 

So: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets: all good guesses as to Jesus’ identity, but all falling short of the truth. So Jesus asks the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” Speaking up on behalf of the rest, Simon Peter replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

 

The Hebrew word Messiah means “Anointed One.” And it translates into Greek as Christos, or Christ. So, contrary to what I thought when I was a kid, “Christ” is not our Lord’s surname, but his title. “Jesus Christ” means “Jesus the Messiah,” or “Jesus the Anointed One.”

 

Peter has given the right answer. Jesus congratulates him: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” 

 

The lesson here is that none of us can come to true knowledge of who Jesus is by our own unaided human abilities. Only God can reveal that knowledge to us. As Saint Paul exhorts us in today’s reading from Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds ....”

 

Then Jesus continues: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”  Here Jesus is indulging in an amusing bit of wordplay. In Greek—the language of Matthew’s Gospel—the name Peter, Petros, is similar to the word for rock, petra. And in Aramaic, the language that Jesus was probably speaking, both the name Peter and the word “rock” are the same: kepha.

 

And “the gates of Hades” shall not prevail against the Church that Jesus will build on this rock. To understand what’s going on here, we need to return to the temple of the Greek god Pan at Caesarea Philippi. An especially lecherous deity, Pan had the head, torso, and arms of a man but the legs, hindquarters, and horns of a goat. His worshippers engaged in orgiastic rituals involving lewd practices best left unmentioned.

 

At present-day Caesarea Philippi, the temple’s ruins stand on a rocky outcropping overlooking where the town was. Directly behind the temples rises a one-hundred-foot cliff, at the bottom of which opens out the yawning mouth of a cave. Pagan worshipers believed that this cave was a gate to the underworld, Hades, the place of departed spirits, and also the place where the god Pan went during the winter (presumably to stay warm).

 

With a little imagination, we can picture Jesus and the disciples arriving in Caesarea Philippi, and seeing this rocky hillside with its temple and its cave believed to be a gate to the underworld. Over and against such temples built on physical rocks, Jesus declares that Peter and, by extension, the other apostles are the rock on which he will build his Church—in Greek, his ecclesia, or assembly—against which the gates of Hell shall not prevail.

 

This image calls to mind a city under siege, which a besieging army storms by battering down the city gates. Even so, the gates of hell will not withstand the preaching of the Gospel. An ancient Christian tradition depicts Christ himself as breaking down the gates of hell when he descends to the dead in the interval between his crucifixion and resurrection.

 

Today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah exhorts us: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” We need to hold fast to the assurance that in Holy Baptism, we’ve been made members of a Church built on a rock—the rock of the sure foundation of confession of faith in Christ Jesus and proclamation of the good news of his kingdom.

 

So far as I’m aware, today’s Gospel is the only place in the New Testament that shows Jesus and his disciples in the immediate vicinity of pagan shrines and temples. Such centers of idolatrous worship and debauched rituals must have been deeply offensive to their Jewish sensibilities.

 

Yet perhaps it’s especially appropriate that it’s here, of all places, that Peter confesses Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God; and that Jesus in turn names Peter as the Rock upon whom he’ll build the Church. Already they’re the advance guard of a movement that will sweep away false belief and false worship by the power of God’s Word and God’s Holy Spirit. 

 

The Roman historian Plutarch relates an incident that took place during the time of Tiberias—whose reign as Emperor largely overlapped the life of Jesus. A sailor on board a ship sailing from Greece to Italy heard a supernatural voice calling over the waters, “The Great God Pan is dead.”

 

Early Christian writers interpreted this mysterious proclamation of Pan’s death as an announcement of Christ’s birth. But I like to imagine that it coincided instead with this exchange between Jesus and Peter at Caesarea Philippi: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God;” and “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”