21 Sunday in OT
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This is an important Gospel for us here at St. Peter’s Parish because our patron, St. Peter, is featured so heavily in the story. As most of you know by now, I was raised in this parish and baptized here, so St. Peter has always held a special place for me. In particular, this story, this interaction that Jesus has with Peter, has always stood out to me. At the end of the exchange, Jesus gives Peter this name: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.” The name is a play on his Aramaic name, Kephas, which means rock, but it is also clearly symbolic. Peter is being called the rock, and I would like to reflect a little on what that might mean for Peter and also for us.
First and foremost, Peter is called a rock because of his strong faith. He becomes, as it were, a source of strength and unity among the followers of Jesus. In the Gospel today, Jesus is in Caesarea Philippi, which is in the north of the Holy Land. It was an interesting city because it was largely Gentile, and it was also a famous pilgrimage site connected with the worship of the god Pan. Pan is often shown with the lower body of a goat and carrying a flute, and he was associated with the wild. So it is there, in the shadow of a place where people worshipped other gods, that Jesus asks his disciples this important question: “Who do you say that I am?” He hears different responses. Some say John the Baptist, some say one of the prophets, but Peter is the one who has the faith to declare that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Even though Jesus’ mission is still unfolding, Peter has this insight. He understands that Jesus is not simply another prophet or religious teacher, but that he is the long-awaited Messiah and the Son of God. Because of this faith, Jesus calls Peter the rock.
More than this, Jesus entrusts Peter with a particular role by giving him the keys. I remember those keys very clearly from growing up here at St. Peter’s. Back in the olden days, before the addition of the present offices, there was a grassy space out along Fourth Street. When I would altar serve, we would walk around the back of the church, and there was a large statue there of St. Peter holding the keys. You can still see that statue today, just outside our office space. So from when I was young, I always associated Peter with these keys. To understand what they mean, we need to look at the first reading. There we hear about Eliakim, who is not the king but is given a key. The key symbolizes authority that has been delegated to him by the king. He is there as a steward, someone who stands in the place of the king and exercises authority on his behalf. This helps us understand the role given to Peter. By receiving the keys, Peter is entrusted with a particular authority from Jesus. Jesus, of course, remains the true foundation of the Church, but he gives different gifts and different missions to his followers, and Peter is given this particular mission of serving the unity and stability of the Church. As Catholics, we believe that this ministry continues in the successors of Peter, the popes. This is why we speak of the pope as the Vicar of Christ. He does not replace Jesus, but he is entrusted with a particular responsibility to represent Christ and to serve the Church.
So Peter is a rock because of his strong faith, but there is another side to Peter’s personality, and another way we could perhaps call him a rock. I want to be polite here, of course, since we are in church, but sometimes Peter can also be a bit of a rock because he is a little dense, a little slow to understand. We see this immediately after the Gospel passage we have just heard. If you were to open your Bible and read only a few verses further, Jesus begins to explain what being the Messiah will actually mean. He says that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and rise again. Peter, who has just been called the rock and given the keys, takes Jesus aside and basically says, “No, no, Jesus. There must be some misunderstanding. This cannot happen to you.” Peter understands that Jesus is the Messiah, but he does not yet understand what kind of Messiah he is. He cannot yet accept that Jesus will be a suffering Messiah. Jesus responds very strongly and says, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me.” So within only a few verses, Peter goes from being the rock on which Jesus will build his Church to being called a stumbling block.
We see this pattern throughout Peter’s life, and as the years advance in my own life, this is actually a part of Peter that I have come to appreciate more and more. Peter makes mistakes time and time again, but he keeps following Jesus. He misunderstands what Jesus is saying. He says the wrong thing. Later, during the Passion, he will deny three times that he even knows Jesus. Jesus had warned him that before the rooster crowed, Peter would deny him three times. This moment became so closely associated with Peter that, especially in parts of Europe, you can still see roosters on top of church towers and weather vanes. The rooster can have several meanings, but one of them is this reminder of Peter’s denial. The Church does not try to gloss over Peter’s failure. It is right there in the Gospel. Peter had great strengths, but he also had very real weaknesses. He fell badly, but the important thing is that he continued. He returned to Christ, he kept following him, and he continued to carry out the mission that Jesus had entrusted to him.
This gives us a third way of thinking about Peter as a rock. Because Peter continued to follow Jesus, even after his failures, he became a kind of foundation stone for others. Through his faith, his preaching, his leadership, and ultimately his martyrdom, Peter helped to build up the early Church and to lay a foundation for those who would come after him. We see this represented in a very physical and beautiful way at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The first basilica there was built by Constantine in the fourth century over the place that Christians had long venerated as the burial place of Peter. The tradition was always that Peter’s tomb lay beneath the high altar, but for centuries the burial place itself was not visible. Then, beginning in 1939, archaeological excavations were carried out beneath the basilica. The excavators discovered an ancient Roman necropolis and, directly beneath the high altar, the area that early Christians had venerated as Peter’s tomb. There is something very moving about that. St. Peter’s Basilica is, of course, a church dedicated ultimately to the worship of Jesus Christ. Christ remains the centre. Yet beneath the basilica lies the burial place of this disciple who followed Jesus. Peter is literally beneath the church. People walk above him, and in a beautiful way that is exactly what his life became. He played his part. He used the gifts Christ had given him, and through his faith, his failures, and his perseverance, he helped build up the Church so that others could come after him.
Peter, then, is a rock in several ways. He is a rock because of his strong faith. He is also a very human rock, sometimes slow to understand and capable of serious failure. But perhaps most importantly for us, he is a rock because he never stopped returning to Christ. He continued to follow Jesus, and because he did, his life became a foundation on which others could build. The same is true for us. St. Paul frequently describes the Church as a building, and Christians as the living stones from which that building is constructed. You can imagine any wall made from stone. When one stone is missing, something is lacking. The wall is not as strong or as complete as it could be. Each one of us has a role to play in building up the Church, the Body of Christ, and our own community here at St. Peter’s.
We do not have to be perfect in order to do that. Peter certainly was not. We will misunderstand things, we will make mistakes, and we will fall at times, but like Peter, we are called to return to Christ, to continue following him, and to keep using whatever gifts God has given us. Today, then, let us pray for the intercession of our patron, St. Peter, the rock upon whom Christ chose to build his Church. Let us also remember that through our baptism we too are called to play our part in building up the Church. May St. Peter help us to have the faith to keep following Christ, the humility to return when we fall, and the courage to use our gifts so that we too can help build up the Church for those who will come after us.
