One Body, Many Members

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Romans 12:1-8 and Matthew 16:13

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ This story is set far from where much of the familiar action in the gospels takes place. It is a solid two days walk north of the Sea of Galilee, and a good hundred and twenty miles north of Jerusalem. As Matthew and Mark both tell the story, it would seem that Jesus has drawn his disciples far from the more familiar Galilean landscape, north as far as Tyre and Sidon where he’d encountered that very persistent Canaanite woman who’d come to ask help for her daughter, and now to Caesarea Philippi. This may have been for the sake of some respite, for while he is still recognized he’s not as likely to be crushed by the needs of the crowds. It is there that he asks this question of his disciples: who do people say that I am?

Oh, they say you might be John the Baptist, or maybe Elijah, perhaps Jeremiah or one of the other prophets… which means that word has gone out that Jesus is thought of as being someone who has come back from the other side of death to offer this ministry. That reflects a desperate hopefulness on the part of a people who believe that the only way they’ll possibly be freed from the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire is to have God send them such a prophet.

Jesus pauses, and then says, “But who do you say that I am?” It is Simon Peter who jumps with a response, which is pretty typical of the Simon Peter we meet all through the gospel accounts. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” It is almost as if he’s already been holding this notion within his heart, not quite daring to speak it aloud. Let me give you Jesus’ response in the paraphrase of Eugene Peterson (The Message), which I think brings a helpful earthiness to the passage:

God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am. And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hades will be able to keep it out.

Simon, from now on you are going to bear the name of Peter—in Greek Petros, which literally means “rock”—because that nickname says something about your whole future, your whole self. You are a rock my friend, and on this rock I’m going to build my people, my ecclesia, and even the gates of hades—of death—will not be able to stop it.

Now it is impossible to know how Peter might have been receiving all of this, and what he did with this sense that somehow he—Peter, the fisherman—was to hold some high authority that extended to the very heavens. You’d imagine he might have been confused, maybe overwhelmed. Puffed up a bit with pride perhaps, or just shaking his head at the idea that he would somehow inherit this authority and responsibility. And no sooner have these words been spoken those words than “Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” And why? Perhaps because Jesus knew that his reputation was already sweeping people up, and that those throngs couldn’t begin to deal rightly with this idea that he was the Messiah, the one anointed by God for the sake of Israel. Maybe he knew that it would all spin out of control, so best just to caution his close circle of followers to just hold this revelation closely and quietly.

Which they do, but Peter seems to have some sense—maybe a bit puffed up—that he now holds a very special role in the movement, and in the section that follows he even tries to correct Jesus when he begins to talk about his coming suffering and death. “God forbid it Lord! This will never happen to you!” Which leads Jesus to call Peter “Satan”, literally an “adversary.” Get your thinking off of all of your human assumptions, Jesus says to Peter, and mould your thoughts around how God is working in this world. In other words, Jesus’ message to Peter shifts very quickly from “you’re solid as a rock, Peter,” to “stop thinking like an enemy of truth; like an adversary.”

So really, what is the force of what Jesus said to Simon Peter that day, when he fixed him firmly with the name Petros? In the words of Stanley Hauerwas, “It is not Peter’s task to make the church safe and secure or to try to insure its existence.” That’s really what Peter was trying to do, when he upbraided Jesus for talking about suffering and death, right? At that moment he wanted a properly victorious Messiah, and an equally victorious church. But no, Hauerwas continues,

 Rather, it is Peter’s task to keep the church true to its mission, which is to witness to the Messiah.

The keys which have been entrusted to Peter are the keys given to the church through which the church is made ever vulnerable to God’s judgement. Peter does not stand apart from the disciples, nor does he stand apart from the church. Rather, Peter stands within the church, charged with keeping the church true to its witness to Jesus. (Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary)

And that, I think, brings us to consider what St. Paul writes in his letters to the various churches. “We are one body in Christ,” he writes in today’s passage to the Roman Christians. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it,” he writes in 1st Corinthians, and this image of us being Christ’s body in the world by grace is an extraordinary one. It is also the only image that might keep the church “true to its witness to Jesus.” Let me read to you again some of the verses from today’s epistle:

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Different gifts, but all of them necessary for the sake of the whole. That’s what makes the church the church, as opposed to being a club of like-minded people who all march to the beat of the same drummer. The church can never be that, because we are meant to a body consisting of diverse parts all working together. We need that pounding heart that was Peter, but also the highly tuned mind of St Paul, the tender hands of Mary Magdalene, and the tough feet of the one who goes the extra mile. And all those other parts of the body that most of us don’t really know what they do… the spleen is the one that most stymies me… are all important. Without those parts, the heart and the mind and the hands and feet will fail. We are the Body of Christ, and every part is needed. Every part.

So to those who will be standing tonight for baptism, for confirmation, for reception into this communion, I’d want to say first of all that we need you; the body needs you in order to keep doing what it does. And secondly, I’d just ask you to ponder what it is that you bring to the body that helps keep it moving? Because we are meant to be a people on the move, and in your being with us, you are part of making that happen.