Text:  Matthew 16:13-19                                      (2^nd Sunday of Epiphany)  W The Confession of St. Peter

A “Rock Solid” Confession

            In the name of him whom together with St. Peter and the disciples we confess to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God, dear friends:  As we just sang, “Built on the Rock the Church shall stand”.  These are comforting words of assurance from our Lord Jesus.  In saying this he has promised us that his Church will endure through every trial, and that it will withstand every storm of persecution and controversy, so that not even all the wicked scheming and fury of hell will ever overcome it. Whatever the enemy throws at it, the Church shall stand because it has a firm, unshakable foundation that imparts strength and integrity to the whole superstructure.

And we understand that when Jesus speaks of the Church built on the rock, he’s not speaking of individual church buildings or congregations of worshippers, but rather of his Church with a capital “C”; that is, the entire body of people, past, present, and future, who believe in his Gospel of salvation.  The Lord vividly pictures this group of people joined together as the living stones of a building – a holy temple – resting securely on its sure foundation.  And you don’t have to be a structural engineer to understand how crucial the solidarity of the foundation is to the ultimate stability of the building it supports. Even little, barely perceptible sags and cracks in the foundation can show up in the superstructure as huge gaps and dangerously high stresses that severely weaken the entire building.

            That’s why it’s so vitally important that we, as believers, make sure that we are standing within – and building our lives upon – the rock solid foundation of which Jesus spoke when he gave this promise to us. Unfortunately, it happens that among the body of believers that make up the Church there’s no agreement concerning what this rock foundation even is. And if we don’t know what rock it is we are supposed to building on, we might very well end up building on the wrong thing – and that would be disastrous.

            So, what is the Rock on which the church is built? Many of you are probably aware that our Roman Catholic friends read this morning’s Gospel lesson and understand that St. Peter is the rock upon which Jesus meant to build his Church.  They use this passage to prove that Jesus appointed Peter to be the leader of the Church and its first Pope.  And to some degree, we can understand why they believe this.  A simple reading of the passage might lead to that conclusion.  After all, the name “Peter” means “rock”.  So, when Jesus says to him, “... you are Peter (a rock) and on this rock I will build my church”, it does sound like he’s telling Peter that he is the foundation of the Church.

            But we know that this interpretation is wrong for two reasons.  The first is because of the two different words Jesus uses for “rock” in that sentence. It’s confusing to us because both words are translated the same in English; but when Jesus gives the name Peter to Simon, he uses a word that means a “rock” like you might pick up in your hand and throw – it’s relatively small rock. But when Jesus speaks of the Rock on which he will build his Church, he uses a slightly different word that means “a big ol’rock” like one that makes up a whole mountain.  It’s a massive block of solid stone that’s big enough to build a castle (or a temple) on.  So it’s pretty clear that though Peter and the rock foundation share something in common, they are not the same thing.

            Besides that, if our Lord had been hoping to build a stable structure, you would think that he would have picked someone else to build upon.  This is the same Peter who often talked big, but usually cracked under pressure.  It was he who swore he would willingly die with the Lord, and then three times denied he even knew him.  Even many years after the ascension of Jesus, when St. Peter was supposedly the infallible Pope, the Apostle Paul had to publicly confront him because of his hypocritical behavior.  Peter was compromising the Gospel and leading people astray because he felt pressure from certain Jewish Christians.  And please don’t misunderstand me:  I’m not picking on Peter.  He was one of the greatest men of God who has ever lived; but that’s the problem: like every man he was subject to all human weaknesses.  No mere man is fit to be the foundation of the Church of Christ.  And any church that is built on a man (and we see them popping up all over the place) is inherently weak and unstable, and it should be condemned as unsafe enter.

            Okay then, having ruled out Peter as the Rock on which Christ intended to build his Church, we’re still left asking, what is the Rock?  It may be tempting to jump to what seems to be the obvious alternative and say, “Jesus Christ is the Rock.”  That’s an idea with good Scriptural support.  Moses called the Lord God his “Rock”.  It was a picture of the Lord’s strength and timeless endurance.  David called the Lord the “Rock of my salvation.” The image he was capturing was of a fortress-like stone outcropping on top of a high hill that could be used as a place to be safe from the attacks of the enemy.  He meant that God was his refuge and defender.  St. Paul mentions the Rock in the wilderness, the one that Moses struck with his staff to provide water for the thirsting Israelites.  Paul says, “Remember that Rock?  That was Christ!”  He’s the one who took care of all your needs.

            So this suggestion that the Lord Jesus himself is the foundation of the Church seems to be right on track; except for one thing: that’s not what Jesus says in today’s Gospel lesson.  He didn’t say, “You are Peter, and on this Rock which just happens to be me I’m going to build my Church.”  No, it’s clear that the Rock Jesus speaks of has something to do with Peter.  Now, maybe alarm bells are going off in your head, and you’re thinking, “Whoa!  Hold on Pastor!  Are you saying that Christ is not the foundation of the church?”  And I want to be careful here, because obviously there’s a connection; but no, it’s not true to say that Christ is the Rock on which the Church is built.

            Why not?  Well, to give you an example, there are a lot of people running around today who say that their church is founded on Christ.  They proudly claim to have “no creed but Christ.”  They make it their goal to strive to imitate Jesus; to be loving, kind, and forgiving as he was.  And we’ve got to admit that it sounds pretty good.  The trouble is that to have Christ as your creed is extremely vague.  To say simply, “Christ” doesn’t say who Christ is or what he does; and the result is that there is a tendency among such people to end up with a concept of Christ that is different from whom the Scriptures present him to be.  They say are all for Christ, and I’m sure that they are sincere.  They want to praise him.  They want to be like him.  But without specific creeds or doctrines about whom Christ is and what he came to do, the Christ they strive to imitate tends to drift off in the direction of their own imaginations rather than remaining the one the Bible presents us. What they think of Christ supersedes what the Bible says about him. In the end, they are more like the people of Jesus’ day who knew that he was a good and powerful man to be honored and respected like one of the prophets – but who really didn’t know who Jesus was or what he came to do.

            So we see that to say only, “Christ is the Rock on which the Church is built” lends itself to over-simplification.  It lacks an answer to the question, “And just who is Christ?”  Consequently it leaves us with an incomplete base on which to build.  And so we might be tempted to expand the base and say, “Well, then, the Rock of the Church is the sum total of Christ’s teaching.”  Here too we have good Scriptural support. Jesus himself said, “... Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”  Because we recognize the Bible as sum of Christ’s message and the authoritative Word of God, another way to say this would be that the Bible is the Rock on which the Church is founded.  That sounds good …

            But here, again, we’re going to run into some trouble. I can’t think of any church that calls itself Christian that does not at least claim to stand on the Bible.  For many of them, it’s a false claim.  Many have effectively thrown out the Bible in favor of other things.  Sometimes it’s blatant, like with the Mormons who say that the Bible is incomplete, riddled with errors, and needs to be augmented with their own books.  In other instances it’s more subtle, as with certain mainline churches that teach that the Bible is okay as far as it goes, but it needs to be understood as a product of its time.  It’s not really factual history; rather it conveys divine concepts through myth and legend – and now that we are so much smarter and sophisticated than the ancients were, we can strip away that mythical clutter and silly superstition to reveal the kernel of truth hidden within.  In this way they feel confident to slice, dice, or make julienne fries of any passage of Scripture until it reveals, oddly enough, exactly what they want it to.  So again, just because a church claims to stand on the Bible does not make it true.

            But even among those churches that have an honest respect for God’s Word as it’s recorded in the Bible, there is still wide divergence in understanding.  But how can that be if we’re all looking at the same book and we all believe that it’s completely true?  If the Bible is the foundation, how can we have so many different denominations saying so many different things built on it?  The point is:  you can’t. And here at last we’ve come to the crux of the matter.  No church is built on what the Bible says.  Just like no church is really built on Christ, or on a man like Peter or anyone else.

            If we want to know what the Rock foundation is, we have to look again at this morning’s text.  Jesus asks his disciples two questions.  First he asks, “What do people say about me?  Who do they say I am?”  They answer him with all the various mistaken things they’ve heard people say. Then Jesus asks, “What about you? What do you say?”  And speaking for the disciples, Peter provides the correct response.  That’s critical.  For the most part, everyone who heard and saw Jesus knew the same Scriptures.  They were all looking at the same Jesus.  They were listening to the same message from him. But the vast majority of them were wrong about what they believed about Jesus.  Only Peter and those for whom he spoke had it right.  What caught Jesus’ attention and moved him to call his disciple blessed was that Peter said the right thing – that Peter believed the right thing.  That’s the solid Rock on which the Church is built:  a correct statement of personal faith – that is, a correct confession of Jesus Christ.  It’s not what Christ says, or what the Bible says, or what any Bible teacher says; it’s what you say you believe if after having been exposed to Christ and his Word you hold the correct understanding of who Jesus is and what he came to do for you.  That’s because the question is not “What does the Bible say?” or “What did Jesus say?” or “What does your church teach?”  The question that determines whether you are standing on the Rock is:  “What do you say?”

            The Church of Christ is above all else the group of people who hold the correct confession of Jesus.  It’s those who stand together on the solid Rock that is the correct statement and exposition of the Christian faith:  “This is what we believe...” That is why we routinely confess one of the great creeds of the Church immediately after the readings or the sermon when we have divine service.  In light of what we have seen and heard of the Lord Jesus in the Word, we are answering together Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”  Our common confession of the historic Christian faith shows that we are standing on the one solid Rock. 

            And yes, in these days our answer to the question is a little more thorough than Peter’s was.  The reason for that is that over time, wrong answers to the question have become more numerous and sophisticated.  People who claim to believe in Jesus no longer say, “Jesus is John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets”; but they do say any number of things that are just as wrong.  And to a certain extent, they have tried to propagate their wrong ideas like cracks and fissures through the Rock on which we stand.  Remember, Satan hasn’t stopped trying to lead people astray.  And so our creedal statements, what we say we believe, have had to become more specific over time because we constantly have to refute the new errors that the enemy keeps throwing out to confuse people.  If you turn to page 166 of the hymnal, you’ll see what I mean.  There you have the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed sitting side by side.  Immediately you’ll notice that the Apostle’s Creed, which is older, is the shorter of the two.  The Nicene Creed is longer because it became necessary to refute certain false teachings that were going around in the Church in the fourth century.  So, for example, you’ll notice that while the Apostle’s Creed says that Jesus Christ is God’s only Son, it doesn’t specifically say that Jesus is God – even though every Christian in previous centuries understood that to be true.  But then some people, calling themselves Christians, began to teach that Jesus wasn’t truly God.  So it became necessary to include that idea more clearly as part of the Church’s confession.  You see that in the Nicene Creed where it says that Jesus is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God … being of one substance with the Father …”.  It leaves no room for confusion on the issue of Jesus’ Godhood.

            Our own church has as its solid Rock foundation a statement of faith known as the Augsburg Confession.  It was prepared at the time of the Reformation to say what we believe about Jesus over and against some very wrong ideas about him that were being taught back then.  These wrong ideas are still being taught today – all the more reason for us to be sure that we continue to stand on the Rock.  But that’s becoming unpopular in some circles.  We live in an age in which standing up and saying what you believe is viewed as being wrong because it’s confrontational or intolerant.  If I say, “I believe this is true and that is false”, I might hurt someone’s feelings.  And because religious points of view are held to be equal under the law of the land, people have got it in their heads that all religious beliefs are equal.  That’s not the way our Lord sees it.  He calls blessed those who say the right things about him.  And Jesus said he would build his Church on the Rock Solid Confession that is a faithful statement of his truth.

            That is the Church that will stand for all time against the gates of Hell.  We know it will stand because we have the sure promise of Jesus.  And we have another reason:  it’s because it’s to that Church that Christ entrusted the keys to the Kingdom.  When Peter made his Rock Solid confession, Jesus said, “I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.”  And we understand that because we confess Jesus Christ as our Savior, because we know that he died to save us, we too have been given these same keys.  The gates of Hell cannot hold us in because we have the keys to get out.  We use these keys every time we declare the forgiveness of sins in the name and by the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord.

            And there’s a bit of irony there.  In this world, even if you’re guilty of a crime, you can get off if you have a “rock solid alibi” – one that casts doubt on your guilt.  On the other hand, if you make a confession, they’re probably going to lock you up.  But in the Kingdom of God’s grace, no alibi however good will get you off; but you are forgiven of all your guilt if you make a “rock solid confession” of the Lord Jesus Christ.  May our gracious heavenly Father who blessed Simon Peter with the ability to speak his faith in Jesus – and thereby set him upon the Rock, also keep sending us his Holy Spirit to keep us in the same true confession of the Lord Jesus.  In his holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!