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What kind of person…what kind of community
This coming Sunday is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. As we noted at the beginning, a large part of the Matthean narrative is devoted to questions: (a) who is Jesus, (b) what does it mean to be his disciples in the light of his identity, and (c) what choices will you make because of his call. Those are questions that could be asked of the community as well as the individual. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser makes that point well in his reflection “The Width of Our Ecclesial Embrace”
Nikos Kazantsakis once said “the bosom of God is not a ghetto, but our hearts often are.” So too, sadly, are our ecclesiologies.
In church circles today, both liberal and conservative, our ecclesiologies are often anything but inclusive and Catholic (“Catholic” meaning wide and universal). We are pretty selective as to whom we consent to worship with and to whom we will accord the grace and wisdom of God. We tend to pick our fellow-worshippers along ideological lines rather than along the lines that Jesus suggests and we are getting ever more fastidious. More and more within our churches the sincere are divided from the sincere and the old tensions that used to exist between denominations now also exist within each denomination.
Given all of this, it can be helpful to reground ourselves in a critical truth that Jesus revealed.
One of his most stunning revelations is that God does not discriminate: “God lets his sun shine on the good as well as the bad.” God, like the sun, shines on every kind of soil equally, fertile and barren alike. And if God showers love equally on the good and bad, then surely God showers love equally on liberals and conservatives, on the rigid and the fanciful, on those who are joyous and those who are bitter, on the politically-correct and on those less inclined to that kind of sensitivity, and on those who belong to our ecclesial set and on those who would prefer us dead. That’s a disconcerting thought, but such, it would seem, is the scope of God’s embrace.
Jesus says as much: “In my father’s house there are many rooms,” This is a statement about the width of God’s embrace, not about the architecture of a heavenly mansion. God’s heart, as revealed by Jesus, is a wide one, capable of embracing immense differences and carrying unbearable tensions.
That, I submit, is one of the major challenges to our churches today, to stretch our hearts, our theologies, our ecclesiologies, and our pastoral practices so as to be more in tune with the great truth of our founder’s revelation that in God’s house there are many rooms. Can we hold the differences among ourselves in patience, charity, and respect? Can we hold and carry more tension rather than always looking for resolutions that result in some being included and others excluded?
Raymond Brown, in his wonderful book on The Community of the Beloved Disciple, traces out how the early church, immediately after Jesus’ departure, already struggled with many of the tensions we have today. The communities of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Paul emphasized very different things than did the communities that followed John.
However, in the end, the church chose to canonize both of them, choose to accept different Christologies and different Ecclesiologies, and to carry the tension and truth of both. It chose to put these differences into paradox rather than opposition.
Brown’s words at the end of this fine book are ones that we, within every denomination and within every ideology within a denomination, might well take to heart:
He tells us the church’s decision to place the Gospel of John in the same canon as the writings of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Paul was a decision to live with tension, to imitate God’s wide embrace. As Brown puts it, by choosing to keep both, the church “has not chosen a Jesus who is either God or man but both; has chosen not a Jesus who is either virginally conceived as God’s son or pre-existent as God’s son but both; not either a Spirit who is given to an authoritative teaching magisterium or the Paraclete-teacher who is given to each Christian but both; not a Peter or a Beloved Disciple but both. . . . This means that a church such as my own, the Roman Catholic, with its stress on authority and structure, has in the Johannine writings an in-built conscience against the abuses of authoritarianism. So also the ‘free’ churches have in the Pastorals an in-built warning against abuses of the Spirit and in 1 John a warning against the divisions to which a lack of structured authority leads. Like one branch of the Johannine community, we Roman Catholics have to come to appreciate that Peter’s pastoral role is truly intended by the risen Lord, but the presence in our Scriptures of a disciple whom Jesus loved more than he loved Peter is an eloquent commentary on the relative value of the church’s office. The authoritative office is necessary because a task is to be done and unity is to be preserved, but the scale of power in various offices is not necessarily the scale of Jesus’ esteem and love.”
In a time of much ecclesial quarreling, especially over authority, Raymond Brown reminds us that “the greatest dignity to be striven for is neither papal, episcopal, nor priestly; the greatest dignity is that of belonging to the community of the beloved disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Our ecclesiologies should echo that.
Image Credit: Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys (c 1481–1482). Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Public Domain
A final reflection
This coming Sunday is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. Eugene Boring [The Gospel of Matthew in The New Interpreter’s Bible, 351-53] had a particularly good reflection following his treatment of our Gospel narrative. Rather than summarize it, it is perhaps best to simply let the author speak for himself.
The function of this scene is to make an important theological claim about Jesus: His death occurred as part of God’s plan of salvation. “While the narrative function of the three passion announcements is to prepare the disciples, their theological purpose is to assure the readers, first that Jesus’ violent death is not a meaningless accident of history hut is part of God’s plan, and, second, that Jesus was not a hapless victim but a knowing [and willing) partner in the divine strategy.” [here quoting Douglas Hare, Matthew, 232]
The Christian life called for is not a reflection of, let alone the baptism and blessing of, the egocentric culture, but its polar opposite. Self-denial is not part of our culture’s image of the “good life.” But neither is the Matthean Jesus’ call for denying oneself to be understood as asceticism or as self-hate. Just as Jesus’ call to discipleship is not a joining in the cultural infatuation with self-esteem, neither is it the opposite. Nor is the self-denial to which Jesus calls the opposite of self-fulfillment. Just giving up things will not make one Christian; it will only make one empty. What is difficult for our culture to understand, indeed what it cannot understand on its own terms, is an orientation to one’s life that is not focused on self at all, either as self-esteem or self-abasement, as self-fulfillment or self-emptying.
This call to discipleship is based on faith in Christ and confidence in the future victory of God; it is not a matter merely of high human ideals or noble principles. That is, the life called for here is not based on a reasoned conclusion about how things ate, inferred from observation or general principles, but on faith that something has happened that makes everything different. To believe in Jesus as the Christ and to live accordingly means to reorient one’s life toward the good news that God has acted decisively and ultimately in Jesus, not that Jesus has some good advice on how to Live (by what criteria could such advice he judged to be good?). The call to discipleship here expressed is based on the past and future revelatory act of God. The call to discipleship of vv. 24-26 is inseparably related to the confession in v. 16 and to the expectation in vv. 27-28, all bound together with Jesus’ self-proclamation as Son of Man in vv. 13 and 28. The christological confession of v 16 is not abstract doctrine about the “person” of Jesus, but is realized only as it leads to the life called for in vv. 24-26.
This call to discipleship is a matter of confession, which means declaring one’s faith in Jesus as the Christ, as God’s definitive act of revelation and salvation. The word used to mean “confession” (martyrion; Matt 8:4; 10:18; 24:14) also means “martyrdom,” in the sense of witness. The giving of one’s life is presented as an act of testimony to a truth bigger than oneself. Its result may be literal martyrdom, as had happened in Matthew’s church and in every generation since, and continues today. But it may also mean the daily giving of oneself away in commitment to Christ (so Luke 9:23 explicitly). While many readers of this commentary will no longer live in a situation such as Matthew’s in which the result of authentic Christian confession can be literal martyrdom, the call to give one’s life as a testimony to the truth of the gospel is no less real. Orientation toward God, revealed in Christ as the Lord of one’s life, rather than idolatrous self-orientation, is the decisive, crucial difference.
This call to discipleship is a matter of community. This is not an individualistic ethic of the solitary “I,” but is the ethic of the community of disciples that confesses Jesus to be the Christ and lives toward the full coming of the kingdom of God for which it prays, accompanied by the presence of Christ during its time of mission.
The meaning of discipleship is learned along the way. The disciples in this story have been disciples for some time, called personally by Jesus (4:18-22; 9:9; 10:2-4), sent by him to preach and heal (10:5-8). They now learn the meaning and cost of discipleship, which cannot be explained in advance but must be learned en route. Many sensitive Christians may have wondered about the integrity of their own Christian life, since they “didn’t know what they were doing” when they “joined the church.” Neither did the Matthean disciples, who only learn in 16:21-28 what following Christ means, and who will yet falter and fail before the story is over. There is encouragement here for Christians who are concerned about past lapses (with more sure to come) and who are sure they do not understand as much as they should about the Christian life, just as there is warning for Christians who are sure that they do understand and have no need to change their present conceptions of the way things are.
Image credit: James Tissot, Rétire-toi Satan, c.1890, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain
The Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven
This coming Sunday is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. Eugene Boring [346] writes:
For Matthew, each of these two kingdoms makes its influence felt by teaching. The “kingdom of heaven” is represented by authoritative teaching, the promulgation of authoritative Halakha that lets heaven’s power rule in earthly things. The image of Peter with the keys is not that of the doorkeeper to heaven of popular piety and cartoons. As the next image makes clear, Peter’s function is not to decide in the afterlife who is admitted and who is denied entrance to heaven; Peter’s role as holder of the keys is fulfilled now, on earth, as chief teacher of the church. The similar imagery of Matt 23:13 and Luke 11:52 points to the teaching office, as does the introductory pericope Matt 16:1-12 and Matthew’s concern for correct teaching in general. The keeper of the keys has authority within the house as administrator and teacher (cf. Isa 22:20-25, which may have influenced Matthew here). The language of binding and loosing is rabbinic terminology for authoritative teaching, for having the authority to interpret the Torah and apply it to particular cases, declaring what is permitted and what is not permitted. Jesus, who has taught with authority (7:29) and has given his authority to his disciples (10:1, 8), here gives the primary disciple the authority to teach in his name—to make authoritative decisions pertaining to Christian life as he applies the teaching of Jesus to concrete situations in the life of the church. In 18:18, similar authority is given to the church as a whole, and the way the last three antitheses are presented in 5:33-48…shows such application of Jesus’ teaching is the task of the whole community of disciples, with Peter having a special responsibility as chief teacher as well as representative and model.
Image Credit: Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys (c 1481–1482). Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Public Domain
Dem bones, dem dry bones
Today’s first reading is from the Prophet Ezekiel chapter 37, the famous “dry bones vision.” Ezekiel has been the source of all the first readings for this week. It has been a week in which the Word of God came to the prophet and directed him to preach a word of destruction against Jerusalem, the kingdom of Tyre and the shepherds (kings) of Judah and Israel. Then the Word of God changes.
In Wednesday’s first reading, after condemning the shepherds (kings), we have the wonderful passage from Ezekiel 34:11 “For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” And indeed, God sent his only son to be the King of kings and the Good Shepherd.
Thursday, the Word got even better
“I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees…you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” (Ez 36:25-28)
That is what God plans to do and in today’s reading Ezekiel is given the vision of result of the promise
“Thus says the Lord GOD: From the four winds come, O spirit, and breathe into these slain that they may come to life. I prophesied as he told me, and the spirit came into them; they came alive and stood upright” (Ez 37:9-10)
It is always good to pay attention when God breathes into the world. The ruah (breath/spirit) hovered over the void of chaos at Creation and there was life. God sent the Good Shepherd at whose baptism the Holy Spirit hovered. The ruah of God hovered over the disciples at Pentecost and their was new life for the Church – all this just as God promised.
The ruah, breath, Spirit of God is present in the world, fulfilling the promises of the Covenant, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. “…you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” God is fulfilling the divine side of the deal. We are called to let the Spirit heal our dry bones and be the people of God in the world.
Figure out the part of your life, the hard part of your heart, or whatever burdens you. Ask the breath of God to instill new life in you.
Image credit: “Vision of Ezekiel” by Paul Falconer Poole, c.1875; Tate Museum Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0)
The developing Church
This coming Sunday is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. Jesus’ words, “upon this rock I will build my church” (v.18) has also contributed to exegetical controversy. Some scholars hold this passage is a later addition and is not authentic, but betrays a later ecclesiastical interest in interjecting that later period’s hierarchy and organization onto Jesus’ words.
This position is fading because of the realization that ekklesia (church) regularly translates the Hebrew qāhāl, one of the terms for the ‘congregation’ or ‘community’ of God’s people – a term completely appropriate to describe the emerging ‘Messianic community’ of the disciples of Jesus. How could there be a messiah without a messianic community?
The building metaphor is the natural one to use in connection with the name Petros, and does not demand the idea of a full-blown hierarchical structure – nor does it preclude its development. The new church/community of the repentant people of God was at the heart of John the Baptist’s mission, and was the necessary outcome of Jesus’ ministry, with its effect of dividing men according to their faith or unbelief. What is striking is not so much the idea of ‘building a community’, but the boldness of Jesus’ description of it as my church/community, rather than God’s.
The emerging church that lasts forever. Hades is the realm of the dead, not the place of punishment. The “gates of Hades” is a biblical expression (Isa 38:10) that can mean the same as the “gates of death” (Job 38:17; Pss 9:13; 107:18). In this case, the word translated “overcome” or “prevail” means “be stronger than,” and the meaning is that the realm of the dead, which no human being can conquer, is nevertheless not stronger than the church founded on the rock, and the church will always endure to the end of history, accompanied by its Lord (28:20). Thus this text declares minimally that the church will never die. But “gates of Hades” may also refer to the portals of the underworld from which the powers of Satan emerge to attack the church, especially in the eschatological times (cf. the eschatological testing of Matt 6:13 and 26:41 and the dramatic imagery of Rev 9:1-11). Then the meaning would be that the church is under attack by the powers of evil, but will never be vanquished, because it is founded on the rock. In neither case is the church pictured attacking Hades. Once again, the two kingdoms stand over against each other (see 12:22-37). The church does not escape from the power of Hades, but participates in the struggle between the two kingdoms with the sure promise that the opposing kingdom symbolized by the powers of death will never prevail.
Image Credit: Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys (c 1481–1482). Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Public Domain
Not without skills
The first reading is from the Prophet Ezekiel from a larger section known as the “Oracles Against the Nations.” In our reading the charge leveled against the prince of Tyre is simple and direct: you have become arrogant, or as we read “haughty of heart”. The prophet outlines three dimensions of his hubris: the king claims to be divine, possessing divine authority and divine intelligence/wisdom. It is not hard to think about animating the prophet’s words with a strong measure of sarcasm.
The prophet seems to acknowledge that the prince of Tyre has some skills and savvy, but notes it is only for the accumulation of earthly riches and power – nothing that will last beyond the end. An end that is coming soon at the hand of “the most barbarous of nations. They shall draw their swords against your beauteous wisdom, they shall run them through your splendid apparel…Will you then say, “I am a god!” In the end it will all come to another bonfire of the vanities.
Apart from the novel by Tom Wolfe, “bonfire of the vanities” refers to the evangelical call of the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola who in 1497 called the city of Florence to burn any objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards, and musical instruments. Savonarola campaigned against what he considered to be the artistic and social excesses of Renaissance Italy, preaching with great vigor against any luxury.
None of us would suffer the delusion of thinking ourselves to be divine as did the Prince of Tyre, but then again none of us would say we are without skills or savvy. The question then, in Florence, and now, is to what end do we direct those God-given skills? Do we seek security for our families? Maybe security and comfort? Perhaps security, comfort, and luxury? Or are we on the verge of becoming like the Tom Wolfe character Sherman McCoy, a successful NYC financial whiz, who has given himself the moniker, “Master of the Universe.” Somewhat like the Prince of Tyre, yes?
To the prince, Sherman McCoy and to us, the gospel simply says: “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.“
It is not the wealth, the security, the comfort or the luxury – it is the lure of those things, the lure to sin against the most basic of commands: “what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
From time to time, we all need to consider what parts of our life, our possessions, that are candidates for the bonfire of the vanities. Consider what weighs us down on our journey to the Kingdom of God.
A painting by an unknown Florentine master depicting the execution of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, on May 22 1498. Photo: Wikimedia commons.
An emerging church
This coming Sunday is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. The disciples as a group had already received a blessing: “But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it”(Mt 13:16-17). Here this blessing is for Peter alone, as the plural address of v.16 shifts to the singular of v.17: Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah – notably keeping the original given name.
But the problem is….
Peter. In the polemics of the Reformation two basic positions were staked out: (a) the reformed position that “upon this rock” refers to Peter’s confession and (b) the Catholic position that the expression refers to Peter and all his successors. Modern scholars, Catholic and reformed alike, take a middle position: the expression refers to Peter (leaving the succession question aside).
R.T. France [1985, 257] writes:
Peter has declared Jesus’ true significance; now Jesus in turn reveals where Peter stands in the working out of God’s purpose. And as Peter’s confession was encapsulated in a title, ‘Messiah’, so Jesus now sums up Peter’s significance in a name, Peter. It is not now given for the first time, for Matthew has used it throughout in preference to ‘Simon’ (which never occurs without ‘Peter’ until v. 17), and Mark 3:16 and John 1:42 indicate that it was given at an earlier stage. What Jesus here reveals is its significance. It was apparently an original choice by Jesus, for no other use of Petros (or the underlying Aramaic kêpā’, ‘Cephas’) as a personal name is known before this; now he reveals why he chose it. It describes not so much Peter’s character (he did not prove to be ‘rock-like’ in terms of stability or reliability), but his function, as the foundation-stone of Jesus’ church. The feminine word for rock, petra, is necessarily changed to the masculine petros (stone) to give a man’s name, but the word-play is unmistakable (and in Aramaic would be even more so, as the same form kêpā’ would occur in both places).
France continues [257-8]
The word-play, and the whole structure of the passage, demands that this verse is every bit as much Jesus’ declaration about Peter as v. 16 was Peter’s declaration about Jesus. Of course it is on the basis of Peter’s confession that Jesus declares his role as the church’s foundation, but it is to Peter, not to his confession, that the rock metaphor is applied. And it is, of course, a matter of historic fact that Peter was the acknowledged leader of the group of disciples, and of the developing church in its early years. The foundation-stone image is applied in the New Testament primarily to Christ himself (1 Cor. 3:10ff.; 1 Pet. 2:6–8; etc.), but cf. Ephesians 2:20; Revelation 21:14 for the apostles as foundation
Image Credit: Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys (c 1481–1482). Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Public Domain
The Harder Deal?
How many times have you heard today’s Gospel of the landowner who went out to hire laborers for his vineyard? Most often we hear it as a contrast between God’s generosity and our sense of fairness. Sometimes it’s the ‘it’s never too late’ homily. Both are good ways into the parable. Then there is the “Five O’Clock Christian” homily with the message to the ones who have labored all day and are thinking, “After everything I’ve done all these years, these johnny-come-latelies get to scoot in at the last minute” The message to the “there from the beginning” folks is all those years of fidelity had meaning. It can be a warning you are turning faith into a scorecard or a timesheet for the accounting department.
Each of Jesus’ parables is meant to draw us into the scene, to associate with one of the characters. You’re here at daily Mass. You take your faith life seriously and have been for some time so I doubt you are “five o’clock” believers. Yet we are more prone to those passing whispers: I’ve been doing this all my life. I’ve sacrificed. I’ve followed the rules. I’ve served the parish. In those moments we are right there with St. Peter when he asked Jesus, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” (Mt 19:27) We are like the early workers who say they have borne “the day’s burden and the heat.”
But underneath their complaint is a question we rarely ask: was being in the vineyard all day really a disadvantage?” Do we believe that spending a lifetime knowing Christ, receiving the Eucharist, experiencing forgiveness, belonging to his people, and having the hope of eternal life was somehow the harder deal? That’s when we need to remind ourselves that it has all been a grace and a privilege to receive: unearned, undeserved, but freely given.
Maybe then we begin to understand what it means to work in the vineyard. The years we have spent following Christ were never wages we earned. They were themselves a gift. The Eucharists we have received, the sins forgiven, the prayers answered, and even the prayers we are still waiting to have answered, the people who have accompanied us in faith, the hope that has carried us through difficult days: all of that, that was the vineyard.
So when the five-o’clock worker finally arrives, perhaps our response should not be, “Why does he get what I get?” Perhaps it should be, “Thank God he finally made it into the vineyard. And thank God I have been here all along.”
And maybe then we will fully embrace an attitude of gratitude for the work and the destiny to which we have been called.
Image credit: Red Vineyards at Arles | Vincent Van Gogh, 1888 | PD from wikiart.org
Things were so much better
From St. Augustine’s Sermo Calillus-Saint Yves 2, he offers us some advice
And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former time. I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors – would we not still hear them complaining? You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them.
Christology: Three Questions
This coming Sunday is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Gospel according to Matthew accepts and uses the main Christological titles found already in the Gospel according to Mark, including Christ/Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, Rabbi, and Teacher. But in contrast to Mark, Matthew adds several new titles and emphasizes certain aspects of Jesus’ identity. Matthew’s Gospel begins by identifying Jesus as “the son of David, the son of Abraham” (1:1), showing Jesus’ Davidic/royal and Abrahamic/Jewish heritage, respectively. Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as “the New Moses” for the people of Israel, and is given a variety of other titles, including Emmanuel, Savior, Prophet, and King of the Jews. It is in this light that our pericope asks its two questions.
The First Question: Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
Clearly the local “buzz” places Jesus among the greats of Jewish religious history. Not only are all prophets, but all are already dead and thought to be resurrected or alive in heaven. Elijah was whisked away to heaven in a fiery chariot, Herod thought John the Baptist was already raised from the dead, and there were non-biblical accounts of Jeremiah resurrected. In other words, they place him in the cadre of prophets raised from the dead. The first question, more literally phrased is “Who are the humans saying that the son of the human is?” The Greek anthropos (human being, person; mankind; man – EDNT 1:100) is used twice in the sentence. There is indeed high praise in the “buzz,” but there is not enough for their faith to crossover and grasp the real identity of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Second Question: But who do you say that I am?
The “you” in the second question is emphatic and plural. It was not a question addressed just to Peter, but to the whole community. As in the first question, the word “saying” is present tense = “continue to say” or “keep on saying.” It is not a one-time declaration, but a repeated confession. Peter answers the question addressed to the whole group. In Matthew’s narrative Peter sometimes represents the disciples, sometimes represents all believers, sometimes plays a unique role in founding the new community, and sometimes is just Simon/Peter. It is a valid question to ask which “Peter” is portrayed answering Jesus’ question? Given the context of the verses that follow, there is something happening that is more than a simple, impulsive response. In this scene Simon/Peter is answering for and on behalf of the new community emerging from discipleship to Jesus
The Response: You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God
Many have written about the lack of a consensus among 1st century Palestine about the meaning of “Messiah.” All that can be said with certainty, whether Messiah be king or pauper, “Messiah” was a word of hope connected to God’s divine providence. Just what shape that hope would take was not clear – even to Peter, the one who had confessed it. By vv.22-23 it is clear that Peter’s understanding does not encompass the idea of a Messiah who suffers and dies.
Up to v.16, the account closely parallels Mark 8:27–29. But in v.16 Matthew seems to add to Mark’s narrative when he includes a further specification of Jesus’ identity “the Son of the living God.” It is not clear whether that is a modifier to “Messiah” or a separate title. Most scholars hold that Matthew wants us to grasp that Peter’s confession, despite the potentially misleading nature of Messianic language and Peter’s own failure to grasp its practical implications, is telling us more. The addition goes beyond a merely nationalistic fervor to an awareness of Jesus’ special relationship with God. The adjective living (which has a good Old Testament pedigree) may perhaps have been included to contrast the one true God with the local deities.
Image Credit: Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys (c 1481–1482). Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Public Domain
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