Category Archives: Scripture

Discipleship and Its Consequences

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This coming Sunday is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. “Then Jesus said to his disciples” With these words the scene moves from the personal debate with Peter to a general pronouncement about discipleship, the first part of it echoing what Jesus has already said to his disciples in 10:38–39: “whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” The disciples’ first reaction was not the softened “self-denial” or “take up one’s burden.” They understood the cross as the sign of Roman torture and death: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (16:24) These words are about literal death, following the condemned man on his way to execution.

Discipleship is a life that puts life and parts of life at risk, with potential martyrdom. It may be legitimate to extrapolate from this principle to a more general demand for disciples to put loyalty to Jesus before their own interests and comfort, but that can be only a secondary application of the passage. Here, Jesus’ words are not to be taken as merely metaphorical. The “cross” and the “losing life” which he speaks of are literal, and it seems clear from v. 28 that he did expect at least some of his disciples to be killed because of their loyalty to his cause (as indeed they were). Such a demand only makes sense in the context of a firm expectation of life beyond death.

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. 25 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can one give in exchange for his life? 27 For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father’s glory, and then he will repay everyone according to his conduct.

What was so uplifting and positive at the point of Peter’s declaration at Caesarea Philippi has moved to the very stark “take up his cross.” The prediction of Jesus’ death hovers ever nearby, but in the context of his ultimate vindication and glory, as judge and king in the presence of his Father and the angels. To speak of the Son of Man’s coming is an echo of the language of Dan 7:13–14 (similarly in 10:23) with the added themes of glory, angels, judgment and seeing. The words are then a prediction of the vindication and enthronement of the Son of Man after his suffering and death, and it will occur while some of those present are still alive.

Image credit: James Tissot, Rétire-toi Satan, c.1890, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain 

Peter’s Response, Jesus’ Rebuke

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This coming Sunday is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” Peter’s typically direct and immediate response is not likely his alone. Just as he spoke for the other disciples in proclaiming Jesus to be the “Son of the living God,” the Messiah, now he gives voice to the horror they all share upon hearing Jesus’ description of the messianic mission. Given his confession (v.16), Peter may well feel particularly let down by the idea that his Messiah should prove to be anything less than a success.

The strong verb “rebuke” (used elsewhere for Jesus’ stern commands to the wind and waves, 8:26, and to a demon, 17:18) not only conveys the intensity of Peter’s shock and his boldness in expressing it, but also prepares us for the even more severe language with which Jesus will respond in v. 23. Peter’s words indicate that he regards the prospect Jesus has outlined not as a goal to he fulfilled but as a disaster to be averted; other people might suffer at the hands of the authorities, but certainly not the Messiah, The strong negative conveys that it is not just undesirable but unthinkable.

Jesus’ Rebuke. Jesus “turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Jesus’ words to Peter are severe. One wonders if even the description of the “place” adds to the severity. Whereas Peter had quietly taken Jesus “aside,” Jesus now “turned” to issue a public reprimand. The opening words directly recall the dismissal of Satan in 4:10, here strengthened by the addition of the words “behind me,” to emphasize Jesus’ dissociation of himself from Peter’s ideology. But whereas in temptation in the desert (4:10) the tempter (which is what “Satan” means) was the chief demon himself, here it is Jesus’ loyal follower. 

The point of the rebuke suggests that behind the human thinking of Peter, Jesus discerns an effort to dissuade him from his ordained course similar to that which Satan himself had made in 4:1–11. Similar to the third temptation in the desert, Peter’s understanding of the Messiah reveals the easier way to power and authority, the gains without the pains. As long as he holds such a view, the “rock” on which the church is to be built proves instead to be a stumbling-block. The image offers another rebuke for as  long as Peter stands in front of Jesus he is in his way, stopping him from his mission – all because of Peter’s unthinking acceptance of “human thoughts.” Peter has expressed only what comes naturally to the human mind when presented with the idea of power and authority which the title “Messiah” suggests. But human thoughts are not God’s thoughts (Isa 55:8–9), and if human thoughts are not questioned they can stand in the way of God’s purpose and derail it. In much of the rest of this section of the gospel Jesus will be seen persistently trying to undermine the “human thoughts” of the disciples so as to get them to see things from the perspective of the kingdom of heaven.

Image credit: James Tissot, Rétire-toi Satan, c.1890, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain 

The Suffering Messiah

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This coming Sunday is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A.  “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (v.23) neatly summarizes the nature of the problem. The way the disciples react to the idea of messianic suffering and “defeat” shows that this concept of Messiahship is going to be very hard to get across. Here, as elsewhere, the mention of resurrection on the third day gets lost. It is apparently so overshadowed by the suffering and death which precedes it that resurrection seems to pass unnoticed.

The source of the opposition which Jesus will meet in Jerusalem is more specifically spelled out by the mention of the three main groups who made up the Sanhedrin: the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes. Hereafter Matthew (unlike Mark) will usually mention only the chief priests and the elders. The only other time all three groups will be mentioned together is in their triumph over Jesus on the cross in 27:41.

The nature of the Messiah’s “suffering” is as yet undefined; 20:18-19 will spell it out more fully. The fact that it comes from those who made up the Sanhedrin indicates the official and judicial rejection of Jesus comes from those who had formal responsibility for the life of Israel as the people of God, and so presents us with the paradox of the rejection of Israel’s Messiah by the official leadership of Israel.

The outcome is not left in doubt: Jesus will be killed. We have had a hint of this outcome in 9:15 and 12:40, and we have heard of the plans of the Galilean Pharisees (a different group from those listed here) to do away with him in Mt 12:14. But now the impending death of the Messiah, which will be the focus of so much of the latter part of the gospel, comes also as a divine “necessity.” It is this unthinkable prospect which triggers Peter’s instinctive response in v. 22.

Image credit: James Tissot, Rétire-toi Satan, c.1890, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain

Where we are, where we’re going

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This coming Sunday is the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary Cycle A. Our reading begins:  “From that time on” which serves as a type of marker that indicates one storyline is closing and the sacred author is moving to another. But there is also a larger storyline that is beginning to take shape. In the succeeding weeks of Ordinary Time we have heard of mighty deeds as well as what seems to be an initial “sorting out” of those who will or will not commit to discipleship. Perhaps a way to view the context of our readings is outlined here.

Signs of the Kingdom and Messiah

  • Healing and Feeding the Crowds (14:13-21)
  • Walking on Water (14:22-26)
  • Defilement (15:1-20 but not part of the Sunday gospel sequence)
  • The Canaanite Woman (15:21-28)
  • Healing Many People (15:29-39 but not part of the Sunday gospel sequence)
  • The Pharisees Seek a Sign (16:1-12)

Messiah Revealed and a Community Begins to Form

  • Jesus, Messiah; Peter as Rock (16:13-20)

Who Will Follow and What it Means

  • The Cost and Promise of Discipleship (16:21-28 – our Sunday gospel)
  • The Transfiguration (17:1-13)
  • Discipleship and Faith that Moves Mountains (17:13-20)

“From that time on” also marks the turning point of the mission in Galilee and from this point on, Jesus and the disciples are moving towards Judea and the city of Jerusalem. This geographical change coincides with the change in the pattern of Jesus’ activity and teaching. Peter’s declaration in Mt 16:16 that Jesus is the Messiah leads Jesus to immediately begin to describe the messianic mission with the very plain statement that he must suffer, die and be raised again (v.21 – repeated again in 17:22-23). The entire journey towards Jerusalem will be in the growing shadow of the cross. As we move ahead there are few encounters with crowds and few miracles. The attention is on preparing the disciples to understand, live and promote the radically different values of the Kingdom – as well to prepare them for the “sea change” that will begin in Jerusalem and ripple out to the ends of the earth.

If that places it all in a larger context, perhaps the more immediate context is well described by R.T. France. He labels the reading as a “Glimpse Into the Future: Messianic Suffering and Glory” where the “primary emphasis of this first part of the journey narrative is on the declaration that the Messiah must meet with rejection, suffering and death, and that those who follow him must expect to share his fate. But set within this depressing message is a persistent reminder that that is not the end of the story. The prediction of 16:21 includes also resurrection on the third day (cf. also 17:9); those who lose their lives do so in order to gain them (16:25–26); the same Son of Man who is to be killed will ‘come in his Father’s glory’ as judge (16:27), and be seen to be king (16:28). [The Gospel of Matthew, 629]

Image credit: James Tissot, Rétire-toi Satan, c.1890, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain 

What kind of person…what kind of community

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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

The Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven

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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

A final reflection

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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 developing Church

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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

An emerging church

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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

Forming the Church

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This coming Sunday is the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our reading is located in a section of Matthean narrative that portrays the formation of the church (13:53-17:27) in the midst of the continuing conflict with all levels of Jewish society that is leaning towards a growing rejection of Jesus as Messiah. This story forms the hinge of the section because after this Jesus will heighten his attention to the preparation of the disciples for their mission as a community once Jesus has died and resurrected from the dead.  It will be a community who perceives and professes his true identity.

Crossing Over: A new theme emerges – A theme that began with Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman (15:21-28) continues with the geographical setting of the story: the region of Caesarea Philippi. Early in its history this location had been the setting of Canaanite worship to Ba’al and later a Greek temple to the god Pan (hence the name Paneas). Eventually it simply became a center of secular power under the Roman regency of Herod the Great and his son Phillip who renamed it after Tiberius Caesar and himself: Caesarea Philippi.  Is the mention of the location just a geographical touch of narrative – Luke, the “geographer” of the gospel writers, does not mention the name – so one wonders why Matthew includes it.  It is not clear, but perhaps Matthew wanted to emphasize that this significant scene took place in a setting with significant religious and secular meanings and associations.  By doing so, Matthew crosses over to confront the pantheon of gods and the power of Caesar, with the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

But at the same time, this scene does not really cross over into new “territory” as regards Jesus’ divine identity.  While this parallel scene in Mark is the first time Jesus’ divine identity is proclaimed by others and worship (homage) takes place, that is not true in Matthew.  Jesus’ true identity is not really new to the disciples who have heard Jesus refer to himself in christological terms, have understood it, and worshiped him as the Son of God (14:33).  The breakthrough is not christological. Matthew is crossing over to begin to explicate the ecclesiological (“being church”) dimensions of the profession and worship.  It is from here that there is a separation of the new community of believers in the Kingdom of Heaven from those who oppose and reject it.

Image Credit: Pietro Perugino, The Delivery of the Keys (c 1481–1482). Sistine Chapel, Vatican City | Public Domain