Introduction
If you can believe it, we are more than halfway through Ordinary time and this week Matthew’s Gospel brings us to a decisive turning point. The disciples have traveled with Jesus, witnessed his healings, heard his teaching, and watched as conflict has grown around him. Now Jesus asks them to name what they have begun to see: “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter gives the right answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus blesses him, names him the rock upon which the church will be built, and places the keys of the kingdom into his hands. A staggering exchange that is worthy of dwelling on.
Yet the lectionary gives us only part of the scene. Next week, almost immediately after receiving this blessing, Peter will reject Jesus’ teaching about the cross. The rock will become a stumbling block. The one praised for receiving divine revelation will be rebuked for setting his mind on human things.
We should be careful, therefore, not to make Peter either the flawless hero of this week or the complete failure of the next. Matthew holds both truths together. Peter sees something real about Jesus, but not yet completely. He is entrusted with genuine authority, but he remains capable of misunderstanding and misusing it. Perhaps that is precisely the kind of person upon whom Christ builds the church.
Narrative Context
This scene appears in Mark and Luke, but Matthew expands it considerably. In Mark, Peter declares simply, “You are the Messiah.” Luke’s Peter answers, “The Messiah of God.” Only Matthew adds “the Son of the living God,” Jesus’ blessing of Peter, the declaration about the church, the keys of the kingdom, and the authority to bind and loose.
Matthew is not simply reporting Peter’s confession. He is establishing Peter’s place within the continuing life of the church.
This takes place in the district of Caesarea Philippi, a region marked by imperial power and religious plurality. A religious crossroads. (To those who just took my workshop this past week at the Preaching the Paradox Festival, this is why some might posit that Caesarea Philippa is where Matthew’s congregation was and where the Gospel was written).
It is here, within the shadow of other claims to authority and allegiance, that Jesus asks, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples report the answers circulating among the crowds: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or another prophet. None of these answers are dismissive. Each places Jesus within Israel’s prophetic tradition which is certainly a point in Matthew. Yet Jesus presses the question further: “But who do you say that I am?”
And then Peter names Jesus as Messiah. But the meaning of that title has not yet been settled. The disciples can say the word before they understand the true meaning the role it will take.
Next week Jesus will begin to show them that the Messiah must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and be raised. Peter will reject that vision because he can imagine a Messiah of power more easily than a Messiah revealed through suffering and the cross.
For that reason, this week’s reading shouldn’t be separated too neatly from what follows. Peter’s confession is true, but his understanding is incomplete. Revelation has brought him to the right title, but he still has to learn what the title means.
Even so, Jesus entrusts him with extraordinary authority: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
In Matthew, this is not merely a passing accolade. It is part of a larger movement of the transferring of responsibility. Peter and the disciples are being prepared to continue Jesus’ ministry of teaching, proclamation, forgiveness, and care for the people of God. The responsibility grows gradually in Matthew 18 with the authority to bind and loose that’s extended to the gathered community, where it appears in the context of conflict, reconciliation, and forgiveness. The keys are given to Peter, but the responsibility they represent belongs to the church.
Until now, the disciples have primarily followed, listened, and watched. From this point forward, Jesus will prepare them for his death and resurrection and for their own leadership after him. Matthew cannot wait until the Great Commission to establish their authority. The foundation must be laid before they are sent to “make disciples of all nations.”
Matthew’s Community and the Peter Connection
This distinctly Matthean portrayal of Peter may also give us a glimpse into the debates of the early church.
Because, despite how we sometimes tell the story, the early church was never a monolith. There was real disagreement about the mission to the Gentiles, circumcision, table fellowship, adherence to Torah, and how Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus could belong to one community.
Paul is remarkably candid about these tensions. In Galatians, he says that he had been entrusted with the Gospel for the Gentiles while Peter had been entrusted with the Gospel for the circumcised (Galatians 2:7–9). But Peter’s position was not simply opposed to the Gentile mission. According to Paul, Peter had been eating with Gentile believers in Antioch. It was only after “certain people came from James” that Peter drew back because he feared “the circumcision faction” (Galatians 2:11–14).
We should be careful not to assume that these visitors represented James or the entire Jerusalem church accurately. Paul’s account does, however, reveal the pressure Peter faced. He seems to occupy something of a middle position. He is willing to cross traditional boundaries and share a table with Gentiles, yet he remains accountable to (and perhaps somewhat fearful of) a more traditionally observant faction within the Jerusalem church. Paul finds that compromise unacceptable. But Peter may have understood himself as trying to hold together communities whose convictions and practices were pulling them apart (a position that Matthew might be finding himself in).
Luke tells the story a little differently in Acts.
In Acts 10, Peter receives the vision of the sheet descending from heaven and hears the command, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (Acts 10:15). This prepares him to enter the home of Cornelius, a Gentile, where Peter declares, “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34). When Peter is criticized for eating with uncircumcised people, he recounts the vision and the community responds, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:18). Later, at the Jerusalem Council, Peter speaks in support of welcoming Gentile believers without requiring them to bear the full yoke of the Law (Acts 15:7–11).
Luke-Acts is not entirely unaware of the disagreements, but Luke presents Peter and Paul as belonging to one Spirit-led movement. Peter opens the door to the Gentiles, the Jerusalem church affirms it, and Paul carries that mission outward. The rough edges are still there, but Luke works hard to show continuity between them.
Matthew seems to preserve a somewhat different perspective.
As I’ve named before, Matthew’s community appears to be shaped deeply by Jewish Scripture and tradition. Matthew’s Jesus insists that he has come “not to abolish but to fulfill” the Law and the Prophets and warns against relaxing even the least of the commandments (Matthew 5:17–19). When Jesus first sends the disciples out, he tells them not to go among the Gentiles but only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5–6). Jesus repeats that same language during his encounter with the Canaanite woman: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).
And yet Gentiles keep appearing at the edges of the story. The Magi come from the East to worship the child Jesus (Matthew 2:1–12). A Roman centurion displays a faith greater than any Jesus has found in Israel, and Jesus imagines people coming from east and west to eat with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom (Matthew 8:5–13). The Canaanite woman refuses to be sent away and is praised for her great faith (Matthew 15:21–28). Finally, the Gospel that began so firmly within Israel’s story ends with the risen Jesus sending the disciples to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
Matthew does not discard Israel’s traditions so that the church can move on to something new. But neither does Matthew imagine a community permanently closed to the Gentiles. The question seems to be how the mission can expand without declaring Israel’s Scriptures, practices, and promises obsolete.
That may be why Peter matters so much here. If Paul was remembered particularly as the apostle to the Gentiles and Jerusalem represented a more traditionally observant approach, Peter could embody a path somewhere between them. He remained closely associated with the mission among Jewish followers of Jesus, but he also crossed boundaries, ate with Gentiles, and participated in their inclusion.
That middle position would make sense for Matthew. Matthew’s community does not want to abandon Jewish tradition, but neither can it deny the Gospel’s movement toward the nations. By placing this confession, blessing, and authority upon Peter, Matthew may be grounding the church’s expanding mission in an apostle who could represent both commitments. The movement toward all nations is not an abandonment of Israel’s story. It grows from within that story and is authorized by the Messiah who came not to abolish but to fulfill.
By the time Matthew’s Gospel was written, both Peter and Paul were likely long dead. The question was no longer simply whether Peter, Paul, or the faction of circumcision was right. Communities shaped by their sometimes-conflicting legacies had to discern how they would live faithfully together.
And those disagreements were not all resolved by the end of Acts. Peter did not receive one vision, eat a ham sandwich, and suddenly bring the whole church into agreement. The disputes continued. Different communities emphasized different parts of the apostolic witness. Some conflicts were reconciled; others became divisions that lasted long into the next generations of the early church.
The church of Jesus Christ has never been as completely unified, orderly, or uncomplicated as we sometimes imagine it was.
The Rock Can Become a Stumbling Block
The lectionary’s division between this week and next creates both an opportunity and a tripping point.
This week, Peter is the rock. Next week, Peter will attempt to prevent Jesus from going to the cross, and Jesus will call him a stumbling block. Matthew uses the same disciple to show how closely faithful confession and dangerous misunderstanding can exist beside one another.
Peter is not called the rock because he has become infallible. He does not receive the keys because he will always know how to use them. His authority is real, but so is his capacity to get Jesus terribly wrong.
Perhaps this is not an embarrassing contradiction that Matthew fails to smooth over. Perhaps it is part of Matthew’s theology of the church.
Jesus builds the church with people who confess faithfully one moment and misunderstand profoundly the next. Christ entrusts the Gospel to disciples who can receive divine revelation and still resist the cross. The church’s foundation is not human perfection but Christ’s faithfulness to imperfect human beings.
This should temper both how highly we elevate Peter this week and how harshly we condemn him next week. Peter’s failure does not erase his confession, and his confession does not place him beyond correction. Authority in the church never eliminates the need for repentance.
Preaching Possibility
Great Responsibility Entrusted to Imperfect People
We often imagine the early church as possessing a unity that the present-day church has somehow lost. We acknowledge the disagreement reported in Acts, but we may still tell the story as though Peter received his vision, the church accepted the Gentiles, Paul continued his mission, and everything became copacetic.
The Gospels and letters of the Greek Testament tell a more complicated story.
Peter and Paul did not always agree. Different Christian communities held different convictions about Torah, table fellowship, circumcision, and the inclusion of Gentiles. Even the Gospel writers emphasize different aspects of Jesus’ ministry as they speak to communities with different histories and concerns. The church was divided over theology, practice, identity, and authority almost from the beginning.
That can be discouraging. If those who knew the apostles (or who knew Jesus himself) could not hold the church together perfectly, what hope is there for us?
Yet perhaps the miracle is not that the church was ever without division. The miracle is that, through all its disagreements, failures, and fractures, the Gospel continued to break through.
Peter could confess Jesus as Messiah and then reject the way of the cross. Paul could proclaim freedom for the Gentiles and still become entangled in bitter conflicts with other believers. Matthew’s community could insist upon the enduring significance of the Law and still preserve Jesus’ command to go to all nations. These traditions do not fit together without tension. Yet through them, the church continued to hear that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
The promise of this text is not that Peter will never fail, that church leaders will never get it wrong, or that Christians will always agree. The promise is Christ’s: “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
Christ builds the church even with stones that sometimes become stumbling blocks.
That does not excuse division or make reconciliation unnecessary. The authority to bind and loose remains a serious responsibility. The church’s decisions can open doors or close them, release grace or withhold it, heal communities or wound them. We hold real keys, and what we do with them matters.
But the church’s future does not finally depend upon our ability to achieve perfect agreement. It depends upon the living Christ who continues to work through communities that are partial, fractured, and often mistaken.
The church has unfortunately been broken from the beginning. And yet, from the beginning, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has kept breaking through. Sometimes through us, sometimes among us, and sometimes in spite of us.
Thanks be to God.
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Micah Krey 
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