Sermon for the Feast of St Peter

Delivered in Bradford Cathedral, June 29, 2010

The Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

Jesus said to his disciples “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter, first among all the disciples, said “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And that response of Peter’s, that wisdom granted him from God, has echoed down through the centuries, right down to us, to be the rock on which our faith is founded today. In our way, too, Jesus says to us “Who do you say that I am?” — and our response makes all the difference in the world.

But the tricky thing is, when we make our response, when we proclaim our faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, there are so many different things we can mean by that. Within the New Testament itself, over centuries of reading and praying, and certainly in contemporary scholarship and thinking, people of faith have developed many different interpretations of what means to say that Jesus is the Christ. Some of us say that Jesus is a great moral example, who shows us the way of humility and service in obedience to God’s will. Some of us say that Jesus is a supernatural figure, the one who came down from heaven to save us from our sins because we are powerless to do anything good by ourselves. Some of us say that Jesus is the compassionate Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep in the fold to look for the one sheep that is lost, and who leaves no one behind. Some of us say that Jesus is a prophet of social justice who condemns all forms of oppression, and who inspired a peasant uprising in first-century Palestine, until the Roman overlords executed him as a political insurgent. Some of us say that Jesus is a teacher of Wisdom, and, more than that, is Wisdom incarnate, divine truth embodied in human life. Like Peter, we today proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One of God; but what we mean by that can cover an awful lot of ground.

And that is important because what we believe about what kind of Messiah Jesus is affects what we believe about what kind of disciples we are. In the story, Peter learns that Jesus’ being Messiah means that he must go to Jerusalem, and confront the powers-that-be, and be rejected, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. That’s not what Peter expected; that’s not what the prophecies of the Messiah promised; and it shocked and dismayed Peter when Jesus spoke of death and resurrection. But Peter learned what sort of Messiah Jesus was called to be, when he tried to stay awake with Jesus in Gethsemane, and when he stood in the high priest’s courtyard while Jesus was on trial, and when he ran to see the empty tomb on Easter morning. And in the process Peter learned what kind of disciple he was called to be, when the Risen Jesus asked if he loved him, and the Holy Spirit filled him with language and the power to preach, and when his own life was given and transformed in martyrdom. Peter’s faith in Jesus as the Christ led him to faith to live as a disciple of Christ — and for Peter that made all the difference.

And that’s what makes all the difference for us, too. How we believe in Jesus affects how we live as disciples of Jesus; what kind of Christ we think Jesus is creates the conditions for what kind of Christians we think we are. If we believe in the Christ as compassionate, then we know ourselves to be called to compassion. If we believe in the Christ as a prophet of justice, then we are called to work for justice. If we believe in the Christ as the embodiment of divine Wisdom, then we try to keep our minds open to the inspirations Wisdom brings to us. If we believe in the Christ as the living sign of God’s eternal love, then we know ourselves empowered to love as Jesus has loved us. For us, as for Peter before us, how we have faith in Jesus as the Christ makes a difference for how we live our faith as Christians. And the gift of the Gospel to us is that Jesus means all these things, and more, which the Holy Spirit will reveal to us as we grow ever deeper in the faith.

Jesus said to his disciples “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter, first among all the disciples, said “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” As we remember Peter today, let us celebrate his faith, and let us pray that we may share that faith ourselves. Amen.