St Peter's role

We read with peril the first half of the story of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ without reading the second.  It seems abidingly important that Matthew 16.15-23 is one story the whole of which needs reading.  Yet on many significant occasions (including many ordination services) we read only the first half.  This was something I returned to with a group yet again last week.

Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”   And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.   And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”   Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.  From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.   And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”   But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

The words of Jesus to Peter form three pairs, the mirror image coming in reverse order thus:

For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.  

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Get behind me, Satan!

You are a stumbling block to me;

for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.

So Peter is told almost in one breathe that his thinking is divinely inspired and humanly limited, that he is both a foundational rock for us and trip hazard even for God, and that he controls access to heaven and is diabolical.  He is thus an excellent candidate to be Patron of the Church of England.  Or of me.

To take just the first half of these careful pairings and to build any theology of discipleship or ministry on them is a disastrous mistake (no less than the despair which would be involved in taking just the second half of each).

Meanwhile, this cross stands close by Muiredach’s High Cross at Monasterboice.