Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 10 2014

Isaiah 51:1-6

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

If you’re thinking that the gospel reading we’ve just heard sounds a little bit familiar, you’d be right. This year we read through Matthew’s gospel at Sunday Mass and this is the point we’ve got to. But this passage is also the gospel for feasts of St Peter, so this is now the third time that we’ve heard it in two months.

But, rather than complaining about all the repeats that we’re getting in the pulpit these days, we can embrace this as an opportunity to take a closer look at what St Matthew is telling us here. Here, about half way through Matthew’s gospel, is the turning point, the dramatic moment when the pace and direction of the story changes. And Jesus begins by asking a crucial question in a very strange place.

Imagine if Nigel Farage wanted to ask his UKIP supporters what being British was all about, and he took them to Brussels to ask them. Or imagine Alex Salmond, the Scottish leader, bringing his people to London to ask them what Scottishness meant to them.

That might give us an idea of how unexpected and odd it is for Jesus to come into the district of Caesarea Philippi and ask the question, “who do people say the Son of Man is?”

Jesus has here taken the disciples to foreign territory, 35 miles north of Galilee. Caesarea Philippi was the regional headquarters of Roman government in Syria. It was a city for the Roman elite, built in a beautiful position by Philip II, one of the Herod family, who named it after Caesar, and himself: Caesarea Philippi, the Caesarea of Philip. It was a gentile city, pagan, not a comfortable place for devout Jews, and a constant reminder of the foreign occupation they were living under.

And it was loaded with religious associations. Pagan ones. The god Pan had been worshipped there from ancient times, the horned god of wild places and wild behaviour. A sanctuary had been built around a cave that made weird sounds caused by a constriction in an underground stream and thought to be the voice of Pan. The cliff face around this cave was dotted with shrines and statues. In the city itself was a great temple dedicated to the ‘divine’ Augustus Caesar, and monuments and inscriptions gave the Emperor titles such as “Son of God” and “Saviour”.

So this is a city of gods and political power. What are gods? They are what people worship, what we make sacrifices to. If you worship Caesar and the Roman Empire and the forces of nature as gods, then you are saying that these have the ultimate claim over human life and freedom. And these gods are unaccountable powers above such things as morality and law. You just have to endure what they inflict on you and hope that you can buy their favour by worshipping them.

So Caesarea Philippi proclaims that the Roman Empire, oppressive power, and elemental forces are gods. These are what matter, these rule human life, worship them.

So when Jesus chooses this place to ask, “who do people say the Son of Man is?”, it is a question loaded with significance. Can the disciples see that there is an alternative understanding of the world? Is Caesar the ultimate reality – or not?

And Peter gets it. ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus is not just a teacher, a healer, or a good man. There were many such in the Roman Empire. No, Jesus is much more than that. He is the alternative to the world represented by Caesarea Philippi. If Jesus is Messiah and Saviour and Lord, then Caesar is not. If Jesus’ way of love and forgiveness and non-violence is the law, then the law of Caesar is not. If the true God creates all things in love and generosity, then it is him we must worship, and not the things he has created.

We are here at the turning point of the story, as Matthew’s gospel tells it. A turning point in the disciples’ understanding: Peter, for the first time, says who Jesus is. A turning point, too, in the journey. Caesarea Philippi is the northernmost point in Jesus’ travels. Here he turns back towards Jerusalem and begins the long journey that will end in rejection, the cross, death, and resurrection.

From now on the shadow of the cross is on every page of Matthew’s gospel. But so too is the light of the resurrection and Jesus’ victory over death itself. That victory will confirm that he is indeed Lord and Messiah, Son of God and Saviour. Caesar’s account of the world will fall and fade away before the triumph of the Risen Lord. But the disciples don’t yet understand this, as we will read next week. For them, the way to Jerusalem and the cross will be a path of obscurity and contradiction.

Like the disciples, the turning point in our lives comes when we meet Jesus and realise who he is. If we look around us it might seem that Caesarea Philippi is everywhere. The prevailing assumptions of the world, the gods of our own day, are as loudly proclaimed as they were in any Roman temple.

What are those gods? As in Roman days, military might has never stopped trying to run the world, as both history and current events show. This is a god that demands endless human sacrifices, yet humanity keeps feeding it, not realising that it will never change its nature.

Wealth and prosperity can be things to serve the good of humanity, or they can be gods that we end up serving. The love of money leads to economic injustice and makes far more slaves than it makes millionaires.

Pan and his fellow divinities may have retreated into myth and fairy tale, but we still encounter what they once stood for, the powerful elemental desires that seem to rise unbidden from the depths of the subconscious: anger, pride, lust and the desire for possessions. Will we worship them? Are they our gods? People used to go to church to confess their sins. Some still do - hurrah! But today you can pay a ‘lifestyle coach’ to tell you that anything you want to do is fine. Autonomy and self-fulfilment may be the new names, but they are the same old gods.

But when we meet Jesus, the Risen Lord, when we realise who he is, then a completely new understanding of the world is opened to us. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar – or his modern equivalent – is not. If Jesus is Saviour, then we can actually be saved. Which is good news, because we can never save ourselves, no matter how many gods we make to worship. When we meet Jesus, we discover that we can’t create ourselves, but are created in love by a power beyond us. And the creator and the redeemer are one in Jesus.

This is what St Paul is talking about in the letter to the Romans this morning. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.” That is to say, be open to the new reality that God reveals in Jesus.

Instead of the old understanding of the world, God’s love and forgiveness and generosity are revealed as the ultimate truth, the defining reality of our existence. And this is offered to us freely, it’s ours for the taking! Jesus meets us and says to each one of us, “who do you say that I am?” And if we turn to him in faith and believe that he is Messiah and Lord, then that is the turning point of our lives. Because he will save us from the old order of sin and death and lead us into freedom in God’s new reality of love and forgiveness and eternal life.