Journey to Jerusalem: The Mission is Ours
By Dr. Tom Pace
March 26, 2017
Matthew 16:13-23

Today our Scripture is a passage in Matthew that is the authorization for the church. Here’s the context – Jesus has gone all the way to the city of Caesarea Philippi as far away from Jerusalem as he could get. And when he gets there he has a conversation with his disciples that leads him decide to turn and one of the Gospels says, “…to turn his face like a flint to Jerusalem.” To go from as far away to head right into the jaws of the powers that be. So listen as you hear about the conversation that he has with Peter and the disciples.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He 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 rockI 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.” (Matthew 16:13-23 NRSV)
I wonder why you’re here this morning. I left this morning on the way to the church, and there’s a guy down the street putting fertilizer on his lawn, and someone else was washing their car and then someone else was walking his dog. I thought to myself, “You know, the days of going to church because it’s the social convention are past.” You have to choose to come; you have to decide that you want to be a part of this. If you join St. Luke’s you pledged yourself to our mission and supporting it by your “prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness.”
What for? What are we all about? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. The Gospel of Matthew traces the institution of the church, the creation of the church, the authority – the authorization of the church – by Jesus to this passage. It is one of only two times in the Gospels that the word church is used. Luke and Acts are two volumes of the same work – Luke wrote both Luke and Acts. And there it traces the beginning of the church to the coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2.
But Matthew really focuses on this moment as just absolutely crucial for our work and what we do. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Join me in prayer Gracious God, open us up, open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel and then O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
I’m going to just kind of read a little of the Scripture and then talk about it – back and forth that way. It might help your learning. If you’re like me you might learn better reading. So at least follow along if you’re not taking notes.
It begins this way: ^“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘“Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’”

Here’s what’s happened, this is what has led to this. Jesus has heard that John the Baptist has been beheaded by Herod Antipas. Herod the Great is the Herod we talk about at Jesus’ birth. He died right after Jesus was born and Herod Antipas is his son. He ruled over Galilee. When Herod the Great died his kingdom was divided into four parts, and Herod Antipas his son was given the region of Galilee where Jesus ended up in Nazareth where he grew up.

So Jesus has been traveling about and teaching in Galilee, and he hears that John the Baptist has been killed by Herod and that “Herod wants to see him.” Well, if the cruel dictator wants to see you, it’s not a good thing. You know that’s bad news.
So Jesus takes his disciples and he gets out of Dodge, he goes north to Tyre and Sidon, which are on the Mediterranean. Then he goes over due east to Caesarea Philippi. This is as far north in Israel as you can get. Today if you went the area is called the Golan Heights, and it’s right at the border of Lebanon and Syria. It’s 35 miles from Damascus.
So there he is as far as he can go. And he has this conversation with the disciples. Isn’t it interesting they’re talking about what other people believe? And they say, “Well, some people say you’re this… and some people say you’re Jeremiah and some Elijah and some John the Baptist.”
We all like to make Jesus who we want Jesus to be. “I want a holiness Jesus, who teaches people to live holy lives. People just willy nilly do whatever they want now, and they never stay between the lines. So we want a holiness Jesus.” Or “I want a social justice Jesus who’s going to lead the world in overcoming inequality.” Or “I want a prosperity Jesus who just says that God loves everyone and wants everyone to be blessed in every way.” Or still others say, “I want a kindness Jesus, because the essence of what he teaches is that you should love one another and be kind to one another.”
And all of those aspects are true but they’re not enough. They’re not enough.
So he goes on: He 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,…”

The church has a foundation, it’s built on something. We just sang it when you came in this morning. “The Church’s One Foundation Is Jesus Christ our Lord.” Everything we do grows out of our affirmation that Jesus is the Christ – the One – the Messiah who’s come to save. The reason we come on Sunday mornings is to reaffirm that, to join with others to acknowledge that Jesus is the One.

Now Matthew is the Jewish Gospel, and it focus on Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. And for centuries the Jews had waited for the Kingdom of God to come, that time when the Kingdom of Heaven would overcome the kingdom of the world when a true king of justice and righteousness would reign.
Tom Long is a New Testament scholar, and he’s actually preached here at St. Luke’s. He’s an excellent preacher. Here’s what he writes: “To call Jesus Messiah – in Greek Christ – is to know that Jesus is the Savior, the one who rescues a world in peril. It is the claim that Jesus is the fulfillment of the deep hope that God would produce an ideal king for Israel. A king who would fulfill every hunger of the nation for wellbeing, one who would bring peace and wisdom and righteousness and prosperity.”
So the affirmation that Jesus is the Messiah, you look round and in the kingdom of God there would be no more disease – look, he’s healing people. In the kingdom of God there would be no more hunger – look, he’s feeding the 5000 with just a few loaves of bread. In the kingdom of God there’d be no division, no brokenness – look, he’s bringing the outcasts in. Everyone is invited to the table now. He’s the one –he’s the King.
Everything we do grows out of that belief and that affirmation – that he’s the one who has come to save us from ourselves. Then he goes on and says, “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…”
Incidentally as a little side note this is one of the places that Roman Catholic theology and Protestant theology differ. Roman Catholic theology says that he’s really talking about Peter – that Peter is the one who the church is built upon. Peter has the keys to the kingdom. But Protestants have always interpreted this to be that it is Peter’s confession of Christ, of Jesus as the Christ, that we build the church on. Just a little bit of side trivia for you. Like you care. Sometimes we pastors get into this stuff.
Then he says ^“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.”

Now in Caesarea Philippi if you go there today you would have a chance to see it’s the source of the Jordan River. It’s where it flows out cold and clear. It’s beautiful there. By the time it gets down to Jerusalem, it’s kind of a little muddy creek. But up there it’s just gorgeous and clean. You can fill your water bottle and just drink right out of there. And next to that, kind of behind it is a huge cliff side, and built into the cliff side are grottos dedicated to the god Pan. In fact the town is now called Banos – they got the b and the p mixed up, so it’s dedicated to the god Pan. And there’s a grotto to Hermes there, too.

But immediately next to that is a huge cave, and the mouth of the cave is about 50 feet tall and maybe 200 feet wide. It’s not all that deep, but it goes in and then it goes down into a deep hole of darkness. That’s the Gates of Hades. They believed that that was the entrance to the Underworld. If you wanted to go down where death lives, where the people who have died go – that’s it. That’s the Gates of Hell.

So I can imagine Jesus saying, “Upon this rock I will build my church, my community and the Gates of Hades won’t withstand our attack.” Listen – it’s military language here. Gates are defensive, so you only need gates if you’re on the defense. He’s saying that the church is attacking the very gates of Hades. We are on the offense. That’s the mission to which he calls us, to storm the gates of Hades.
One of the commentators I read, I love what he said. “Jesus is saying to the disciples, ‘We’ve got death on the run! We’re going to catch it and conquer it and the Gates of Hades can’t hold us back.’” That’s our mission, friends, that’s what we’ve been called to.
What does that actually mean for you and me? Well, it means that first, we face death differently than others do. I think a lot of times what we find people doing is that we take a defensive posture about death. We say, “I’m going to hide from it, I’m going to protect myself from it. I don’t want it to get me!”
Maybe you know someone who’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness, or one that could be and they’ll use this language to you: They say, “You know what? I’m going to fight like the dickens! I’m going to win this battle!” What they’re saying is, “We’re not afraid – we’re on the offense! We’re going after it!”
Then there comes a point when you realize that the final victory for that only comes when you go right into its jaws. When you go right into the jaws of death because that’s where you find resurrection.
I gathered with a group of my pastor friends – we’re in a covenant group together. And when we meet we tell stories. Preachers are pretty good at that, by the way, and some of them are true. So I was gathered with them and actually we were sharing illustrations for Easter. It was fairly early, but we said, “Have you got any really good stuff for Easter?” We were talking about it.
One guy said that he just had this incredible experience. He had come to visit a man from his church who was in hospice care, who was near the end of his life. And the minister held the man’s hand, he said a prayer. They said the Lord’s Prayer together. Then afterwards the man looked up and said, “Thank you, pastor. Let’s do this.” It was like “Let’s go – let’s face this – let’s go head on into this,” because that’s where we’re going to find resurrection. That’s what Jesus does. He’s saying, “Let’s go right into it.”
I want you to think about this. He’s reached the point and he’s gone as far away as he can. He’s been running in a defensive mode from King Herod. He has a conversation with Peter and the disciples, and they say, “You’re the Christ.” And he thinks, “They’re getting it now. They’re starting to understand. So I can go face death, and they’re going to pick up the torch. They’re going to carry the mission once I’m gone, so I’m headed to Jerusalem. I’m going to head to the cross.”
I think it also changes how we deal with evangelism. So that when we share with people the good news of Jesus Christ, when we offer them the invitation to be in a relationship with the living Christ, what we’re saying is, “We want you to know life! We want to offer you an alternative to the Gates of Death. We want you to know abundant and eternal life – Here! Take it!”
I think it has to do with our missions. Our job is to storm the Gates of Hell, that there is brokenness around us all over. So if the attributes of the Kingdom of Heaven are peace, love, wholeness and health, then the opposite of that is what we’ve come to fight against. The church has been in that business for centuries.
Across the American frontier when they discovered disease, what did the church do? The church founded hospitals. Houston Methodist Hospital and St. Luke’s Hospital were both founded by the church in a time when we needed hospitals to fight disease.
When there was ignorance around, what are we going to do? Well, let’s start schools. So we founded schools and universities all across the frontier. When there are people hungry, what does the church do? They say, “Let’s send people out in missions.” All this is growing out of our confession that Jesus is the One – the Christ – the Savior who’s come to save the world in peril. And we’re joining in the work. That’s what we’ve been called to do.
Then he goes on: ^“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.”
This has been kind of a hard week. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, maybe sometimes you do, too, just by watching the news. I think it started for me when I watched the news of the surgeon at Methodist Hospital who was killed by her husband, and then he took his own life. She was an amazing woman. We knew of her work at the hospital and to see the pictures of their home on the news… It was a nice suburban home with nicely trimmed shrubbery and to think how many other houses around us that if you go behind the exterior, there’s so much pain and hurt inside.
Then immediately following that story there was one about a young man and woman who are really just kids, who have kids, and they went into Walmart and left their kids in the car for an hour. The police were called, and the kids are now in CPS custody. You see their pictures on the news and all I can say is, “They have no clue as to how to raise children. Of course they did that.” I felt for the kids and I felt for the parents. My heart broke for them.
Then I go to a meeting and there’s a discussion of the opioid epidemic that is racing through our country and people caught in these addictions. Sometimes you think to yourself, “What can I do? What can I do? There’s nothing to be done. I think I’ll just go play a round of golf.” That’s what happens in your head and what this is saying is, “No, you can’t do anything on your own. But I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and you can unlock the door and the forces of heaven will be behind you.”
We’ve got this picture of St. Peter as the one who stands at the door to heaven and opens it so we can get in. “A Methodist minister, a rabbi and a priest go to heaven and they meet St. Peter …” You know these stories and jokes that St. Peter is at the door and he’s guarding the gate.
The keys to the kingdom are not to get me and you into heaven, they are to get heaven on earth. You just prayed that prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…” The kingdom of God has come, Jesus has inaugurated it, it has begun. And our job is to bring it to its fulfilment. And if we’ll do that, if we’ll take this step…
You know the scene in “Schindler’s List” where he says, “I could have done more.” And his friend says to him, “You saved 1100 Jews, eleven hundred Jews, Oskar. You have preserved generations.” Then Schindler says, “Yes, but if I had sold my car, I could have used that money and bought freedom for ten more. I could have saved one more person.”
That picture of saying, “I want to do everything I can…” He can’t do everything, but you can do something. We can do something, and if we’ll do that something then we can open the gates of heaven, and the forces of heaven come on our side.
Beverly Robinson passed away two or three weeks ago. Bev was the wife of Rev. Dean Robinson on our staff here at St. Luke’s many years ago. He was an amazing fellow. I had a conversation with his son Phil, and he was talking about his mother Beverly. He said, “My mom was always supportive of my dad’s hare-brained schemes.” Those of you who knew Dean Robinson knew he had a lot of hare-brained schemes. He had more ideas than Carter had pills. And I tell you a lot of them just fell flat. But he founded the Christian Community Service Center, which feeds thousands of people today. He was the impetus behind the creation of Amazing Place which provides care for early onset Alzheimer’s - memory care. If you’ll just do something, then the forces of heaven will be unleashed. Just something.
Father John Collins, who was a very close friend was at Beverly’s funeral. He credits Beverly for leading him into the ministry. He was actually her boss in HR at one point. He read this at her memorial service – it’s the end of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is to have succeeded.”
Now you can’t do everything, but you can do something. And that something gives you the opportunity to open the doors to the kingdom of heaven and watch the forces of heaven come join you in your work.
Now one last thing and I don’t want you to miss it. So the church has a foundation, Jesus Christ, it has a mission to storm the gates of hell. It has power, the forces of heaven on our side. But the last thing is that there is a strategy.
Sometimes people are uncomfortable with military imagery for the church, and I’ve had my own discomfort about it, because it often brings to our minds the crusades, the killing of many innocent people in the name of Jesus. But I think it makes sense, because I think there is a battle and that there really is good and evil and there really is love and hate. And there really is darkness and light, and there really is death and life. And there really is a force that is for good that is on the offensive against those things and pushing back the darkness and pushing back the death.
It wouldn’t have surprised the disciples at all that Jesus said, “Okay, we’re going to Jerusalem, and we’re going to storm the gates.” But here’s what he says, “We’re going to Jerusalem, and I’m going to go to the cross, and I’m going to die and then I’ll be resurrected. And if you want to be my follower you pick up your cross and you come, too. Because if you want your life then you’ll have to lose it.”
The strategy here is not swords and spears, it’s not power, earthly power. It’s sacrificial love. Peter draws his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus says to him, “Put away your sword.” That’s not how we win this battle. We do it through sacrificial love and servanthood.
So friends, I’m not sure why you’re here. But I hope you’re here because you have signed on to the mission -to storm the very gates of Hades itself, because you believe that Jesus is the one that is leading that charge, and because you want the forces of heaven to bring in the kingdom.
Gracious and loving God, we confess that sometimes we just kind of give up and become complacent. We know we can’t do everything, but we can do something. And when we do something we pray that those forces of heaven would come through the door that we can open and that your kingdom would come to pass. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.