A Homily for the Feast of Saint Peter
Thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my Church. – St. Matthew
16:18
Who was Saint Peter?
He was a regular guy. A working man. A fisherman, actually, working the commercial fishing
trade out of Kfar-Nahum on Lake Genesseret. He had actually
done pretty well for himself: he had his own boat,
his own nets, his own big house in town, where he lived with his wife and
her mother.
He was a practical sort. It was a time when
people were wandering off to the desert to listen to holy-men and prophets. But he did not have time for that. It
was his younger brother who followed John the Baptist for awhile, and who
came home one day to say, “We have found the Messiah.” It
was little brother Andrew who introduced him to Jesus.
He was a regular guy, and he
had a regular guy’s name: Shimon bar-Yona, or, we might say, Simon Johnson. But from the very first Jesus called him “Kiffa,” “Rock.” He was probably
a large man, and certainly a strong one—in those days they hauled the fishing
nets in by hand. And that is reason enough for the
nickname. But he was also the go-to guy, the one
you could count on, the one you could lean on. And
so “Kiffa” he was, the Rock.
And his nickname has come down to us in two forms, the Greco-Aramaic
“Cephas” and the Greek “Peter.”
He was a practical man, and yet a bit of an adventurer. One day, after an afternoon of fishing on Lake Genesseret, Jesus said to Simon and Andrew, “Come with
me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And they
dropped everything and followed him. And from that
day on, they went with Jesus on his travels.
There was something else about Simon, though. He
was, sometimes, an over-the-top sort of guy. And sometimes
he just did not quite “get it.” One night, when they
were on the lake, he saw Jesus walking toward them over the water and he
called out, “Hey, Jesus, ask me to come to you.” And
over the side he went; but he became frightened and started to sink . .
. like a rock.
Just before Jesus’s final trip to Jerusalem,
Peter was with him on Mount Tabor for the glorious vision of Jesus, in glistering
raiment, talking with Moses and Elijah. “Hey, Jesus,”
he said, “do you want me to pitch three tents up here, one for each of you?”
In today’s Gospel lesson, Peter is recorded
as the first person to realize, and to speak, the full reality about Jesus. Other people recognized Jesus as a prophet—like John
the Baptizer, or maybe like Elijah or Jeremiah. But
it was Peter who, on behalf of the Twelve, said, “Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God.” And Jesus responded with a
pun: “you are Peter, Kiffa,
the Rock, and on this rock, this kiffa, I will
build my church.” (Earlier, in one of his parables,
Jesus had said that whoever would hear and do what Jesus said was like the
wise man who built his house on a rock, and not on sand.
“And the rain descended, and the floods
came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for
it was founded upon a rock.” )
But only a little later, when Jesus explained
to the Twelve the implication of what had been revealed to them, namely that,
as the Son of God, Jesus must go to Jerusalem, and suffer, and be killed,
it was too much for Peter. Matthew writes that Peter
“rebuked” Jesus. “No way, Lord,” he said, “This shall
not be.” So that Jesus, in turn had to rebuke Peter: “Get behind me, you tempter. You
are an offense to me. You do not care about the things
of God, but only about the things of men!”
And, of course, when Jesus, trying to teach
a lesson of humility and service, says that anyone who will not let Jesus
wash his feet has no part with him, Peter says, “Okay, Jesus, but not just
my feet, wash my head and my hands, too.” There was
nothing subtle about Simon Peter.
He had some bad days, too.
Probably the worst was the twenty-four hours from sundown on Maundy
Thursday to sundown on Good Friday. After supper,
they went to the garden and Jesus told them to watch and to pray. But poor Simon was overcome by sleep.
Jesus rebuked him, “Couldn’t you watch with me for even one hour?”
And then the temple guards came with the
crowd and Simon Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of one of the high
priest’s entourage. Jesus had to tell him to sheathe
the sword. After Jesus was arrested and led away, Simon Peter followed
to see what would happen; but, three times, when other people identified
him as one of Jesus’s disciples, he denied it. And when Jesus hung all those hours on the cross, John
stood at his feet with Jesus’s mother, but Peter
was nowhere to be seen.
Still, when Mary Magdalene and the myrrh-bearing women found the
stone rolled away from the door of Jesus’s tomb
on Easter morning it was to Simon Peter that they reported it. And, even though John was faster and got to the tomb first,
it was Simon Peter who entered to find the burial clothes folded and laid
aside.
The real transformation of Simon Peter came on Pentecost, when the
Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles. It was Peter,
as the leader of the Apostles, who spoke to the assembled crowd of doubter
and mockers about the wonderful works of God—who spoke so forcefully that
thousands became followers of Christ that same day. Peter’s
subsequent career reveals the power of the Holy Ghost.
In Jerusalem, Peter was one of the leaders
of the new Christian community, although it was James, and not Peter, who
was the bishop there. When the Apostles and elders
gathered in council to consider the question of whether gentile converts
to Christianity should be required to keep kosher and observe the myriad
Jewish ritual laws, Peter was one of the spokesmen for the council.
In fact, although Paul is often called the
Apostle to the Gentiles, it was Peter who baptized the first recorded gentile
convert to Christianity, Cornelius the centurion of the Italian legion stationed
in Caesarea.
Later Peter went to Antioch, in Syria, then
a major commercial center, where he is still revered as the first bishop
of that city. It was in Antioch that the followers
of Jesus were first called “Christians.” And from
there he apparently went on a missionary journey to Asia Minor, because his
first Epistle is addressed to the Christians of that region.
And, finally, of course, he went to Rome,
the capital of the Empire. There, along with Paul,
he presided over a large Christian community of both Jewish and gentile
converts.
In the year 64, during the persecution of
the Church under the emperor Nero, Peter was martyred. In
that savage persecution, hundreds of Christians were thrown to the lions
and other wild animals in the arena; hundreds of others were wrapped in
oily rags and set afire to provide light for the emperor’s dinner parties. But Peter was crucified. At is
own request, he was hung head-downward on the cross, because he felt unworthy
to die in the same manner as Jesus.
If Nero had intended to wipe out Christianity,
his plan was a miserable failure. Today, in Rome,
a great church building stands over the site of Peter’s tomb, within a short
walking distance of where the great buildings of the Roman Empire lie in
ruins. Thousands of Christians attended Mass this
morning in that Church building, and tens of millions have made a pilgrimage
to that tomb.
Nero was able to kill Simon, the man. But
he was not able to crush Peter, kiffa, the rock
upon which Jesus has built his Church. The power
of an empire could not prevail against the Church built on that rock. Indeed, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Church of Saint Mary Magdalene
Orange, California
29 June 2003
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