A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. When Jesus came to the neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi, that's up in the North, he asked his disciples this question. Who do people say that the son of man is? They replied, some say John the baptizer, others Elijah, and still others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets. And you, he said to them, who do you say that I am?
And, of course, you know who answered. Simon Peter said, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. Now Jesus replied, blessed are you, Simon, son of John. No mere man has revealed this to you but my heavenly father. I, for my part, declare to you, you are rock.
Peter, papers. And on this rock, I will build my church, and the jaws of death shall not prevail against it. I will entrust to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be considered down in heaven, and whatever you declare loosed on earth, that shall be loosed in heaven. And then Jesus strictly ordered his disciples disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
From then on, Jesus, the Messiah, started to indicate to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer greatly there at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. Finally, to be put to death and then raised up on the third day. At this, Peter took him aside and began to remonstrate with Jesus. May you be spared, master. God forbid that any such thing should ever happen to you.
And Jesus turned on Peter and said to him, get out of my sight, you Satan. You are trying to make me trip and fall. You are not judging by god's standards but by man's. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen. Well, as you all recognize, this is a classical text and no less a person than Mark Twain took it seriously. Now Mark Twain visited The Holy Land after the right after the civil war on a very special trip. And he wrote a book that became famous. He entitled it Innocence Abroad because this tour that he was with had been made up of a group of very fervent fundamentalist Christians.
Now Mark Twain, Clemens, was not exactly a fundamentalist Christian. It's questionable whether he was a Christian at all. And so he wrote this book which is really a gesture in satire, and he called it Innocence Abroad because it's an account of their tour. Now some have found that account a little bit spurious. Well, it has its has its spots, but when it comes to this text, it's very and to this sense, they were coming down from the North.
They came into the Holy Land through Caesarea Philippi, and this is one of the first places they hit where it was where you had some nice remember, this is right after the Civil War and that there was vegetation, there was coolness, there was running water. It's a very beautiful place this where this took place. Anyway, when it comes to this text, Clemens, Mark Twain, the scurrilous one, takes it very seriously. Not that he accepts it, but he accepts the meaning that here Christ told Peter something very special about his being the rock on which he's going to build his edifice. Now that having been said, of course, I hasten to add is Mark Twain wasn't exactly a scripture scholar, but when the scholars get working on this text, there's no question about the text, authenticity, its integrity, and the literal meaning of it, I mean, far as words go.
Now when you come down to saying, what did Christ mean when he says, Peter, you're a rock and all this, I will build my church. Remember now we we it's a terrible mistake to read into our lord's time the meaning of church that we have today. Of course, that's a horrible mistake to do that in any kind of literary work. But the point is there's no question about this text. There's no question about Christ saying it, and there's no question about its evident meaning until you start asking yourself what does the meaning mean.
Then you get into little bit of trouble. But this is the great text on which the Catholic church of Jesus Christ has rested its case. You can't throw it out. Now the only other way of dealing with it is to twist and squirm and give it all kinds of interpretations, which of course has been done because obviously those who reject the church of Rome, those reject Peter as the head of the church, have to those who reject this, most of them accept this text, remember. So it's it's their problem to try to figure it out.
This text has extreme meaning for us today. I've just been reading some books, and they some you know, reading books is dangerous stuff. Gotta be very careful what you read. Anyway, the whole within the Catholic church and among clergy, even amongst some bishops, the concept of the Catholic church as it was held up until, say, twenty years ago, has been nibbled at, has been attenuated, has been thinned down until you the the the supremacy of Peter is is not today universally accepted by all Roman Catholics. This is a fact of life.
Let's face it. It's one of the great developments, one of the great revelations of modern contemporary theology, you know. So we're not fighting a windmill. And this question, is there a church? Is there a Catholic church?
Is there and by this I don't mean an assembly of the faithful united by faith. I mean a visible organization, something you can see and touch and feel and argue with and pay taxes to or what have you. I mean a visible organization, not an assembly of the faith united in some kind of a moral union. It it either is or it isn't. And if it isn't, let's admit it and get and get rid of it.
I can you see, I have sympathy. Have understanding for a man like Luther who wanted to get rid of the papacy because he thought it was a horrible aberration. At least he was consistent. It's like I I I can can deal with an atheist, but I can't deal with an agnostic. And so this is something where and then you see how important if there is if there is a church with a head called the pope, I don't care what what name you give.
Peter wasn't called pope. Then does he or does he not speak with authority? Now this is the keyword authority. He either does or he doesn't. And you have this dichotomy, and there's no nothing gray in between.
It either is or it ain't. And if it is not true, then away with it. Then we are simply supporting and furthering a sham, a lie, and certainly a grievous wound on the body of Christ, and Luther was right in trying to throw it out. And sayings go for Zwingli and Calvin and the rest if their supposition is correct. If, if, if, if.
Because you see, I do not so much today that people are going back to to the text is what what do we see in the New Testament as if that was the sole foundation of Christ's church. That's a strictly Protestant view, you see, but we have gotten a lot of it. Thanks to mister Boltman and company and his fine and loyal successors in the church. But the point is Christ never wrote a book. He never told anybody to write a book.
The Catholic church isn't founded upon a book or books or a library. It wasn't and it isn't. Christ gave his disciple No. And these texts are beyond dispute. These are not like the nativity texts.
They where Christ said, go and teach all nations. Teach them what? Give them a book that I'm giving to you. Get your old Xerox machine spinning and get and have a lot of flyers and leaflets and give them the good news printed. They they knew how to write.
People were writing things in those days. Whole libraries have been discovered long before Christ's time. He could have done that. He didn't. He gave a living message to his disciples and he said, I will be with you all all days.
And he didn't give that to the whole crowd. He never said that to the whole crowd. Never. Never. Never.
Said it to his chosen few. Now this text is it's either what it says or it isn't what it says. But whatever it says or doesn't say, this text has been known for some little time. Now what happened between our blessed lord's living and the sixteenth century, the great century of reformation as it's called? That's sixteen hundred years.
That's only three hundred years ago from us. Was the church all wrong. You go back to those earliest letters that we have like the Saint Clement of Rome, Saint Polycarp, and there you will see then or you have the the bishop from Lyons. There you will see in the very earliest days of the church. I'm not saying you have a full fledged view here of the church with a hierarchy and the pope, bishops and archbishops and cardos and curia and all that.
This is ridiculous to even think you're going to find it. It isn't there, and Christ didn't do it that way. But he did found an institution, but he didn't found a dead plant. He didn't put it in alcohol to preserve it unchanged. And this is where Newman, at the end of the nineteenth century brought in his great book called The Development of Doctrine.
He had a much better idea of evolution and development than Darwin had and before Darwin. This is Newman. So you're not talking about something static. If a thing is alive, it isn't dead, and if it's alive, it's subject to change. What kind of change?
There's the point. Growth? The man of 32 is slightly different from the baby of two years, But is it the same person or isn't it? There's your problem. And so today when we have this text, I'm there's no question about the validity of this text.
The Greek is perfectly clear, perfectly clear, I mean, far as words are concerned. There's no scrambling about it or throwing it out or or having it as an interpolation or something that's been added to being spirit, none of that counts. It's and as I say, what does it mean? What does it mean? All I can say is here's what Mark Twain and he was not exactly a a first rate Christian, but he certainly said this is what it means, that Christ not that he accepted it, but he accepted the meaning of the text.
And it's rather unique in this book if you've read it, Innocence Abroad. It's well worth reading. It's extremely good. It's not that I discovered it, but that point is I discovered it late in life. But this text is rightfully important for us today.
We have a holy father who's being criticized because he's going to his flock to shepherd it. Yes. His own people aren't criticizing him for it. Say, you ought to stay in Rome and run affairs there. We have a holy father who is the pastor, who's trying to be, and who's trying to show the way of Christ in a world that needs it desperately.
Let us be loyal. Name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.