Gates of Hell

Propers: The Thirteenth Sunday After the Pentecost (Lectionary 21), AD 2023 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Gods and rocks and the gates of hell. Well, this ought to be fun.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus travels with His disciples to Caesarea Philippi, which is a pretty wild place for them to go. I guarantee you that when they first set out to follow Jesus, they did not expect to wind up here. Caesarea Philippi is a major pagan shrine. It’s got Greek, Roman, and Canaanite gods all higgledy-piggledy, not at all where you'd expect a good rabbi to guide His flock.

Israel, we must recall, is a tiny little country, roughly the size of New Jersey. The reason why it keeps punching above its weight class, historically speaking, is because it lies at the crossroads of continents. Before the sea was truly mastered, before caravans conquered the desert, Israel lay at the intersection of Africa, Europe, and Asia. Down its spine ran two great arteries of travel and of trade: the one that concerns us here is the Via Maris, the Way of the Sea, betwixt the mountains and Mediterranean.

Along the Way of the Sea, in what today is the Golan Heights, an ancient natural spring had carved a cave from the sheer face of a cliff, providing blessed sweetwater for every warrior and wayfarer traipsing through the wilderness. In their gratitude and relief, travellers started erecting shrines to the divinities of the wastes, most prominently Pan, the Greco-Roman goat god of woodlands, wilds, and panic. Ever since Alexander, some three centuries before Christ, Pan had ruled this place.

And if that weren’t all pagan enough, the Herodians, those puppet-kings set over Judea by Rome, spruced the whole thing up and renamed it Caesarea Philippi: “Caesar’s place, from his buddy Herod Philip.” So it’s a symbol of occupation, a monument to empire. Imagine then Jesus standing there, surrounded by statues of hoofed and horned deities, the disciples looking decidedly uncomfortable, and He chooses here and now to ask them: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

Now there’s a loaded question for a number of reasons. It’s a funny phrase, isn’t it, that “Son of Man”? On the one hand, it’s just a semitic idiom for a person, a human being. The son of a duck is a duck; the son of a man is a man. But as you well may know, the phrase Son of Man, in the time of Jesus, refers to a specific idea, a specific prophecy, found in the Book of Daniel.

Daniel was important in the time of Jesus Christ. Scholars debate its composition and compilation, but regardless of its origins, Daniel started a clock. It gave a timeline for the coming of the Messiah, who would not be like the kings and priests of old, who one and all failed, but who would descend from heaven to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. That’s why everyone was looking for the Christ at Jesus’ birth.

Daniel spoke, in wondrous visions, of God as an ancient King seated upon a heavenly throne, sharing His authority with another divine figure of some sort, a younger monarch, a heavenly Son to the heavenly Father. And Daniel said this King of Kings would appear as a Son of Man; that is, would look like one of us, while being so much more. And Daniel also spoke of four great empires, the last of which would be toppled by a rock hurtling from heaven, so that this final empire would be turned over to God’s saints.

For the Judeans of Jesus’ day, living beneath the boot of Rome, the interpretation of this vision seemed obvious. Four empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Each had conquered God’s people. Now they awaited the Son of Man, and this rock from heaven, to give over Rome to the saints. The time was nigh. The time was now.

So Jesus says, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Whom are they to expect? Some say John the Baptist, arisen from the dead. Others say Elijah, who was prophesied to come. “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus presses. And, oh, the stakes have changed. Did you catch it? Jesus just identified Himself as Son of Man. He is the heavenly monarch, in other words, the God sent down by God.

And Simon—good old impulsive, impetuous Simon—blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” Messiah, of course, means Christ, the Anointed. But Son of God was a term reserved for the Kings of Israel and descendents of David. It’s funny, really, that Son of Man is a divine title, while Son of God is a human one. Simon puts the two together: the Son of Man is the Son of God, and both of them are Jesus.

“Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah,” Jesus cries, “for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” It’s a confession of Simon’s faith, his divine inspiration. “And I tell you,” Jesus continues, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” This, mind you, so far as I can tell, is the first time ever that the word “Peter” becomes a name.

See, Jesus here calls Simon “the Rock,” Cephas in Aramaic, Petrus in Latin. And He recognizes Simon as the Rock because Simon recognizes Him as the Son of Man, both derived from Daniel’s prophecy. Peter is the Rock who will topple all of Rome. And he does, doesn’t he? With the hindsight of history, we know that in decades to come Peter will take the Gospel to Rome, and that the church he founds there—the ἐκκλησία, or assembly—will in time accomplish the impossible. The empire that crucified Christ will come to worship Him as the Risen Lord.

Now we can see clearly why Jesus chose this venue, this beating Roman heart in God’s own Promised Land. Here in Caesarea Philippi, He commissions Peter to bind and to loose, which is a rabbinical phrase for religious interpretive authority. “Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” Jesus entrusts unto Peter communal leadership, to shepherd Jesus’ flock, which mantle Peter will take up after the Resurrection.

And then to seal the secret: “He sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah.” Christians call this the messianic secret: Jesus’ explicit instruction to hide His role from the world until after He rose from the dead. That might be another good reason to come to Caesarea Philippi: not a lot of Pharisees or Sadducees here to hear the teaching. And it demonstrates that He always understood His kingship as otherworldly.

By this I don’t mean pie in the sky, but otherworldly in the sense that He sought no earthly power, no uprisings, no armies, no riches or harems or perks of the job. He was not like the kings of old. Truly He is the Messiah, the only true and worthy King.

And even Peter doesn’t know what that means, not really, not yet. He knows that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God. But he doesn’t realize what all that entails. Peter’s not ready for the Crown of Thorns and Cruciform Throne. None of them are. How could they be? But He is preparing them, as He prepares us all, to witness to a wonder that to this very day still overthrows all the world.

When I was a child, I used to imagine this immovable rock, with the gates of Hades, the gates of death and of hell, crashing against it like waves breaking upon the shore. But that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Gates are for defense; they cannot advance or attack. It’s the rock that shatters the gates, hurtling as a meteor from the heavens, to batter down the barrier, to topple the worldly walls of hell. The Kingdom of Christ assaults the grave and leaves not one sinner behind.

This is the rock He has sent to our world. This is the war He has won. And all those bound in death and sin are loosed to life in Him. For the great god Pan is dead.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.






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