Num 20:1-13, Ps 95:1-2,6-9, Mt 16:13-23
This Gospel has been so tied to the Pope and the founding of the Church that it can be hard to hear what else it has to tell us. It is, of course, the story of the crucial encounter between Jesus and Peter. The story that makes it clear Jesus intended a group of people to follow in his footsteps and that they needed a leader who was open to the voice of God. Therefore, a leader who would recognize Jesus was the Son of God.
However, this story is part of Sacred Scripture, so it has more to tell us than what happened. We believe Scripture is the living Word of God, and as such, we can continue to hear God’s voice by reading and listening to what we read. In this case, I think we have a model of how God continues to encounter people. Haven’t you heard preachers, or read reflective articles, that ask, “Who is Jesus for you? Jesus did not just ask Peter but he asks us today, “Who do you say that I am?”
Just like Peter, the Apostles and the Israelites in the desert centuries before them, we have to decide who Jesus is. Is there a presence of God acting on this earth or not? Do we trust in a God who can bring life giving water from a stone? Or are we still wandering, 40 years and more in a desert of our own making? Each of us has to answer that question. How we answer it makes all the difference for us and for everyone around us.
How we answer, isn’t just a personal issue because the reading says, upon this rock I will build my Church. That rock is not just Peter, that’s every person who recognizes that Jesus is God. Each of us, who knows that God is here and present, and active and saving us from our fears and anxiety, each of us is the Church that Jesus founded. Because to know God’s presence is not to have figured it out by “flesh and blood” but to have it revealed to us by Jesus’ heavenly Father. It is Jeremiah who tells us plainly, “I will place my law within them and write it one their hearts.” We know who Jesus is because God gave each of us a gift that deep down even the gates of hell can’t disturb. Today we sit and pray because we know what Peter knew, what the Apostles knew that day. Jesus, is the Son of the Living God and that makes all the difference.
Does that mean it’s easy to accept and live out? How many times did the Israelites question whether God would deliver? They doubted, they were afraid, they thought they knew better. Don’t we still do the same things? This part of the story is just as much about us and how it is to relate to God as it is a story of people centuries ago.
You would think that if you have been led through the Red Sea and seen Egyptian soldiers drowned in the closing of that Sea, if you have seen the tablets of the Ten Commandments, if you had watched water gush from a rock in the desert, if you had been there with Jesus, in person, that you wouldn’t have any doubts about God. Don’t we think that? But that isn’t what the Gospel and Sacred Scripture stories tell us. Even the people right there at the time doubted. What does Peter do moments after he identifies Jesus as the Son of God? The Gospel says, he rebukes, do you believe, rebukes Jesus? Telling Jesus, he is making a mistake, that it can’t be that way. How often do we think God certainly doesn’t know what God’s doing? That life would be better if it went the way we had planned it. Faith in God doesn’t clear the path or take away the struggle.
I suspect none of this is new to anyone who thinks about it. We know these experiences from our lives. So today, let’s pray together and have faith that whatever comes next, God is, in fact, with us.
