Is that your final answer?

Matthew 16:13-20 (CEB)

Now when Jesus came to the area of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Human One is?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”

He said, “And what about you? Who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Then Jesus replied, “Happy are you, Simon son of Jonah, because no human has shown this to you. Rather my Father who is in heaven has shown you. I tell you that you are Peter. And I’ll build my church on this rock. The gates of the underworld won’t be able to stand against it. I’ll give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Anything you fasten on earth will be fastened in heaven. Anything you loosen on earth will be loosened in heaven.” Then he ordered the disciples not to tell anybody that he was the Christ.

Jesus, along with his disciples, had gone to Caesarea Philippi, which was about 25 miles northeast of the Sea of Galilee. It was outside the domain of Herod Antipas, and in fact it was a region where Gentiles outnumbered Jews. That was what Jesus wanted; he went there to get away from his public ministry and spend time with his inner circle of disciples. William Barclay, the great Bible commentator, said that Jesus knew he was reaching the end of his ministry and wanted to make sure that the disciples were ready for what was about to take place.

The great United Methodist pastor, author and educator Will Willimon says that this passage marks the beginning of a new phase in the Gospel story. Up until this point in Matthew, Jesus has been teaching his disciples. Now, says Willimon, he is testing them on what they have learned.

This particular pop quiz has only two questions. “Who do other people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”

When it comes to TV game shows, two of the most popular are “Jeopardy!” and “Family Feud.” On “Jeopardy!”, the questions – even though they are worded as “answers” -- are all matters of well-documented fact. Who was the president when the stock market crashed, causing the Great Depression? What element has the atomic number 12? What film won the most Oscars without winning Best Picture?

On “Family Feud,” of course, the questions are quite different. They are more open-ended: Name something you might forget to bring along on vacation. Name a food that can be cooked on the grill. How many children would you consider too many for a family? What you are trying to guess is not the right answer to those questions, because there is no one right answer. You are trying to guess how other people answered the question when they participated in an opinion survey. If the player guesses something that is a very popular answer, given by a large number of participants in the survey, their family gets more points. If the player guesses an unpopular answer, that few if any people gave to the survey, the family gets fewer points, or none at all.

Both games are fun to watch, but they are completely different. And the types of players they attract are different as well. Jeopardy players are very focused. There’s an online test you can take to apply to be on “Jeopardy!” Most of the players who are selected to actually appear on the show are already possessed of a lot of general knowledge, or else they wouldn’t have passed the online test.

Even so, once they get that call to come to Los Angeles for a taping, they begin cramming for the show, memorizing lists of presidents or Best Picture Oscar winners or state capitals. They don’t know what the actual categories will be, of course, but they want to try to cover as much ground as possible and hope for the best.

The families who appear on “Family Feud” want to win the big money, of course, but they’re a lot more casual, a lot more relaxed, and they seem to be having a lot more fun. There’s less pressure, especially since there are a range of possible answers.

Even if you don’t come up with the best answer, a pretty good answer will still help your team alive. And you’re not carrying the whole burden yourself; you’re sharing the work, and the wealth, with four of your relatives.

Jesus’ first question to the disciples is a “Family Feud” style question. “Who do others say that I am?” Several of the disciples pop up with the answers. For the disciples, this is almost like gossip. This is like sports fans arguing about the merits of a certain college quarterback. There’s no pressure; no one is being put on the spot. It’s just a chance to tell Jesus some of the things you’ve heard other people say about him.

“Some people say you’re John the Baptist.”

“Some people say you’re the reincarnation of Elijah.”

“Some people say you’re the reincarnation of Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets.”

Jesus, of course, could not be the reincarnation of John the Baptist, because the two of them were related, both about the same age, and had clearly and publicly interacted with each other, and John the Baptist had proclaimed Jesus to be the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, and had indicated that Jesus’ power and significance were far superior to John’s own. But not everyone had seen or heard John in person; many had only heard about him. In those days, people had to rely more on hearsay and second-hand information. If you’re getting all your information through the grapevine, some of it is going to be wrong, and it’s easy to imagine that some people thought Jesus might have been a resurrected version of John the Baptist after John was beheaded.

Elijah, another of the overheard guesses about Jesus’ true identity, was considered the greatest of the prophets. Some Jews expected the return or reincarnation of Elijah to happen before the Messiah – they expected him to play a role like the one John the Baptist played, of announcing and heralding the Messiah’s arrival.

The fact that some people thought Jesus was the reincarnation of Jeremiah is interesting as well. According to William Barclay, there was a story among the Jews that before the people had gone into exile, Jeremiah had hidden the Ark of the Covenant and the altar from David’s temple in a cave on Mount Nebo, and those people predicted that Jeremiah would return prior to the appearance of the Messiah and retrieve those items in preparation for the Messiah’s coming.

So that’s why some people were looking for Jeremiah to be reincarnated, and thought Jesus might be him.

The disciples had probably heard people say negative things about Jesus as well, but if they brought those up here, Matthew doesn’t tell us about it. Jesus already knew that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes didn’t like him; they’d confronted each other directly, face-to-face. So there was no need to tell Jesus about that.

Anyway, it was easy to answer the “Family Feud” question about what other people think about Jesus. But then, we move to the “Jeopardy!” question, the question with a right and wrong answer, and the question that puts you on the spot when you answer it.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Caesarea Philippi was an interesting backdrop for the question about Jesus’ true nature and identity. As I said, Jews were in the minority, and the area had a lot of different religious traditions. There were ancient temples which had been used to worship Baal. There was a temple to the Greek god Pan – the Romans had a similar god whom they called Faunus -- and the area was closely identified with that temple and with Pan. There was also a temple to Caesar, which had been built by Herod the Great, the Herod from the Christmas story, and the father of Herod Antipas.

And yet, Caesarea Philippi was also the headwaters of the Jordan River. So it may not have been primarily Jewish territory in Jesus’ day, but symbolically, if you associated Judaea with the Jordan River, there was a connection.

In this place, where various religious traditions were represented, Jesus – the son of a carpenter, raised in the backwater town of Nazareth – is asking the disciples who they believe him to be.

Peter, who during Jesus’ ministry was often the first disciple to speak up, lived up to that reputation again here – at least, his response is the only one Matthew tells us about. Some of Peter’s off-the-cuff remarks are things he regrets later, but this time, he’s right on the money.

I mentioned “Family Feud” and “Jeopardy!” Another game show that just about everyone is familiar with is “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

Unlike “Jeopardy!,” where you have to answer as quickly as possible, contestants on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” are encouraged to talk out their answers, think about them, second-guess themselves. Once the contestant settles on something, the host then asks, “Is that your final answer?”

Well, Simon Peter did not need a chance to talk things out. He didn’t need a lifeline, and he didn’t need to phone a friend. He answered right away – an immediate, “Jeopardy!” type of answer.

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

The people who were overheard by the disciples thought of Jesus, not as the Messiah, but as a precursor to the Messiah: an advance man, a prophet, a spokesman. Why didn’t they see Jesus as the Messiah himself? They – like some of the disciples – were expecting a conquering king, someone who could lead an army of rebellion against the Romans and drive them out of Judaea, never to return.

Jesus, perhaps, did not project the aura of a military leader or the kind of king to whom the Judaeans had become accustomed. In fact, he was not that kind of leader, and his kingdom would not be the kind of kingdom the Jews were expecting.

Simon Peter was a fisherman – not a scribe or a scholar or any sort of educated man. But Peter had seen enough of Jesus’ miraculous power and had heard enough of his wisdom to recognize Jesus’ messianic nature. Jesus tells Peter that God the Father had revealed this to Peter and put this answer in Peter’s mouth.

Jesus then makes a play on the name Peter, which means “rock.” Jesus had given Simon the name Peter back when they first met. The name is “Petros” in Greek, which is why we know him as Peter, but it would have been “Cephas” in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke. In either case, it meant “rock.” Jesus says “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”

At this point, we encounter a difference of opinion between Protestants, like those of us in the United Methodist Church, and Catholics. Catholics believe that when Jesus said “on this rock I will build my church,” he was ordaining Peter in a very special way. The Catholics believe that Peter was the first pope, and they believe that all of the popes who have followed Peter have inherited his special divine authority.

There’s even a Catholic belief, based on this scripture passage, that Jesus gave Peter the authority to decide who is to be admitted to heaven, which is why, in popular culture, you sometimes see St. Peter with a big ledger book, standing at the gates of Heaven deciding whether to admit people.

One misconception that some Protestants have is that Catholics consider the pope to be without fault, and that they believe everything he says is inerrant. That’s not quite true. The Catholics believe that certain statements made by the Pope are inerrant – special proclamations that are identified as coming from “the throne of St. Peter.” Those statements are considered inerrant, but things the Pope says in casual conversation or in the normal course of church business are not.

In our Protestant world view, Peter was an important, even crucial, leader of the early church, but just that. So how do we explain Jesus’ comment that “on this rock I will build my church?”

Perhaps Jesus was just predicting Peter’s leadership in the early church, which was undeniable and substantial, without turning Peter into some sort of magical figure.

Other interpeters say that “this rock” refers not to Peter, but to the faith that Peter exhibited by acknowledging Jesus’ identity as the Messiah. “Upon this rock, the kind of faith that Rocky just demonstrated, I will build my church.”

Others believe that Jesus is, in effect, calling Peter the first true convert – the first Christian, as we understand Christians – because he was the first to publicly acknowledge Jesus as his savior. If you were to open an ice cream shop, and someone comes in and buys the first cone of mint chocolate chip ice cream, when you celebrate your 10^th anniversary you might invite that first customer to the party and say something like “it all started with that first cone.” In that sense, the church was “built” on Peter, because it all started with that first proclamation of faith.

Not long after Peter’s bold proclamation, Peter – who had not yet been gifted with the Holy Spirit, which would happen on the day of Pentecost -- denied that he even knew Jesus at all. Peter became a great leader of the early church, but he was, in the end, just as human as you or me. There can be ups and downs in our faith. Our salvation is sometimes a process, and that process might have ups and down, advances and relapses.

As Barclay points out, Protestants and Catholics tend to read this passage already believing one thing or another about Simon Peter, and we tend to read into the passage what we already believe.

One thing is clear – Jesus speaks about building the church, and in order to build that church, people must acknowledge who Jesus is. The church is the evidence of God’s kingdom in the here and now, and the church depends on each of us acknowledging that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus is our savior and the intercessor through whom we can approach the holy throne. Without that, this is just a community club or a charity or something similar.

The question that Jesus asks the disciples, and that Peter answers so boldly, is the same question that Jesus asks us, day by day. Who do we think that Jesus is? If we think that Jesus was just a wise teacher, maybe we’ll make some effort to be nice to people every now and then, when it’s convenient. But if we think Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and if we really understand what that means for us personally, then we will be transformed.

We must answer this question ourselves. This isn’t “Family Feud,” and we aren’t trying to second-guess what others believe. We may want to know what others believe about Jesus for purposes of evangelism and conversation, but the crucial question can only be answered by each of us for himself or herself.

John Wesley believed that while salvation is God’s gift to us, not anything we can earn or deserve, someone who is a true Christian will be known by their behavior, their priorities, their treatment of their fellow human beings. The way we answer Jesus’ question – who do you say that I am? -- will determine whether we are set on that path, the path towards a Christian life.