Sunday Sermon Manuscript, August 23

Finding What Is Hidden

Matthew 16:13–20

Why the Road Home Goes So Quickly

1. I took my son to his school in Manhattan, New York, and came back. What we picture in our minds and what we actually meet always seem to be two different things. I had assumed he would walk in boldly, but I sensed a slight awkwardness in his face. I suppose it hit him that this was the real beginning.

2. I dropped my daughter off at her school in Pennsylvania and hurried back just last evening. Coming home alone, all sorts of thoughts came over me. This is probably something you have already been through, or something still ahead of you—but because I met this moment almost the way you tackle an assignment, I still don't quite know whether I did it well or not.

3. Lately it struck me that when I got married, my mother and my mother-in-law were exactly the age I am now. I wondered where the time had gone, and as I thought of all the ways my parents must have worried and prepared when they sent their own child off to be married, I felt what a foolish child I am, to understand their hearts only now.

4. Last Monday I drove down to San Jose to comfort a close pastor friend who had recently lost his mother, and we shared a meal together. Since several pastors were with us, after the meal we went to encourage another pastor who had just opened a coffee shop, and we sat and talked about this and that.

5. In the middle of our conversation, a white gentleman greeted us warmly. He said he worked at a company called LinkedIn as a headhunter, and he asked what company we were with. As the conversation went on, he kept asking in detail—what company, what field, what country we had come from—so we told him we were pastors. He was startled, and said he had never met so many Korean pastors at once.

6. All at once the subject changed. He told us he was also a Methodist—not now, but he had been—and in that short time we talked about a great deal. Afterward I think I dwelt for a long while on the fact that saying "we are pastors," "I am a pastor," came out with more hesitation than I had expected.

7. When people ask, "I'm a pastor!" does not come out of me in a single breath. Perhaps it is because, once I step outside the church, there are not many occasions to say it at all.

8. And when I think about it, our members probably don't have many occasions either—to go out into the world and say, "I'm someone who goes to church! I am a Christian!"

9. In the passage we read today, Jesus throws his disciples a question: "Who do you say that I am?" And I found myself wondering—isn't that same question being thrown at our own lives, too, over a long stretch of time?

10. I have become a pastor; I have reached the age to understand my parents' hearts; and yet to me—a pastor still preaching from the pulpit—Jesus is asking the very same thing: Who do you say that I am?

The Same Event, Different Points of View

11. Films like Courage Under Fire, Vantage Point, and Hoodwinked! share a common device: people who witnessed a single event tell it from completely different points of view. Through characters who tell utterly opposite—or entirely different—versions of the story, we sense that someone is lying, and the fun comes from watching the main character work to bring the truth to light.

12. In fact, films built on this concept draw all of their enjoyment from those clashing perspectives. Among Han Kang's novels, Human Acts uses the same kind of storytelling, letting a faded history come into sharper focus through many different points of view.

13. In this way, differing perspectives can drive a story toward conflict, or toward filling in what has been missing.

14. And there is one more thing. A story carries a peculiar delight: it lets the one watching the film or reading the novel choose a side for themselves. Depending on our temperament, we side with and affirm some of these differing characters, or we reject and deny others—and being so vividly alive inside the story is, I think, exactly the pleasure of watching and reading these tales.

15. When we look at today's passage, several different gazes toward Jesus appear. And in the difference between those gazes, the text quietly reveals what lies hidden. It can even be read as putting the same question to us who read it: from what vantage point are we looking at Jesus?

The Same Jesus, Different Gazes (vv. 13–14, and the yeast passage before it)

16. Looking at the same Jesus, people see an entirely different Jesus depending on where they are standing. When the gaze is different, of course the things one sees are different—and so are the things one fails to see.

17. To the Pharisees, Jesus was seen as a dangerous figure. To the Sadducees—the wealthy priestly class that controlled the temple—Jesus was an unsettling one. The Pharisees' gaze was distorted, I think, less by the religious power they held than by an anxiety at work underneath it: that so many people were following Jesus, and that everything they had long enjoyed might come crashing down.

18. The Sadducees were likely moved by much the same thing. People who had ordinarily kept a certain distance from the Pharisees now made Jesus a common enemy, demanding a sign and putting him to the test. As they pressed him this way, an uncomfortable alliance formed between the two groups, each trying to catch Jesus in a slip—and naturally, their gaze was distorted.

19. In response, Jesus in today's passage gives the teaching, "Beware of the yeast." Within the Jewish community, yeast had long been understood as false teaching. Toward the Pharisees and Sadducees—who want to keep every privilege for themselves while speaking of a tradition emptied of love, immersing themselves in a law that never leads anyone to grace, condemning others without understanding or empathy, clinging to an authoritarianism with no humility in it—Jesus is saying that these people are "like yeast."

20. The disciples don't really grasp what Jesus means, and at the word "yeast" they fret in the wrong direction: "We didn't bring any bread." Perhaps the disciples' gaze sees Jesus only as a worker of miracles, a man of power—so that, though they stand nearest to him of all, they still cannot perceive the depth of who he is, or why he does the work he does.

21. So then—is the yeast really only about the false prophets, the Pharisees and Sadducees? Might it not also include the disciples, who see Jesus merely as a miracle-worker? Seen in today's terms, might it not point to churchgoers who are held captive by a simple slogan—"Believe in Jesus, heaven; don't believe, hell"—while remaining indifferent to the varied, complicated, and deep questions the Christian life actually demands?

22. Or might it be speaking to those with a lightweight faith, who treat a prosperity religion—believe in Jesus and everything goes your way, you receive blessing, you get rich—as if it were the whole of Christianity? Could it even be us ourselves, who leave all of this untended and are content simply to go to church in a comfortable, half-hearted way?

The Hidden Source, the Overflowing Water (v. 13a — Caesarea Philippi)

23. When we read the passage, Jesus does not arrange to prove himself through some loud and impossible riddle. He asks his question in such a way that he can be found in the very place where we live our ordinary lives—not in anything special, but in the place where, the moment we understand, we are able to see. What is hidden has not been concealed so that we cannot find it; it has been set close by so that we can—and there he asks.

24. Today's setting, Caesarea Philippi, is a place where the snowmelt from Mount Hermon overflows out of the rocks. When you go there on pilgrimage, you are astonished at the sheer volume of water. The scenery along the way looks like desert that surely could hold no water at all—and yet from Hermon, with its near-perpetual snow, the meltwater runs hidden inside the rock and comes bursting out like springs, in an amount that leaves you amazed. Though nothing shows on the surface, the water flows hidden—and flows over in abundance—and it makes you realize that you must not judge what is hidden by what happens to meet the eye.

25. For this very reason, it was a place overrun with pagan temples and idol worship. In particular, the cave once called "the gate of Hades" was there, and the site was named after the Roman emperor—Caesarea Philippi. It is in that place, thick with pagan religion and the shadow of empire, that Jesus asks his disciples his question. Perhaps, too, when he praises Peter in verse 18 and says that "the gates of death will not prevail," he says it with this Caesarea Philippi—the most active center of pagan worship—in mind.

26. Jesus does not speak of himself in complicated ways, or often, and even when he does speak, he does not say it so that we catch it at once. In that sense, faith is not something that shows itself through the gathering of information or through some grand decision. It is built, rather, through the opening of eyes that recognize the One who is near—through the joy of at last finding what has been hidden.

The Confession Finally Found — "Who Do You Say That I Am?" (vv. 15–20 — Peter's Confession)

27. A confession of faith is not something we can arrive at by collecting the various rumors we have heard. It is when, in the midst of a tireless, unbroken relationship with the Lord, our eyes are opened at some moment and we come to see what we had not been able to see—that is what we may call a confession of faith.

28. No one, from the very first time they come to church, says, "I believe in Jesus—I am saved!" Time goes by; relationships build up within the church; and even though it is not always only good between one another, and even though it can feel like flailing about, like nothing much is changing at all—this steady faithfulness one day opens our eyes and brings us to understanding. Faith takes root in us in just that way.

29. Today Jesus asks the disciples an unexpected question: "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" (v. 13) The disciples answer with the most familiar things, the things people had been chattering about: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah...

30. As if he had expected exactly this, he soon puts another question to them: "But who do you say that I am?" (v. 15) This, perhaps, was a question that fit Caesarea Philippi.

31. Right up until today's passage, Jesus had been performing miracle after miracle—the feeding of the five thousand, the feeding of the four thousand, one right after another. And here the Pharisees' and Sadducees' demand for a sign is an attempt to push Jesus, as though denying the very miracles unfolding before their eyes, into a slip or into an unavoidable conflict.

32. In the middle of a genuinely frustrating, seemingly answerless situation, Jesus turns his eyes to his disciples and throws out the question, "Who do you say that I am?" Was it a test? Or was he really asking out of a genuine wondering? Or was he simply worn out by people who, even with such crowds pressing in, would not acknowledge him and kept treating him as an enemy? We cannot know for certain—but this question reads as though it is given not only to the disciples, but to everyone who reads this passage.

33. In verse 16, Peter's famous confession follows: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (v. 16) Jesus praises this confession lavishly. And in verse 17 he says that this confession was not something any human being made known, but something revealed by "my Father in heaven."

34. Here we must remember that realization—the discovering and finding of what we did not know—is not something achieved as an "accomplishment," but is a gift of grace. Each religion says something different about what it means to "have realized" the truth; and for us, the point is that we must be able to say we came to know it through "grace given as a gift."

35. It was through the gift of grace God gave that Peter was able to confess, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!" And in verse 18, the words "on this rock, Peter, I will build my church, and the gates of death will not prevail against it" can be understood to mean this: the very place where the water springs up, the very place where all the pagan gods were held to be special and given sacrifice—that place he has now turned into a firm and solid ground where a new church is being built.

36. A person who comes to hold a faith confessed through God's gift of grace is no longer dragged around by the powers that once held sway. That very same spot is transformed into a place of faith's confession, a place where the gift of "grace" is put on display.

37. "Peter, and the church built upon the rock"—taken literally, this has been understood as the church established firmly upon the name of Peter, and the early church came to see Peter as the first pope, the rock of the church. But in truth, the meaning of Peter as the church built on this rock points to the one who, like Peter, has received the gift of grace—and it is such people who become the firm rock of the church.

38. It is true for me, and true for us: if you yourselves can confess the Lord as Lord through the "gift of grace you have received," then that very place is the firm rock, the place where the church is built.

39. To put it another way—the reason Peter is remembered as Jesus' foremost disciple through this confession is not that he was clever, but that he finally recognized the One who was hidden and yet nearest of all. This is what we must remember.

That Day Is Coming — So Look for Him Now

40. "He is hidden, yet he is not far off." Even today, Jesus stands beyond the rumors and beyond our narrow field of vision—and yet he stands nearest of all.

41. The Pharisee's place, wary of a dangerous figure; the Sadducee's place, demanding a sign; the disciple's place, longing only for power—each of these looks at Jesus with different eyes. So then, where are we standing today, and what are we seeing, and what are we missing?

42. Time passes, and that day comes. The son who once did nothing but trail along after his mother has now leapt bravely into a life of his own, and before long he will be old enough to be sent off in marriage himself.

43. And the day of God, the day that God is bringing about, will most certainly come as well. In this time that races past like an arrow, my hope is that you and I will not put it off, but that here, in this very place, today, we will seek out and recognize and confess the One who is hidden.

44. "Who do you say that I am?" Each in our own place in life, through the grace that is given to us like a gift—my prayer is that you and I will strive, today, to answer this question.