The Rev. Dr. Brandon Perrine
Proper 16 A
Matthew 16:13-20
August 23, 2026
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
~o~
Peter finally did it—the other disciples should have been proud. They all knew what it was like to fail and fail splendidly. But this time—this one time, Peter got one right! In fact, he got it so right that Jesus tells him that his confession will be the very rock on which the church would be built. And to that church, Jesus would entrust the very keys to the kingdom—the power to bind and to loose, to forgive and the power to condemn.
Very likely, those of you who grew up in the Roman Catholic tradition remember a somewhat different interpretation of those verses. You were likely taught that Peter himself, not his confession, was the rock upon which the church was built and the keys to the kingdom were given to Peter and his successors forever, the bishops of Rome—the popes. This has been a matter of some debate since the days of the early church and a matter that likely won’t be resolved to anyone’s real satisfaction this morning.
But whether the rock is Peter himself or Peter’s confession, there is something important happening here. Jesus asks a question, Peter answers it, and Jesus tells him that something important is going to be built upon that answer.
Peter and his fellow disciples had been all over Judea with Jesus. They’d heard him speak to crowds, seen him minister to those with various ailments and needs, felt his magnetic presence. When others identified Jesus with John the Baptist, Elijah, or another of the dead prophets, the disciples knew there was something more to him.
If you are reading or hearing Matthew’s gospel for the first time, this question provides a good halfway-point check-in. “Who do you say that I am?” Ten chapters later the question is answered again by the guard at the foot of the cross: “Surely this man was God’s Son!” It’s the core question of the Christian faith. And the answer matters.
One could argue that it reveals more about the one giving it, about us, than it does about Jesus. Our quests to uncover the truth about him often end up showing us a mirror of ourselves. If the Jesus we find ends up looking and sounding a lot like us; if the Jesus we find only comforts us, reassures us, and gives us peace; if the Jesus we find is one we can accept with wide open arms, that should give us pause to ask if we have really found Jesus or if we have just found ourselves in Jesus’ clothes.
If the gospels are to be believed, then the Jesus they portray was complex and, at times, not entirely likeable. He pushed. He offended. And he asked a lot out of the people who followed him. The folks who boil Jesus down to “all about love” are missing some key aspects of his life and message. Not that he wasn’t about love, but that’s not all he was about.
And that is part of what makes this question so important. “Who do you say that I am?” is not simply a question about getting our theology right. It is a question about what kind of person we are going to follow.
If I’m honest, whether it’s the version in Matthew or the ones in Mark and Luke, this is one of my very favorite stories about Jesus. I feel the weight of his question every time I read it. For some, that might make it one of their least favorite stories about Jesus. But I love thinking about that question. I love reading about that question. I even love preaching about that question.
As I said earlier, it is the core question of our Christian faith. And it demands more than thinking about, or reading about, or preaching about. It demands answering.
Who do you say that he is? And, to take it a step further, why do you say it? The answer matters. The answer matters because we are Christians—followers of Christ, students of Jesus. As a noncreedal church, we at New England Congregational take responsibility to answer these questions for ourselves. We take seriously the witnesses of the early creeds, of Peter, of the guard at the foot of the cross. We weigh them against our personal experiences and our deeply held convictions. We come to our own answers, but we hold them gently, knowing that like life itself, faith is ever-evolving, ever-changing.
But at the end of the day, who Jesus was—is—informs who we’re trying to be and become. And that’s where the question gets particularly interesting.
A few years back, we went out with friends on New Year’s Eve. They ran into some people they knew and introduced us. One of them proceeded to call me Daniel throughout the evening. I corrected her, but she just laughed and said, “I’m just going to call you Daniel.” She might have had one too many. But when it comes to Jesus, we ought to do better. She had me confused with someone else. And I knew she had it wrong because I know who I am.
Jesus isn’t John the Baptist. He isn’t Elijah or one of the other dead prophets. So who is he, and why do we say so? And perhaps there is another question hiding inside that one.
If we say we know who Jesus is, then what does that require of us? Because if Jesus is the person the gospels portray—the person who welcomed people others rejected, who challenged religious insiders, who spoke uncomfortable truths, who told his followers to forgive extravagantly, who warned them about the dangers of wealth and power, who insisted that love of neighbor was not optional—then answering the question of who Jesus is begins to make demands of us. It becomes harder to simply make Jesus in our own image. Not because we need to come up with the one perfect answer, but because whatever answer we give will eventually shape us. If Jesus is who we say he is, then we have to ask what it means to follow him.
And that means we answer his question not just with our words, but with our lives. With whom we welcome. With whether we choose mercy over being right. With what we do with our power and our resources. With whether we are willing to see people the world has taught us not to see.
We may disagree about precisely who Jesus was—or is. As a noncreedal church, I think that is not only permissible but important. But sooner or later, our answer to “Who do you say that I am?” becomes visible. And perhaps that is the deeper question Jesus is asking us to consider. Not only, “Who do you say that I am?” But, “Who are you becoming because you say that I am?”
Maybe that is what makes Peter’s confession a rock. Not because Peter finally figured Jesus out. Not because he found the perfect words. But because he answered the question—and then had to spend the rest of his life figuring out what that answer meant.
Maybe that is what it means to be the church, too. Not to be people who have finally figured Jesus out, but people willing to keep asking who he is, willing to answer honestly, and willing to let that answer change us.
Who do we say that he is? And why do we say it? And who are we becoming because of our answer?
