FIVE
FACES OF THE ROCK:
A
meditation on Matthew 16:13
INTRODUCTION
“Who do people say
that I am?” Jesus asks and seems to ask of his disciples just a simple report,
perhaps a bit of a philosophical discussion on the vagueries of the crowd
ending with a chummy, “What can ya do?
What can ya do?”
But then comes the kicker: “Who do
YOU say that I am?” and we’re moving past the philosophical and into the
personal, out of the hypothetical and into the confessional. Now it can’t be dismissed with a shrug of powerlessness. Now it’s YOU and Jesus is placing the power
in YOUR hands: “Who do you say that I
am?”
Peter took a good stab at it but apparently answered badly, at least judging
by Jesus’ reaction. Peter had the right
word – Messiah – but there is no magic in right words. Jesus was pushing to find something more from
his disciple, something more IN his disciple.
And that something more would be the story of Peter’s life from this
moment on.
“Who do you say
that I am?”
This morning I want us to consider Peter’s search for the right answer
to that question as an example to each of us how we grow and change, mature and
deepen in our own Christian faith.
Imagine a conversation, a dialogue between five different Peters, or at
least Peter at five different stages in his life. We have five actors this morning but they are
all playing one role. All of them are
Peter, but each of them represents Peter at a different stage of his life.
First, Peter the Disciple, the one who was so eager, so anxious to please,
so willing to loudly and boldly confess his faith. (The
actor playing Peter the Disciple comes up onto the chancel.)
Second, Peter the Denier, the one who was afraid of the crowd, afraid of
the Cross, afraid of the danger to his own life, and so took it back, all his
eager words, and denied that he even knew Jesus. (The
actor playing Peter the Denier comes up onto the chancel.)
Third, Peter the Apostle, the one who witnessed the risen Christ, and
through the resurrection was called back from failure and disappointment into
power and purpose and an exalted place among the twelve. (The
actor playing Peter the Apostle comes up onto the chancel.)
Fourth, Peter the Theologian, the one who once again lost his place,
shied away from his calling, and only late in life became the Rock Jesus meant
him to be. (The actor playing Peter the Theologian comes up onto the chancel.)
Finally, Peter the Martyr – for that was Peter’s destiny, to die the
same death as Jesus, a crucifixion at the hands of the Roman authorities as
they persecuted the early Christian Church.
(The actor playing Peter the
Martyr comes up onto the chancel. The
five of them are arranged in a semi-circle facing the congregation.)
You can see how Peter’s life took many turns. This morning we ask how those turns were
guided by faith, by Peter’s changing answers to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?”
MARTYR
In time …
THEOLOGIAN
In time …
DENIER
Over a lifetime …
MARTYR
One moment …
DISCIPLE
Memory …
APOSTLE
Experience…
THEOLOGIAN
Event …
MARTYR
Is recollected …
APOSTLE
Reconnected …
DENIER
Dissembled …
DISCIPLE
Remembered …
THEOLOGIAN
Again …
APOSTLE
And again …
MARTYR
And then sifted …
DISCIPLE
Shifted …
APOSTLE
Hefted …
DENIER
Tested …
THEOLOGIAN
For meaning.
MARTYR
So it was for me …
DENIER
For all of me …
DISCIPLE
For us …
ALL FIVE
(saying it in a
slightly staggered unison)
The five faces of the Rock …
MARTYR
As I …
THEOLOGIAN
As we …
APOSTLE
In time …
DENIER
Over time …
DISCIPLE
Over a lifetime …
MARTYR
Remembered his question:
DENIER
Who do you say that I am?
THEOLOGIAN
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I
am?
APOSTLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
MARTYR
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
DISCIPLE
(stepping into the
middle, proudly)
You are the Christ. The Son of the living God.
DENIER
(with disgust)
Oh, shut up!
DISCIPLE
That’s not what he said!
DENIER
Near enough.
APOSTLE
He told you to tell no one.
DENIER
In other words, “shut up!”
DISCIPLE
No, no!
MARTYR
Didn’t he tell you - tell all of you - to keep silent about him being
the Christ?
DISCIPLE
He gave me my name - our
name. He told me I was Peter, the
Rock!
THEOLOGIAN
And on me the church would be built.
MARTYR
(ironically)
Over my dead body.
DISCIPLE
(almost frantically)
He liked me! He really liked me!
DENIER
He loved you. In spite of your answer.
DISCIPLE
But I was right! I knew the right
answer!
APOSTLE
You said the right words. At that
moment, you said the right words. But
there were other moments …
(The five change
positions so that the Denier is put in the middle.)
MARTYR
Who do you say that I am?
THEOLOGIAN
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I
am?
APOSTLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
DISCIPLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
DENIER
I don’t know. I couldn’t
know. I wasn’t with him.
(pause)
Really, I didn’t know. Everything
was going wrong, not at all what we had talked about.
APOSTLE
He had talked about
it.
DENIER
I know, I know. But not in ways -
well, we didn’t understand. We had
thought he was something else. The
Christ, the triumphant one, the Son of David in the lineage of David …
THEOLOGIAN
In the seat of David.
DENIER
Yes, yes, the King!
DISCIPLE
(intensely)
The Christ!
APOSTLE
Oh, shut up.
DENIER
But nothing turned out the way we had hoped. There was no triumph, no uprising, no
coronation, no apocalypse. There were only shouts and screams and moans and
tears and blood. So of course I didn’t
know him. They asked me and I told the
truth.
(voice rising in
tension)
I don’t know him. I have nothing
to do with him. He isn’t mine! I am no part of it! It doesn’t involve me! IT DOESN’T TOUCH ME!
MARTYR
(stopping his
outburst)
All right.
(pause - then with
more comfort)
All right.
DISCIPLE
Then I was wrong.
DENIER
We were wrong.
DISCIPLE
He wasn’t the Christ?
DENIER
No - he wasn’t our
Christ. He wasn’t the one we thought he
was.
(turns and walks
away)
DISCIPLE
Then what -?
APOSTLE
(stepping into the
middle)
Come here.
(extends hand to
the Disciple who join hands with him)
Feel my hand. Feel its weight and
its warmth. Feel its strength. Do you remember when they came to him, the
sick and the weary and the sad and the bleeding, and they grabbed his hands or
even just the hem of his garment? And
there was power - God, there was
power that came out of him. It almost
made your hair stand on end.
DISCIPLE
I remember.
APOSTLE
Feel my hand. Its weight and its
warmth. Its strength.
(smiling, almost
whispering)
The power! He gave it to us, to
me!
DISCIPLE
What?
APOSTLE
It was just days after he left, just days after the Spirit had
come. John and I were going up to the
temple and they were carrying in their brother - a lame
man - so that he could beg for them by the gate. As he lay on the pallet, his soft body rocked
with the motion of their cruel footsteps.
His eyes were closed with shame.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but, moved by pity and fury, I grabbed
his hand and told him he could walk!
(quietly,
intensely)
And then the power came. And then he walked!
THEOLOGIAN
Who do you say that I
am?
MARTYR
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
APOSTLE
(a bold
proclamation)
You are the power, the power in this hand!
THEOLOGIAN
(with an edge,
circling him)
You were carried along by the power, calling and gathering, preaching
and healing.
MARTYR
“But Peter,
standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them …!”
APOSTLE
(with great
excitement)
From
MARTYR
Your voice. Your
hand.
APOSTLE
No, no, no - of course they were his!
But bequeathed to us. Made real in us. Incarnated in us. But still the Christ - understandable,
accessible, available, powerful.
DISCIPLE
He said, with more than a touch of pride.
APOSTLE
(irritated)
What about confidence?
MARTYR
Yes, what about confidence? And,
while we’re at it, what happened to yours?
If success came so easily, why did you hide for seventeen years?
APOSTLE
(after a pause,
softly)
Things became … complicated. I
lost my place among the twelve.
MARTYR
Supplanted by James.
APOSTLE
(sagging)
The power seemed to fade.
THEOLOGIAN
(stepping forward)
It was that man. That strange,
crooked, little man who told me that he was the last of the Apostles, that
Christ had come to him.
(The others circle
around the THEOLOGIAN.)
MARTYR
Who do you say that I am?
DISCIPLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I
am?
DENIER
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
THEOLOGIAN
You come in the form of a strange, crooked, little man and ask us to
make decisions that are difficult, too difficult. What was I to do? Simply allow all the unclean to come in? All of them, scurrying about the table,
turning the feast into a feeding frenzy?
What of the narrow door? What of
the way of the Cross that demands sacrifice and discipline and understanding?
APOSTLE
“Truly God shows
no partiality.”
THEOLOGIAN
Yet James had other counsel.
Circumcision and ritual observance - proper Jews they were to be. And his counsel made sense to me. Of course it would, for, among other things,
I was a proper Jew myself. The way of
the Christ had to follow the footsteps of Jesus, the way of a proper Jew. And I declared it to be so.
MARTYR
But again other counsel came.
THEOLOGIAN
Yes. Angry, bitter words from
Paul, that crooked, little man.
MARTYR
(with anger)
“But when Peter
came to
DENIER
(ironically)
The Rock …!
MARTYR
“ … I opposed him
to his face, because he stood self-condemned.”
THEOLOGIAN
The way of Christ, he said, was radically new, radically free, radically
gracious. Of course such counsel made
sense to Paul for he had never even known Jesus, only the Christ.
DISCIPLE
I know what happened to you. It
was all this thinking that took away the power.
I mean, what’s the point of such debates and intellectual parrying? There were no questions, no second thoughts,
no debates when we were with him. When
we were with him it was pure spirit, unadulterated joy. Our heads weren’t addled with sophisticated
thoughts; our hearts burned with the gospel truth.
APOSTLE
A golden age.
DISCIPLE
Yes, yes - it was golden, haloed in bliss. Don’t you remember? Don’t any of you remember?
(pause)
DENIER
Of course we remember. We
remember all of it. But not just the
miracles and exorcisms and healings and feedings and prayers and whispered
stories.
APOSTLE
We remember the tired feet and sagging spirits -
THEOLOGIAN
The tears shed and fears shared -
MARTYR
The ones that weren’t converted -
APOSTLE
Or healed -
DENIER
Or even touched.
THEOLOGIAN
Don’t you remember? That vast crowd, even more vast than the
scrambling, needy poor, that stood stolidly on the outside, arms crossed
stupidly, eyes squinting in distrust, who only said, “Show me a sign.”
DISCIPLE
Yes, I remember them. But they
weren’t worth the debates. They were
meaningless, beyond hope of rousing.
MARTYR
They couldn’t be roused by the Gospel.
Not by words. But the scent of
blood, that was another matter. They
found it positively bracing.
(The others circle
the MARTYR.)
DENIER
Who do you say that I am?
DISCIPLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I
am?
APOSTLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
THEOLOGIAN
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
MARTYR
(slowly, he steps
to the middle.)
A crooked little man, you say?
Ah, it was easier for Paul. How
swiftly falls the executioner’s ax. A
soft whistling … that’s it. That’s all
one hears as it quietly cleaves the air before cleaving the neck. But a crucifixion … the shouting and pounding
and screaming and groaning. It terrified
me when it was his. But then it was
mine, my crucifixion.
DENIER
Were you afraid?
MARTYR
I was warned.
APOSTLE
Warned?
MARTYR
Paul had been killed; so many others by the madman Nero. I knew it could happen.
DISCIPLE
But that’s not the warning you were thinking of.
MARTYR
(after a pause)
Of course, you’d
remember. You’re right. I was thinking of something else.
DISCIPLE
“When you were young, you girded
yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out
your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to
go.”
MARTYR
Yes. He warned me. And he was right - I didn’t want to go.
(to Denier)
Yes. I was afraid.
DENIER
Then why did you go?
MARTYR
“Who do you say
that I am?” he asked. “Who do you say that I am?” I had to find the answer for myself. In myself.
DENIER
And what answer did you find?
APOSTLE
“Beloved, do not
be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though
something strange were happening to you …”
THEOLOGIAN
“… But rejoice in
so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad
when his glory is revealed.”
DENIER
What answer did you find?
MARTYR
(smiling)
His glory. His glory.
(They resume their
positions from the opening.)
In time …
THEOLOGIAN
In time …
DENIER
Over a lifetime …
MARTYR
One moment …
DISCIPLE
Memory …
APOSTLE
Experience…
THEOLOGIAN
Event …
MARTYR
Is recollected …
APOSTLE
Reconnected …
DENIER
Dissembled …
DISCIPLE
Remembered …
THEOLOGIAN
Again …
APOSTLE
And again …
MARTYR
And then sifted …
DISCIPLE
Shifted …
APOSTLE
Hefted …
DENIER
Tested …
THEOLOGIAN
For meaning.
DENIER
Who do you say that I am?
THEOLOGIAN
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I
am?
APOSTLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
DISCIPLE
(overlapping)
Who do you say that I am?
MARTYR
(quietly)
You are the Christ. The Son of the living God.
CONCLUSION
Each of us, as Christ’s followers, is asked for our confession, for our
answer to the question, “Who do you say
that I am?” The words we would use,
words like prophet and teacher, messiah and friend, are as many and as various
as there are people in this sanctuary.
Peter discovered that no matter how good or well-intentioned those words
might be, they are not enough. “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus
asks. And the real answer to that
question is found not in what we say.
It’s found in what we do. We
answer Jesus with our faith. We answer
Jesus with the way we live our lives.
In our exuberance as new Christians, the exuberance of the disciple
Peter, when our enthusiasm and our behavior don’t match, still Jesus is Messiah
and asks us to follow. (The actor portraying Peter the Disciple
sits back down.)
In the dark night of the soul, when we would turn away from God and deny
the Christ, still Jesus is Messiah and asks us to follow. (The
actor portraying Jesus the Denier sits back down.)
When we come into the Spirit, into our own calling and vocation, when
the power of the Christ dawns upon us, Jesus is Messiah and asks us to follow. (The
actor portraying Jesus the Apostle sits back down.)
When we fall again into despair and think our work is in vain, still
Jesus is Messiah and asks us to follow. (The actor portraying Jesus the Theologian
sits back down.)
And when we are called finally to stand up for our faith, to match words
and deeds not counting the cost, then Jesus is Messiah and sees that we have
followed. (The actor portraying Jesus the Martyr sits back down.)
That is our faith, that is our journey along the road to faith, that is
our confession, spoken not only with our lips but with our lives. So that at the last, when Jesus asks again,
“Who do you say that I am?”, we can reply with confidence: “You are the Christ,
the Son of the Living God.” Amen.
Drama and sermon given by Reverend Stephen P. Savides at First
Congregational U.C.C.,