Reflections on the Confession of Peter, the gospel lesson for Pentecost XIII, 2026, Incarnation’s Principal Service at 11:00 (Morning Prayer)
Priests have a choice of sources for the sermons they deliver on a given Sunday; whether the service is a Eucharist or the daily office, the scripture readings appointed for the day are selected to accompany the communion service but can also be used with the Daily Office. This means that at Morning Prayer the two (rather than three) required readings can be drawn from the Gospel, the Old Testament, or the epistle offerings. On August 23, which at Incarnation was a Morning Prayer service, the gospel appointed for the day was not a required text, so Adrian chose to address the message in Paul’s quite eloquent letter to the Romans rather than the verses from Matthew. And it is entirely appropriate to use the epistle; it just means that on occasion another important passage is necessarily eliminated from use as a homily theme on that day. This can mean that even a topic separately dealt with in the roster of Holy Days (in addition to the regular weekly services dictated by the Lectionary calendar) comes to be overlooked. On August 23, the appointed gospel passage this year was the famous Confession of Peter which is also celebrated as part of a Holy Day on Jan. 18 devoted to the ministry of St. Peter including his martyrdom. No matter how helpful one of the Letters can be for a sermon on Pentecost XIII, then, the only regrettable consequence is that it means missing an opportunity to single out one of the most important (if not the most important) of the disciples of Jesus whose role in the history of the church is beyond dispute. It can also mean losing an opportunity to link both lessons used for Morning Prayer for purposes of “homiletic enhancement.” That is why I’ve asked for an opportunity to add a post-script to the homily delivered on Sunday, August 23 so that we can address Peter’s critical pronouncement in a straightforward way.
Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus as the Son of God is reported in all four gospel accounts, so clearly it is an important event. For one thing, it marks a watershed moment in the narrative. From this point on, there will be no turning back for Jesus, for Peter, or for anyone else. Certainly, Matthew conveys the breakthrough significance of the confession in pointing to it as both a divine revelation for Peter himself and a public affirmation of the identity of Jesus. From this point forward, the focus of Jesus will be on preparing the disciples for the time when he will no longer be with them. As Jesus puts it, it is God who has enabled Peter to recognize Jesus as the Messiah; this is not the work of Peter himself or of any other influential person in the entourage of the Lord. From this one event we learn not only who Jesus really is, but we also discover who Peter himself is and will be: the disciple whom God inspires to announce this revelation and to do so publicly. Thus, Peter is the one Jesus is choosing to invest with authority in the movement that will grow from his ministry. To be clear then, this passage relates directly to the birth of the church. And this links it with the epistle lesson for the day in which Paul exhorts us not to be “conformed to this world, but (to) be transformed by the renewing of minds, so that (we) may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So, when Peter makes it clear that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, he is signaling to his followers what their obligation is to their Lord and Savior: to follow his lead out of love.”
It is important to understand that this development in the narrative of the life of Jesus would come to inspire countless people to devote their lives to building the kingdom of God on the basis of their loyalty to an individual who, more than any other, has come to embody the faith of God’s people. In the first century, the meaning of believing in someone or something was about developing a relationship, not agreeing to a set of specific principles or assertions. Jesus was asking people to follow him out of love for everything he represented, not merely to subscribe to a formula or a creed but rather to become a living link in a worldwide fellowship of believers.
And that is as true today as it was in the first century: the miracle comes in how this act of following Jesus out of love becomes a reality which can change the world. As Paul would have put it, as a result of our being transformed by “the renewing of minds” which occurs in the company of Jesus of Nazareth, we naturally set out to change the world around us to put it in proper relationship with the new reality we are seeking to bring into being. Let me explain how this is accomplished by pointing us to the formula provided by way of St. Paul in his second epistle to the Corinthians and his letter to the Galatians: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself, through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting (our) trespasses against (us), (but) entrusting (to us) the message of reconciliation…there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
From this stirring message have flowed any number of actions and movements in human affairs which have overcome evil and brought about good in its place. I’d like to demonstrate this by telling you about one of the most significant of the followers of Jesus who altered the shape of the world at a time long after the Resurrection and Ascension: William Wilberforce, a member of Parliament in the U.K. in the modern era who, once converted to Christianity, joined with like-minded friends to reform ‘the manners of society.’ However, this did not mean just social niceties but included the founding of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, reformation of the brutal penal code and prison system and of the way in which children were treated in the workplace, and a host of other social issues which called out for change in early 19th century England. “But he was pre-eminently noted for spearheading the long campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire.” He may be little known today, but the story has at least been told well in writing as well as on the screen. It is the riveting tale of a small man (5 ½ ft. tall) with a gigantic task, one far more revolutionary in its impact than the bloody revolution taking place across the English Channel in the same time period. In the film version released in 2006, he stops a coach in which he is being transported so that he can tell a man to stop beating his fallen horse. At the time, Wilberforce was suffering from a debilitating form of colitis for which the only known relief was laudanum, an opium derivative whose side effects were often worse than the disease itself. But what we see emerging in Wilberforce over the course of his lifetime is his conversion from the bland rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment to the heart-felt faith of the evangelicals of his time (people like George Whitfield and the Wesley brothers whom we associate with the Second Great Awakening in the America of the late 1780s and early 1800s two results of which were the founding of the Methodist church along with a long-lasting tradition of revival meetings as the setting for evangelical worship). Once converted to this version of Christianity, he initially came to believe that he should give up politics; instead, he resisted that temptation in order to throw himself into the cause of abolitionism which would require his full attention. When he discovered the horrors of slavery as practiced in the early 19th century, he was haunted by what he learned. As a result, though it took many years and much devoted work to achieve it, in 1807 Parliament outlawed the slave trade and assured that all of those who were still enslaved in the empire would be emancipated by 1833.
And of such stories we can begin to trace the impact of Christian thinking upon the modern world. In the case of Wilberforce, we can get a better idea of the power of the abolitionist movement simply by singing the hymn “Amazing Grace” which was written by an Anglican priest who later became an integral part of the movement in its British version and worked closely with Wilberforce. The lyric is right out of scripture and focuses on stories as well-known as the parable of the Prodigal Son. The familiar words of the hymn can recall for us not only a significant political movement but also our entire faith heritage: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Or, in a message of hope, “The Lord has promised good to me, His word my hope secures, He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures.” The hymn has been even more popular in America than in Britain and is directly associated with abolitionism here as well as the later civil rights movement of the 1960s. The next time we join with others in singing it, I hope we will all be thinking about Wilberforce, but also about St. Paul, St Peter, Jesus the Son of God, the Second Great Awakening, and other themes we’ve explored today in connection with the gospel reading from Matthew which takes us back 2,000 years to the Confession of Peter which is a seminal event in the Christian story. Thanks be to God.
AMEN
Faithfully yours,
Fr. Greg+