The Rock and the Keys

Our Lord puts the question to his disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi, and the answers come easily enough. John the Baptist. Elias. Jeremiah. One of the prophets. Safe answers. Secondhand answers. The answers of people who have heard things about Jesus without having to commit to anything on the strength of them.

Then Jesus narrows the circle. "But whom say ye that I am?"

The whole history of the Church hangs in that silence.

I. The Confession and the Commission

Simon Peter speaks. And what he says is not a theory or a report — it is a confession: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus replies with a word that has echoed down twenty centuries of Christian argument: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church — and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."

If you have ever attended a service in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome — or even seen a picture of it — you will know what the Church of Rome has done with that verse. It is inscribed in letters four feet high around the base of the great dome: Tu es Petrus. Thou art Peter. The Roman Church has built on that text a claim of staggering ambition: that Peter was the supreme head of the Apostles, the first Pope, the Vicar of Christ — and that his authority passes in an unbroken line to every Bishop of Rome to this day.

It is worth taking that claim seriously. It did not come from nowhere, and it is not held by fools.

II. The Controversy

But let us look at what the text actually says — and what it does not say.

When Jesus says "upon this rock I will build my Church," he uses two different Greek words. He addresses Simon as Petros — Peter, a stone, a pebble. But the rock on which the Church is built he calls petra — bedrock, the solid foundation of a cliff. The distinction matters. Our Lord may well be saying: "You, Simon, are a stone — and on this bedrock I will build my Church." And what is the bedrock? The confession Simon has just made. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. The Church stands not on Peter's person, but on Peter's faith.

This reading is not a Protestant invention designed to embarrass Rome. Saint Augustine held it. Saint John Chrysostom held it. The Fathers were divided — and when the greatest minds of the early Church are divided on a text, we ought to be very slow to declare the matter settled.

And there is more. The authority of the keys — "whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" — Jesus gives those very same words to all the Apostles together in the eighteenth chapter of this same Gospel: "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." Peter is not singled out. The keys are the keys of the whole apostolic ministry.

And then there is Saint Paul, who tells us in his letter to the Galatians that he "withstood Peter to his face, because he was to be blamed." You do not withstand the Vicar of Christ to his face. You do not tell the supreme head of the Church that he is to be blamed. Unless, of course, he is not the supreme head of the Church — but simply one Apostle, first among equals, capable of error like the rest, in need of correction like the rest.

The Peter of the New Testament is not the serene, gold-crowned figure of the Sistine ceiling. He is the man who sank when he tried to walk on water. The man who said "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man." The man who swore three times in a courtyard that he did not know this Jesus of Nazareth. And then wept bitterly.

III. The Rock That Does Not Shift

And yet — here is the extraordinary thing — Christ called him back. After the resurrection, on the shore of the lake, Jesus asked him three times: "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" A question for every denial. And three times Peter said: Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. That exchange — which we receive in the Communion today — is the real portrait of Peter. Not infallibility. Restoration.

The Anglican tradition has always maintained that the Church of Christ is built upon the apostolic faith — the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God — and that this faith is entrusted not to one man or one see, but to the whole Church, guarded by the whole apostolic ministry, celebrated in word and sacrament wherever two or three are gathered in his Name. The keys of the kingdom are real. They are exercised every time a priest speaks absolution, every time the bread is broken and the cup is given, every time a sinner kneels and hears that his sins are forgiven. But they belong to Christ — and he holds them still.

What we receive at this altar today is not a Roman bequest or a Protestant invention. It is the inheritance of every baptised soul who has ever made Peter's confession and meant it.

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And that — that single declaration, spoken in faith, confessed with the whole life — is the rock on which the Church was built. It is the rock on which you stand today.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen ✟