Sermon by the Revd Ian McCormack for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 30, 2026

May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Those of you who were here last week will recall that we heard then Saint Matthew's account of the confession of Saint Peter.

Who do you say that I am?

Jesus asks his disciples.

You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, responds Saint Peter in a moment of divinely inspired clarity, and in return Jesus proclaims, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

It's one of the great climactic set pieces of the Gospels.

It may therefore seem to be an anticlimax when today, just a few verses on from that great encounter, we hear Jesus describe Peter as Satan and order him away.

So this morning I want to consider how and why this sudden change comes about, and I want to focus on two key aspects, the personality of Peter and the nature of Christ.

Let's consider Peter first.

We know from elsewhere in the Gospels that he was a tempestuous, impulsive man.

His very name suggests this.

In the Greek in which the Gospels were written, there is a play on the name Petros and the word Petra meaning rock.

In the Aramaic which Jesus spoke, the play is there as well.

Kepha is rock, from where we get Peter's other name, Cephas.

Now the first thing that may spring to mind when we think of a rock is something solid, strong, unyielding.

But precisely those qualities which make for a virtue if you're standing or building upon a rock can make for uncertain or dangerous territory if, for example, you're trying to steer a ship between a collection of them.

Knowing that you have a rocky road ahead of you is not a comfortable place to be.

Scholars suggest that the title given to Simon last week was not so much a proper name, Peter, as a nickname, Rocky, we might say, which was connected to his personal characteristics.

And characteristic of this man was to be the brave, fierce, immovable leader of men one minute, and to fail utterly in that role the next.

To call Simon Peter Rocky was true on a number of levels.

This is most evident in the events of Holy Week, culminating in Peter's denial of Christ.

But the picture is consistent throughout the Gospels.

Across the course of this liturgical year thus far, we have heard of Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, desperate to build houses for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah one minute, flat on his face with fear the next, and again on the lake, desperate to come to Jesus across the water, but then losing faith and sinking until Christ saves him.

So the pattern of Peter making an impressive but impulsive act of faith, and then failing to live up to it, is well established, and to a considerable extent that helps explain the issue at hand this morning.

The only difference is that here it is not Peter's courage or physical ability that is lacking, but his understanding, his understanding of who Jesus really is.

Last week Peter saw clearly that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

But today he simply cannot comprehend what that means for Jesus himself.

And in this, of course, he was not alone.

The Jewish people expected a warrior as their Messiah, a mighty Saviour who would reclaim the holy places from the hated Romans and restore the ancient kingdom of Israel to its rightful preeminence.

But the reality was, is different.

The kingship of Christ is not of this world, and his victory was won not on a battlefield, but upon the cross.

And in some ways the whole of Jesus' public ministry was one long battle to make people understand this, including those closest to him.

They simply could not comprehend a Messiah who had to die.

And indeed, the question of why Christ had to die, did Christ choose to die, remains theologically potent to this day.

To try to explain this, we're going to take a little detour here, so bear with me.

In a powerful book called The Stature of Waiting, the Anglican priest and theologian W.

H.

Fanston showed that at the moment of what is normally called his betrayal, Jesus passes from activity to passivity.

He ceases to be one who does and becomes one who is done to.

He ceases to lead, to teach, to heal.

Instead, he becomes one to whom things are done.

Almost exclusively nasty things from this moment on, in fact.

But the significant thing in this context is that they are done to him.

We call the events of Holy Week the Passion of Christ.

Passion in this context means suffering, and in modern English, to suffer is to experience pain, physical or otherwise.

But in old English, to suffer was to permit or to allow or to let happen.

Hence the archaic phrase of Matthew 19, 14: suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me.

In other words, allow the children to come to me, let them come to me.

In this understanding, the particular manner of the betrayal of Christ by Judas is that of a handing over.

Judas hands Christ over to the authorities, and from this moment onwards Jesus suffers, lets happen, many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes.

So Christ here does make a choice.

The choice he makes is to allow himself to be handed over.

He suffers himself to be handed over.

And that's because, in a wider sense, and throughout his earthly life, Christ makes the choice to remain faithful to his vocation, whatever the consequences, whatever the cost.

That vocation of Christ's was to show by his words, his actions, by his very being, that the kingdom of God was close at hand, that love, joy, and peace will always, in the end, defeat hatred, hardness of heart, and violence, that God loves us so much that he sent his only son to save us, that God longs for nothing more than for we prodigal children to return to him and be a part of the family again.

All of this is the truth, the reality at the centre of the gospel.

But, as T.

S.

Eliot sadly acknowledged, humanity cannot bear very much reality, and so the bearer of this astounding good news had to be handed over, and as a consequence was destined to die.

It is not what Christ willed, but it is what he allowed to happen, as the cost of being faithful to his calling.

We know that Christ had moments when this path was far from clear to him, in the Garden of Gethsemane, for example, but also before that, when he was tempted in the desert.

There, you remember, the devil needled away at him.

There's no need to be hungry, you're the Son of God.

There's no need to be faithful, God will look after you whatever you do.

There's no need to deny yourself.

Worship me and I'll give you the whole world.

And now, in today's gospel reading, it is Peter of all people who becomes the tempter of Christ, needling away at his resolve to be obedient to his calling.

There's no need for you to die, he says, in effect, the powers of heaven will surely save you.

No wonder that Jesus in this moment hears the devil speaking through Peter.

No wonder he responds with words which seem to refer directly back to the final temptation in the desert.

What value is the whole world if a man loses his soul in winning it?

No wonder that Christ chooses this moment to repeat his teaching from earlier in the gospel, that those who wish to follow Christ must do so by taking up their own cross.

This was not the expectation that the people had of what it would mean to follow the Messiah.

And as so often, Peter is at the forefront of the crowd, this time as representative of their inability to think the ways of God rather than the ways of man.

And in this, Peter also represents the difficulties that have faced Christian disciples in every age since, including us today.

Indeed, the reason that Peter is ultimately such an attractive figure for us is that we can see so much of ourselves in him.

We have considered this before in recent weeks, so rather than repeating myself, let me say simply that we all have moments of great devotion, of strong faith, of certain hope.

And then, perhaps just minutes later, we do or say something that seems to throw it all away.

Christ knows this about us, and even loves us for it, just as he knew it about Peter, and loved him for it.

Jesus knew exactly the type of man Peter, Rocky, was, and he still made him the rock on which the church is built.

In the example of Peter's salvation lies hope for our own.

Amen.