Caesarea Philippi

Every name in the answer is an honorable one. That is what makes the answer insufficient rather than merely insulting. John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah: the public has placed Jesus among men who speak for God. The disagreement concerns which prophet has appeared, not whether something remarkable is happening. Admiration has brought the discussion a considerable distance. It has not brought it to the confession Jesus is seeking.

The location adds another layer without supplying an imaginary stage. Caesarea Philippi belongs to a region whose buildings and names advertise powerful patrons. Josephus describes a marble temple near the Jordan's springs and records Philip's naming of the city after Caesar. Here Jesus asks about his own identity, but the Book of Matthew says only that he entered the district. It does not place him at the mouth of a particular cave or have him point toward a shrine.

The disciples can report the names circulating outside their company. That is still a report, not their answer. The passage carefully separates knowing what people say about Jesus from identifying him. An impressive list of prophets remains a list of other people.

The rock has attracted so much argument that the builder can almost disappear behind it. Peter and rock make a deliberate play on words in Greek, Petros and petra. The change from a masculine name to a feminine noun does not, by itself, settle the passage through a tidy contrast between a tiny pebble and an enormous cliff. Christian interpreters have differed over how Peter, his confession, and Christ himself relate to the foundation. Those differences should be stated, not smuggled past the reader as dictionary facts.

Several words are less elusive. I will build. My church. Jesus names himself as the builder and the assembly as his own. The promise does not depend on Peter announcing what he intends to construct. Nor does church here mean the stone building that later generations may picture. People, rather than a sanctuary's masonry, are in view.

The final image is equally weighty. Hell translates Hades, the realm of the dead, not the different Greek word Gehenna. The gates of death will not overcome this assembly. In a chapter that also announces Jesus' death and resurrection, the promise does not pretend death is absent. It denies death the last word.

Jesus calls the crowd closer before explaining the cost. This is not a severe condition reserved for a private circle of especially ambitious disciples. The people join the disciples, and the invitation is stated openly. In the verses immediately before it, Peter has resisted the announcement of Jesus' suffering. The answer now extends beyond Peter: following this teacher cannot be detached from the road the teacher takes.

Cross is not a mild word for an irritating inconvenience. The image belongs to execution, and its severity should not be polished into an attractive slogan. Yet the passage does not celebrate suffering for its own sake or treat every death as the same kind of loss. For my sake and the gospel's specifies the allegiance at issue. The person is not being told that life has no value. The very next comparison insists that its value exceeds everything that might be acquired in exchange.

The language of profit exposes the bargain. The gain has been made as large as language can make it: the whole world. The loss is the life of the person who would possess it. Nothing remains with which to buy that life back. The largest acquisition imaginable can still be a ruinous transaction.