Today we read the famous line, “I also tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” here.
For years there has been a Catholic view and a Protestant view. Michael Green deals with each respectfully in The Message of Matthew, pp. 179-180.
The word from which we get our word “church” appears a few scant times in the New Testament.
I want to however go upstream in history and make one other point about Jesus’. Upstream, in history, God’s people were a society. They started as a family, and I believe the ultimate relationship we are called into by God is that being his son or daughter.
A family is a society of sorts. They grow and at times are called tribes or communities.
Indeed we as humans organize together for all sorts of reasons. For sports, for family, for work, for common interests, and more.
Yet when it comes to living in a community for and with God—God is the organizer. It is God who calls, who structures, who establishes the norms of life. The Old Testament story, in broad terms is God forming the human race into his people, his family. He set apart Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to form a specific community, the Jews, who by their godly living were to stand far apart, and live in such a radically different way, that people would be drawn not to them—but to God.
In their history they had families, tribes, nations, and religious groups organized around the Temple or the Law—all were meant to serve, worship, and proclaim God.
Jesus in the text today declares that “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church”.
And guess what—Jesus has—both the Catholic and the Protestant.
The point in that little ramble is that God is always calling people to form a community that is living in, through and for Him.
And when we do, we, humankind, FLOURISH! We do. We however don’t “keep it together for very long”. Whether we are a family, a tribe, a community, a nation, or an organized church—when we actually live in, through and for Him—we FLOURISH.
Consider Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They and their families had seasons when they obeyed God and flourished, and seasons they did not. Think of the nation of Israel. Think of churches, be it at the local level or the more organized level. Think of nations that lived “under God”, but then stopped.
The pattern is maddeningly the same. Get your community (at any level) to live in, through and for Him and there is flourishing. Please note I mean prosperity by the Bible’s view, not humans. There is much history of communities and churches living in poverty, but living, really living and caring for each other. There is much history of communities and more ordering their societies according to God’s Law—and the order which flows yields a flourishing society.
Now for the dialectic thinkers out there who are thinking, “Yeah but”, let me acknowledge there are stories where those, under the guise of religion have wrought harm. This has happened at every level: family, tribe, community, nation, and church.
A postmortem on those failed episodes reveals however that the organization and its leaders were not living in, through and for God. No, they were living for themselves.
Today it is easily argued that the west, in the broadest terms (family, community, nation, and church) is not just slipping, but apparently running away from God. It is because it is not only no longer living in, through and for God. It is not even pretending. It is living as opposed to God.
The point, perhaps, for me as an individual, and building on the prior reflection is have I allowed God to be in control. Specifically:
1. “If I answer Jesus’ question that I believe he is the Christ, then am I living in, through and for Him?”
2. Am I working to create and/or live in a family and community that is likewise?