26. Matthew 16:1-28: Jesus Heads toward Jerusalem




Warnings to and about the Pharisees and Sadducees (Mt.16:1-12)

Pharisees and Sadducees are not naturally allies. Much divided them, particularly belief in the resurrection. One who believes in it believes the world can be fundamentally changed. One who does not sticks with the powers that be and the way things are. The two had very different ideas about how Israel should be God’s people, especially viz-a-viz Rome (as we have seen). For them to collaborate against Jesus, to catch him up in a way to discredit or destroy him (v.1), each sense in him a threat to their way of being Israel so strong that can unite in the project to do away with him.

They challenge him to perform a sign for them (one they could use to turn the people and/or the authorities against him). The issue at the heart of this confrontation is the same as it was for their ancient forebears who, freed from Egypt by God’s mighty act of deliverance, grumble and gripe in the wilderness soon afterward and ask God for a sign that he is truly present among them (Ex.17:7). The Pharisee and Sadducees, ironically, were asking the same question (though they believed they knew the answer!): “You can’t be who you say you are, so who are you?”

As adept as they may be at reading some signs (vv.2-3), the Pharisees and Sadducees are tone deaf to others, especially the ones Jesus has done as he walks the path of Israel again, rightly this time, displaying God’s presence for those who eyes to see and ears to hear what is happening in their midst.

Their desire for a sign comes from their bent hearts. An “evil and adulterous generation” we have met before in 12:39. Like there Jesus again means the distorted visions of Israel and its God both the Pharisees and Sadducees promote. The sign of Jonah is all they will be given. A sign of death and resurrection, a sign for Israel this generation is not ready or able to hear and embrace.

“The only time in Matthew that Jesus promises a ‘sign from heaven’ is in Matthew 24, where He describes the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The Jews will someday see the threatening ‘sign of the Son of Man in heaven’ (Matt. 24:30). There are close links between these two signs. In Matthew 16, the Pharisees and Sadducees ‘come to’ Jesus asking Him to ‘show’ a ‘sign’; at the beginning of Matthew 24, the disciples ‘come to’ Jesus and ‘show’ Him the temple buildings and then ask for a ‘sign’ of the end of the age. Jesus refuses to give a sign to the Pharisees and Sadducees, but He does explain signs to the Twelve. Matthew 24 is an elaboration of the ‘sign of Jonah,’ the sign of the Son of Man’s resurrection and reign, the sign that the good news has gone to the Gentiles and raised up Gentiles against the unfaithful covenant people, and to provoke the Jews to repent and return.[1]

Jesus gives his disciples additional (needed) instruction about the Pharisees and Sadducees by warning them to avoid their “yeast” (vv.4-12). Dense disciples that they are, they misunderstand Jesus to be speaking of bread they forgot to procure for their journey. Somewhat exasperated (who can blame him?) he plaintively asks if they so soon forgotten the lesson of the feedings: the fives loaves and twelve baskets of leftovers and the four loaves and seven baskets of leftovers. Remember, those two feedings signaled God’s blessings for both the Jews and the Gentiles. The evil “leaven” of the Jewish leadership from both ends (as it were), threatened to obscure or obliterate the “blessing of the nations” part of the Abrahamic promise – the very rationale of Israel’s existence!

The “leaven” of the Pharisees and Sadducees was anti-Exodus at heart. Israel eschewed leaven when they hurriedly prepared unleavened bread for their journey out of Egypt. These two groups are trying to re-leaven Israel to make them a worldly kingdom, a mini-Egypt. And Jesus will have none of it!

Finally the disciples understand what Jesus is talking about, if not its full import.  

Peter’s Confession (Mt.16:13-20)

As if to reinforce this last vital teaching before beginning the trek to Jerusalem and what awaits him there, Jesus takes the disciples to the “district of Caesarea Philippi.” There, in that place, Jesus launches the final phase of the New Exodus with a direct challenge to the powers that be. Not simply the Jewish powers. They’re small fries in the political power game. He goes right after the big boy, Rome. Caesarea Philippi

“. . . is a city devoted to the cult of the emperor, an outpost of imperial ideology at the northern border of the land of Israel. This place name is a reminder that Jesus comes into a world dominated by the Roman empire, a world in which the Jews are a subject people. In this Roman city, a city named for Caesar and containing a temple devoted to Augustus Caesar, Jesus speaks of a different kingdom, a different empire, a different power in the world.”[2]

That’s why Jesus asks them in this place freighted with such meaning, who people say the “Son of Man” is (v.13). This figure, drawn from Dan.7:13,14, is a term for a people God makes victorious over the power brokers of the world. As the leader and point person of this people Jesus has been explaining and demonstrating how different a political leader and political entity he and this people will be. On the heels of their “leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” discussion Jesus first asks them about the impact the unleavened character of this enigmatic figure on the public.

The answers he gets are all figures associated with the promised New Exodus – John the Baptist, is typological forerunner Elijah, Jeremiah or another of the prophets (who regularly voiced New Exodus themes). They are hearing Jesus rightly, to a degree. But they have not yet penetrated to the heart of Jesus’ identity and work. Do the disciples yet understand it? Jesus asks them to find out.

Peter, as usual, represents the disciples, and in a flash of insight, of revelation (v.17), he “sees’ for a moment that this “Son of Man,” in all his strangeness), is indeed the Messiah (Christos)! “the Son of the Living God.”

“It’s important to be clear that at this stage the phrase ‘son of God’ did not mean ‘the second person of the Trinity’. There was no  thought yet that the coming king would himself be divine–though  some of the things Jesus was doing and saying must already have  made the disciples very puzzled, with a perplexity that would only  be resolved when, after his resurrection, they came to believe that  he had all along been even more intimately associated with Israel’s  one God than they had ever imagined. No: the phrase ‘son of God’ was a biblical phrase, indicating that the king stood in a particular relation to God, adopted to be his special representative (see, for instance, 2 Samuel 7.14; Psalm 2.7).”[3]

As Israel’s true king (Messiah) this confession is a profoundly political claim as well as a theological affirmation.

Jesus commends Peter for his openness to this revelation and then utters one of the contested sayings in all the gospels: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (v.18). Catholics and Protestants have fought over the meaning of this saying for centuries.

-Is Jesus setting up Peter (whose name means “rock”) as the head of the church, which headship eventually became the papacy? Catholics say yes, Protestants no.

-the latter claim it is not Peter’s person but rather his confession of Jesus’ messiahship that is the “rock” on which the church is built.  

Wright combines both views when he says, “If Peter was prepared to say that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus was prepared to say that, with this allegiance, Peter would himself be the foundation for his new building.”[4]

Furthermore, the new building Jesus would construct on and with Peter is figuratively the city of Jerusalem with its Mt. Zion on which the temple stood. The temple was thought by many Jews at the time to be the navel of the world where heaven and earth met and against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.[5] This is probably a reference to the power of death (Isa.38:10; the only reference to the “gates of sheol or Hades or hell in the Old Testament).  

Matthew has already told us that Jesus is greater than the temple (12:6). So he is not indicating a physical structure but the New Exodus movement he is leading and those who are following him. They will receive the “keys” to the kingdom of heaven to “bind and loose” on earth which action will be ratified in heaven (v.19).

This too has been a controversial point of interpretation. What does “binding and loosing” mean? In context it probably refers to the rabbinic process of moral discernment. John Howard Yoder elaborates making five observations about Jesus reference to this process:

1.       Believing men and women are empowered to act in God’s name.

2.       What the believers do, God is doing, in and through human action.

3.       God will not normally do this without human action.

4.       If we receive forgiveness, we must give it.

5.       This dialogical reconciling process must come first. Only then must we turn to talk of the set of standards that his process enforces. Much Christian debate about moral issues makes the mistake of concentrating on what the standards ought to be rather than on how they are to be discerned and implemented.[6]

This practice is the heart of the practice of church discipline Jesus enjoins on his people in 18:18 and to the act of forgiveness in the mission of the church in Jn.20.

People who make such a confession of faith in such a Lord will grant entrance and grant others entrance into this Lord’s kingdom and share together in shaping a way of life invulnerable to the worst then enemy has to offer.

On to Jerusalem (Mt.16:21-23)

“From then on” – for the second time we meet this phrase which divides Matthew into geographical sections. 4:17 introduces Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom and his Galilean ministry. 16:21 commences with Peter’s confession and Jesus and the disciples’ journey to Jerusalem.

We have here the first of Jesus’ three passion predictions. He tells his followers that he

-“must” (verb suggests divine necessity) go to Jerusalem,

-be abused by the religious leadership there,

-be killed, and

-be raised on the 3rd day.

N. T. Wright tells about Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland titled Alice through the Looking Glass. In it Carroll creates a mirror-world in which you cannot make progress toward something by walking towards it. Instead, you must head in the opposite direction to get where you wanted to go. Great effort and intentional focus are required to learn to function this way.[7] That’s what Jesus undertakes with special intensity through the rest of the gospel. This is their first lesson.

Under normal circumstances, a messianic figure would rally his people, prepare them, pick an opportune time, strike, occupy the temple. And install your own king. That’s just how it was done then. But to enter the city publically with a small motley crew of followers to engage in controversy and conflict with the religious leadership, who in cahoots with secular authority would put you to death and be raised on the 3rd day (whatever that might mean!) is sheer madness. Yet this is the way, Jesus tells his followers, God’s kingdom will come. This is his “through the looking-glass” version of the messianic, royal way of the Son of Man.

Peter, again representing the disciples, flunks this first session of training with flying colors. He even earned a rebuke from Jesus in which he is called “Satan” for his insistent misunderstanding and attempt to dissuade Jesus (“this must never happen at all”) from his own clear, divinely-mandated vocation (“I must go to Jerusalem”).  

Peter has, at this point, stopped following Jesus and needs his rebuke to “get behind me” where all good disciples should be. He further tells him that he has flat blown this whole “through the looking-glass” session.

If we are not sympathetic with Peter at this point, we are kidding ourselves!

“Take Up Your Cross” (Mt.16:24-26)

Fresh off this spectacular debacle Jesus again teaches his followers that the only way to follow him is to buy into and practice his upside-down-inside-out way of being messiah. Worldly success following the tried and true ways of getting things done, ultimately means nothing. In fact, it means losing everything. To win by losing is doubtless the craziest thing they’ve ever heard . . . unless it happens to be true!

This is Going to Happen in this Generation (Mt.16:27-28)

The Son of Man will come, says Jesus “in the glory of his Father.” In victory. And in judgment. Those who have walked through the looking glass with Jesus will see the victory. His way of being Israel will be vindicated when God raises him from the dead. Those Jews who have not followed him, will feel the devastating brunt of Rome as divine judgment. It will be the end of ethnic Israel as God’s Abrahamic people. And this will all happen while at least some of those hearing Jesus speak at that moment are still alive.

“To those who followed him at the time, Jesus made astonishing claims about what was going to happen in their own lifetime. Many people have been puzzled by these claims, for the simple reason that they have failed to see the significance of what happens at the end of the story. The phrases about ‘the son of man coming in his kingdom’ and the like are not about what we call the ‘second coming’ of Jesus. They are about his vindication, following his suffering. They are fulfilled when he rises from the dead and is granted ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (28.18).”[8]



[1] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 830-836.
[2] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 916.
[3] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 18.
[4] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 19.
[5] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 19.
[6] Summary of Yoder’s discussion in his Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World by Joel Willits at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2011/11/practices-of-the-church-1-binding-and-loosing/.
[7] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 21.
[8] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 24.

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