Sermon preached at St Margaret of Antioch, Toxteth, 29 June 2025
The one-time incumbent of my sending parish of Prescot used to say that you could preach all the heresy you liked as long as you kept it under eight minutes. I’m advised the limit of your tolerance here is ten minutes, so I am going to do my utmost and beg your mercy if I overshoot it—but hopefully not.
Although today is the feast day of both Saints Peter and Paul, I’m going to focus unapologetically on Peter, as I rather feel for him. Not because he doesn’t get as much attention as Paul, but because he quite often missed the mark as a disciple of Jesus, and the gospels draw rather a lot of attention to it; in fact, Jesus draws quite a bit of attention to it.
When he and his brother Andrew heard Jesus’ call, they immediately cast aside their nets and followed him, but Peter’s was to be a steep learning curve. When, amid a storm on Galilee, his Lord called him out of the boat, he faltered and began to sink, prompting the well-known words, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ Nevertheless, Jesus was there to catch him. Part of his journey was to learn that when we are faithless, Jesus remains faithful.
Peter didn’t always understand the ways God worked, and when he brashly dismissed the possibility of an impending crucifixion, he was no doubt bruised by Jesus’ response: ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ I’m not sure that’s the sort of stern rebuke I’d welcome from the creator of the universe. Yet just six days later, he entrusted Peter, along with James and John, with a mountaintop experience of his glory. Jesus remained faithful, even when Peter didn’t quite get it.
Later, he smugly declared he would never be intimidated into denying Jesus, and yet, terrified of what the authorities might do to him after his friend’s capture, and fearing that Jesus’ fate might also be his, Peter went back on his word and denied the Lord three times, after which he wept bitterly.
Later on, according to John’s gospel, Peter was wounded yet again, when the risen Lord asked him no less than three times whether he truly loved him. Peter had once doubted Jesus; he had even denied him; perhaps he wondered if Jesus now doubted him.
And yet Jesus’ way of testing his friend shaped him into a great leader, the foremost among those first apostles, the first bishop of Rome and eventually one who had the faith and courage to face death as a martyr, accepting the persecution from which he had once fled, in the manner of the one he loved and trusted—and who loved and trusted him in return.
In our gospel reading today, we witness a wonderful moment of grace, where for once Peter truly ‘gets it.’ He recognises who Jesus is, and in turn, Jesus recognises him.
The Lord and his disciples have been roaming the countryside for some time, healing the sick, preaching the arrival of a new, heavenly kingdom, calling people to a new way of life, forgiving the penitent and challenging those who held stubbornly to power. Jesus is starting to look towards the next stage of his mission, and perhaps still working things out in his own heart and mind—after all, even as the Son of God, Jesus in his humanity learned and grew like us, dependent on the Spirit—he asks his disciples: ‘Who do people say that I am?’
They throw out a few suggestions: Perhaps John the Baptist, the eccentric wanderer whose prophetic preaching had prepared Jesus’ way; perhaps Elijah, the ancient Hebrew prophet expected to return at the end of the present age. Then Jesus narrows it down: ‘Who do you say that I am?’
And Peter, in a moment of clarity and great faith, answers: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.’
How bold of Peter. He knows what it is to get it wrong, but he takes a risk in blurting out what he instinctively knows as one who had been present with Jesus from the beginning of his ministry. ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.’
‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!’ Jesus declares. ‘For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.’
I love that, having recognised Jesus, Peter is now recognised by Jesus.
Now, I have a poor memory. I take a long time to get used to people’s names, and I also have to get to know people for days or weeks to remember faces—I think the technical term is prosopagnosia, where I can spend a lot of time talking to a new person face-to-face then completely fail to recognise them in the street a few hours later. So this is me apologising in advance if at any point I struggle remembering your name or recognising your face. It’s not a lack of care, but a cognitive quirk I try my best to overcome. (Not a quirk I enjoy, especially as a new curate in a new parish!)
But thank God that our Lord knows each of our names. He knows each of our faces and, as Matthew records earlier in his gospel, ‘even the hairs on your head are counted.’ Not a hard task for an omniscient God, admittedly—a glance in the mirror this morning confirmed my current hair count is three, give or take.
The Lord who created the universe, who took on flesh for our sake, who lived and died and ascended so that we could be raised to new life with the Father, knows you by name.
The incarnate Lord knew Simon Peter. He named him, blessed him and then said something that Peter could not be prepared for. The name Simon meant ‘reed,’ something easily swayed by the wind. On this occasion, and perhaps for some time earlier, Jesus had given him a special name: Peter, which means ‘rock,’ something solid, something foundational, something strong, immovable and of great potential.
‘You are Peter,’ Jesus says. ‘You are Rock. And on this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.’
And so, two thousand years later andmore than two thousands miles away, we follow and worship the same Lord—because the Lord knew and chose a man upon whose confession of faith he began to build a people that no hellish army could defeat. St Peter, or someone writing in his name, would later declare that church to be ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation and God’s own people.’
We have a share in that. Peter’s second letter puts it this way: we are ‘participants in the divine nature.’
The Lord knows you just as intimately as he knew Peter. He knew Peter’s faith could be shaky, but nevertheless he declared him Rock. Apparently the name David means ‘beloved.’ There are a few of us Davids here. A few of us were ordained deacon last week, too, and it gave us a laugh when the preaching archdeacon addressed us mid-sermon: David… and David… and David… and David. Beloved.
I wonder what your name means, or if our Lord has a special name for you as he did for Simon son of Jonah—Peter, the Rock—and a special purpose. He has chosen you no less than he chose Peter, and he has no less a plan and a purpose for you than he did for Peter.
Aside from Christ we may feel lost, lacking an identity, grasping in the darkness. Peter’s first epistle proclaims Christ to be a living stone around whom we are being built, like living stones, into a temple—a home—for God. ‘Once you were not a people,’ the author writes, ‘but now you are a people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.’
In Jesus Christ we come to a God we can trust. Peter—who could be of much faith and at other times of little—recognised the Son of the Living God, and in turn his Lord recognised him. In the ebb and flow of our faith, he remains faithful to us, too, and recognises and calls us as surely as he called his apostle.
Amen.