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S. Pentecost 13.26 Matt. 16:13-20

‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is heaven…’

Who is Simon Peter? The first pope of Rome? The Rock on which the Roman Catholic church is built? The chief apostle of Jesus Christ, first among equals? The first Christian, confessing Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God?

All that is pious (well not all that pious, any of it, really 😉 speculation. Jesus identifies Simon Peter as “Bar-Jonah”—son of Jonah. This is literally the Word on Simon Peter! And it is my contention that only when we understand how Peter is “Son of Jonah” that we really identify him and get who he is for us, today…

It is the consensus of all modern exegetes that Jonah here is simply the name of Peter’s biological father who is otherwise never named or mentioned in the scriptures, which BTW, don’t usually identify the prophets or apostles as “Son of So and So”. Is this just a weird little piece of census data that Jesus throws in (and and most readers ignore 😉 an irrelevant detail in the Story?

Well; it is my contention—as someone who reads the scriptures as a vast, loosely-organized non-fiction novel in which “figures” or “types” play a huge role in conveying the point of the story—that we are missing something big here, that we’ve got the wrong Jonah being named as father of Simon Peter…

Jesus is—to modern sensibilities!—shockingly indifferent to our biological parentage and lineage—pretty “meh” on his own biological relatives! And Jesus never speaks a word that is unimportant in the Story. And Jesus is a big fan of “figural” or “typological” prophecy—constantly referring to Adam, Moses, David as “types” or living pictures of who he is and what he comes to do for us.

One of the important “figures” Jesus refers to at the most crucial juncture of his Story is Jonah—the Jonah of “Jonah and the Whale” fame. The Pharisees demand a sign to show who he is and what he’s all about. And Jesus (somewhat testily 😉 shoots back “A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign! No sign will be given except the Sign of Jonah: as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”.

Jonah is thus, for Jesus, a far more crucial and important figure than his short and strange little book makes him seem to modern readers. And my contention is that it is this Jonah—the “Jonah and the Whale: guy, the reluctant prophet who at first refused to go to Nineveh (because he didn’t want to see unbelievers saved! 😉 and gets himself cast out of the boat sailing the opposite way to Tarshish, swallowed by a fish, puked out on the shore for new Adventures—it’s really this Jonah Simon is a “son” of… 😉

Have you noticed that when people ask Jesus questions like “what are you doing?” or “what is your teaching on this or that?” that he tells them a story, a parable that doesn’t give propositional truths to memorize but paints a picture to wonder at?

A careful reader of Matthew’s Gospel, who starts at the beginning and is reading or hearing it straight through, would, at this juncture in chapter 16, see a very significant little “Jonah moment” from the chapter before that we had as our Gospel just a couple weeks ago and so would have no doubt that it’s this the OT Prophet Jonah Jesus identifies Simon Peter as a “son” of—if they had any literary sense or imagination!

Previously in the Gospel of Matthew, our episode 2 weeks ago, we met the 12 apostles in a boat in a storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus comes walking to them on the stormy seas and Peter, impulsively, gets himself cast out of the boat (like Jonah! did in the storm keeping him from getting away from Nineveh) walks on the water, but then (faith failing 🙁 sinks beneath the waves, just like Jonah got himself cast out of the boat and sinks beneath the waves to drown—which he does! Jonah gets saved (not by a whale!) but by the fish ιχθυς—which Christians see as an acronym: “Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior”. After spending three days and three nights (Dead, I say!) in the belly of the fish, Jonah is raised and vomited out onto the Nineveh road to go and scare the beejeebers out of some pagans!

Jesus afterward hangs the nickname (Jesus loves nicknames 😉 Kephas or “Stone” on Simon to remind him that he sinks like a… Stone! whenever he leaves the boat to walk on water 😉

‘Stone’ will sink again in Caiaphas’ courtyard and get spit out later on the shore to meet Jesus and be called again as an apostle. I suggest it’s by Simon’s sinking and rising that he serves as a paradigm of faith for us all. Simon is Bar-Jonah like this… 😉

Simon’s nickname here is πετρος—the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Kephas, with a little different shade: ‘Rocky’, a little chip off the big πετρα (a different Greek word that means a huge Stone Mountain). Peter is not THE πετρα, the Rock on which the Church is built—that would be Jesus! Simon here is called Rocky, a chip off that block who, on his own, sinks like a Stone and only connected to Jesus by the faith which cries out in desperation: “Save me!” when he’s sinking, shows what Xn faith in Jesus is really all about…

It’s not about ruling or spinning out systems of pure doctrine and making others follow us down those cognitive paths. Nah. Faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, did not come from Peter’s heart or mind or cogitations. The Father revealed this to Bar-Jonah—a gift, a flash of lightning, a Bolt from the Blue. And when Stone stops thinking about it and simply non-rejects the Word, he gets pulled from the depths his impulsiveness got him sunk under, pulls his head out of his ah… sea, that’s raging 😉

For us, Simon aka Stone, shows rather vividly how we’re all The Sinking Sons of Jonah (great name for a Rock Band!). God sends us to Nineveh; but we go the opposite way to Tarshish. A storm arises. We despair and get ourselves cast out of the boat into the raging sea. And walking on the water, thinking about IT, we only sink deeper; yet, it’s in our sinking that Jesus gets hold of us, grabs us, pulling us out of our own heads into his Heavenly Kingdom.

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “everyone who hears these words of mine and is done by them is like a wise man who builds his house on the Rock”. Jonah’s Rocky Sons (like Simon 😉 are saved only by sinking under Baptism’s raging seas, by swallowing Jesus’ broken body which transfigures them into Sons of the Living God; and Peace, surpassing understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.