Posts Tagged ‘Acts 4:8-13’

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Acts 4:8-13 / Psalm 23 / 1 Peter 5:1-4 / Matthew 16:13-19

Today we celebrate the Confession of St. Peter.  They’re at Caesarea Philippi, a beautiful, rugged place of streams and waterfalls north of the Galilee in the Golan Heights, an area of Syria now controlled by Israel.  The splendid Roman city is gone; the many temples and shrines to pagan gods built into the face of a great rock cliff are gone—a couple of small niches remain.  It was perhaps directly facing these shrines with their statues that Jesus may have said something like, “That is Pan and that is Aphrodite.  But who do you say that I am?” “You are the Anointed, the Messiah, the Christ; the Son of the living God.”  You are Son of the living God, not a god carved in stone—says Peter.  The shrines and temples were built on the face of the rock cliff; the church would be built on the faith of a human “rock”, that is, Petros, Peter—as Simon came to be known. Read More