Thought for the week - 23 August 2026

There are rules that we need, and ones that we do not need, and ones that we do not always need, so can be ignored or waived from time to time. If you give me a grouse, I will cook it for 14 minutes in a hot oven and eat it with game chips, bread sauce and port gravy. If I were to use it for sushi or a lasagna, you would be at liberty to phone the emergency services. There are rules of engagement as well – we don’t go up to people we do not know and invite them to go on holiday with us, and there are speed limits, which can be useful guidelines for some people. Rules can and do matter only because people matter. Rules may make us uncomfortable, but should we change them simply to put people at ease? Things that make us uncomfortable lead to a choice: between listening to others or to ourselves.

In John’s Gospel many are uncomfortable with Jesus’s teaching. They cannot accept that Jesus is the Bread from heaven, and many who had previously followed him cease doing so. Jesus interrogates his disciples, whether they also want to leave. Peter answers,

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God. (John 6.68-69)

Jesus responds by calling one of his apostles (Judas) ‘a devil’.

This is similar to the Gospel we hear today. Jesus interrogates his disciples, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ and Peter responds with a confession of faith, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus then calls one of his apostles (Peter) ‘Satan’.

In John’s Gospel the reason for Peter’s faith is that Jesus has ‘the words of eternal life,’ and in Matthew’s account because Jesus’s Father has revealed this to Peter. In both Peter has faith in God’s saving revelation of himself. By contrast Judas is called ‘a devil’ (slanderer) because he rejects faith and life offered in Jesus, and Peter is called ‘Satan’ (adversary) because he is ‘not on the side of God, but of men’.

The context of these choices, between faith and one’s own will, is an uncomfortable disquiet. The disciples do not understand Jesus’s words or who he is, but they must choose. Peter puts his trust in Jesus. Following Peter’s confession of faith, Jesus makes his own choice. ‘Upon this Rock I will build my Church,’ Christ says. But what is this Rock?

The Bible gives three identities for the Rock, and all three are true.

First, the Rock is Jesus himself (1 Corinthians 10.4). The Church is built on apostles, with Christ as chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2.20), such that there is no other foundation but Christ (1 Corinthians 3.10-11).

Secondly, the Church in her liturgy, unhesitatingly affirms that the ‘Rock’ is Peter’s confession of faith.

Thirdly, the ‘Rock’ is Peter himself. Jesus says to Simon Peter, ‘You are Rock and on this Rock I will build my Church’. This is the plain literal sense of the text. Peter, shifting and fickle as sand, is made to be a Rock by Jesus. By grace Peter receives that stability and role that is Christ’s by nature, and we share that as well if we accept Jesus as the Lord and share that confession of faith. Furthermore, Jesus uses a plural here – ‘on rocks I will build my church’, living stones, like you.

By the Father’s gift the Church remains faithful, confessing through the Spirit that ‘Jesus is Lord’. Some people want, and get, a church that changes its rules to suit people. But if any church should prefer human ways over God’s or unbelief over faith, changing doctrine to suit people, then she is ‘Satan’ and ‘a devil’, the adversary and slanderer of Christ. Our rules are not guidelines, they show how we follow Christ because that is the only journey that really matters.

The church then is a gift to the world, because we exist simply to point the way to eternal life and hope, and to the source of all love and no trend or fashion has ever loved and cared for his people more than God himself. We find Him in the Bible and we find Him in our community, together, because we are, completely, in this together and it is Him we listen to, Him we worship, Him we model our lives on, and Him we want to be with forever, and the choice is to be with the slanderer, the adversary, who speaks so well in the voice of our times, but whose every word is a lie.