You Are the Messiah? - Reflections on Matthew 16:12-20, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Thursday, June 18, 2026

         This text from Matthew, clearly based on Mark 8:27-30, is among the most important pericopes of the entire Gospel. For here it is made plain just who Jesus is, as that is revealed by the chief disciple Peter. Or is it as simple as that? In Mark’s account of the dialogue held at Caesarea Philippi, after Peter blurts out that Jesus is “the Messiah,” Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him” (Mark 8:30). This warning is part of the famous “Messianic secret” that characterizes Mark’s Gospel, that element of mystery surrounding the identity of Jesus that Mark announces again and again. However, Matthew turns the scene in a very different direction, allowing Peter to make his claim—an even more extensive one than is found in Mark—yet still concludes with that strong warning from Jesus: “Then he ordered the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Messiah” (Mt.16:20). It is important for us to explore why that warning is a crucial one for Matthew’s Gospel narrative.

         We may only begin to answer the conundrum of the warning not to tell anyone about Jesus’ messiahship if we look more closely at the ways in which Matthew purposely alters the manner in which Mark paints the scene. In following Mark, Matthew repeats the pattern of identification of Jesus (Mark 8:27-30=Mt.16:13-20), the passion prediction (Mark 8:31-33=Mt.16:21-23), and the instruction on discipleship (Mark 8:34-9:1=Mt.16:24-28). All these examples are nearly identical across the two Gospels. In addition, there are some minor editorial touches. Matthew adds the following: “Jeremiah” to the list of the guesses about Jesus’ identity (Mt.16:14); the specific reference that Jesus was indeed Messiah (Mt.16:20); Peter’s direct speech in Mt.16:22 as opposed to Mark’s narration of the speech; Jesus calling Peter a “stumbling block,” versus Mark’s harsher language of naming Peter “Satan.” These are perhaps not really significant changes, but the great expansion of Peter’s confession in Mt.16:16b-19 is quite significant indeed.

         This material, made extremely important by its use as the very foundation of the Roman Catholic Church, has no parallel in Mark, nor is it found in any other Gospel source. In Mark, Jesus immediately corrects, if not rejects, Peter’s claim of Jesus’ messiahship, in Matthew the confession is the basis of Jesus’s rich blessing of Peter. In this text, Peter is praised as a recipient of divine revelation (16:17), is named the church’s foundation (16:18), and is given a special authority by Jesus himself. Little wonder that the church very early found in these words the center of the church’s origin and the beginning of its structuring.

         The origin of these words have long been in dispute. They sound Semitic (“Simon Bar-Jona,” “flesh and blood,” the Peter-rock pun, among others) and may suggest an Aramaic source. It has been concluded that Matthew used a pre-existing tradition and incorporated it into his text. Given its focus on Peter, who is rebuked roundly in Mark, while being held up in Matthew as a highly significant figure in the early community of the emerging faith, the tradition may have its origin at Antioch where Peter was seen as the founding apostle of the church there. Also, in 1 Cor. 15:5, the risen Jesus appears to Peter, offering a very early Pauline witness to the importance of Peter. However we are to adjudicate the question of the saying’s origin, it can hardly be doubted that Matthew has laid the foundations for the Roman church’s adoration of Peter and why he was seen as the first Pope, leading to a long line of his descendants in that role. Peter, says Matthew, received a revelation from God about the identity of Jesus, and as such was named by Jesus as the “rock” of the church and the keeper of the “keys of the kingdom.” 

         Yet, what about a possible answer to our question concerning Jesus’ warning against revealing his identity after Peter’s confession, despite Jesus’s warm reception of that confession and his fulsome approbation of what Peter has said? I think the warning may be for any, and especially Peter, because there always remains the distinct possibility, shown over and again, of confusing just what sort of Messiah this Jesus may be. This danger is made plain in the very next scene of Matthew’s Gospel.

         Beginning on Mt.16:21 Jesus gives to the disciples another of his Passion predictions, the absolute certainty that the road on which Jesus is traveling will lead to his death and his final resurrection. “And Peter took hold of him and began to rebuke him, saying: “God forbid, Lord! This will not be so for you!” (Mt.16:22). That sounds very like Mark at Mark 8:33. And Jesus’ reply is quite Markan, too. “But he turned to Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me because you think the things not of God but of humans” (Mt.16:23). Peter’s refusal to understand or accept the death of Jesus suggests that he does not know what the Messiah must undergo if he is to fullfill the mission God has set for him, and thus the mission God has in mind for Peter, too. 

         Soon, Jesus will ride into Jerusalem, and crowds will cry out that he is “Son of David, the blessed one who comes in the name of the Lord” (Mt.21:9). There is a clear triumphalism in these cries, and therein lies the danger of imagining a false Messiah, one who must vanquish the Roman oppressors, and make a world free from all difficulties and pain. But this Messiah will go quickly to his death on a Roman cross, and the day he dies will see no political change in the land at all. The disciples are warned not to announce Jesus as Messiah, because they, and we, are likely to get it wrong. And that danger is still very much with us now. The Jesus too often proclaimed in our time is that false Messiah, the powerful warlord of God, sent to defeat supposed enemies and to make the rule of certain of the world’s peoples, the peoples with the greatest armies and the most money, possible. That Jesus simply does not exist. The Jesus of Mark and Matthew is the Jesus who is Messiah, but whose Messiahship does not resemble anything like the person of power and might envisioned by too many folks in our day. Hence, Jesus’ warning to his disciples, and to us, about announcing too soon and too simply the reality of Jesus as our Messiah. Right after Jesus both affirms and rebukes Peter, he says that any who would follow him “must take up his cross” (Mt.16:24). There is the true Messiah, and his call to us remains the same, a calling to the difficult way of a cross.