Week 1 of the Church year
കൂദോശ് ഈത്തോ ഞായർ
Jesus asks his friends who they think he is. Peter gets the answer right, and a few verses later gets everything else wrong. The Church year starts with both.
Near Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks who people say he is, then asks his disciples. Peter says he is the Christ. Jesus calls him the rock the Church is built on, then warns that he must suffer. Peter objects and is rebuked.
Koodosh Eetho means the sanctification of the Church. On the first Sunday of the new year the Church remembers where it came from: one man’s confession of who Jesus is.
Peter is called a rock and a stumbling block in the same conversation. The Church is built on people like that, and it still is.
ഈ ഞായറാഴ്ചയുടെ വായനകൾ
Peter calls Jesus the Christ, then rebukes him for speaking of the cross.
Three times Jesus asks Peter “do you love me?” and gives him the flock.
Moses meets God in the tent outside the camp, face to face, as a friend.
The tabernacle is set up, and the cloud of God’s glory fills it.
Isaiah sees the Lord in the Temple: “Holy, holy, holy”, and “Here I am, send me.”
You are living stones, built into a spiritual house: a holy nation, God’s own people.
You are God’s temple, and your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Peter confesses Jesus as the Christ; Jesus calls him the rock on which the Church is built. This is the Gospel of the day.
Open in five scenesMoses meets God in the tent outside the camp, the cloud fills the tabernacle, and Isaiah sees the Lord in the Temple. Peter and Paul then say the dwelling place of God is now his people. The year opens by asking what makes a place, and a people, holy.
References follow the official lectionary of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Your parish may read them in a different order.
Pick a scene to see what happens in it and what is easy to miss.
Far to the north, near a city named after Caesar, Jesus asks what people say about him. John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets.
Every answer the crowd gives is a prophet who is already dead. They can only fit Jesus into the past.
Jesus turns the question on the disciples. Peter answers for them all: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The question moves from “people” to “you”. Nobody can borrow someone else’s answer to it.
Jesus says Peter did not work this out himself; the Father showed him. Peter is the rock on which the Church will stand, and he is given the keys of the kingdom.
This is one of only two places in the Gospels where the word “church” appears (the other is Matthew 18:17).
Jesus tells them to keep it quiet for now. From this moment he begins to explain that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed and rise on the third day.
Matthew marks it as a turning point: “from that time Jesus began”. The rest of the Gospel walks towards the cross.
Peter takes Jesus aside and tells him this must never happen. Jesus calls him Satan and a stumbling block, because he is thinking the way people think, not the way God thinks.
The rock of verse 18 becomes a stumbling block in verse 23. The same man can be a foundation or something to trip over.
The verse to keep
“നീ പത്രൊസ് ആകുന്നു; ഈ പാറമേൽ ഞാൻ എന്റെ സഭയെ പണിയും; പാതാളഗോപുരങ്ങൾ അതിനെ ജയിക്കയില്ല എന്നു ഞാൻ നിന്നോടു പറയുന്നു.”“I also tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
Peterപത്രൊസ്
A fisherman from Galilee, the first of the disciples to call Jesus the Christ.
“Rock” (Kepha in Aramaic)
Simon bar Jonahബർയോനാ ശിമോൻ
Peter’s name before Jesus renamed him: Simon, son of Jonah.
Simon means “he has heard”
തെറ്റുപറ്റുന്നവരുടെ മേൽ പണിത സഭ
Peter’s answer at Caesarea Philippi is the most famous thing he ever says. Jesus blesses him for it and calls him the rock. Five verses later the same man tries to talk Jesus out of the cross and is told to get out of the way. Matthew does not soften either moment.
The Church begins its year with this Gospel on purpose. It is easy to imagine the Church as a building, or as the people who never put a foot wrong. Jesus builds it on a man who understood one thing perfectly and another thing not at all, and who would deny him within the year.
That leaves room for the rest of us. The question Jesus asks is still put to each person in turn: who do you say I am? Answering it is the first step. Letting him correct the rest of what we think is the work of a whole year, and this is the first Sunday of it.
കുടുംബമായി സംസാരിക്കാം
If someone asked you this week who Jesus is to you, what would you honestly say?
Two minutes after the audio. Everyone gets a turn, and nobody is interrupted.Pick one thing you want to do differently in this new Church year, and tell one person at home so they can ask you about it.
Lord Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Build your Church on us, weak as we are, and correct us when we think as people think and not as God thinks. Amen.
The whole year
Every Sunday of the Church year, season by season: readings, the Gospel and a question for the family.
Sunday 1 of 2 in Koodosh Eetho