Commentary on Matthew 16:13-20

I am a movie buff, and our text today reminds me of a powerful, profound, action-packed movie titled Vantage Point. Though I admit that it is not one of my favorites, it would be included on the list of my high-ranking honorable mentions. Released in 2008, this cinematic offering starred Dennis Quaid and Academy Award–winning actor Forest Whitaker and was about an assassination attempt on the President of the United States. The most interesting aspect of the movie, and I dare say what makes it so brilliant, is that it is told and retold through the eyes and experiences of the various characters. 

The movie begins with the audience watching from the perspective of a spectator, until the attempt on the President’s life. Then the movie literally rewinds to the beginning, starts over, and follows the same series of events, yet through the different experiences of other individual characters, allowing viewers to walk with them through their day leading up to the assassination attempt. I thought this to be phenomenal, not only because of the movie’s daring creativity and the amazing amount of expertise and high-level execution it takes to pull such a project off, but also because it takes raw courage to tell the same story through the lens of different characters, allowing others to watch the interactions with people from all sides with unfettered objectivity. 

Whether the audience knew it or not, they were blessed to have the opportunity to see the story from all sides, which gave them a peculiar sense of power because they knew what the people in the movie did not and could not know. You see, the writers presented the story in such a way that we knew the narrative from each character’s vantage point while they only possessed the purview of their own experience. 

Perhaps the filmmakers are suggesting that part of the fallenness of the human condition is that we are so enamored with our own perspective that we often overlook, discount, or even disregard the stories of others. However, in this movie, the viewers did not have to worry about that because the writers shielded us from a myopic, one-sided perspective; they showed us the whole story from multiple perspectives and gave us a true vantage point. It was a fantastic endeavor, one that we audaciously aim to accomplish today.

In today’s biblical narrative, we encounter three distinct vantage points most urgently. The primary and hardest for us to understand would be that of Jesus, the Christ. The other two vantage points, with which we are probably most familiar, are (1) that of the disciples and (2) that of the Pharisees and Sadducees. We are most familiar with these because, whether we want to admit it or not, we have played both in the narrative of our own lives. While we endeavor to star as the faithful disciples of Christ in the theater of our own minds, we often inadvertently put God to the test through our thoughts and actions, taking on the roles of Pharisees or Sadducees. As a result, the vantage point of all three becomes penultimate in the exegesis, the preaching, and the application of this text. 

The Pharisees and Sadducees were under pressure. The growing positive and popular public opinion of Jesus, the renegade from Nazareth, was becoming a more significant issue than they had thought. The Pharisees were having problems because Jesus, by their own admission, spoke like one “with power and authority,” while the Sadducees were concerned about what he was saying. The Sadducees were a wealthy priestly sect with authority over the Temple. Jesus’s preaching about the poor, the injustices in the Roman Empire, and giving personhood to the lost, the last, and the least was making waves. So, to test Jesus, they asked for a sign. Jesus responded by saying, “Beware of the yeast.”

This is important because yeast in the Bible represents falsehood or false doctrine. Jesus warns the people about the Pharisees and Sadducees by saying, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” The disciples, from their vantage point, are in a panic because they forgot to buy bread. Jesus says “No, y’all don’t get it, I’m talking about the yeasty or false traditional teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 

Jesus is telling them that if their teaching is devoid of love or simply preserves tradition, it’s yeast. Watch out for traditions that don’t lead with grace, for attitudes that major in negativity and judgment but are devoid of love and understanding, and for personalities and positions that posture in power without having the sensitivity and humility of Christ. Watch out for the yeast, Jesus says. However, it took a moment for the disciples to understand what he was saying. 

Have you ever been there? Have you ever been in a season where, though you’re in a deep relationship with Christ, you are struggling to understand what he is saying? This was the plight and vantage of the disciples for most of this passage.

Finally, Jesus, possibly knowing that the disciples’ ears were in the streets, asks them a jarring question as they come to Caesarea Phillipi: “Who do people say that I am?” After several answers from the group, Jesus asks the most important question, and I paraphrase: “Dear Ma’am or Sir, from your vantage point, who do you say that I am?” Peter, as Peter does, blurts out an answer. But it turns out to be a profound confession: “You are the Christ, Son of the living God. 

There it is. This, I believe, is the primary concern from Jesus’s perspective regarding us. More than anything, Jesus wants for us, based on our vantage point, to answer that question: “Who do you say that I am?” The question has been asked; what do you say? Amen and Ase’.