“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”
There is no greater contrast than between Peter and Paul, the one a poor fisherman, the other, a proud scholar. And yet, as Augustine argues, “they were as one”. What unites them? Christ Jesus. What does that mean? It means that Christ Jesus has overcome all the oppositions, enmities and animosities that are present in the world and in our souls.
The truth and unity of the Church is found in the confession of Christ. “No one can say, Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit,” Paul will say, just as Peter famously confesses to Jesus, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” And Jesus says to him that “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven.” One of the most dominant metaphors for God in the Old Testament is God as the Rock, the rock which like a father has begotten you, the rock which like a mother has brought you to birth, as the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy puts it. “That rock was Christ,” Paul proclaims, having in mind the wilderness journey of Israel and the stricken rock out of which comes life-giving water. The image is at once static and solid and dynamic and life-giving. Christ is the stricken rock out of whose pierced side water and blood pour forth, the symbols of the sacraments by which we live from him who died and lived again. Jesus says to Simon Peter, “you are the rock upon which I shall build my Church.”
The Church, the ekklesia, referring to the gathering together in unity of heart and mind, is defined by the Lord, Kyrios, from which is derived the word, Kirk, and Church. Peter and Paul are one in the beginnings of our coming together in “the blessed company of all faithful people,” the Church. Their stories are best known from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles and from their writings. The many Epistles of Paul and the two Epistles general of Peter, are essential parts of what becomes the New Testament. Yet their story is not without controversy and argument, a conflict about the universal and the particular, about Jew and Gentile, about the Old Covenant and the New, in relation to Christ and his company. It was a necessary argument out of which arises a deeper understanding and confession of “Christ, the son of the living God,” whose death and resurrection means the overcoming of all and every form of enmity and whose redemptive love is by definition for all.
“God is love,” we commonly say, forgetting that this is the love which died and rose again for us. Why? So that in him we might die, being “buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead … even so we also should walk in newness of life”. It is the very meaning of our life in Christ, our life in his body, our life as confessing the crucified and risen Christ.
It means dying to ourselves and our hatreds in order to live for Christ in and through one another. The mission of the Church universal proclaims our life in the body of Christ as the community of reconciliation and reciprocity. The feast of Peter and Paul in the tradition of the Church unites these two Princes of the Church and the Faith. To commemorate them is to remember the rock upon which we stand and the living word which goes forth to all the ends of the world. The rock and the mission are one.
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”
Fr. David Curry,
Feast of Peter & Paul,
June 29th, 2026.