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The following message is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. His sermon is entitled "The Gates of Hades." Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew, the 16th chapter. I begin the

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reading at the verse which is numbered 13. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

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Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar- Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death, the gates

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of Hades shall not prevail against it." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. In a day when two out of every three church members are not present in their church for worship on Sunday morning, and in a day when the average church member spends more to buy one McDonald's sandwich in a week than she spends to

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alleviate world suffering in that same week, and in a day when, speaking in terms of real numbers, it takes 10,000 Christians to win three new converts to the faith, in a day like today I am often asked, "Why do you continue in the ministry? Why do you stay with the church?" My answer to that question is always the

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same. It's something that Jesus said about the gates of Hades. He said it at Caesarea Philippi, and this is the story. This penniless carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus, took his 12 scruffy disciples to a place about 25 miles northeast of the Sea of Galilee. It was a place of recreation. There was a famous temple

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there made of white marble which had been built by Herod the Great to honor Caesar as God, and somewhere in the vicinity of that temple, for it dominated the city, Jesus said to his disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" He got various answers from various of the disciples, but then Simon said, "You are the Messiah," or

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if we were to render that in Greek, "You are the Christ." Now remember, Simon was a Jew, and so when he said this, he was saying, "You are the fulfillment of the Old Testament. You are the culmination of the hopes of my people. You are the promised one for the children of God." It was quite a remarkable thing to say, but

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he goes on to say something even more remarkable. He says, "You are the Son of the Living God." The majesty and the mystery of Jesus' deity, the way in which the glory of God radiated through him, had penetrated to the mind and the heart, the soul, and the conscience of Simon. Now I am quite sure that Simon could not

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have offered a sophisticated theological explanation of what he had said, but he knew what the Holy Spirit had made evident in his heart, and he testified to it. If we would have walked upon that scene as mere bystanders and seen Jesus standing there, perhaps in a profile position, he would have looked to us just

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like any other man. But Simon had been with Jesus now for many weeks, and he had looked at him eye to eye. He had seen the passion in the man. He had seen the overwhelming pity in the man. He had seen the purity that no thought, no word, no deed was ever anything less than it ought to be. He had seen the willingness

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in this Jesus to grasp the hard nettles of life. He had seen the world-winning vocation toward which Jesus had committed himself, becoming evident in Jesus' life. He had seen the traces of deity and, at the same time, a loving devotion to humanity. He had seen how the Spirit of Jesus could reach the spirits of other

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people. This man was unique. We, looking at Jesus in profile, might have said, "Well, he's just a man." But Peter, having seen him eye to eye and having had the Holy Spirit moving within him so that the mind of Jesus met the mind of Peter and the heart of Jesus, his heart, and the conscience of Jesus, his conscience, and

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soul to soul in the intimacy of that, he came to the conclusion that this one was none other than the Son of the Living God. I cannot explain to you how this comes to pass, but each and every one of you who has met Jesus of Nazareth in your heart, in your mind, and in your soul knows exactly what I'm talking about.

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And Jesus responds to what Simon has said, and he responds by establishing the church. He says, "Thou art Peter," he gives Simon a new name, Peter, which means rock, "Thou art Peter, and on this rock," he says, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Max Weber, the great sociologist, has said

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that there are three kinds of authority evidenced in human experience. The first kind of authority is that of tradition, the authority that comes with custom, things that have been handed down. The second kind of authority is legal, that is, a system of rules and the power of those who enforce the rules. But there is,

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Weber adds, a third and most powerful kind of authority, and this he calls charismatic authority. This is the authority which comes from the divine. Now many people, when they look at the church, see it as nothing more than traditions and customs that have come out of yesterday. And many, when they look

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at the church, see it only as a philosophical or theological system with which one can approach life. But what the Scriptures teach us is that the authority of the church is not to be seen in these things. The authority of the church lies in this, "It was established by God." So when someone says

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to me, "Why do you stay with the church?" My first answer is, "Because the church was begun by Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, and I will not forsake that which is divine in its essence, in its origin, and in its life." Now when Jesus said to this one he was now calling Peter, "I will build my church," the word

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he used for church, and we're not sure what language he was speaking here, whether it was Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic, but whichever one, the sense of the word for church is the same. Jesus is saying, "I'm going to establish, build a new group, a new Israel, a new people, all of whom will freely follow me as my

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disciples." Now notice he says that it is to be built. This is not something that is already established. When he speaks to Peter, he is speaking of its beginnings. And he also says, "I am going to build this church on rock." And this of course is the significance of the new name which Jesus gives to the one called

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Simon before, but now called Peter, which means rock. You see, what Jesus is saying to Peter is this, "On the basis of the confession that you have just made, that I am the Son of the Living God, on the basis of what the Holy Spirit has taught you in your heart, on the basis of that which you have just testified to in

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front of all these other people, on these bases I'm going to give you a new name. And because you have this new name, rock, the church is going to be built on the rock of what you have just said. And because you were the first one to say it, you will be the first stone which I lay into the foundation of my church."

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Throughout the whole New Testament, we encounter again and again the concept of the church as a building, and each person in it is a stone. This is woven throughout the pages of the Scriptures. In 1 Corinthians 13, for example, or 1 Corinthians 3, for example, we read that the church was not built by mortal, but

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rather that its foundation was laid by Christ himself. In Matthew 16, the passage which is before us this morning, we are told that the first stone that is laid in that foundation, both in terms of who said it and what he said, is Peter. In Ephesians chapter 2, we are told that all of the other apostles and the prophets

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are also to be built into the foundation of the church, Christ himself being the cornerstone. And in 1 Peter chapter 2, we are told that Christ is living stone and that all those who become a part of the church become living stones in the building which the church is. You see what's happening here?

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Peter honors Christ. "Thou art the Christ, thou art the Son of the living God." Christ turns around and honors Peter. "And I will call you the rock, and I will build my church on the rock, and on what you have said, that will be its foundation, that will be the rock, and you, because you said it first, will be the first stone in

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that foundation." Now Christ is not giving to Peter here any special power. He says in the very next verses that Peter has the power to bind and loose things both in heaven and on earth, but he says that to all the disciples in John chapter 20, so that is not unique. Jesus is not giving to Peter here any particular

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authority. Just a few minutes later he rebukes Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan," he said. Or in Acts chapter 15, the church is confronted with a problem, how do they settle it? Not with Peter's opinion, they organize a council and the council decides, and the chairman of the council is not Peter but James, the brother of

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Jesus. And in Galatians 2, Paul says that it was necessary for him to rebuke Peter to his face because of the wrong practice in which Peter was involved. And Christ is not here giving to Peter something that he can pass down to his successors. By definition, only one can be first. Peter was first, but you can't pass

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down that firstness. When Peter preached the Pentecost sermon, at which 3,000 people were led by the Holy Spirit to respond and become living stones in the newly being built church, when he did that, every one of those living stones became a preacher. Every one of those living stones went out carrying the

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message of the gospel. All rocks in the building which the church is. If you'll pardon the rather casual expression, one might refer to the church as a rock group. And that means it should have harmony and it should have the same rhythm and it has a song to sing and it ought to sing that song with spirit and

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enthusiasm. I saw a young person on a campus carrying a placard which read "Jesus, yes. The church, no." That's absolutely illogical. That is impossible on the very face of it. For the fact of the matter is that if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord, then you will be built as a living stone into the church.

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And if you are, on the other hand, a living stone in the church, then you will be responding to the authority of the church's builder, Jesus the Son of God. So when someone says to me, "Why do you stay with the church?" I answer, "Secondly, I am not like Peter in that I was the first one to confess and the first one built

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into the foundation, but I still am one of its living stones and I will not forsake the duty of a disciple." And then Jesus says one other thing to Peter about the church. He says, "The gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Hades means "the place of death." So what Jesus is saying is the church will not die. On

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Easter, when Jesus broke the bonds of death, the church became the Easter people. Jesus is saying that the gates of death itself will collapse before the power of life and life eternal, which he brings to and through the church. Death itself will die. Auguste Rodin was one of the most famous sculptures of the last

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part of the 19th and the first part of the 20th century. Most of you will be familiar with his greatest work, The Thinker, the man sitting on a rock with his chin resting on his fist in deep contemplation. Now the vast majority of people are not aware of the fact that The Thinker was not created by Rodin as

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a separate work of art. In 1880, the French government asked Rodin to cast a great set of gates, bronze gates, on the theme of Dante's Divine Comedy. And this became the major work in Rodin's life. Now he created a lot of other works as he continued his life, but he always came back to these gates and kept adding to

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them. And finally, in the year 1917, he completed the first plaster casts of those gates, which he called the Gates of Hades. Unfortunately, a very few months later he died. And so the gates were never cast in bronze until 1938. And in 1938, three sets of the gates were cast. And seven years ago, one of those sets of

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gates was brought for the first time to the United States and displayed for a few weeks at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. And I drove to Washington, DC to see those gates. And they were awesome to behold. At the very top of the gates sits the thinker. And he is looking down on the gates and

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depicted on the face of the gates mythologically, biblically, historically, is the whole tragedy of the human story. All of the ways in which death enters into people's lives, temptation destroys, wars ruin. Here is the record of human perfidy, all the sadness that one can conceive of, everything in life that has

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about it the stink of death. That's the reason the thinker looks so intense. This is what he's looking at as he looks down at these gates, the Gates of Hades. But what Christ says is, "Those gates will fall. Death will not prevail in history. The church will win. And it will win finally, and it will win forever." There

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has been no time in the church's history when it did not have problems. In the 14th century it was simony. In the 15th century it was commercialization. In the 18th century, half the bishops were atheists. And there are all kinds of problems in the church today, some of which I have mentioned this morning. But

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in the end, the church has always risen above those things of death which have clutched at it. In the end, it has continued its life so that it is the oldest institution on the face of the earth, impervious to death. In 1984 I attended the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It was one of the greatest

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moments of my life. I loved the experience. And people often ask me, "What's my greatest memory of those games?" Well, there are a lot of them, of course. The international crowds, the wonderful spirit which prevailed, the parade of the athletes when they came into the great arena, hearing the music of George

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Gershwin played on a hundred grand pianos at the same time, and a thousand trumpeters play the Olympic theme, seeing records made and broken, seeing the fantastic pyrotechnical displays which the Japanese brought and exploded, seeing the Olympic banner raised to the highest flagpole. These were all great moments.

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But to me, the greatest moment had to do with the Olympic torch. You will remember that the torch came to our East Coast, and then it was carried by hand by a series of runners across the United States. And those runners represented every walk of life you can imagine. There were men and there were women, there were

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older people and children, there were black people and yellow people, there were rich people and poor people, there were outstanding athletes and people in wheelchairs or on crutches, but one after another, each one took his segment and carried that torch a few yards closer to its goal until finally it was brought

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into the arena there in Los Angeles. And the whole crowd stood, thunderous applause and many weeping, as Rafer Johnson, one of our greatest athletes, took up that torch and ran to the highest point in the stadium, and there ignited the bowl of flame which represented the Games. I'll never forget that. For at that

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moment, there was given to me by God the vision that that torch is like the church. As I looked at it and thought of the church, I remembered all those who have carried the church's torch across the years, old and young and black and white and men and women and crippled and whole. As I looked at that

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torch and thought of the church, I was reminded of how it comes out of yesterday and is here today and will go on into the future. And as I looked at that torch and thought of the church, I thought of the church as unquenchable, as brilliant and warming, as that which brings light and heat to a dark and a

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cold world. And thinking of that, I said to myself, "How could anyone who loves Jesus Christ lay down the torch, stand aside from the church?" For it was Christ who established it. It was Christ who has made all Christians' living stones responsible for the building of it. And it is Christ who has promised to the

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church the final victory over death and everything in life that promotes death. This is now and this is always why I will stand with the church. Pray with me. O God, we thank thee for thy Son. And we thank thee that when he went away he did

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not leave us comfortless but left us your Holy Spirit. And we thank thee that the Holy Spirit continues to live and move and breathe and do his works through the church. O God, bless the church. Bless us as living stones within the church. May we always be faithful. May we always hold high the torch. We pray

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our prayer in our Savior's name. Amen. (engine noise)