Homily for the Twenty-First Sunday - 23 August 2026

“The Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” - Ephesians 3:15

For the past few months I have been chasing my family tree. On my mother’s side, I have found a documented line of descent reaching back into the early thirteen-hundreds. On my father’s side the trail runs out sooner, in the mid-seventeen-hundreds — but even there, to hold a record of a man baptised nearly three hundred years ago, and know his blood runs in mine, is a strange and moving thing. The research continues and it is fascinating. There is a hunger in the human heart to know where we come from — whose son we are, whose daughter, whose line we continue.

It struck me, reading this Sunday’s texts, how full they are of exactly that language. Eliakim, in our first reading, is introduced very precisely as Eliakim, son of Hilkiah. Jesus, in the Gospel, calls himself the Son of Man. Peter calls Jesus the Son of the living God. And Jesus, in reply, addresses Simon by a name we might easily read past: Simon Bar-Jona — son of Jonah. Scripture today is doing something with names and sonship. Follow that thread, and it leads to the heart of what this Gospel is asking of us.

The deeper question is not only where we come from, but who God says we are when he calls us by name.

Look first at Eliakim.

God tells Isaiah he will summon “Eliakim, son of Hilkiah,” clothe him in the royal robe, and lay on his shoulder the key of the House of David, so that he opens and no one shuts, he shuts and no one opens. This was a real office in the royal court: the man authorised to act in the king’s name, with the king’s authority. Its visible sign was the key, and its deeper meaning was service; Eliakim becomes “a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” A son becomes a father. An office is laid on his shoulder, and it changes what he is for others.

Now turn to the Gospel, where Jesus asks two questions. The first is easy: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” The answers come tumbling out — John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. None hostile; it seems people think well of Jesus. We are not so different today: ask around, and you will hear Jesus described as a great moral teacher, a compassionate reformer, an inspired religious founder. All of it warm. All of it still short of the truth.

Jesus then asks the second question, and it is no longer about “people.” “But you,” he says, “who do you say that I am?” Peter answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Not admiration. Confession. And Jesus tells him where that answer came from: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Flesh and blood — the very thing I have been tracing these past months through old documents and parish registers. And Jesus says to Peter: this did not come to you that way. It was not inherited. It was revealed.

Then comes the detail

I find most beautiful of all. Jesus does not simply accept Peter’s confession and move on. He answers name for name. Peter has just told Jesus who Jesus is. Jesus now tells Peter who Peter is: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona.” Simon Son of Jonah. We know from John's Gospel that Simon's father was actually named John, and Jona is most likely just an older Aramaic form of the same name. But Christians have never quite resisted hearing something more, since it is Matthew who elsewhere records Jesus speaking of “the sign of Jonah” — the prophet who rises after three days in the whale, a living sign of resurrection. Intended or not, the resonance is hard to un-hear: in the moment Peter confesses the one who conquers death, Jesus names him a son of the sign of resurrection.

And this is exactly why Jesus speaks of giving him the keys: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” This is not a vague, poetic image, but Eliakim’s old office, now opened inside the household of the new King. Peter is made chief steward of the Kingdom — authorised to serve in the King's name — and the link with the popes as successors of Peter and vicars of Christ is striking.

Augustine, preaching on this passage centuries ago, caught something essential in five Latin words: Petrus a petra, non petra a Petro — Peter takes his name from the rock; the rock does not take its name from Peter. Peter does not become the foundation because he is strong or wise or faithful enough to deserve it. He receives an identity, and an office that are not his own achievement — exactly as his confession of Christ was not his own achievement. Grace always comes first. Vocation follows.

None of this was new in the story of God's people. Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel — at each decisive covenant moment, God renames someone to mark what he is making of them, not merely what they already were. The Church has never let go of that instinct. We receive a name at baptism, and often another at confirmation — traditionally a saint’s name, chosen to shape the life still forming. Those entering religious life still, in many communities, receive a new name at profession. Every time, the same principle: an identity given, in Christ’s name, that we did not invent for ourselves, and that we are called to grow into.

That ought to turn a question back on us. We spend a great deal of energy answering, unprompted, the question “who am I?” We seek the answer in our achievements, our failures, what others make of us, and the accidents of our birth. But perhaps the more honest prayer is the one Peter never thought to pray, and yet received an answer to anyway: “Lord, who do you say I am?” Not the identity we construct for ourselves, but the name Jesus already speaks over us, if we are quiet enough to hear it.

St Paul, writes in the Letter to the Ephesians that he kneels before “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” Every line I can trace in documents and parish registers, and every line I cannot, finds its truest identity not in the flesh but in the Father who names it.

Simon’s name changes to Peter, meaning rock, because his deepest family, from this moment, is traced no longer through John his father alone, but through the God who has just revealed himself to him.

I find that consoling.

Jesus did not wait for Peter to become a finished man before entrusting him with anything. Nor does St Paul conclude his own reflection on God’s plan with the satisfaction of a man who has worked it all out; he breaks into praise instead: “How rich are the depths of God — how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods.” Even Peter, given the keys, is not given omniscience — something worth remembering the next time we feel unequal to what Jesus asks of us, as a parent, a catechist, or someone quietly relied upon by others in this parish.

So, I leave you with the same two questions Jesus put to his disciples near Caesarea Philippi. The first is easy: what does the world say about Jesus today? A great teacher, perhaps. A good man. But the second question is the one that will not let us go. Jesus is not asking what the world thinks. He is asking us each individually. "But you — who do you say that I am?"

This week, take that question into one quiet moment of prayer, answer it honestly before him, and then ask in return: “Lord, who do you say I am?” If we give him a true answer, Jesus may well have a name to give us in return — not the name our flesh and blood gave us at birth, but the name he sees in us, the person he is patiently, faithfully, already building us to become.