Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 2026

Behind me stands St Peter. Rendered by sculptor Henry Hugh Armstead in the 1860s, he is one of the four sculptures that stand on either side of the High Altar here at Westminster Abbey. From left to right they are: Moses, Peter, Paul and King David. They are heroic images of these great figures from Scripture. Moses is impressively muscled as he grasps the stone tablets bearing the ten commandments, David has his crown and his lyre, Paul gestures imperiously whilst grasping the sword that is the symbol of his martyrdom. And then there’s Peter, clutching the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus bestowed upon him in this morning’s Gospel reading, brow nobly furrowed as he gazes into the middle distance. Each figure is gilded gold as, more than life-size, they stand as witnesses to the greatness of God’s acts, as inspirations in how to lead a holy life, as guides to what an individual can be when they follow God’s call.

That, at least, is the St Peter that we meet in this morning’s Gospel. Jesus asks all the disciples with him a question: ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ and we get a group answer. Matthew makes it clear that the disciples are answering together when they speak for the crowd. Jesus then asks them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ and it is Peter alone who speaks, and speaks truly: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And so Peter is singled out by Jesus and given an extraordinary task. ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,’ and ‘I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.’ The keys that we see in his statue and in the vast majority of images of the saint. From that task lies Peter’s leadership in the early Church as testified to in Acts, for some his status as first among the Apostles and the one from whom the Apostolic succession flows, and the set-up for many jokes about people arriving at the gates of heaven. Of all the Apostles, he is mentioned by far the most times in the Gospels, and is arguably the most fully transmitted personality: of all the twelve disciples, we can see Peter as an individual.

But Jesus’s question wasn’t just to Peter. He asked all the disciples, ‘who do you say that I am?’ and we are asked the same question. As individuals, we have to answer for ourselves the question of who Jesus is. This is not a question where we can stand around, hoping that someone else puts their hand up before us and then nod along with the answer. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life; the answer to the question ‘who do you say that I am?’ is a matter of life and death. We can repeat Peter’s answer, and we would be correct, but to know what that means is a life’s work as we grapple with Jesus as brother, friend, moral instructor, saviour, wisdom, and all the other facets of the glory revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ. And, as for Peter, our individual recognition of Jesus as the Son of God gives us in turn an individual calling—a task that we carry throughout our lives. What we would call a vocation.

Our vocation may not be to be the Prince of the Apostles, and blessedly we do not all need to be like St Peter. Indeed, not to spoil my colleague’s sermon they may be about to preach next week, Peter is an unlikely rock: as much as he was prone to getting it right, he was more often prone to getting it wrong. As the letter to the Romans we heard this morning makes clear, we all have different gifts that we can bring to the building of the Kingdom. I was going to say that I hope your vocation is not as weighty as St Peter’s, but in fact all vocations are weighty, whether you are called to be a priest, a parent, or the person in the workplace who calls out racism or sexism, someone who doesn’t turn aside from someone in need, or someone who is called to a life of prayer. Just as we have to individually answer the question, so is our vocation individual to who we each are and who God calls us to be.

At this point, I am beginning to sound like something out of The Life of Brian. ‘You’re all individual!’ ‘Yes, we’re all individual!’ And our statues of heroic saints that we are told we should emulate can make it feel like we are called to be “superheroes for Christ,” set apart by virtue of our “specialness,” raised up on a pedestal and gilded in gold. But if you look more closely at the screen that surrounds our High Altar, you will see that our four statues are not alone. They are surrounded by innumerable saints and angels. I once foolishly asked the choristers to count them without having done so myself, and regretted it when it led to spirited debate as to how many exactly there are! But the screen gestures to one of the most important vocations for every Christian—the fact that we are called to witness to who Jesus is as a community.

Much is made, and rightly, of the Letter to the Romans’ insistence on the goodness of the plurality of gifts; on the fact that there should be a delight in our differences. But it also makes clear that we, who are many, are one body in Christ. Our Christian life is inextricably woven from these two strands: the fact that we are individuals with an individual relationship to Christ and an individual calling, and the fact that we are one body through our relationship with Christ. Jesus consistently forged community around himself through his radical hospitality, and made it very clear that part of the role of that community was to care for one another. To ‘love one another as I have loved you.’ To pay attention to other people is to pay attention to God, and it is because of the extravagant variety of ways in which people respond to God and live the life that we have in him that we are impoverished if we think we can do it all ourselves. As Rowan Williams puts it, ‘the slogan of the Church’s life is “not without the other.”’ It’s not a static picture of everyone standing untouchable in their individual dignity, it’s a dynamic vision where everyone (yes—everyone!) has been set free to serve and be served in a common life. That fact is underlined at every Eucharist as the bread is broken and the priest proclaims, ‘though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.’ Our vocation as Christians is not one of singular striving to climb onto our own solitary pedestal of holiness, where the light of our individual goodness will gild us with unapproachable sanctity. It is one of continual movement where we climb off those individual pedestals to help and be helped, to love and be loved, just as Christ came down from heaven that we might abide in him even as he abides in us.

‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.’ Peter’s individual answer to the question we are all asked gave him an individual vocation, but in that vocation we see the community of the Church founded on Christ as the chief cornerstone. As we come here to this altar to be fed by Christ’s radical, self-giving hospitality, we do not do so alone, but as a part of the great Communion into which we are baptised. The story that is told by our altar screen is not of heroic individuals who do it alone—it is the story of the many who are one body, because we all share in one bread.