Several years ago, a woman walked out of her church after a particularly rousing Sunday service and bumped into a thin, sort of lost-looking man who was standing on the sidewalk looking up at the cross on top of the church steeple. She excused herself and started to walk away, but the man called her back. “Tell me,” he said, pointing through the front door into the church she had belonged to most of her life, “What is it that you believe in there?”
She started to answer him, and then realized that she did not know the answer, or did not know how to put it into words, and as she stood there trying to compose something the man said, “Never mind. I’m sorry if I bothered you,” and walked away. She shared the story with her pastor and confessed he did bother her.
Bothered or not, I wonder how we would answer such a question if asked as we leave worship today. What is it that we believe in here? What would we say about our faith, about our church, about our God? And more importantly, what difference might our answer have for the person pointing at our faith. Is there a real possibility their response to our feeble answer might be, “Never mind.” Or, if we dare say what we believe clearly would the follow-up question be more difficult, “Seriously, you really believe THAT in there?”
Imagine for a moment you are the woman. You have been in worship. You feel your soul has awakened within you and that you have felt God’s spirit in your heart as the word of God is read and proclaimed, as you prayed and sang and offered anew your life to our Savior.
Imagine for a moment the young man on the sidewalk though unknown to us is Jesus and he is asking us, “What did you just do in that place?” “Why, worship” we say”. Then he asks what we believe in there when we worship? Will there be a hesitation, a hushed and tentative answer or a bold clear proclamation?
In our gospel reading this morning Jesus and his disciples have just come into the district of Caesarea Philippi leaving a trail of miracles behind them. Thousands were fed, the sea was calmed and walked upon, and demons were cast out of a little girl. Always the teacher, Jesus had been asking his disciples questions about what they believed about him and it was time for questions again.
The road to Jerusalem and the cross lay ahead. Jesus knew he was running out of time. He needed to make sure he could leave his disciples and they would understand he was the Christ, the Messiah, the one who had come to save the world from sin and eternal damnation. So far, the disciples had not passed his tests. They were failing miserably.
So Jesus asks, “Who do people say I am.?” Admittedly, this should be easy. They don’t have to think for ourselves or search their brains for a clue. They simply say what others are saying, John the Baptist, Elijah, or even Jeremiah.
“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. Now they cannot wiggle out of an answer, it is too personal, if they hesitate they risk Jesus saying, “Never mind, I’m sorry if I bothered you’ and he may walk away.
Fearing this, I can see them looking to the one person who always has an opinion about things, the one person who isn’t bashful about asking Jesus to explain things, the one person bold enough to even ask Jesus for miracles, Peter. I can just see all their eyes moving to Peter for help. And Peter delivers like he has never delivered before. He nails the answer! Seldom right, but never in doubt, this time Peter saves the day, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he says.
Peter does not take the easy way out; he doesn’t guess or admit he doesn’t know who Jesus is because this time he knows. You are the Messiah Jesus, that is who you are! Jesus must have been hoping for this answer because in one fell swoop he declares ‘Blessed are you, Simon of Jonah,’ and then Jesus gives him a new name, He says, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church.’
He also declares he will give to Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Words that tell us, Peter is given the knowledge he needs to interpret Jesus teaching. But be on the look out, we know enough about Peter to know he seldom leaves things alone. One minute Jesus says to Peter, “Oh you of little faith,” and then he is being blessed. I have a feeling Peters on again off again favor is the true picture of his life with Jesus. And he just may be the perfect model for how ours is too.
It is interesting and important to note, once Peter declares Jesus to be Messiah, Jesus pulls the plug and tells him his answer is not his own. We should be reminded too that when we profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, while our answer is right, it is not really our answer. Jesus explains, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
The truth is we have not reasoned to the conclusion that Jesus is our Messiah, no, that truth doesn’t come from us. God has revealed it to us and without God’s help we too would find ourselves guessing Jesus to be John the Baptist or someone like that.
We should also wonder, if it was not Peters’ answer why did Jesus rewarded him. If our “finding” Jesus is not our discovery, I wonder why we are rewarded too.
Honestly, that’s what our Messiah does. Our savior loves people like Peter. People who are bold enough to declare him to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Jesus gives love and favor to those who have faith in him even though we stumble and forget from time to time.
We are so like Peter when we think we deserve a reward for our correct answer or our correct lifestyle. Like we have earned something, a blessing perhaps, that we are different from the rest who don’t get it. And then, like Peter, we stumble and make a mess out of things, we doubt, we declare we are faithful and promise to live our lives as if Christ were a part of our very soul, and then our actions don’t match our words.
Peter, fresh from his blessing, will in just a few verses in this same chapter, be rebuked by Jesus for arguing with him when Jesus tells his disciples what is going to happen in Jerusalem. He tells them he will be killed and on the third day be raised. Peter argues with Jesus and declares that this must never happen. And Jesus commands him, “Get behind me, Satan!” It is as if Jesus says, Peter you are a stumbling block in my path, and I have just stubbed my toe on the very one who is to be a building block in my church.
Do you see how Peter mirror’s our lives when we go from being blessed and the corner stone of the church to being a stumbling block in Christ’s way? This is the reality in our lives that shows us how desperately we need Jesus to give us the right answer to his questions. Our answers are not right. Without Jesus, we are truly a lost and forgotten rubble.
But Peter is also a positive model for us. He never hesitates to live his life, to be an active participant in the progression of time and space into which he has been thrown. To live, to love, to endure, to find in joy and bliss and pain and suffering hope. To risk grabbing hold of the one sure life-line with an eternal promise, a life with Christ, who is the Messiah!
There is an important distinction to note about Jesus’ renaming Simon Peter and then his speaking of the rock upon which his church is to be built. Petros, the Greek name Jesus gives Peter, means a stone or pebble, a small piece of a large rock, while petra, the Greek word used for rock, means a boulder, a great big rock. The importance of this difference affects how we interpret this story. Jesus is saying of Peter, you are a small piece of a larger rock, a chip off that rock perhaps. He is also saying he will build his church on a boulder, a great rock large enough and solid enough to be a foundation for a church.
Revisit the story in Matthew for just a moment, Jesus asks, ‘But who do you say I am?’ Simon Peter says, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus blesses him and says he is a chip off the old block, a small piece of a greater rock. That greater rock of course is Jesus Christ. That is who God’s church will be built upon, for God has revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Rock of Ages and we join in being those pebbles under foot that God uses for walls and supports and roofs for his kingdom on earth, his church. Like Peter, our proper place is as a building stone filling in those chinks in the church.
Dear ones, our gift this morning is that we are blessed because our answer to life’s question is God’s answer and we are the bed rock of the church where the Kingdom of God is built. We are chosen not because the right answer has occurred to us, oh no, the right answer occurs to us because we are chosen, because Jesus chose you and me to build his church upon.
We find our hope in a person like Peter and Jesus’ obvious love for him. He did not always say or do the right thing, yet he is the rock used to build God’s church. In that truth, there is hope for us because like Peter, we will remain a chosen rock whether we live as a corner stone or a stumbling block.
Being chosen is more about our willingness to try and answer what it is we believe than knowing the right answer. The right answer after all doesn’t come from us. It comes from God. Being willing to take risks and say what we believe, speaking in faith, from our heart, that is what God wants to hear from us.
It is a comfort knowing someone like us, Peter, is the one in charge of heaven’s gates. When we show up we will be recognized by one of our own. One who, like us, is not afraid to declare Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?
That matters a great deal, our willingness to boldly declare to the sort of lost looking man who is standing on the sidewalk looking up at the cross on the top of the church steeple wanting to know if his teaching has worked on us. Don a ’t be bothered like the woman who had just come out of worship, be like Paul, who takes a risk to answer the most important faith question we can be asked.
What is it that you believe in there, when you worship, the lost looking man asked. Truly, I cannot answer for you, he is saying. But the important thing for each of us is to try – not only to say what we believe but also to live what we believe.
Like Peter, we too will rise and fall, give the right answer some days and the wrong a few chapters later, yet we too are chips off the old block, pieces of the one true rock upon which even the powers of death shall not prevail.
And praise God, this is the truth we believe in here, this is the truth we will declare to all who ask. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the Son of the living God!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Additional helps:
“The Seeds of Heaven”, Barbara B. Taylor, p. 74.
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This seems to be the crux of the matter:
ReplyDeleteThe truth is we have not reasoned to the conclusion that Jesus is our Messiah, no, that truth doesn’t come from us. God has revealed it to us and without God’s help we too would find ourselves guessing Jesus to be John the Baptist or someone like that.
By grace alone....