21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 16:13-20
Homily given at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, New Harmony, IN
Whenever my kids would use
the word HATE
I would always counter
Now, sweetheart, Hate is a
VERY strong WORD…
I think what you really mean
is …
Well, I really mean it…
I HATE teachers who give pop
quizzes.
That is how I always heard
this Gospel
As Jesus giving the dreaded
Pop Quiz
So…I listened again
And I found a different way
to read this
One that makes a lot more
sense
Certainly Jesus is aware that
there is buzz
We’ve had healings, and cryptic
parables, miraculous feedings,
and walking on water
There is buzz
And if there is buzz, the
disciples are hearing it
And if they are hearing it
They are participating in it
too
What is the buzz?
Jesus wonders
And what are you contributing
to the buzz?
Not much of a quiz…Jesus is
curious.
This passage in Matthew’s
Gospel is called
Peter’s Great Confession
“the Christ…the Messiah…the
son of the living God!!!”
He gets it right
…With a little divine assistance
the text says
Peter is the Rock
But there is…it seems to me
A tinge of humor here
The very next episode
…a little preview of next
Sunday’s reading…
the very next move by Peter
causes Jesus to say to him:
‘GET BEHIND ME SATAN!”
Talk about strong words!
In an instant the ROCK
becomes a STUMBLING BLOCK
So it seems that it isn’t
particularly difficult for a person
to get the doctrine spot
on…Without knowing what one is really saying!
That is a Peter I can relate
too!
Peter, like us, doesn’t exhibit
full knowledge
Good creed, good doctrine…not
complete understanding.
No matter how churchy, and
theological a doctrine sounds
It wasn’t just thought up…pulled
out of the clouds
…it had to begin with an
earthy experience
Can it really have relevance
or saving power
if it wasn’t first born of
human experience???
But not just any human
experience…
…an experience of coming face
to face with something SUPER-natural?
Something so new that the
mind
grapples and grapples and
fights to understand?
And eventually after all that
grapple and all that fight…
Finally…it gets expressed in words…albeit limited words
It didn’t begin with a
4th Century ‘Father of the Church’ sitting down
at some 4th
Century typewriter
No…it was just
people…ordinary people…
who had known this Jesus of Nazareth
Ordinary people who found
themselves different because of knowing him
People who felt something real
happening
Something new, and
hope-filled, and even unsettling
I remember a line from a book
I read a long time ago
I remember nothing else about
the book except this line:
“It was impossible to despair in the presence of
Jesus”
“It was impossible to despair in the presence of
Jesus”
It sounds like a way of
talking about that ‘something’
My friends, we are invited to
participate alongside these real people
We must find a way in
We must find a way into that
experience
The experience behind the
doctrine
The experience that gave rise
to it
We must…
Because to simply subscribe
to a doctrine
(Which is a good thing don’t
get me wrong
it is a great resting spot)
But simply to subscribe doesn’t
mean that much as an end point
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
Whoa…it
feels a bit ‘IN MY FACE’
The
child in me wants to say
‘I
don’t have to answer if I don’t want to!’
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
Not
a Pop Quiz
More
like the Gospel holding out an invitation
I’m
not sure I want to open it…
It is
so nice and neatly sealed
in
that holy and sacred Bible envelope!
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
Wait
a minute
That
invitation is not addressed to me!
…he’s
talking to those 1st century disciples…
You
hypocrite Cindy!
You
scardey cat
You
are always preaching about how important it is to enter the text…
to
walk around in it…
to
identify with various characters…blah blah
Open
that INVITATION Cindy!
Because
it is the Church’s ancient answer to the question
I
am going to use the Apostle’s Creed…
…as
my guide
I’ll
use it to shape
My RSVP
to this invitation.
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth;
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
This is the easy part.
It’s my Jewishness coming out!
Yep!
I believe in only ONE
The hard part about ONE
Is that it necessarily excludes all
the others
So…for starters…that one is not ME!
And it isn’t my favorite movie star
It isn’t the President
It isn’t the one who hates the
president the most boistrously
It is not my bank account or my
zipcode
That ONE is not the power an addiction
That one is not the seductiveness of
sin
That ONE God
The source of all there is
The uncreated one
I call that God LOVE
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy
Spirit
and born of the Virgin
Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was
buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right
hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and
the dead.
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
And I believe…I really do believe
That God became a human person
This is the part that is most
important to me.
How would I ever figure out how to
love God if God remained distant?
Distant, amorphous, vague and out of
reach
An idea or concept
Or energy
How can I love energy or concept?
How can a God like that make any kind
of demand on me?
A God who is love
Needed to become concretely lovable
In the flesh
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
You are the one born like me
Fully human
You are the one who became the only
model
worth imitating
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
You are the Christ
The one who reveals God’s very heart
A human heart that both ached and
rejoiced
And still does
Aching alongside me when I suffer
Rejoicing alongside me when I rejoice
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
You are the face of the living God
that I encounter whenever I look with the eyes of love and compassion
You are the face of the living God in
the neighbor I struggle to forgive
You are the face of the living God
that shows me what is actually possible for us men and women
You are the face of the living God in
human form
It is all there…in the stories
You are the one who chose to heal
rather than ignore
You are the one who chose to feed
rather than send the hungry on down the road
You are that one who faced down the
demonic
You are the one who didn’t wait for
the other to initiate reconciliation
You are the one who breathed mercy
You are the one who rose from the
dead showing us that death, and hate and fear…are no ultimate match for the
love of God
You, Jesus of Nazareth, are the one I
hope to imitate.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
You are the one now present
here
Not in your flesh but through
the power of the Holy Spirit
In OUR flesh
You are present and active in
this gathering of church
In the communion that knows
no time or space
You are present whenever I
forgive or am forgiven
You are present in my body
When I was a brand new infant…
Now as a late middle aged
grandmother…
And on and on as I age…and
through my death
It is through my body that I
encounter your presence
My senses, my intuition, my
prayer
They are gifts…gateways to knowing
you.
WHO… DO… YOU… SAY… THAT I
AM?
That is what I have for
now….for today
Certainly incomplete.
But it isn’t made up
It is, in fact, only what I
have received
…At least what I have
remembered today of what I have received
From my grandmother Jennie
And my father Ed and my mother
Jane
And countless unknown saints
along the way
It is what has been handed
down to me
What I have been taught
Sometimes without me even
paying attention
Taught by reciting the
tradition in the form of prayer and creed
Taught by stained glass
windows and trips to old cathedrals
Taught be the stories of
scripture
Without even paying too much
attention
This faith is still settling
into my bones
It animates my life
But it isn’t until I take
that question seriously
WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
That I am moved to gratitude
Wrestling with it
Putting it down on this paper
I wonder…How did this come to
me?
How did I end up on the
receiving end?
And what is my part in the
tradition of ‘handing on?’
To Believe
Is to give over one’s heart
I Believe I will keep trying
to do that.
I will keep trying to give over my heart.
WHO
DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?
It is not a pop quiz
It is an invitation
An invitation
That from time to time
we would do well to open and
to RSVP
Our responses will always be
partial
But in answering
We will be practicing giving over our hearts
Giving over our hearts
To the one who shares his own
