Sermon for August 23, 2020 Pentecost 12 A House of Prayer Lutheran Church
Matthew 16:13-20; Romans 12:1-8 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
Close your eyes and picture the scene: A mountain with several peaks reaching skyward, each one higher than the next, the highest point over 9,000 feet above sea level; covered in snow year-round. Below the snow line, vast forests of pine, oak, and poplar cover the hillsides, while lower down grapes are cultivated in vineyards waiting to be harvested and turned into wine. At the base, rocky outcroppings open into dark and cool caves, while springs seep through the rocks, feeding lush marshes where tall reeds grow, and flowing into streams and rivers. No, I’m not selling a travel adventure--I’m just describing the location of today’s gospel story!
I know, as summer draws to a close in this pandemic time, that many travel plans have been rearranged. There’s trips we haven’t been able to take, people we haven’t been able to visit, things we haven’t been able to do or see. So maybe this year we can live vicariously by traveling with Jesus through the Bible. And Jesus has sure been doing a lot of traveling this summer as we’ve heard the stories from Matthew’s gospel. He wandered the hillsides around the Sea of Galilee. He walked on water to join the disciples who were sailing to the other side of the sea. He walked up north to the region of Tyre and Sidon, on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. And now he’s wandered inland, about 30 miles north of his home base in Galilee, to enjoy the mountain majesties of Mount Hermon at the busy crossroads of Caesarea Philippi.
One reason Jesus did all this traveling was to keep widening the circle of who is included in his ministry and message. Like when he was trying to find a place to be alone in the Galilean hills, but ended up having compassion on a crowd of over 5,000 whom he fed with his Word, not to mention the loaves and fishes. Or like the Canaanite woman up in Tyre and Sidon who begged him to have mercy upon her daughter being tormented by a demon. The disciples wanted nothing to do with her--of course not, she was a Canannite; her people had been enemies of their people for thousands of years. But Jesus turns the tables saying, “woman great is your faith; let it be done for you as you wish.” Through Jesus, God keeps widening the circle of who is part of his kingdom.
And now Jesus and the disciples are at the mountain-side crossroads of Caesarea Philippi, a Roman city just north of Galilee known especially for it’s shrine to the Greek god Pan. You can still visit this site today and see the ruins of the temple and the grottos and caves used for worshiping this mythological god, who in human imagination was half goat and half man, and played a flute cut from the reeds growing near the spring that flowed out of the mountain.
An interesting thing about the worship of Pan is that he’s the only Greek god who was believed to have died. So at the shrines of Caesarea Philippi the people worshiped a dead god, who was called by those devoted to him a “son of man”. This seems like a good place for Jesus to ask the question we overhear in today’s gospel: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” After all, one answer to that question was carved into the mountain rock all around them--the dead god, Pan. The disciples’ answer takes a different angle: “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah…” These were prophets of Israel who had died, yet whose words still lived because they spoke the living Word of God.
Finally, Jesus gets to the money question: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers--not a dead god imagined in greek mythology, not a dead prophet who once spoke a living Word--Peter confesses, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And that confession of faith is the rock upon which Christ has been building the church ever since. The church--throughout the world--exists because we have a living God, who has come down into the world to be present and active in our lives. And as Christians, we put our faith in a Messiah who has compassion for us in our struggles and forgiveness available for our sins; who has mercy for the fallen and brings justice to make things right according to God’s lovingkindness; who has new life waiting to grow within us when we humble ourselves before him; who opens to door to eternal salvation because he defeated the power of death and sin forever in being raised from the dead.
We are the church because of him. Wherever it is that we are--in our homes, our cars, our work spaces, watching on computer screens, going to school in whatever form school is going to take this year, wherever it is we happen to be--we are the church today, because our living God keeps building on the foundation of this rock of faith. And our Messiah wants to fill us with the hope and love of God by opening the kingdom of heaven to all who open their hearts to him. That is God’s promise for all peoples--and remember, it also includes each one of us. It includes you!
Christ is still building his church in me and you so that the gates of hell will not prevail against us! This doesn’t mean we won’t face difficulties or won’t suffer from sin--but it does mean that through faith, Christ can lead us through them to new life on the other side. And we sure do need to hold onto that hope of new life in Christ. Because even as we’ve been at this pandemic time for a while, that doesn’t mean things have necessarily gotten easier. Many people feel lots of things that are sucking the life out of us these days. Lots of things that might drag us down, make us despair and wonder when will it all end and life be normal again? Lots of people have really been challenged by anxiety, and issues with mental health, physical health, spiritual health. With all of these challenges we might wonder: Is Christ still building his church?
Yes--because we've got to remember, it’s Jesus who builds the church, not us. It’s faith in God’s grace that opens the kingdom, not our ability to have it all figured out. What we get to do is hitch ourselves up for the ride. We get to be like those disciples and travel along the way with Jesus--the greatest tour guide ever--even when we’re not sure where he’s leading us. Just like he did with Peter throughout the gospels, Jesus takes each of us “as is”, and Jesus asks us to trust that he knows where he’s leading us.
Christ is still building the church today. Each day, like a brick mason laying down mortar and fastening new bricks, each day Jesus puts down a new layer of “church” upon the previous one, so that he can help us adapt to our circumstances. And each of us is one of those “bricks” that Christ uses to build his church. As St. Paul puts it in Romans 12, “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. And we have different gifts according to the grace God has given us…”
We need each other, because no one person has in themself all the gifts that Christ needs to build his church. So we need to rely on one another; stick with each other; pray for each other; try to understand each other; love and forgive as Christ first loved and forgave; ask God to grow us and transform us into who he needs each of us to be.
And if you’re at a place where those things seem too big, you’re struggling in your faith, you don’t know where God could possibly begin with what you’ve got to offer--then start by looking small and simple. Start by opening your heart to the love Christ has for you, and the possibility that the living God might be up to something, and say “here I am Lord, as is.” Amen.