My Sisters and Brothers,
This Wednesday we celebrate the Confession of St. Peter. For me, this passage from Matthew (16: 13-19) is one of the most significant in our lives as Christians. In my sermon this past Sunday I spoke about the first four titles Jesus is given in John’s gospel: Lamb of God, Son of God, Rabbi, and Messiah, and contrasted it to my sermon two weeks before when we celebrated The Holy Name and I spoke on the significance of names. What makes the passage so powerful to me is that it is one thing to ask what do the people think, it is another to ask, “but who do YOU say?” The question is no longer what others think, but it now becomes personal, what do I believe? The answer must come from deep inside us. We are asked to search our souls for the answer, something I find many today would rather not do. It is so much easier to follow the crowd and to remain incognito, but when the question is asked of us, we cannot look at our neighbor’s test page for the answer. There is no cheating. What I am really being asked is not what I think about Jesus, but who Jesus is in my life, not yours. A question I believe we need to answer daily.
This Wednesday also is the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In many locals, Christian Churches will gather for noonday prayers. Often the theme of the preaching revolves around the lines from the “high priestly prayer” in John 17:20 “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” What is unfortunate is that all too often this is understood to mean that we all might be the same. Jesus spoke these words to his disciples. They had different backgrounds, different gifts, and different personalities. What unity they had was in believing in Jesus. St. Paul spoke of the church as being a body; some feet, some hands, some eyes, some ears. As he wrote to the church in Corinth: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12: 12-13). Oh, that we could live into this, focusing on what we have in common, Jesus Christ, and setting aside our differences so that we can truly love one another as Christ loves us and accept His call to follow and see.
Peace,
Bryant+
