The Psalm : Psalm 124
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side--let Israel now say--if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The Old Testament Lesson : Exodus 1:8-2:10
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. The total number of people born to Jacob was seventy. Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live." But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?" The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them." So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."
Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, "This must be one of the Hebrews' children," she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Yes." So the girl went and called the child's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, "because," she said, "I drew him out of the water."
The Epistle Lesson: Romans 12:1-8
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
The Gospel Lesson: Matthew 16:13-20
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
"Destined or Determined?"
Over the course of this summer's Sundays we have been sharing stories from the life of the patriarch Jacob, from the months before his promised conception, through his turbulent childhood and youth, his marriage to two sisters, the birth of twelve sons along with the subsequent loss and reunion with Joseph, right up until his death as a very old man in the land of Egypt. Throughout that time I hope that your opinion of him went through a number of changes. Certainly the more experiences we have with anyone, the more likely our opinion is to change, for the better or the worse.
Which sets us up for our first question today. How important is the role of public opinion in your life? It may depend a lot on what kind of a career you have. Certainly if one is a politician, in active public office, the opinion of the populace is very important, and a great deal of money is spent trying to assess and woo it. Parents on the other hand have to become pretty callous to their children's opinions about the way they stack up as compared to the parents of "all the other kids in the school" on almost any given issue, and couples often become too busy just trying to stay ahead of the game to count a regular evaluation of their performance to be realistic.
I remember hearing a story about a young wife who on the eve of their first anniversary, over a very nice dinner, turned to her husband and said "So tell me just what I've meant to you over the last year." He, not being the particularly expressive kind of guy, struggled to come up with some examples of things she had done or said that were especially meaningful to him, and that seemed to suffice. The following year she did the same thing again. He managed to come up with one or two new examples, and added "and your the woman I love who makes me very happy." Since that seemed to please her he felt is was a good formula and stored it in the back of his mind for future use. By the third year he was ready, and just relied on "You're the woman I love and you make me very happy." And that's how it went for the next six years. On the eve of their tenth anniversary he came home to an empty house and a note that said "I can't spend another year not having made any real difference. It matters to me that I grow and have an impact on the person I share my existence with."
Everyone needs feedback, whether they want it or not, and most people want to feel valued. Apparently even Jesus needed to do a reality check on his own disciples to see how well he was coming across as the time of his three year public ministry was drawing to a close. Like most people he probably already had an answer he was looking for when he asked the question, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?", and one can only wonder at his disappointment with the recorded first attempts at an answer. When Peter calls him "the Messiah, the Son of the living God", Jesus defines faith as the realization of such a certainty through experience.
That is a very important point being reaffirmed in all of our lectionary readings this morning. In Psalm 124 which is part of the annual Passover Haggadah, the ritual readings shared with the gathered family, God's daily protection is lifted up and celebrated. "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side…." Such a recounting of the past year is meant not only to remind, but to renew the sense of covenant that exists between the Lord and the people who see their whole existence dependent upon divine protection.
Paul, in the twelfth chapter of Romans, also calls for "the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect." It is an ongoing re-evaluation as opposed to a reliance on a formula faith. Who do I say God is in my life today? How am I growing in my understanding and appreciation of that very relationship?
Why should that be so important to all of us? Because life is not meant to be a flat line on the screen, but a constantly vacillating script of highs and lows that demands an appropriate response based on faith, and sometimes such faith requires that individuals go against the grain of public opinion to hold fast to what they know is God's will for them. Such defiance as performed by the midwives in the Old Testament lesson this morning, who dared to oppose the decree of the Pharaoh at the risk of their own lives, or the Pharaoh's own daughter who knowingly took as her own child one of the very children her father had ordered destroyed.
The history of the world is filled with the stories of people great and small who have done the same thing, as well as with the stories of those who simply conformed without question to the accepted understanding of their day.
Certainly knowing the right time to stand up for one's own opinions and act boldly is essential. Within the context of Matthew's Gospel even that dichotomy is played
out. In chapter sixteen, verse twenty Jesus "sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah." Then in chapter twenty-eight, verse nineteen he tells them "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." What makes the difference? Recognizing the authority of one voice.
In all four of the Gospels there is complete agreement that the Christ is simply an agent of God, empowered by God, and instructed by God. In the Epistles that follow them, the Church is never seen as a human achievement nor simply a fellowship of like minded believers who have formed a support group, but like the Christ himself is an institution of God who grants the revelation that generates faith, blesses those who receive the revelation, gives them a new identity, and then sends them to continue the work, with the authority to make decisions in God's name.
Such total transformation is a matter both of destiny and determination. Clearly we are here today because God chose to extend that special privilege to each one of us, but it doesn't just happen because one is found to be in the lucky ten percent. It happens because following a recognition of an opportunity that has been extended, one does their very best to make the proper use of it by application to their own experience.
Think of it this way…what does it mean if when in response to being asked who we are, what faith we follow, we say "we are followers of Jesus"....we are Christian"?
In all honesty, if it is an authentic description of "who someone could say I am", what it has to mean is that my life reflects the same things that the life of Jesus did.....it means I am kind, loving, forgiving, patient, that I care for the poor, that I fight for the marginalized....that I truly attempt to do all the things that define being a follower of Jesus.
If no one knew for certain whether or not we belonged to this Church, would we still be taken to be a Christian? Would we be seen as showing the same characteristics as Jesus? Think back to the early church. The thing that attracted new members to the faith was the living example of how the Christians related to one another and the world itself - "see how they love one another" and seeing that behavior modeled was what brought people to join.
So instead of the passage celebrating a turning point in recognizing who Jesus is, as in Mark, it has become in Matthew a celebration of what the Church is. Nothing suggests a dynasty where power is exclusively Peter's and his successors. Clearly 18:18 implies the same power is be taken and exercised by the entire congregation. The challenge to the scribes and Pharisees shows that it will be possible to abuse such authority. Next week's passage will show that it is possible for Peter to be a Satan to Christ and the gospel. History has many examples where Peter's success rate has been matched. Matthew is affirming the authority and waving in our face the dangers and the fallibility of leaders. The will to power is very seductive, not least in ministry.
On reflection for this day...think back through you're last couple days.....if a stranger were to have followed you around all day long, each day, would that person have been able to respond to a question from someone asking "who you are" by saying "he (or she) is a disciple of Jesus Christ".....by your actions in life, would you be taken to be a Christian? May God help us to be able to answer "Yes!"
The Pastoral Prayer:
God our Help and our Redeemer, if you had not chosen to become a part of our lives, through the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ, where and who would we be? Helpless without you we offer our heartfelt thanks and praise for such evidence of your care for us. In and through Jesus, we have become more deeply aware of your goodness and mercy. As your presence enabled him to live courageously, so you strengthen us to live boldly through the gift of the Holy Spirit - your empowering presence in us. We pray that our worship and our daily living will resonate with our gratitude and praise for your presence with us and all your gracious gifts to us. Loving God, we give thanks that You care for all people, but particularly the vulnerable and abused. We give thanks that You give some people the insight and courage to dissent, to act against cruel policies, to raise the hard questions to those in power and make us all rethink Loving God, thank you for the abundance and beauty of Your creation, meant for the enjoyment of all people. Thank you for the richness of different peoples and their cultures.
O God, our comforter, we ask you to comfort the broken-hearted and protect the vulnerable. In places where violence destroys lives, bring your peace. In places where hatred disfigures communities, bring your love. God of justice,
compassion, grace and mercy, hold back the arm of those who would do violence and wickedness. Bring down the proud and the powerful and lift up the downtrodden. Christ, our friend, when we were once distant strangers you proclaimed peace and brought us near. Help us extend your grace and welcome in word and deed to all around us. Help us to live out the values you have called us. Let us not be conformed to the world and behave with selfishness or indifference to the needs of others, but follow the way of your son, who came not to be served, but to serve. Let our lives and our words witness to your grace and
love that reach out to the last and the least.
Merciful God, so transform us with the life of Christ and renew us in his image that the grace, humility and compassion which marked his life will be clearly visible in and experienced through our lives; so that we who are one body in Christ may delight in sharing the gifts you graciously give us for both the building up of this community of faith and the communities in which we live and work and play. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen