Matthew 16:13-20
New Living Translation (NLT)
Peter’s
Declaration about Jesus
“13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi,
he asked his disciples,“Who do
people say that the Son of Man is?”[a]
14 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say
Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
15 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah,[b] the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John,[c] because my Father in heaven has revealed this to
you. You did not learn this from any human being.18 Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means
‘rock’),[d] and upon this rock I will build my church, and all
the powers of hell[e] will not conquer it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven.”
How many
times in our lives have we failed to be “real” with one another? How often have
we failed to show our authentic selves? Peter can only be accused of this a couple of
times in the Bible, once for denying any association with Jesus, and once for
going along with the crowd in a bid to ostracize Gentiles from the common
table. The rest of the Gospels and the
New Testament reveal a Peter who was a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy. When I think of Peter, I think of
self-effacing raw emotion. He’s the guy
who would jump out of the boat to meet Jesus or cut off an ear to protect him. I think it was the raw honesty and lack of
pretense that Peter showed that made him dear to Jesus. Peter, unlike some people might like to
portray him, was not a bumbling idiot, he was perhaps a bit of a hothead, but
overall, a true follower and friend of Christ.
To sum it up, Peter was real. And if you are going to choose to build
your church on someone, they’d better be pretty darn real.
For some
reason, at some point in our history, the Church (in general) decided to err on
the side of polish over authenticity. We
save the bearing of our souls for homes or small groups or we just don’t allow
ourselves to be that vulnerable, which is fine. We don’t always have to lay our
hearts and lives out for public dissection to really worship. But every now and
then, that vulnerability voices itself in truly beautiful ways.
This
Sunday, I experienced a bit of Peter in our church. Our service was on forgiveness and letting go
when we have been hurt. Deanna Deaton,
sang a song that she wrote about not understanding the betrayal of those whom
we have shared our lives and hearts with.
She said that we hurt because at some point, “we made the silly choice
to love others” and become part of one another’s lives. Deanna is easily the
most honest and true person I know. She would deny this, but that is why I love
her. In the song, she puts the person who
has betrayed her or cut her out of their lives in God’s hands because, she
can’t hold them in hers. The song was
beautiful, but what was even more beautiful was seeing her wipe her eyes of the
crocodile tears that were rolling down, and then I looked around and people all
around me were wiping their tears as well.
And the tears didn’t stop there, as Pastor Patrick talked about
releasing others of their iniquity and thus releasing them and ourselves into
God’s healing, I thought about how we should have put a box of Kleenex in every
row before the service.
And it’s
not that I feel that every service should be a cry-fest, but in this service
our tears felt like permission to say in our Sunday best that, “I’m not okay
sometimes. I have been hurt or maybe I’ve hurt another to the point of killing
something inside myself.” All around me
I saw God’s wounded people and it was heartbreaking and heartwarming, because I
knew that with those displays of vulnerability, were the first glimmers of
healing. Sundays like this one are why the best way I know how to describe the
followers of Christ is “broken and beautiful”. May we never fear the honest
tears of healing and worship for it is upon that honesty that God will rebuild
the church. Amen.
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