13 Pentecost

August 27, 2023

 

Matthew 16.13-20

 

 

+ This past week I was discussing my journey with deconstruction with a priest colleague of mine.

 

For those of you who do not know what deconstruction is, it is big thing happened right now among some Christians, especially those of more Evangelical backgrounds.

 

However it doesn’t haven’t to be for those from Evangelical backgrounds.

 

It is essentially a way of re-examining and shedding those parts of our faith life that’s imply do not work for us anymore.

 

I like to call it “burning away the fluff.”

 

My deconstruction journey has forced me to take a look at many of the things that have defined me as a Christian.

 

And it’s good for all of us sometimes to just take a moment and realize that things that may have sustained us earlier in our journey maybe do not sustain us anymore.

 

As you all know, I am a very liberal priest on many issues, such as LGBTQ inclusion in the Church and full inclusion of women in ministry.

But I'm a pretty solid and disciplined in areas of my spirituality and worship. 

 

But the areas I have found myself looking at long and hard on this journey are some of the other areas of my life.

 

Things like how Jesus is so easily worshipped in the Church, but so rarely followed.

 

That has been a big stickler for me over these last years.

 

And the more I see it, the more it digs deeply into my spiritual skin.

 

It bugs me, because I have done it myself.

 

A lot.

I want to be clear: I am not saying we shouldn't pray to Jesus.

But not to exclusion that we don't follow him. 

 

Let’s face it, it IS easier to worship Jesus rather that follow him.

 

And once that becomes a lens through which I observe the Church and other Christians, I find myself seeing it so often in our Christian journey.

 

And I see it as a source of what is so wrong with the Church.

 

It is safe to worship Jesus rather than follow him.

 

It is so safe to keep Jesus contained, neatly in our Aumbry, to pray nicely to him and kneel before him.

 

But it is not safe to actually seek to BE Jesus in this world.

 

To embody Jesus and to act like Jesus in this world.

 

And let me tell you, it is so easy to selectively ignore the things Jesus says to us in the Gospels.

 

For example, no where in scripture does he tell us to worship HIM.

 

But again and again he tells us to follow him.

 

And to follow him doesn’t just mean to nicely and politely follow him as he performs miracles and multiplies bread as though he is performing for us.

 

As though we are an appreciative audience, politely clapping of rhim.

 

Following him, means striving to see as he saw and love as he loved.

 

Sadly, the Church is not always good at this.

 

Christians are sometimes the worst at doing this.

 

That’s sometimes definitely the way it is with the Church—capital C.

 

Now, I know this is a shock to all of you, but I do not like authority.

 

I do not like being told what to do.

 

As many parishioners and a few bishops over the years have tried (and failed) to do over the years.

 

Ultimatums do not intimidate me.

 

I do not respond well to nagging or unconstructive criticism or complaining.

 

I once had a parishioner who sort of attended on occasion get mad at me.

 

She did not like that I did not confirm to her view of what a priest should be.

 

I did not nicely fit in to her neat little framework of what priests should say or do.

 

And she definitely didn’t like when I called her out for her abrasiveness toward others, her expectation that I give her some kind of special attention, or that I didn’t just quietly smile when she was borderline racist.

 

The days of nice, smiling, complacent priests are quickly dying away in the church.

 

And so they should be.

 

There are still plenty of nice, complacent priests around.

 

But it’s not me, and it’s not here at St. Stephen’s.

 

I will respect authority.

 

I will follow the rules (within reason)

 

But, let me tell you, I don’t always like it.

 

There are days when I don’t like the Church—capital C, or the authority of the Church or the hypocrisy of the Church.

 

There are days when I really don’t like some bishops, or some fellow clergy, especially when Bishops act pompous and full of themselves and when clergy act like spineless weasels.

 

There are days when I don’t like Church leaders—not just ordained ones but lay leaders too—who try to coerce and manipulate the Church and its ministers.

 

Probably most of us here would say we have felt the somewhat same way about the Church at times.

 

In fact, I know you have.

 

Because that is why you are here at St. Stephen’s.

 

There are days when we all groan when we see or hear other Christians get up and speak on behalf of the rest of us.

 

There are days when we are embarrassed by what some Christians say or do on behalf of Jesus and his Church.

 

There are days when we get frustrated when we hear clergy or other authorities pronounce decrees that, in no way, reflect our own particular views or beliefs.

 

There are days when we see people talk a big game about their nice, sweet, white, blond Jesus whom they worship with wild abandon, but who then go out and act like the same people the brown, Jewish Jesus would condemn again and again.

 

And there are times when we get downright mad at the hypocrisy, the racism, the homophobia, the misogyny, the transphobia, the ambivalence, the silence in the face of oppression and evil and war, the downright meanness we sometimes experience from the Church.

 

And it IS meanness.

 

Most of us—idealistically, naively maybe—wonder:  wait a minute.

 

The Church isn’t supposed to be like this.

 

The Church is supposed to be a place of Love and Compassion and Acceptance and inclusion. 

 

It is supposed to be a place where everyone is welcomed and loved.

 

And yet, for us as Episcopalians anyway, as we look around, we get a lot of polite, Episcopal complaining about rubrics, Prayer Book revision and the Hymnal 1982.

 

Knowing that and comparing the ideal view of the Church with its shortcomings only make us feel more helpless, listless, angry, and disgruntled.

 

And that’s all right.

 

I personally think that’s a somewhat healthy way of looking at the Church.

 

Because we have to remind ourselves of one thing: What we find ourselves turning away from and what we are often tempted to run away from is not God.

 

What we are running away from is a human-run, human-led organization.

 

We are running away from a celestially planned treasure that has been run (and very often mis-run) throughout two thousand years of history by fallible human beings.

 

In today’s Gospel, we find this wonderful interchange between Jesus and Peter.

 

Peter, when asked who he thinks Jesus is, replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”

 

Yes! That’s definitely the right answer!

 

But, Jesus responds to this confession of faith with surprise.

 

He responds by saying, “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.”

 

Of course, as you might know, Jesus is playing a little word game here with the words “Peter” and “rock.”

 

The Aramaic word for “rock” is “kepha.”

 

In Jesus’ own language of Aramaic he would have said, “You are Kepha (Peter is also called Cephas at times in the Gospels) and on this kepha (or rock) I will build my church.”

 

If you’re from a  Catholic upbringing—and especially if you’re more Roman Catholic minded—it seems that Jesus is establishing the Church on the Rock of Peter—and of course in that tradition Peter at this moment becomes essentially the first Bishop of the Church and in R.C. tradition, the first Pope. 

 

But that’s not what’s happening here.

 

The Church is being established not on Peter himself, but on the rock of Peter’s confession of faith.

 

Jesus IS definitely commending the Church to Peter and to his other followers.

 

And this is important, especially when we examine who Peter is.

 

Jesus commends his Church to one of the most impetuous, impulsive, stubborn, cowardly human beings he could find.

 

Peter, as we all know, is not, at first glance, a wonderful example for us of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

 

He is the one who walks on water and then loses heart, grows frightened and ends up sinking into that water.

 

He’s the one who, when Jesus needs him the most, runs off and denies him not just once, not twice, but three times, and even then cannot bring himself to come near Jesus as he hangs dying on the cross.

 

But…you know, Peter is maybe a better example of what followers of Jesus truly are than we maybe care to admit.

 

Yes, he is a weak, impetuous, cowardly, impulsive human.

 

But who among us isn’t?

 

Who among us isn’t finding someone very much like Peter staring back at us from our own mirrors?

 

And the thing we always have to remember is that, for all the bad things the Church has been blamed for—and there are a lot of them—there are also so many wonderful and beautiful things about the Church that always, always, always outweigh the bad.

 

Obviously most everyone here this morning must feel that same way as well to some extent.

 

If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here this morning.

 

Most of us are able to recognize that the Church is not perfect.

 

And I think that, when Jesus commended his Church to people like Peter, he knew that, as long as we are here, struggling on this “side of the veil,” so to speak, it would never be perfect.

 

But that, even despite its imperfection, we still all struggle on.

 

Together.

 

I love the Church and I love the people who are in the Church with me, sometimes even the ones who drive me crazy.

 

And I sometimes even love the ones with whom I do not agree or who lash out at me for their own personal issues.

 

Why? Because that’s what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

 

That is what it means to be the Church.

 

I am here in the Church because I really want to be in the Church.

 

I am here because the Church is my home.

 

It is my family.

 

It is made up of my friends and Jesus’ friends.

 

I am here because I—imperfect, impetuous human being that I am because I love my fellow Christians, and I don’t just mean that I love Michael Curry and all those Christians who are easy to love.

 

I love those who are hard to love too.

 

I love them because, let’s face it, sometimes we are those same people too.

 

I certainly am. I am a hard Christian to like sometimes.

 

Sometimes we are the ones who drive people from the Church as well.

 

And sometimes we ourselves drive our own selves away from the Church.

 

But as long as we’re here, as long as we believe in the renewal that comes again and again in recognizing and confessing our shortcomings and in professing and believing in what it means to be a baptized Christian, then we know it’s not all a loss.

 

As long as I struggle to not be the person who drives people from the Church, but works again and again in my life to be the person who welcomes everyone—no matter who they are and where they stand on the issues—into this Church, then I’m doing all right.

 

Because the Church Jesus founded was a Church founded solidly on the rock of love.

 

The Church’s foundation is the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God and the message to us as followers of this Son of the Living God, the Messiah—the bringer of freedom and peace—is that we must love God and love each other as we love ourselves.

 

If we are the Church truly built on a love like that then, without doubt, the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

 

And as long as I’m here, and you’re here, we are going to make the Church a better place.

 

We need to be the Church from which no one wants to leave.

 

So, let us be the Church we want the Church to be—because that is the Church that Jesus founded.

 

Let us be the Church that Jesus commended to that imperfect human being, Peter.

 

In those moments when we find ourselves hating the Church, let’s not let hatred win out.

 

Let love—that perfect, flawless love that Jesus preached and practiced—eventually win out.

 

We are the Church.

 

We are the Church to those people in our lives.

 

We are the Church to everyone we encounter.

 

We are the reflection of the Church to the people we serve alongside.

 

So let us be the Church, and if we are, we will find ourselves in the midst of that wonderful vision Jesus imagined for his Church.

 

And it will truly be an incredible place.

 

It will truly be the Kingdom of God in our midst.

 

Let us pray.

 

Living God, we believe that Jesus is your Son, the Messiah, who has come to us in our time of need; help us to follow him, to be a Church of love and acceptance and inclusion, and in doing so, a place wherein your living Presence dwells. We ask this in his most holy Name. Amen.