You are the Messiah

We find ourselves outside of Caesarea Philippi, named in honour of the Roman Emperor by a son of Herod the Great. It’s evening. Time to rest from walking in the sun. Time to eat and talk. We find a campsite, with water nearby, someone gets a fire going, someone else begins to cook.

We look up at the rocky cliffs around us, carved with shrines to Caesar, Pan and other local gods. Our eyes linger on the place where a stream used to be before an earthquake blocked it.

Some believe the place where this stream came out was an entry to the underworld. This is a location dedicated to empire and power and competing gods, all striving for our attention, loyalty, and worship.

Then Jesus, looking up at the scene around him, asks a question:

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

The disciples answer him:

Maybe John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other prophet.

This is the popular answer. The crowds like Jesus. They think he’s a holy man, a ghost from the past with a new look, a prophet sent by God. But that’s all. A good man, with important things to say, but no more.

It’s a start, the beginning of something, but Jesus pushes.

“But who do you say that I am?” he asks.

He makes it personal, direct, a challenge. A more dangerous question with the potential to upset people in authority and rearrange our priorities.

Silence falls among the group. The wind blows round the niches filled with gods and around the statues built to the glory of Caesar. But then Simon Peter, ever one to speak up, has a moment of divine insight and calls out,

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”.

And the tension breaks as Jesus laughs and smiles in delight because one disciple at least has got it. One disciple at least has heard his Father in heaven and knows who Jesus is. One disciple, in the middle of that place of competing powers, has stood up for Jesus.

So, Jesus makes a promise. Simon becomes Peter, the rock. He will be the rock on which God’s church will be built.

And God’s Church will endure, even against the gates of the underworld, even when the pagan gods’ niches are empty, Pan is just a story, and the Roman Empire is a matter of history.

Peter has faith, and Peter has a calling. Like Sarah and Abraham, the rock and quarry from which God made the nation of Israel to be his people, Peter is to help create a new people for God based on faith.

Sarah, unable to have children, and Abraham, already an old man, were called to leave everything behind to start a nation. No wonder Sarah laughed. But they had faith and a calling, and through them the nation of Israel was born.

Now it’s Peter’s turn. But not only his turn. His fellow disciples also have their faith and their calling.

We know little about the lives of most of the first followers of Jesus. But we do know that through their ministry, and the ministry of others around them and after them, the Church has been built, and faith has been passed on from generation to generation.

And now it’s here, with us, in this ancient building, filled with life, with love, with the presence of God – and with us. We too have faith, and we too have a calling.

Paul lists some of the callings we might have. Some might prophesy, some might teach, some might exhort, some might give generously, some might lead with diligence, some might show compassion with cheerfulness.

It’s not an exhaustive list, and neither are the categories mutually exclusive. But it tells us something important about faith and calling.

Like those first followers of Jesus sitting around a campfire, like Sarah and Abraham, and like all the many millions of followers of Jesus throughout history, we each have a calling.

And each person’s faith and calling is vital.

There’s a natural human tendency in institutions of all kinds, including religious ones, to especially value the leaders, the ones up the front, the ones who seem to be set apart for something the rest of us mere mortals can’t do.

Obviously, there need to be leaders, and we should value and encourage and support them, but they’re not the whole story.

All of us, together, are the whole story. Each of us has a role, and none of us can be overlooked or harmed or dismissed without damaging the whole.

Once, when I was about 11, I broke one of my little toes trying to dance in the kitchen. It was a small bone but very painful to break, and the effects on my ability to walk, run and even lie down and sleep were big.

Similarly, without the contribution of even the smallest person, the whole body of Christ suffers. It’s for that reason that we all, each one of us, has a calling.

I tried to list all the many ways in which people express their callings in this church but gave up because the list kept on expanding, and I probably still forgot something.

I guess, though, that the list of jobs to do isn’t really the point. The point is that there are as many callings as there are followers of Christ, and every act of service matters, including, and perhaps especially, the ones that people might fail to remember or notice.

They matter because they’re acts of service and love to God and others, carried out because God first loved us, and God notices and treasures all of them. They matter because we, like those first followers of Jesus, are also surrounded by empires, conflicting loyalties and idols.

We live, work and walk among many competing calls on our attention, our time, our loyalty and our worship, and we must choose who or what gets priority.

We too are asked by Jesus, in the middle of all of it, who do you say that I am.

And each one of us, as we declare, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”, are called to take our own unique place in the body of Christ, to be both loved and loving – to have faith and a calling.