SPEAKER_00: God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_00: That was sad.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you didn't know what you were supposed to say.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Wake up.
SPEAKER_00: So whenever you're reading scripture, whenever anybody reads scripture, at least I think, one of the most important things you can do is pay attention to the details.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we've heard these stories over and over and over and over again all of our lives, and the details tend to slip away.
SPEAKER_00: So when I was reading this week's gospel reading, it stood out to me that the author of the Gospel of Matthew wanted to make darn sure that we knew this story happened where?
SPEAKER_00: The district of Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: Which didn't actually go into the city, but he was somewhere on the outskirts of the city of Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: So I said, Well, I don't know much about Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: Let me go and do some research.
SPEAKER_00: So it's something that Israel and Syria have been fighting over for a generation now.
SPEAKER_00: And it was probably fought over as far back as the city was founded.
SPEAKER_00: There's been a city there a really long time.
SPEAKER_00: And during the Hellenistic period of Jewish history, so after Alexander the Great conquered the world and Greek culture and language spread all over the Mediterranean, all of that made its way into Judah and Israel, and the Jews embraced Greek, Greek philosophy, Greek thought, Greek language, Greek culture.
SPEAKER_00: During the Hellenistic period, the period where the Jews were embracing all things Greek, a great city was built there.
SPEAKER_00: And they discovered a little grotto.
SPEAKER_00: Because this city, Caesarea Philippi, sits on the river, and at the head of the river is a cave.
SPEAKER_00: And from that cave comes a spring that feeds the river Penaeus or Balais.
SPEAKER_00: And that river goes all the way down to the river Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Greeks or the Greek-influenced Jews, it's hard to tell at this point in history, decided this little grotto at the head of the river next to the city of Caesarea Philippi is where the Greek god Pan was born.
SPEAKER_00: And so a shrine was built to Pan.
SPEAKER_00: And over time, more shrines were built around that shrine to people associated with Pan, like Hermes and Echo, and all of these Greek characters that you well know.
SPEAKER_00: And later in history, Herod the Great was given this city by Caesar Augustus.
SPEAKER_00: And because he was so grateful for the gift of the city to his kingdom, he built a temple to the god Augustus in the city of Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this city had become a pretty cosmopolitan place with people from all over.
SPEAKER_00: And by the time of Jesus, there are at least twelve temples to gods who are not the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the city of Caesarea Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: That's not to mention the grotto of Pan and the dozen or so Nietzgos that go along with the Grotto of Pan.
SPEAKER_00: So they're passing by a city which is technically part of the country of the Jews, but is filled with temples to non-Jewish gods.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus turns to his disciples and says, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
SPEAKER_00: I think that's an important point, that he's going past this city full of the gods of the nations, and wants to know what people are saying on the street.
SPEAKER_00: And his disciples say, well, some say you're John the Baptist, which would have been quite a feat since John and Jesus lived at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: But some say Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, okay.
SPEAKER_00: But who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to know that the you in this sentence is plural.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is talking to his entire group of disciples who are traveling along with him.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just look at Peter and say, You, you, who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: He looks at all of them and says, Who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: And when I picture this story in my mind, next dead silence, just like that.
SPEAKER_00: Just like when I ask you a question, you all go, oh.
SPEAKER_00: You can kind of picture Jesus' disciples going, hmm.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: And then Peter speaks up.
SPEAKER_00: Peter says, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing Peter ever got right.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus points out and says, Blessed are you, Peter, son of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: Simon, son of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He basically says, Yeah, the only reason you got this right is because some supernatural inspiration.
SPEAKER_00: And he says to him, You are Petrus.
SPEAKER_00: You are Peter, we turned it into a name.
SPEAKER_00: But what he says to him is, You are rock.
SPEAKER_00: And on this rock, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, centuries of questions about what exactly that means, and we could spend the rest of the day here debating that.
SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me, given Peter's just naturally inspired declaration of the Messiahhood of Christ, that is exactly what Jesus is saying he will build his church upon.
SPEAKER_00: The faith of Peter.
SPEAKER_00: The ability to say, you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, period, and then go, did I say that?
SPEAKER_00: Now, what does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: There was an author in the 90s.
SPEAKER_00: His name was Peter Bloch.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have probably heard of him.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote some business-like books.
SPEAKER_00: He was in those later years into community organizing, and he wrote a bunch of books about that.
SPEAKER_00: And one of his later books was just called Community.
SPEAKER_00: And in it, he said this a powerful question is the kind of question that once you answer it, turns you into an actor.
SPEAKER_00: Having answered it, you no longer have the luxury of being a spectator.
SPEAKER_00: Having answered the question, you no longer have the luxury of being a spectator.
SPEAKER_00: This is probably the most powerful question that Jesus asks in all of the Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: He looks at his disciples and he says, Who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: And Peter answers, and because of this, the whole rest of his life is changed.
SPEAKER_00: Sure, Peter had walked away from his nets and his boats, and he had followed Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But what did he really decide about up until that moment?
SPEAKER_00: Because what does tradition tell us happened to Peter?
SPEAKER_00: He became the head of the church in the city of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: He ran the community of Christians there.
SPEAKER_00: And then what happened?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was martyred by being crucified upside down.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the kind of thing you can accept in your life without having a serious reason to say yes.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus seems to be asking this question in the region of Caesarea Philippi to be able to get them to think, what does who I am, who God the Father is, what does that mean for how you will live your lives?
SPEAKER_00: You could easily go to any one of these other gods.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the Jews have been doing it for generations and generations and generations.
SPEAKER_00: Just read the Hebrew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But if you decide to stay, Jesus says, what's it gonna mean for your life?
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite lines in the prayer book is from the general thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who's ever prayed morning or evening prayer knows this prayer.
SPEAKER_00: In the end of the prayer, it says, it asks God to allow us to honor Him not only with our lips, but in our lives by giving up ourselves to your service.
SPEAKER_00: That's what answering this question means.
SPEAKER_00: It means that you can no longer stand back and say, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: But for us to say, you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, means from that moment forward your life has to be completely different.
SPEAKER_00: It means living every single day of our lives, every moment of our lives as disciples of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Not when it's convenient, not when it's comfortable, not when it's easy.
SPEAKER_00: Every single moment.
SPEAKER_00: Not between 10:30 and 11:30 on Sunday morning, but every single moment.
SPEAKER_00: This powerful question of Jesus isn't just for Peter, it isn't just for his disciples who were gathered around him on the road outside of Caesarea Philippi sometime in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: This question from Jesus is from for every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: Every morning when we open our eyes and put our feet on the floor, we have to answer this question and decide what will today.