TEXT: Matthew 16:13-20; Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-2013 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."17 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.18 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.19 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."20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Romans 12:1-81 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 spiritualworship.2 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.3 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.4 For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function,5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith;7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching;8 the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

"WAS GIVING THE KEYS TO PETER A MISTAKE?"

TEXT: Matthew 16:13-20; Romans 12:1-8

"Was giving the key of the kingdom to Peter a mistake?" That's a question that has on more than one occasion popped into my mind when I have read this passage. I mean, you just don't give the keys to your home to just anyone. Especially when you are going out of the country for an indefinite period of time. You really have to trust someone to do that. You need confidence that they are not going to abuse the privilege. What if they threw a big party and trashed the place? Or, began to treat the place as though it were their own and let in folk for sleep overs whom you didn't want in or kept out your friends whom you would be glad to have use the place. You have a reputation to uphold after all. What would the neighbors say?

Yet, in this morning's gospel passage from Matthew, that is just what Jesus did. He told Rock, "You have the keys to my place."

And not only that Matthew records that Jesus said, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Now that is unabashed confidence. And just look what Peter and those who have followed him have done. Was it such a good idea after all?

Eberhard Bethge, friend and biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in preaching on Matthew 16:13-20 called this passage "one of the top texts of the church." This confession of faith has consoled Christians through many tough times as we cling to Jesus who is the long awaited Messiah--Savior--the very son of God. At the same time Bethge pointed out with great concern, this text has been abused by the Christian community as an authorization for prejudiced disrespect -- if not out right persecution -- of non-Christians.

Frankly, I am not ashamed to say that I am a Christian. The confession uttered by Rock that day at Caesarea Philippi is that which makes a Christian a Christian. I may not be able to explain in intellectual terms to the skeptics satisfaction (or to my own) how the very nature of Jesus was the nature of God or why the reason for Jesus was so that we--human kind--might have the means to intimately know God who loves us--who not only loves us but desires that we live our lives embraced by that redemptive love. Yet, I believe that to be truth. I, like most of you, affirm Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life. in response to Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?" With Peter, I can say--we can say-- "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."

But over the past few weeks, I have bought my sodas from a Muslim grocer, eaten food prepared by Hindu hands, bought gas from a Sihk, dickered over the price of a drum (which I didn't buy) with an animist, planned a meeting with a Jew, reviewed an organizational program to combat bigotry with an agnostic and discussed missiology with an Eastern Orthodox Christian. And I am sure that I have left some faith group out. Welcome to New York. No, make that "welcome to America."

Some of our Puritan forebears came to America with the dream of establishing a Christian nation along with an economic paradise. Those who thought that individuals should have a say in the matter of faith, and be free to worship anyway or no way that they chose, were pushed aside and took up the name "baptist." But even so, our evangelical fervor and resolute holding fast to the confession of Peter, led us to join with other mainline Protestant types in an effort to make a "Christian America." A major project for most evangelicals in the past century was for this to be a land where we would never encounter anyone unable to say, "You are the Christ, the Son of God." The 1900's were to usher in the "Christian Century." We never prepared ourselves to live in a multi-religious America--much less world. Too many of us simply don't know how to do it.

The drive in the 80's to build a Christian political majority didn't work, mainly because Christians couldn't decide who to count in the majority. We couldn't decide who was in the kingdom. Christians, especially conservative evangelical Christians, increasingly find themselves in the minority. While Gallup may state that 82 percent of all Americans claim to be Christian (1993), we have gone into a defensive posture which is often offensive because we simply do not know how to live in a culture that is bubbling with the vitality of other religions. What do you say to the Jew, the Hindu, the Scientologist, the Muslim with whom you work and play? As I raised the question last week, "Are they going to hell because he or she doesn't believe Matthew 16?" Don't know.

Matthew 16 comes out of just such a time. The early followers of Jesus were an insignificant minority in the midst of a very religious world. In such a culture with competing religious allegiances how could Peter make such a confession? And just as importantly, what would he do with such a claim?

It seems that this text would kill any opportunity for religious dialogue--the answer is decided--its a no win argument for the non-Christian. Yet, it is an issue which is as current as our daily lives.

If Jesus is affirmed as the sole means of salvation then it would appear that there is no room for dialogue only vigorous persuasion. That being so, the text has a long history of being used by Christians to persecute persons of other faiths. No one likes to be a target for someone else's faith community.

There are Christians in American history and in America now who are not innocent of abuse. The argument goes: Jesus is the Messiah. That is the truth. We have the truth. We hold a place of privilege. Others do not believe the truth, and thus, if they do not believe, they are not good, and if they are not good, then they should suffer the consequences. Maybe then they will be convinced to believe as we do. Now it is our task to .... But do we have the truth, or have we met the truth who has us?

Maybe you think that I am painting a picture of the extreme, but is it really? Such usage is mis-usage. Peter doesn't just say, "You are the Son of the Living God." He says, "You--Jesus--are the Son of the Living God.

Jesus came not as a crusading warrior, but as a suffering servant. Not as a caustic, condemnatory, denouncer of other religions, but as one who said, "Follow me!"

Therefore, if we make that confession, then we are to speak as Jesus spoke with others in our encounters with other faiths. We must speak as Jesus has spoken to us. As Christians, we believe not just that we have met God, that we have met the truth. We believe that we have met God as Jesus.

Other faiths believe that they have met God in the words of Mohammed, a wise and righteous warrior, or as the Buddha, an introspective and contemplative mystic. That will make a difference in how they view us as Christians. And Jesus makes all the difference in how we view them, how we talk with them, how we listen to them. When Peter said, "You are the Messiah," he set up parameters for our relationships with people of other faiths.

Some of us, either because of either our shame over past arrogance, or because of a desire to be intellectually sophisticated, or maybe because we want to appear to avoid conflict, appear to back away from the core of our confession. We say to someone of another faith, "You are a Hindu, I'm a Christian, but it doesn't make any difference because we are basically saying the same thing." To say that is to be wrong. We are not saying the same thing if you listen for a while.

Such an attitude is just another type of arrogance. It is to say the other persons beliefs are not really important and are insignificant. Jesus is singularly different. Everything good folk were saying of Jesus may have been nice, but it was incomplete. He is the Messiah!

To hold that "Hey, we are all human beings and that's all that really matters" is to belittle another's views which she or he holds as the most important thing in her life.

We do Jewishness no favor when we say something that implies that Jewishness is insignificant. That it's just a cultural thing or a quirky world view to be over come by an appeal to common humanity or universal feelings of brotherhood. That's pagan. That's why many are offended by such phrases as "Judeo-Christian." There's no such thing. There are Jews. There are Christians, but there are no Judeo-Christians. They don't want to be proselytized and baptized. Jews want to be Jews, to be listened to as Jews. To be respected as Jews and not to be demeaned into some American Christian neutral blob called "Judeo-Christian."

The first step toward learning to live with our religious differences is learning to respect those differences, allowing one another to live in our differences. Those differences should not be roped off from our discourse as being irrelevant, unimportant and insignificant.

As Christians finding ourselves in a place of lost status in society maybe its time we recognized that we can identify with and learn from our Hindu, Moslem and Jewish friends who have been ostracized for their faith. Conversion will not come through coercion or intellectual arrogance, regardless of how subtle.

As Christians, we are to relate to people of other faiths as Jesus related to them:
· With respect and love, knowing that they are beloved children of God for whom Christ died.
· With humility, knowing that we didn't come to Christ, he came to us.
· With joyful curiosity in leaning more about what they have learned of the ways of God, hoping that one day they may in turn ask us to share what we have learned of God in Christ.
· With the awesome responsibility, knowing that they are quite right in judging the claims of Christ by watching how we live. More than one person has observed that most people do not believe in Jesus, not because they think Jesus is a fraud, but rather because they see so little of Jesus in the lives of those of us who profess to be following Jesus!

One last thing. When Peter made his stunning confession, Jesus did not say, "Great Peter! Now go out there and arm wrestle, coerce and legislate everyone else into seeing things the way you see them."

He said, "It's been given to you. It's a gift from God." No place for smugness or self-righteousness. In fact don't tell anyone yet. Let them come to that same gift by the way you live your life before them and dialogue with them. To them, it's not a matter of who you say that I am, but a matter of who they say that I am. The ultimate fate of others who do not believe in Jesus, the significance of their relationship to God, that's a matter between them and God. Your greatest concern is not, "What about them?" Your care should be "What about me? What do I say about Jesus in my words and in my deeds?"

The apostle Paul said it this way, "1 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.2 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.
3 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. (Romans 12:1-3)"

From our confession of faith, our focus should shift from what others are saying about Jesus (perhaps that's just a way to evade Christ's claim on our lives.). Our care should be "What about me? What do I say about Jesus? How does my life -in the way I go about the world, in the manner in which I relate others-how does my life demonstrate that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God? That's my calling, that's my spiritual worship!