August 21st, 2011
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.”
Then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
It is truly an honour to have been asked to speak this morning.
Your church has made a significant contribution to the advance of God’s kingdom in this City, from its inception in West Ellesmere United to the community meeting here.
Having made the impact you have can be intimidating when you as a congregation contemplate your future.
If your past had not been so glorious, the pressure to improve on it in the days ahead would not be so intimidating. But it is intimidating and all the more so when there aren’t as many people involved as there used to be and questions loom on every side.
Questions like:
- where do we go from here?
- have do we generate the income we need to keep going, to grow, to make an impact on the community around us?
- who should we be reaching out to?
- what changes do we have to make to our services that more people might be drawn in?
- are we just one fantastic preacher away from seeing our glory years return or has the Lord something different, something brand new for us?
It is to this reality, the gospel reading today emphatically speaks to.
The future of this church does not rest with us.
It rests solely with the one who says ‘I will build my church and not even the gates of hell will overcome it!’
To understand the significance of Christ’s words, their context is important.
Jesus leads his disciples out of their comfort zone, away from Galilee. But instead of taking them to south to Jerusalem which is the focal point of Jewish faith and history, he takes them 40 kilometres north to Caesarea Philippi, a Roman military outpost.
In Caesarea Philippi, one would never hear on its streets ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord is One’ as one would hear on the streets of Jerusalem. Caesarea Philippi was the birthplace of worship for Pan, as in pantheism, as in many gods.
In Caesarea Philippi, ‘Caesar is Lord’ is the one recurring refrain’ punctuated by the marching legions of Roman soldiers trained to crush anything or anyone who gets in Caesar’s way, Messiahs included.
In Caesarea Philippi the talk of anything Jewish would be muted, hushed. To be a Jew in this town would be like being black in Birmingham Alabama in the 1950’s.
Seen but not heard.
In Caesarea Philippi, to speak of any other son of God other than Caesar himself was tantamount to treason!
So when Peter confesses Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God in Caesarea Philippi, he could not have been making a more courageous and more political declaration.
Although it would have turned a few heads had Peter made this confession in Jerusalem, talk of a Messiah in Jerusalem was pretty common place. The entire city was on the lookout for one.
But any talk of a Messiah in a Roman Military Outpost would take the same courage as it would for any of us to to publicly declare Jesus is Lord in the streets of Tehran or Beijing!
As much as we are inclined to think Peter a coward, he isn’t. The one time he does cave, he caves with everyone else. All the disciples deserted Jesus on the day he was crucified.
But in Caesarea Philippi, Peter stands tall. Jesus commends him by telling him that he has been blessed with a revelation straight from his Father in heaven.
Peter’s revelation that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is the rock on which Jesus promises to build his church.
Jesus says this with the same conviction as God did 2 thousand years before when he told a 90 year old childless woman named Sarah and her 99 year old husband Abraham.
“I will certainly bless you,
and I will multiply your descendants beyond number.” Hebrews 6:14
The God who enabled Sarah to give birth to a son when she was well beyond her child bearing years, is the same God who will build his church even when we’re tempted to think our best days as a church are behind us!
The less able we are, the more able we discover He is.
He is the God who makes possible what we can’t!
Nothing can prevent Him from building his church. Not even the gates of hell can stop him. When all is said and done, all those who are His will be His, with no one missing!
Your biggest church asset is the One in this room none of us can see, the one we are here to worship.
The future of his church is in his hands. His workmanship and architectural ingenuity come with an eternal lifetime guarantee. He knows what he is doing. As one prophet put it: He has his way in the whirlwind and the storm.
Jesus calls us to work with him, not for him. What he is building is not bricks and mortar, but a community of people knit together in love, members in particular who belong to one another.
So what is it that we are to do?
In response to Peter’s bold confession, Jesus blesses him with ‘the keys’.
And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.
Strange statement at first glance.
On the surface it would appear that Peter is given the keys; the authority to determine who is in God’s kingdom and who is not ... who is forgiven and who isn’t.
If this were the case, it runs contrary to a whole bunch of verses that say the people who make up God’s kingdom are the people Jesus himself chooses. He overrules what Peter or any other high ranking church authority might decide!
Had been up to Peter to determine whether Saul of Tarsus was out or in, the man responsible for the death and imprisonment of many in the early church, Peter would have said ‘he’s outta here!’
But clearly Jesus overruled Peter and said of Saul, who would become Paul the Apostle ‘he’s with me.’
Michael Coren, formerly a talk show host on CFRB and currently on Vision TV, tells a story that helps in understanding the authority Jesus gives to his church.
Michael had come to work early one morning. Not having had time to eat breakfast at home he walks to the MacDonalds close to his work place.
It’s a cold morning in January and as he makes his way to the restaurant, he passes a pile of green garbage bags, which on second glance appear to be moving.
As he gets closer, he can see someone struggling to shake himself free from the small mountain of green bags on top of him. The man who gradually emerges stinks having spent the entire night buried in garbage.
Michael keeps his distance but does venture to ask the man if he could buy him something to eat.
The man nods and follows Michael into McDonalds.
As the wait staff is about to take Michael’s breakfast order, he looks at the man beside Michael, the odor from whom was overwhelming.
Barely concealing his disgust the waiter asks Michael:
‘Is he with you?’
Michael replies somewhat sheepishly: ‘yes he is with me.’
In reflecting about the experience afterwards Michael said, ‘it really brought home for me the profound significance of Jesus standing beside broken and foul smelling people like me and saying ‘he is with me’.
Look through the gospels, and you see Jesus doing this everywhere.
He goes to the most unlikely of people: to Zachaeus the fraudulent businessman and Mary Magdalene the prostitute, telling Zachaeus ‘today salvation has come to your house’ and Mary ‘though your sins are many you are forgiven.’
This is the gospel in action: Christ coming to broken and poor people, to depressed and despised people and telling them ‘yours is the Kingdom of God.’
Isn’t this how it began for us? When despite ourselves, Christ met us in our smelly clothes and instead of nailing us for our faults, he said to us: ‘you’re with me.’
What Peter is given the keys to, is the authority to open the door to all those Jesus identifies as his own.
Jesus builds his church by going to people whom the rest of the world despises and telling them: ‘you’re with me.’
In some instances he does so even before those people have professed their faith in him.
He asks us to do the same.
The keys Christ gives us are not to a building, but to the people outside this building.
These people are not waiting outside our doors until we hire the right preacher or have the most upbeat worship team to draw them in!
What they are waiting for is someone willing to go out where they are who will vouch for them in love.
Like Jesus did.
It means that some of us will be taking the ‘keys’ to homeless people, where some struggle with schizophrenia and others with addiction. Here we meet people desperate for anyone willing to understand their predicament who will advocate on their behalf.
For others, it will mean taking the ‘keys’ to business people who are so weary and disillusioned from chasing the mechanical rabbit called success, they are willing to give themselves to the work of the kingdom, the only work which nourishes the soul.
For some of us, it will mean taking the ‘keys’ to new immigrants and refugees, to those who long to find a home. These strangers of whom we’d otherwise be suspicious, Christ wants us to embrace.
This is how Christ builds his church. When we go out and engage a hurting world with the love that bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things.
Typically when we begin a venture, a business for example, we conduct ‘visioning’ sessions to develop a model of operation that will guarantee success.
But the church is different. Because Christ is the one who builds her, the only thing we need to know is:
“Lord, what would you have us do?”
We are not to be surprised if what he responds by pointing us in a direction we’ve never gone before. We serve a God who’s specialty is doing something new.
I came to Christ during the days of the Jesus people movement...when a bunch of long-haired rock and roll types start coming to Jesus in droves.
I remember sitting down with my parents who were dedicated United Church people, trying to explain to them why I was now high on Jesus.
Although they welcomed the change, it was so different from what they understood Christianity to be, I’m sure they thought I was from another planet.
When I think of my children and their generation - it could be that coming to Christ for them will be different than it was for us; something different than altar calls, or even Sunday morning church services.
They may be drawn to a Christianity closer to global issues than we are.
Or to a Jesus who is as concerned about social justice as he is about personal salvation.
The coming generation of the church may be more about building bridges with people of other faiths than they are about determining where they disagree.
Their faith may be more at odds with the status quo than ours has been; their preaching more like Jeremiah the prophet than the happy talk of preachers on TV...
How Christ builds his church is his business. It’s not something we can predict or manufacture. Only the wind of his Spirit can blow new life into the church.
All we can do is pray that we might have a part in what he’s doing and be open to his rebuke if we stand in his way.
Minutes after Jesus blessed Peter for his revelation Jesus had to rebuke him.
Jesus had been telling his disciples that the next step in his church building process would involve suffering and betrayal and crucifixion and resurrection.
Peter interjected with ‘No way Lord’ at which point Jesus yelled at him: ‘get outta my way Satan!’
We can’t be telling Jesus how he should be building his church. We can’t point to some way that worked in the past and insist ‘Lord why don’t you do it this way again.’
Christ knows what he is doing. It will be new, as strange to us as it was to our parents when their long-haired hippy kids were singing songs to Jesus on their electric guitars.
Regardless of what the church looks like 20 years from now, there are some constants to the way Jesus builds his church that never change.
His church is built on the rock which is a revelation:
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
That’s the rock against which the gates of hell crumble.
Christ has given to his church ‘the keys’, the authority to say on Christ’s behalf to broken, unloved and alienated people: ‘you’re forgiven, he is with you regardless of what garbage pile you’ve slept in; regardless of how much you stink.’
To have a part of what’s next in God’s calendar, we have to follow Jesus outside these walls to where the people are. There’s no sense in our having the keys to his kingdom, if we aren’t in the places the keys are designed for.
Because I work downtown, I have been drawn to people over whom Jesus is saying: ‘they are with me.’
I have brought pictures.

Until 2 months ago, Robert had spent the last 8 years in various correctional facilities in Collin’s Bay, in Joyceville and in Millhaven.
‘I did some bad stuff, man,’ he confessed.
‘But praise God,’ he continued, ‘I’m a changed man. Thanks to the people at the Good Shepherd on Queen street, who took me in and fed me, I know that God is with me.’
I asked him where he was staying now, since his stay at Good Shepherd was limited to 10 consecutive nights.
‘I’m sleeping on the street for now, but I am so determined to get back on my feet, I won’t be out here for long. I have Hep C and diabetes and my doctor tells me I may only have another 8 years to live. But that should give me plenty of time to do something good with my life!’
This is our friend Alex.
I say ‘our friend’ because when Alex turned 60 at the end of June, several of us took him out for lunch to celebrate. Blaise, who some of you know, asked Alex what he’d like for his birthday and Alex said, a DVD player to watch movies when he’s lonely.
Alex came to Canada in 1969 to escape the US draft. He was 18 at the time. When he crossed the border into Canada, the custom officials let him in with the understanding that while in Canada, he would have ‘no status.’ He would never be eligible for a Social Insurance Card, or OHIP coverage or pension benefits. He has no legal status, no right to work, no right to own property, no legal remedy should he be violated in any way.
When I asked him if he had any friends he’d like to invite to his 60th birthday lunch, he said, ‘when you’re poor and have nothing, you don’t have any friends.’
‘But I am glad to be here. I’d rather be living here with no rights than dead in some grave in Vietnam with all the rights in the world.’

Hercules used to run a travel agency.
When his partner ran off with the money and left Hercules with all the debt, Hercules went from owning his own plush condo to living on the street.
Through Toronto’s Street to Homes program and COTA Health, Hercules now has his own place,
If you were to talk to him he would tell you that one of the people who kept him alive in the days he didn’t want to live anymore, was me.
But it’s deeper than that.
If you look at the picture you’ll notice that it is his arm on my shoulder and not mine on his. It’s as though he is the one with the keys saying about me: ‘he’s with me’.
That’s the real blessing.
Which to conclude is the other constant when Christ builds his church.
When Paul and Barnabas were commissioned by the early church leadership to build the church among the Gentiles, Galatians 2:10 says they were given only one instruction:
Remember the poor. Not start small groups, or build missionary societies; not even instructions as to what they were to preach.
Just remember the poor.
That one instruction is its own sermon, so I will say little more here.
Except to say, pivotal to Christ’s messiahship is:
‘the gospel is preached to the poor!’
Pivotal to the church he is building are poor and vulnerable people of whom he says: ‘theirs is the kingdom’ and of whom he says ‘inasmuch as you care for them, you are caring for me.’
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