Do you know how you arrived at where you are?  It is an important question to consider.  I believe we are where we are because of everything we’ve experienced in life.  But more than that, we are where we are because of all that has happened in history. There is a connection between our lives and the lives of those who have gone before us.

So I’m kind of surprised to have to say, in relation to Holy Scripture that guides our worship this morning, that today I don’t care if you know that Isaiah 51 was most likely written to God’s Chosen People as they prepared to return to the Promised Land from exile in Babylon.  Those returning were the children of those who were taken.  God’s People were exiled from the Promised Land because they were not the nation that God intended them to be.  They were not the people that God created them to be. 

They were warned by other prophets.  But they continued to choose to mistreat the people in their community that were disadvantaged.  They ignored God’s rules about allowing widows and orphans to glean the fields and orchards.  And concentrated only on themselves and trying to become like the nations around them who did not know God.  So they lost the Promised Land.  But God, through the new king Cyrus, was allowing God’s Chosen to return to the Promised Land.  They needed to know that the images shared with them by their parents and grand-parents were no longer true.  The Temple was destroyed, the land was unkempt. But God was returning with them and Isaiah wanted them to know that with God all things were possible, there is hope with God, the land would be restored.  But you don’t need to know that today.

You don’t need to know that Paul wrote to the new Christians’ in Rome. He’d never met them, which was not the way Paul usually operated.  He was writing, not only to introduce himself and ask for their support of his planned visit.  He wrote to tell them his understanding of the relationship between God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the difference it had made in his life.  He wanted them to know that they were all important to God’s creative vision and encouraged them to use the gifts God had given them for the glory of God’s House.  He also wanted them to know that this “church” rested securely and completely upon God’s work and not their own. 

            You also don’t need to know that the verses we read from Matthews’ Gospel sit at the center of everything he wanted the early church to know about Jesus’ ministry.  Until this point, Jesus was born, became a man and invited people to “come and see” the difference God could make in the world.  He healed the sick, vanquished demons, interpreted scripture, and brought life to those who were treated as if they were dead. 

But after Peter’s God-revealed answer to the question he posed to his disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus began to teach them exactly what God’s Messiah would be.  He started talking about picking up your cross, and loving God more than family, and crucifixion, and death, and resurrection. 

Those aren’t the important revelations that came while preparing for this moment on this day.  When I read this week’s scripture I saw that Isaiah’s prophesy ran right into Paul’s letter and ended with Matthew’s memory of Peter, the first to recognize Jesus as “the Messiah (Christ), the son of the living God.”

God’s faithfulness to this creative vision is how you got where you are today.  God has not given up on changing chaos into paradise.  God’s work continues today and you are an important member of God’s Chosen People.  Listen to how it all flows together into one masterpiece of perfect love.  You’ll be reading from “The Message”.

 ”Listen to me, all you who are serious about right living and committed to seeking God. Ponder the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were dug. Yes, ponder Abraham, your father,
 and Sarah, who bore you.  Think of it! One solitary man when I called him, but once I blessed him, he multiplied.

 Likewise I, God, will comfort Zion, comfort all her mounds of ruins. I’ll transform her dead ground into Eden, her moonscape into the garden of God, A place filled with exuberance and laughter,
thankful voices and melodic songs.

“Pay attention, my people.  Listen to me, nations. Revelation flows from me. My decisions light up the world.  My deliverance arrives on the run, my salvation right on time.   I’ll bring justice to the peoples. Even faraway islands will look to me and take hope in my saving power.  Look up at the skies, ponder the earth under your feet.  The skies will fade out like smoke, the earth will wear out like work pants, and the people will die off like flies. But my salvation will last forever; my setting-things-right will never be obsolete.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

When Jesus arrived in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?”

They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”

He pressed them, “And how about you? Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter said, “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus came back, “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am. And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.

“And that’s not all. You will have complete and free access to God’s kingdom, keys to open any and every door: no more barriers between heaven and earth, earth and heaven. A yes on earth is yes in heaven. A no on earth is no in heaven.”

He swore the disciples to secrecy. He made them promise they would tell no one that he was the Messiah.

But they did tell. At least they told after Jesus’ resurrection when he negated his earlier command, telling them to go into all the world, teaching what he taught and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; remembering that He was always with them everywhere they went.   You can’t keep a secret of something like that; can you?

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