Pilgrim Preaching

Vocation: Where Little Faith Meets Deep Water

Proper 14A Pentecost +9 | Matthew 14:22-33

During the week of August 7, 2011, summer chapel-goers at Luther Seminary heard five sermons on the story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter getting out of the boat to go to him. Here is one of the five. (By the way, while it is true that the Greek construction for "Come after (or Follow) me" in Matthew 4 is different from that in Matthew 14, I decided the difference did not preclude the use of both texts here.)

Not recognizing Jesus

I especially like this story for a few of its details. First, I like that the disciples do not recognize Jesus for sure right away. They see him and they cry out, “It is a ghost!”

I like this detail because most of the time, when Jesus is coming toward me, I do not recognize him right away either. Lots of people have more clarity on what God is up to in the world than I do. Throughout the years, when I have considered one call or another, one vocational path or another, I have never been able to distinguish in a conclusive way between Jesus talking and my own imagination.

• Am I interested in this new thing because it’s new, or because it’s a call? 
• Is whatever it is that is coming toward me frightening because it’s a miracle or because it’s a delusion? 

Around seminary we hear and tell call stories just about every other day, maybe more. I have almost always felt a little out of place in that conversation. I imagine that I have mistaken ghosts for Jesus and Jesus for a ghost more times than most disciples. 

The test

Peter comes up with a way to solve this problem. Like Gideon of old, trying to figure out if God was really calling him, Peter sets up a test for Jesus. Now a test is not necessarily a bad thing. In 1 John, we read, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (4:1).

In seminary, we call this kind of testing “discernment.” We discern a call by praying, talking with others, listening to advice, and yes, running some tests. “God, if you really want me to do this, I have to be able to sell my house.” “God, if I’m supposed to make this move, my kids are going to have to be OK with it.” “God, if I’m supposed to do this, you have to show me where the money is going to come from!”

“If it is you, bid me come to you on the water.” That is Peter’s test of Jesus. Jesus says, “Come,” and I imagine Peter thinking then, “I should have made the test harder.” Or, “Why didn’t I say, ‘Lord, if it is you, calm this storm!’?” The problem, of course, with asking for a sign has always been that you might get what you ask for. The house sells. The kids are fine with moving. The finances starts to look doable. Jesus, not a ghost, says, “Come.” 

Little faith and deep water

And now we have arrived at another detail I particularly like about this story. Peter answers what has turned into a real call from Jesus, a true imperative, “Come.” He steps out into the water. 

I sometimes feel like the only person on this campus who has never warmed to that quote from Frederick Buechner about vocation. Buechner wrote that “The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This is a really meaningful sentiment to many, and I suppose there is truth to it. 

I want only to point out that in our text neither deep gladness nor deep hunger seem to be at play. That place where Jesus calls Peter to is the place where Peter’s little faith and the Sea of Galilee’s deep water meet. In my own vocation, I do not know much about deep gladness meeting deep hunger.  I know rather more about little faith meeting deep water.

Christian vocation is a lifetime of stepping out of the boat and then thinking, “What did I just do?” or if the risk is something a whole congregation takes, it means stepping out of the boat and then thinking, “What did we just do?” What were we thinking? And what was Jesus thinking? Why would he call anyone to something so dangerous, so foolish? 

Always, my first reaction when hearing this story and getting to the part where Peter gets out of the boat is to think, “What a stupid thing to do!” “Stay in the boat!” I want to yell at him, every time. “Stay in the boat!” 

He never listens. 

Fishing for people

And then I realize that for all his foolishness, and all his little faith, Peter is onto something. He is going where Jesus is, deep waters and fierce storms notwithstanding, and I can understand that. I understand wanting to be where Jesus is. Not that it is safe or wise to get out of a boat on a stormy sea and take off across the water, but who said anything about safe? Since Jesus so rarely plays it safe, going toward Jesus in most any context is not safe... except that, finally, it is, because it’s Jesus, and Jesus is all about fishing people out of water. 

“Come,” he had said to Peter and Andrew along this same lake, some time before. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19).

“Come to me,” he had said to a larger crowd on land, “all whose work is hard, whose load is heavy, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28f).

“Come.” It is the way we speak our Lord’s own invitation to his table. “Take and eat.” 

As we gather around this altar, we are heading toward Jesus. More to the point, Peter might say, Jesus is reaching out to all of us. Jesus reaches out to you here, and to me, with gifts as tangible to us as the hand of Jesus was tangible to Peter as Jesus fished for him, caught him around the wrist, and hauled him into the boat.

Answering the call of Christ to “Come” is as likely to leave you soaked and sputtering as it is to leave you “deeply glad.” Either way—both ways—the one who calls you already has hold of you. You and Peter... you’ll be fine.

Imagining the Invisible God

Christ the King (or The Reign of Christ) | Colossians 1:11-20

"He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, NET).

Image-Saturated Lives

Think for a moment about the images that surround us every day. How much red, white, and blue did you see on campaign signs in the last few months? How many images of happy and energetic-looking family men and women pictured, ready to go to work for you in Washington? Consumer images may be even more a part of daily life than political images. How many times a day do we see the Target bull’s-eye, the Nike swoosh, or that unmistakable Apple apple? Images are all around us. Each of these pictures plays a role in shaping our imaginations and our actions. We think, feel, and act differently on account of them. 

Colossians says Christ “is the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). While an image of God would sound strange to Jewish ears, Romans would take that part of the Christian witness, at least, in stride. Images of the gods abounded both in Roman religion as a whole and in the cult of the emperor. In the Roman empire, Caesar’s image was bigger even than the script Coca Cola is for us. In Colossians Remixed, Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat write that “The image of Caesar and other symbols of Roman power were literally everywhere—in the market, on coins, in the gymnasium, at the gladitorial games, on jewelry, goblets, lamps and paintings."¹ In hundreds of ways every day, images of Caesar reminded people within the Roman empire of where power resided and who was responsible for peace. Harry Maier comments that in Nero’s time, the emperor was at least “the vice-regent of the gods, if not incarnate deity.” To look on the image of Caesar, then, was to have a window to the divine. And what does this divine or near-divine one do for the people? Maier says that he “holds all things together in the body of his Empire of which he is the head, and which he maintains in health and security” (328).²

That is Caesar’s job—except, according to Paul in Colossians, that job has long since been filled. Caesar need not apply. As far back as the beginning of creation, God’s Son has been prior to and more powerful than Caesar and all things, whether visible or invisible, thrones, dominions, principalities or powers. 

This has to sound like a grandiose claim for a little upstart off-shoot of the tiny, provincial religion of the Jews to make in the Roman empire. It stands in direct contrast to Roman claims that the political wisdom, military might, and physical presence of the emperor constituted the image of the divine. Paul says here that all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell not in Caesar, but in Jesus of Nazareth. 

What should we make of this? Is it a branding campaign for the new religion? Is it simply part of a contest for bragging rights? When the former professional wrestler, Jesse Ventura, became governor of Minnesota, cars with Minnesota license plates began showing up with the bumper sticker, “My governor can beat up your governor.” Sometimes the Christ Hymn of Colossians (1:15-20) can sound something like that, like boasting intended to offer the rhetorical equivalent of a kick in the shins to Caesar.  

Images of Jesus

Yet when we put the claim that the Son is the image of the invisible God next to actual images of Jesus’ life, we see that Paul is doing something far different from just claiming superior fire power. The hymn claims that the true nature of power and peace is fundamentally different from what we usually see.

Look, for instance, at the images in the gospel reading assigned alongside this text from Colossians. What does the image of the invisible God look like there? In the gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus is being crucified under the charge, “King of the Jews.” The firstborn over all creation is not just “above all things” in general. When we catch up to him in the gospel reading, he is specifically above the soldiers who have fixed him to a cross with nails and rope. From that perspective, he says, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23:34). The one who is before all things is also here between two thieves. When one of them asks to be remembered, Jesus finds the breath to say, “I tell you the truth; today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Luke shows us a picture in which Jesus brings peace by interceding for his torturers. Jesus brings peace by promising a blessed future to one who is dying beside him. Jesus brings peace not by exercising superior fire power but by absorbing the violence and making peace in the midst of violence.

Christ the King

One of the criticisms of a Christian festival named, “Christ the King” Sunday, is that it is too triumphalistic. The concern is that naming Christ as “king” buys into hierarchical ways of imagining good order that can finally only be maintained by force. To guard against that, the Scriptures almost never call Jesus “king,” or speak of his “kingdom” (cf. Col. 1:13), except in the context of his trial and crucifixion.³

Colossians is no exception to this rule. The empire sustained the Roman pax (peace), such as it was, with rhetoric about the emperor’s benevolence and wisdom combined with brute force to punish enemies of the state and squelch unrest. By contrast, Colossians says that the peace that Jesus brings is “peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). Pax Romana required the killing of tens of thousands, including Jesus, for various infractions of Roman order. Jesus, as he is being murdered, does the work of true reconciliation. 

The Christ Hymn does not offer a kick in the shins to Caesar, and it does not try to beat Caesar at his own game of winning through intimidation. It declares that Caesar’s claims are false, and it gives us an alternative image of God’s own benevolence, wisdom, power, and peace.

Notes

¹Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed : Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 83. BACK TO POST

²Harry O. Maier, "A Sly Civility: Colossians and Empire," Journal for the Study of the New Testament 27, no. 3 (2005) : 323-49. BACK TO POST

³Exceptions to this rule are Nathaniel’s confession upon meeting Jesus, “You are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel” (John 1:49), and references in 1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, and Revelation 19:16 to Jesus as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” BACK TO POST

Related Posts

On Colossians 1:1-14, see also “Rescue, Transfer, Daily Life.”

Muddling Through

Proper 28C | 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15

Note on Adding vv. 14-15

The Revised Common Lectionary assigns 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13. Yet the topic of faithful waiting in community actually extends to v. 15. Reading through verse 15, we see that the letter offers two reasons for avoiding a community member who is idle: the rationale in verse 6 has to do with the harmful effect such association may have on the hearers of the letter. The rationale in v. 14 is that avoiding such a one may serve as a “wake-up call” to that one and, it is implied at least, result in changed behavior and the return of the shunned into the community. Verse 15 also makes it clear that the undisciplined are not enemies of the community; rather, they are brothers and sisters.  

From the text as a whole (with vv. 14-15 added), one gets the sense that separation from the idle and busybodies is an interim gesture. While relationships in the community are strained in the near term by this behavior, the text offers an alternative both to “just living with it,” and to dismissing the undisciplined. The response urged on the Thessalonians aims not so much at purifying the community from such influences as at holding each other accountable in a way that makes an authentic common life possible for everyone.¹

Life in a Small Group

I often assign group work in the seminary classes I teach. I do it to foster the kind of collaboration that people working in the church will eventually practice in ministry as they work with committees in a congregation, staff members, and other community leaders. I do it also because almost any project worth doing requires help from lots of different kind of people, so why not incorporate that kind of working together into learning?

For the most part, this group work goes pretty well. A group of people almost always has more resources to draw on for an assignment than any one person alone. People learn to trust a little of their grade to others, and they learn that their fellow students are often smarter and more interesting than they thought. 

But it is not all roses. Every class has at least a couple of slackers. A few people each year just coast along. They miss group meetings; they hang back while others volunteer; they promise work and then fail to deliver. People who are working steadily start to feel as if the slackers are just taking advantage of them.

Once in a while, a group will have the opposite problem. A micromanager emerges. This person is always emailing reminders to others about what they are supposed to be doing, always editing the group’s written work, always posting messages on discussion threads that imply others could or should be doing more for the team. People on the receiving end of this kind of attention start to feel as if the micromanager has no confidence at all in them. 

Imagine what a mess you could have if this kind of group process went on throughout a whole semester. 

Waiting and Working 

Now imagine what a mess this could be if it were not happening in a semester-long class, but in a congregation of Christians in a life together whose end was nowhere in sight. Something like this seems to be happening in Thessalonica. In his first letter to the church there, Paul had described a remarkable end to the present age, complete with an archangel, a trumpet, the appearance of the Lord Jesus on the clouds, and the resurrection of those who had died before the end (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). 

Different people in the church seem to have responded to this news in different ways. Some in the group pasted those “Jesus is coming soon. Look busy!” bumper stickers onto their cars, and began getting busily into everyone else’s business. 

Others saw no point in work at all. Like a second-semester senior in school, they could not see how, in light of the future that awaited them, the work in front of them mattered. If this present world is passing away, what difference does daily work make?

In a new letter to the Thessalonians, Paul, or someone writing in his name, brings up the topic of the end again. He reassures everyone that God chose them from the beginning and called them through the gospel, and he urges them to hold on to the traditions they learned from him while they wait for an end that has not yet come (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17). 

One of those traditions has to do with not freeloading in the community. If you are part of a small group (like a family, or a church, or a seminar in graduate school) you show up for work. It’s that simple. 

Counting on Each Other

A few years ago, after the first day of a course, a student approached me to say that he was dropping the class. The requirement of group work was a deal breaker for him. “I just will not trust a third of my grade to other people,” he said to me. Whether that student was right to assume that his grade would be better, or at least safer, if he worked alone, his decision not to risk it illustrates the problem. We usually think we have two choices where relationships with other people are concerned: (1) we can do our best to ignore and/or pick up after people who make our work harder, or (2) we can go it alone. 

Paul imagines a third way: he describes relationships in which people hold themselves and one another accountable to each other’s good. Before we dismiss this as some big, utopian dream of the new community only possible at the End, notice its context. Paul is articulating an interim ethic. He is talking to a bunch of people who know they are waiting for something better and who are, like the rest of us, muddling through in the meantime. What to do when problems arise? We could start by being truthful about the consequences that actions have and calling one another to something better. People who are “not doing their own work and meddling in the work of others” (2 Thessalonians 3:11, NET) should “work quietly and so provide their own food to eat” (v. 12, NET). 

Some Christian churches get enthralled with all this holding each other to account. They call for public repentance of public sins and they make much of the holiness and purity of their community. 

Lutherans tend to slide into the opposite ditch. With our emphasis on the way Christians never stop being simultaneously justified and sinners, and our emphasis on the unmerited grace of God for sinners, Lutherans are particularly susceptible to the heresy that it is unchristian to have any rules at all. But “no rules” (or antinomianism) leaves us not with authentic, grace-filled Christian community but just a lot of unspoken resentment about how some of us are working harder than others and it just isn’t fair. Pretty soon “authentic Christian community” is too big a dream, and we find ourselves back to the two choices of that student who dropped the class. We can either ignore or pick up after people who make our lives harder, or we can go it alone.

Muddling Through

At some point in classrooms, families, and congregations, it becomes clear that we will only have authentic common work and life together if we can count on each other. 2 Thessalonians equips us in two ways for such common work and life. First, the opening chapters of this letter testify to God’s power for good as greater than all sorts of evil. The future we wait for belongs to God, so we wait not with anxiety or inactivity, but just by doing what needs to be done in the present.

In the context of community life whose future belongs to God, the text also tells us that being Christian does not mean never saying a hard word to a brother or sister in Christ, nor does it mean never hearing such a word directed to us. We will only have authentic common work and life together if we can count on each other, and one of the things we count on each other for is this kind of truth-telling. It will not be perfect. We will muddle through in this work as justified sinners muddle whenever we attempt to do what is right (cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:13). Nonetheless, part of our commitment to each other is a commitment to speak as honestly as possible about everyday things, things like working and food. As we do, we will find that there is enough of each for everyone. 

     ¹As Judy Skeen, “Not as Enemies, but Kin: Discipline in the Family of God--2 Thessalonians 3:6-10," Review & Expositor 96/2 (1999): 287-94, writes, “This distance created is intended to bring the rebellious family members back to the disciplined way of life” (293). BACK TO POST

Prayers and Peace

Proper 20 | Pentecost 17C
(also the text for Thanksgiving B)

1 Timothy 2:1-7

Compromises in Paul's Later Letters?

One of the common criticisms of the pastoral epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus) is that they domesticate the gospel we know from Paul’s earlier letters. Paul had preached that a whole new age had begun in Jesus Christ and as a result, not just humanity’s relationship with God, but also the most basic relationships among human beings—those between slaves and free people, between men and women, between Jews and everyone else—had been reconfigured. Standard ways of imagining human beings to be ranked or separated from each other were no longer valid. While Galatians 3:27-29 is the Pauline text most quoted to demonstrate how Paul’s message wiped out the usual “us/them” categories, one can find language throughout the letters about how God’s impartiality and God’s grace for all have eliminated distinctions previously taken for granted.

With that news in mind, it is possible to read the pastoral epistles and come to the conclusion that someone—either an older Paul or one of his disciples—has given up on the gospel Paul preached. In place of a whole new way of understanding ourselves in relation to our neighbors, the pastorals seem to give us back many of the old rules: they commend hierarchy as a way to order life within the Christian fellowship; they call for men and women to have separate, tightly circumscribed roles within the community of faith; they give advice to slaves and masters that leaves completely unchallenged the ownership of one Christian by another (not to mention the ownership of one human by another). In crucial ways, the argument goes, the later Pauline letters abandon the grand, alternative, egalitarian present and future that Paul had previously associated so closely with the work of God in Christ. In place of Paul’s former vision is a picture of the church well on its way to making a habit of compromising with its surrounding culture. 

Prayers for Everyone

Is 1 Timothy 2:1-7 an example of that kind of compromise? Here the author urges that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:1-2, NRSV). Do we have here the beginning of the ‘Go along to get along’ accommodation to culture that has plagued the Christian church for centuries? Does this letter encourage us to trade speaking truth to power for living in peace and quiet?

If we stopped at verse 2, these conclusions might fit with the text. When we read on through verse 7, a different picture emerges. It turns out that “a quiet and peaceable life” is only one of two reasons to pray for everyone, and alongside the second reason, “quiet and peaceable” looks less accommodating than we might have thought.

From the remaining verses of the text, we find out that we pray for everyone because God welcomes such prayer, and God welcomes such prayer because God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4 NRSV). 

Really, Everyone

“Everyone” is a lot of people, some of whom could hurt us, some of whom may even want to destroy our way of life. (Often I really want God to be more discerning.) 

Remember how Ananias, a follower of Jesus, heard in prayer that he was supposed to go to Saul, who had traveled to Damascus for the express purpose of arresting followers of Jesus? In prayer, Ananias updates Jesus, “‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name’” (Acts 9:13-16, NRSV).

Is what Ananias went through the kind of peace and quiet God has in mind for us?

In 1 Timothy 1, when Paul (or a later writer describing Paul’s experience) had spoken of being saved, he described the experience in terms of his having been changed from a persecutor of the church to one strengthened by Christ for ministry. Elsewhere I have likened this re-purposing—this salvation—to the work of fashioning swords into plowshares. 1 Timothy testifies that God wants that kind of transformation to take place not just in Paul’s life, not just in the lives of other Christians, but in everyone’s life.

By mentioning “kings and others in authority,” the author makes it clear that “everyone” for whom we offer “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings” includes people powerful enough to hurt us and those we love. Imagine offering an intercession for the Taliban next Sunday. What might people say after church? Could you give thanks for the current president of the United States? For those in the Tea Party movement? What would happen if you offered supplication for drug dealers in your town? You don’t have to pray that God prospers their work, but you do have to pray for them. What would you say? And if you cannot pray for all these people, out loud, in church, why not?

Sometimes “everyone” is even harder as it moves closer to home: the guy who fired you, the friend who dumped you, the lover who, you see now, never cared about you at all. Intercede for that boss whose true, double-dealing colors no one else seems able to see. Pray for all of them. Pray any way you like, knowing that the One to whom you are praying desires them (even them) “to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.”

From a text in one of the pastoral epistles, a risky, subversive way of being Christian starts to come into focus: we do not pray for the powerful in order to be left alone by them. We pray so that our paths may cross with these people—in Christ. If our prayers for them result in God’s deepest desire, the distinction between “we” who are saved and “they” who are not saved will disappear. 

Peace and Quiet Remixed

And what of that first reason the lesson gives for why we pray, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:2)? This particular quiet and peaceable life is not a life in which Christians blend so well into the surrounding culture that our lives threaten none of its values. God’s desire is (and has been for some time) bigger than that. In Hebrew, the quiet, peaceable life about which 1 Timothy speaks is called shalom. It is peace, and also safety, wholeness, even friendship—for everyone. In our world this sort of thing often appears to be a long way off. That is, of course, all the more reason to pray.

On Christ Saving Sinners

Proper 19 | Pentecost 16C
1 Timothy 1:12-17

Making Friends with Paul

In 1 Timothy, at that place in a letter where we would expect thanksgiving for the letter’s recipients, we get something else. In this letter, thanksgiving is offered for the way that Christ has called Paul and made his own ministry possible. To those of us who are pretty sure that a follower of Paul, rather than the apostle himself, wrote 1 Timothy, this beginning brings a smile. One of Paul’s students sets out to construct a letter in the apostle’s voice. How shall he begin? Why not begin with content that can be heard as arrogant and self-absorbed? That’s it! Of course. I imagine the disciple reviewing his first paragraph and saying to himself, “Nailed it!”

(Most of us have had remarkable teachers who were like Paul in at least this respect: they were odd combinations of brilliance, arrogance, self-doubt, and foolishness. It may help when we spend time with Paul’s letters to offer Paul the same level of charity that we would give to the great, flawed, beloved teachers we have known.)

Mercy

So Paul, or someone trying to get Paul’s voice right, begins with thanksgiving for the mercy shown to him. Mercy is getting something good just at a time when it would make more sense if you got nothing, or getting something good at a time when you should have received punishment. To understand the gift of mercy that Paul talks about, we have to have at least a sketch of what Paul was doing when he got what he did not deserve. So Paul fills in some back story: in short, he was “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” (1 Timothy 1:13).

For more detail, one can look at the story of a mob-killing of Stephen in Acts. Luke reports that witnesses to the stoning “laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58), also known as Paul. A couple of chapters later in Acts, Saul is “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1a). He requests letters from the high priest to the synagogues at Damascus, “so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:2). Paul himself describes his former life by saying, “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13).

This is the one who receives mercy: one who was so sure of himself that he could claim to practice violence in defense of justice. In 1 Timothy, Paul says he acted in ignorance, as if he imagines that ignorance offers an excuse. It doesn’t, but Paul is not the only one to marvel at the contrast between the good we thought our actions would have and the harm we actually did. “I didn’t know it would turn out that way.” “I was trying to help.” “I didn’t think anyone would get hurt.” No matter what we intended, still, there we are, standing in the need of mercy.

Salvation: Swords to Plowshares

Having described his past, Paul goes on, “This saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). Paul’s claim to be “chief of sinners” may strike many hearers as one more bit of evidence of his life-long arrogance. Yet it would be a mistake to get stuck in analyzing the flaws in a personality here. The thanksgiving emphasizes Paul’s sinfulness only insofar as it demonstrates the surpassing greatness of Christ’s work to save Paul, to strengthen him, and to call him to something better (cf. 1 Timothy 1:12). The words point beyond Paul, and beyond sinfulness, to the work of Christ to exercise “the utmost patience” in order to save blasphemers, persecutors, people of violence, and other sinners. Christ makes Paul an example to show that if Paul can be saved, anyone can be saved.

To figure out what it means for Christ to “save sinners,” we have to look back to the first verse of this lesson. There, we see that Christ strengthened Paul, judged him faithful and appointed Paul to Christ’s service. “Saving,” as Paul describes what happens to him, is not moving a name from one column to another. Saving is certainly not ignoring sin and the harm it does. Saving is re-commissioning someone for new work. It is taking a persecutor of the church and turning him into an ambassador of Christ. Saving is the human equivalent of fashioning swords into plowshares. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Paul should know. He is Exhibit A.

The fact that Paul is Exhibit A tells us one more thing about salvation in Christ. From Galatians 1-2, we know that before his experience of the risen Jesus, Paul was bright, zealous, ambitious, and quite sure he was right about things. From the rest of his letters as well as the testimony of Luke in the book of Acts, we know that after his experience of the risen Jesus, Paul was bright, zealous, ambitious, and quite sure he was right about things.

In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called, “Tapestry,” Captain Picard has an experience of seeing what his life would have been like if one particularly embarrassing chapter had been removed from it. Afterward, he confides to his first officer, "There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of. There were... loose threads—untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads, I unraveled the tapestry of my life."

Paul is genuinely remorseful about having persecuted the church, yet he cannot remove that thread and still tell the story of his life and his new life in Christ. In the end he comes to see Christ as having re-commissioned even this chapter along with all of the elements of his character that led him to do such a thing. At least part of the miracle of salvation in Jesus Christ, as testified to by the apostle Paul’s life, is that Christ does not unravel the tapestry of those whose lives he saves. He does not unravel anything, but out of that mess of threads and stitching, he creates something for the neighbor’s good.

A Love Song for the Vineyard

Proper 15 | Pentecost 12C
Proper 22 | Pentecost 21A

Isaiah 5:1-7

"It’s a love song I’d sing,
And salvation I’d bring
To my people, beloved and strong;
But, can’t do what I would,
For I made them for good,
And somehow they got it all wrong.

Home, home, please come home,
There’s death where you’ve chosen to roam.
I stand and I knock. Can’t you hear the dread clock
Ticking tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock?"

Sometimes a sermon is both so textual and so memorable that you can never again read the Bible passage without thinking of that particular appropriation of the text. Isaiah 5:1-7 and Fred Gaiser's "Love Song for the Vineyard" offer an example of this phenomenon from my own listening life. I came to chapel a bit late that day, walked in, and wondered, "What on earth is going on?" Watch the video (requires RealPlayer) or sing the typescript. The tune is "Home on the Range."

One of the very best things about living and working where I do is regular access to Fred Gaiser's preaching. Check out other Gaiser sermons and hymns here.

Fearlessness Ahead of Time

Proper 14 | Pentecost 11C
Luke 12:32-40

I read through the gospel of Luke yesterday. I recommend this sort of thing when one is preparing to preach, and here in the year of Luke, it had been a while since I made my way in one fell swoop from Zechariah's prayer in the temple to the disciples' praise there 24 chapters later.

A lot happens between the two temple scenes. Two things stood out.

The Reality of Healing

First, I was struck by how much of the way we get to know Jesus in this gospel is through his healing of people. After Jesus comes on the scene as an adult, he talks a little but does a lot. Jesus performs wonder after wonder, usually to the astonishment of many and for the rather inefficient number of one broken person at a time. The most compelling impression offered by the first half of Luke is that people walk away from encounters with Jesus whole.

Exhortations to Fearlessness

Secondly, maybe because one of Jesus' exhortations from this week's gospel ("Have no fear, little flock") was in my mind when I started reading, I was equally struck by how many times fear is mentioned in Luke. Read straight through the gospel, and eight times in the first twelve chapters, you'll hear either an angel or Jesus say, "Do not be afraid." The exhortation comes as something good is about to happen at a time when "good" is not by any means the obvious conclusion from the evidence at hand.

• An angel appears: good news or bad?
• A stranger works a miracle to fill your boat with fish: are you drawn to him or scared out of your wits?
• You learn that even the hairs of your head are numbered: is that level of intimacy between you and God a good thing or a bad one?  

In response to all of these happenings and more, we hear, "Do not be afraid."

This week's "Do not be afraid," is in the context of two sources of anxiety: (1) things staying the same, and (2) things changing.

Fearlessness When Things Stay the Same

On one side of the exhortation is a description of the daily grind: striving to make ends meet. What will you wear? What will you eat? What will you drink? At a time when many of the people we preach to are experiencing economic hardship, some of us preachers are tempted to back off from Jesus' blanket exhortation, "Do not worry." We ask ourselves, "Wouldn't that feel like a slap in the face to people facing foreclosure, or 99+ weeks of unemployment, or just an oh-so-sadly-wiped-out home equity line of credit?" We want to affirm our parishioners' experience, to demonstrate that we are in touch with their real lives, and so we say, "It is natural to be worried in times like these; it means we are paying attention. Here Jesus simply warns us against letting worry guide our lives," or some other silly compromise that offers hearers nothing better than another self-improvement task: "Try to worry less."

Jesus preached to subsistence farmers and fishermen, day laborers, Jewish religious leaders, and a few men and women of economic means. To all of them, he said, "People who do not know Yahweh as their God [that is, 'the gentiles' or 'the nations' of v. 30] strive after stuff and worry about it all the time. You people know better. You know that your God knows the material stuff you need and is eager to provide it: not only daily bread but also a reign—a 'kingdom', as it were—where people are whole."

Worry enthralls us so that quite apart from what we have or do not have, we miss all of that news about God and live as if it were not true. So Jesus says to this followers, as he had said to Peter after that scary big catch of fish, and even as he said to Jairus in the moment that man heard of his little daughter's death, Do not be afraid. "Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).

Fearlessness When Things Change

"You must be ready," Jesus says in the same text, "For the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour" (Luke 12:40). How odd: readiness exists in inverse proportion to worry. We might expect it the other way around: "Worry, so that you are ready"; but this is not what we get. One of Hank Shore's favorite Onion news items is a photo captioned, "Suicide bomber reacts poorly to surprise birthday party." The caption gets at the hazards of pairing worry with readiness and then adding surprise to the mix.

There are two surprises in the story Jesus tells about servants waiting for their master. First, the master is delayed. The delay may not be entirely unexpected. After all, you only leave a party early if it is a total dud, so the master's delay is not entirely bad news. It means he will have lots of good stories to tell when he gets back. The second surprise is that the master serves. Luke 12:37: "Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them."

Imagine the scene:

The night wears on. Eventually, the first streaks of light begin to signal the end of the night, and then somebody inside the house hears something. One servant after another elbows one sleepy co-worker after another in the ribs, until by the time the door is opened to that party animal of a master, all of us servants are on our feet, moderately bright-eyed, and ready to sit the master down over a hot cup of coffee to listen to the details on the wedding and the food and the dancing and the party that lasted most of the night.

But instead of things working out that way, the master says, "I feel like cooking. Is anybody hungry?" And the next thing you know, the master is beating eggs and rummaging around for the waffle iron and pouring orange juice into a nice pitcher. "No, no," he says to us. "You sit still. This morning, I'll serve you."

We had waited up, expecting to show our master the hospitality that was his due on his arrival home from the party. Instead, he has brought the party home with him. A wedding feast has spilled over into a late-night, early-morning breakfast with the master serving and the servants being waited upon. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom, he had said. We need not have napped in our work clothes. We should have dozed in party clothes because when the master arrives, he brings a celebration with him.

This future will arrive as surprisingly as a thief in the night, but notice this: what is coming is not a thief in the night; it is a party in the morning, a party where we who aspire to be servants of the Lord will be served, treated as guests of honor.

With this glimpse into the future, Jesus frees us for fearlessness not just when things stay the same, day after day, year after year, but also when things (abruptly, surprisingly) change. Ahead of such a change, Jesus says, "Just FYI, you're on the lookout for a party here, people." It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

When you know that, all sorts of things are possible that were not before, among them selling possessions and giving alms. Also you might lengthen the fuse on those explosives you have wrapped around your waist all the time. For me, the question of this text this week is, What could you (or y'all) do if you weren't afraid? And without that fear, what that is broken in you (or y'all) might be shown to have been healed?

On Securing the Soul

I preached this sermon in 2003 at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly.The day's theme was designated as "Healing of the Earth," and the text was chosen for me. I remembered it this week when I looked at the text for next Sunday.

Proper 13 | Pentecost 10C
Luke 12:13-21

Relax! Eat, drink, be merry! The farmer imagines saying this to his soul after he finishes his barn expansion project. I like this picture of the farmer taking a break from work and worry. I know a few farmers, and I confess I have not often thought of merriment as one of their pastimes. Many of them are not the best at relaxing, either. On a farm there’s always more work to do than you can get done. About the time you think you’re getting ahead of it, a piece of equipment breaks down. It used to be that darkness at the end of the day, or a hard freeze at the end of the growing season, would have the effect of slowing down the farmer’s pace, but for years we’ve had lights on all the big machines, and now we have crops like sunflowers that you cannot even begin to harvest until after a hard freeze. It is as if there is no end to the work.

So finally, after who knows how long working his fingers to the bone, this farmer has a good year, and he sets about saving for a rainy day – or maybe just saving for next year’s drought. Sometimes we read this parable, assuming that the man was somehow a crook or that he was insatiably greedy, you know, never enough. But Jesus doesn’t say either of these things. Jesus doesn’t say that the man is hoarding ill-gotten gain; he just says the land of a certain rich man produced abundantly. The guy had a good year. We should all be so lucky, and most of us have been, one year or another. Was he greedy for more and more? The fact that he’s ready to kick back and relax after those barns are built says that he wasn’t the sort of guy who’s never satisfied. As far as we know, from the details that Jesus gives, the man’s problem is not that he practiced dishonest business, or that he had a voracious appetite for more and more. So, what is his problem?

Well, first of all, our guy needs to get into town a little more often. He’s started talking to himself. He’s talking only to himself, and he’s pretty much talking only about himself. In the 1980s James Taylor had a hit song called, “You are my only one.” When the song was popular one of my school classmates joked about his own bleak, date-free status by walking down the hall singing, “I am my only one, I am my only one.” This could be the theme song of the farmer with the great crop and the new barns. In the parable, not even one other human being makes an appearance. He is his only one. Every line that this farmer speaks is spoken to himself, and everything he says refers to himself: my soul, my goods, my barns.
There is no one else in this story that Jesus tells – not until the end, when God says to him, “The things you’ve prepared, whose will they be?” It is a question without an answer in the parable. As far as we know, he doesn’t have anyone to whom to leave his goods. Besides being all alone in the world, our farmer has at least one other problem: he is misguided about what he manages and what he doesn’t.

A few months ago I was talking with a woman whose office manages a database of contacts. She told me about a software glitch that they had. They encountered it as they were migrating data from one system to another. Somehow in the migration the reports – things like mailing lists and contact lists of certain people in the office – all those reports got corrupted, so that some names were not with the right addresses and all sorts of similar problems kept cropping up. You can imagine, this is just a disaster if you’re trying to figure out who’s who. One of the problems was that the file of deceased contacts was somehow activated. I’m not making this up, and it actually happened at a development office of one of our fine schools! The file of deceased contacts was activated so that people who had died were appearing again on the mailing list. The woman said to me, “We had people coming back from the dead!” And then she said, “not our job.”

That wasn’t their job, and reassuring his soul on the basis of his assets is not the farmer’s job either. Our friend with those new barns, he is apparently good at resource management; he knows his business and he is successful running it. All that is good. But then, given all his management skill, he begins to imagine himself managing the future. In an internal dialogue about an internal dialogue, the man says, “I will say to myself, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' A reassured soul is is a good thing, but the farmer is making promises he cannot keep. It is not his job to assure his soul about the shape of the future. There are some things that even a man with a good crop and big barns doesn’t control.

Strangely, the rich man does not seem to know that he has stepped beyond his sphere of influence. He is rich, he is prudent, he is a good manager. He is also a fool. The farmer’s folly is not that he has built barns; he’s a farmer, and farms need storage space. In the story, God does not pass judgment on the farmer’s moral character; instead, God calls him a fool. The man is a fool because he believes that his ample goods will safeguard his future. He is a fool because, whether he has ample goods or no goods at all, he will be dead tomorrow. And he seems to have considered every future scenario except that one – the one that is guaranteed for all of us, and breathtakingly close at hand for him. His future is ours, you know. I hate to put it this way exactly, but none of us is going to make it out of here alive. This thought may have occurred to you earlier in the week, but I speak it. (I couldn’t resist that. Sorry.) I speak it here in another context.

Every Ash Wednesday we get honest with each other about this: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The rest of the year many of us take our vitamins, keep our doctors’ appointments, eat our oatmeal and sweep that dust language as far as possible away from us. I’m not here preaching against vitamins or routine medical care, or even oatmeal – I actually like oatmeal – and Jesus is not preaching against a good crop and the good sense to gather it into barns, either. But here’s the thing: You may be the best farmer, the greatest long-range planner, the most dedicated oatmeal eater in the room, and still, if you do not know that you could be dead tomorrow, you are a fool.

It is ironic that this story was inspired by a request for help getting an inheritance. “Tell my brother to share the family inheritance with me,” someone asks. “Rabbi, you read the law; explain the law to my brother. Tell him he should share with me.” But Jesus won’t step into that debate. He’s headed somewhere else as he responds to the man who asked for his help. Instead of issuing a ruling on the inheritance question, Jesus cautions the man and everyone else within earshot about the difference between storing up treasure for one’s self and being rich toward God.

Jesus is headed somewhere else – namely, to Jerusalem where, as he has already told his disciples, he will be killed. The farmer is not the only one breathtakingly close to death. Jesus is interested in inheritance questions, but not the inheritance of the brother in the crowd, or even the inheritance of the farmer who dies with no heirs at all. Instead, Jesus speaks of the inheritance that belongs to the children of God. Just a few verses after the parable of the barns, Jesus says, “Have no fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” You are a child of God – a son, a daughter of God! And it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. That’s all the inheritance you need.

When I was in college, one of my religion professors was trying to explain this inheritance, this gift to us, and he borrowed a single run-on sentence that had been fashioned by a woman named Ann Herbert, whom I’ve never met, but I use a couple of her things over and over, and if someone knows her, you should tell me. She used to be an English teacher at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Herbert explained God’s grace by saying:

So here’s Peter, standing by an imitation-I’m-sure-not-even-cultured-pearl picket gate, stuck with a sign scrawling “Welcome home to the universe” and being naturally curious, and I won’t add in my usual considerable pain, I try to get it, offering dollars, marks and using anecdotes, custom-tailored purebred yankee ingenuity with a five-year service contract, stock options both ways and dinner for two and a complete living-room suite while watching the latest in self-adjusting color tv, but he won’t take or tell me the price of admissions; he says I’m already in.

You’re already in. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. It is the Son’s good pleasure to share his inheritance with you.

What if our hard-working, momentarily-relaxed, about-to-die farmer had known about God’s good pleasure to give him the kingdom? How might his life have been different before his death? To answer that question, it may help to go back to the farmer’s first problem. Remember, he is his only one? Yet Jesus announces the gift of the kingdom to the flock, and not to a solo sheep. “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give y’all the kingdom.” In that little word “you” with its plural form, a different story comes into focus.

The man with the barns is there, but there are also other characters we haven’t seen before; there are workers – builders of the barns, commerce people for the grain, people who need to eat – even the One who sends rain and makes the sun to shine and the crops to grow. It is that One’s good pleasure to give you and all those other people in the story what you all need from day to day. The man with the barns was never as isolated as his self-talk led us to believe. The difference now is that the man can look up from all that muttering over his ledger long enough to realize it.

The other difference for the farmer comes in what he expects his barns and his grain to be able to do for him. Dear Mr. Farmer: Your soul is secure in life and in death. It is God’s good pleasure to secure our soul. When that matter is settled, no longer is all the grain in those barns the means by which one foolish farmer gives himself a false sense of security. When the farmer comprehends that his soul is secure, the grain can be what it was meant to be: the simple miraculous means by which the Creator cares for creatures who need to eat.

Dear voting member, assembly visitor, honored guest, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ: Your soul is secure in life and in death. It is God’s good pleasure to secure your soul. Relax! Eat, drink, be merry. Rejoice! Rise, work, rest. All of this – your whole life and your death besides – is sanctified by the One who said, “This is my body, my blood, my life, my death. For you.”

As for that grain in your barns, that work you are good at, those accounts you manage – they are worthless for the purpose of soul-securing. Worthless. But they were never intended for that. In the rule of God, they will not go to waste. Our time, our talents, our possessions – they are just what God needs to answer our neighbor’s prayer for daily bread. How’s that for resource management?

On Rendering

24 Pentecost A | Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2005

Probably nine years ago, I heard this line in a sermon by Paul Palumbo: "Having been rendered to Caesar, Jesus renders us into the very heart of God." I wrote it down on the back of a bulletin. This week I finally had an opportunity to use it. That sermon, preached in the Luther Seminary chapel, follows.

Chapel sermons are strange for several reasons (the congregation members are all connected to a theological seminary; one is preaching before one's students, teachers and colleagues; the sermon is supposed to be about 8 minutes long!). I thought I had to throw out a few good things this time so here are some notes that wouldn't work in the sermon I preached but might work somewhere else.

1. Is it lawful? This question is posed to Jesus here but other occurrences of the question/issue are really interesting. Among the places it shows up in Matthew are (a) when Jesus' disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath, and (b) when Jesus is about to heal someone on the Sabbath, and (c) when Judas throws the money back at the temple authorities after he repents of betraying Jesus. That last discussion of whether something is "lawful" struck me as a great tie between this text and the cross, but I couldn't get it to fit in my sermon.
2. Where do we fit in the story? In the sermon, I put the congregation in the position of Jesus, asking them to answer the question, "Is it lawful to pay taxes…?" from the perspective of a teacher, student or staff member at the seminary. It would be a different sermon if the congregation were asked to identify with, say, the questioners. Is there a way that we fuss about theological questions precisely so we do not have to face the real question about who Jesus is and how he challenges Caesar's authority?

One more comment about my experience of this text. I am just about the farthest thing imaginable from a prophetic preacher. I am a great fan of direct deposit and tenure. I like the prayer in Compline that says, "The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night, and peace at the last." Mostly I like paying my taxes and being left alone. I don't naturally take to agitating or being agitated. Yet it seems to me that the powers and principalities really do make a play for all of us, and I wanted to announce to my hearers, "You do not belong to them." After I did that, I got a lot of feedback about how the sermon was courageous. Is it an "edgy" thing to call American an empire? I didn't think so, but I heard enough of those sorts of comments that I'm curious how a parallel between America and Rome might play in the preaching contexts of my readers.

Here's the sermon.

The Tension of Discipleship

14 and 15 Pentecost | Matthew 16:13ff.

I wrote a short sermon for the ELCA Convocation of Teaching Theologians on the Luther Seminary campus this week. I couldn't keep from talking about the fact that just after Peter's confession, Jesus starts talking about his death--so this might be fodder for 14 Pentecost or 15 Pentecost texts.

More than in any other gospel, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is a teacher and a trainer of teachers. We get long exegetical lectures from Jesus in Matthew—“you have heard it said… but I say to you….” There are handfuls of parables piled one on top of the other, and even a few private tutoring sessions between the Teacher and his disciples. The disciples are somewhat better students here than they seem to be according to Mark. Their scholarship—or something—is good enough in Matthew that by the end of the book, they receive a call to teach. “Go and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus instructs them, “baptizing them … and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”

Even so, it sounds like Jesus starts out today's lesson with rather low expectations of his class.“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” One of my teachers used to try to put us at ease by saying about exegesis, “When in doubt, describe.” Describe what you see; say what you are hearing. So Jesus asks, “What are people saying about the Son of Man?” It is an easy question, and it works. The students are able to give answers: “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Basically the buzz around Jesus is that he is a holy man, a grumpy holy man from the look of this list, but a holy man just the same. He is in a line of those who know God and who want the people to be on better terms with God.

Then comes the next question: “Who do you say that I am?” This one is harder. We are not in the third person any longer, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Here Jesus wants something different from a survey of the possibilities. The question is a call to commit to one answer. And it is personal, direct address: “Who do you people say that I am?” When in doubt, describe? Jesus is not asking for description now, but confession.

Peter confesses: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus says something like, “I know you didn't come up with that answer on your own” or even maybe, “I know you didn't get that answer from me.” “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you.” Another teacher I know once made the observation that the students for whom we would most like to take credit are probably the ones with whose formation we had the least to do. Jesus does not take credit for Peter's answer. Instead, he tells Peter, “You are blessed.” “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

The Father is revealing Jesus as Messiah and as Son. We usually think of it the other way around: the Son is the one who shows us the Father, but it works both ways. Here the Father is opening Simon's eyes so that when he looks at Jesus, he can see the Son of the living God.

So we have revelation, confession, commendation and then… an exhortation to silence. I hate it when that happens. Things were going so well. Everything was so positive. If I were writing the gospel, I would put the sending out of the 12 right here, when the energy of a great class was still in everyone's muscle fibers. “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons,” I would have Jesus say right here. Or maybe he could seize the moment by saying to Peter and the others right now, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Instead, we get, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” and then, “Do not say anything to anyone about this.”

And then it gets worse. Jesus exhorts the disciples to silence, and then starts tutoring them on what will happen to him in Jerusalem. Suffering, humiliation, death, resurrection. The next thing out of Peter's mouth is, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

Just like that, the student's fortunes have changed. One minute he is the recipient of divine revelation and the next minute he is getting the same rebuke that the devil received when he tried to tempt Jesus at the start of his ministry. “Get behind me, Satan!”

This is the tension of discipleship. Peter understands, and then he doesn't understand at all. One moment he is walking on water, the next, he is sinking, the moment after that, he is saying with the other disciples to Jesus, “You are the Son of God.” At the end, the disciples all promise to stand by Jesus, and Peter pledges that even if he must die with Jesus, he will not deny him; within an hour or two, the disciples are all gone except for Peter, who stays in proximity to Jesus long enough to claim with all the persuasiveness that his sailor's vocabulary will offer, “I do not know the man!” A rooster brings him back to himself and he weeps bitterly. Peter is rock and stumbling block at almost the same moment, and he is blessed with just enough self-awareness to know both things are true of him.

He is, in this respect, representative of those who follow Jesus. If you have not known yourself to be both brilliant and clueless as you follow Jesus, fierce and craven, faithful and running for your life at almost exactly at the same time, you are not paying attention. Jesus does not say he will build his church on a rock such as Peter because the man's insight is so great or his faithfulness so remarkable or even because Jesus has any particular hope that Peter will become, over time, more faithful and less frightened. Jesus chooses this particular lump of clay because Jesus sees God at work in him. “Blessed are you, Simon, son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.” God is at work in this one, and when Jesus sees that, he gets on board with it.

Our hope for the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ is not that Peter or the rest of us who are fishing for people will get better, clearer, louder, quieter, more trusting, or less cowardly but that God will keep revealing himself and his merciful and just rule through his Son to human beings quite apart from their goodness, clarity, trust and courage. I am not glorifying Peter's vices here, or yours or mine. I am only saying that neither doubt, nor fear, nor simple-mindedness nor the incapacity to know when to speak and when to be quiet have stopped the Father from revealing the Son, or stopped the Son from embodying the Father's reign on earth as it is in heaven. “I thank you, Father,” Jesus says, “that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will” (Matt 11:25f). God is at work, making the Son known, because that is what God wants to do. Such is his gracious will. Peter and the rest of us see the revelation of God, then lose it, then catch another glimpse, then make our confession, then take a step back from it. God can work with that. In fact, it is God's gracious will to work with that. On such rocks as these, Christ builds his church.