Sermon prepared for
by Gregory S. Kaurin, associate pastor
traditional service,
Text: Matthew 16:13-20
Sermon:
Cement
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Two
weeks ago in our worship services Peter called out to Jesus, “Lord, if it is
you on the water, let me walk out to you.”
In
this morning’s gospel he says: “Lord,
beyond what all others are saying, I say you are the Messiah, the Son of the
Living God!”
Next
week, Jesus will explain what happens to the Messiah, that he will be imprisoned,
tortured and killed and Peter will answer, “Heaven forbid!” Jesus will tell him, “Get behind me,
Satan!”
At
the Last Supper when Jesus was about to wash Peter’s feet, he cried: “Lord, you
will never stoop to my feet!” Jesus
answered, “But Peter, unless you let me serve you, you will have no part in
me.” And Peter responded with, “Then,
Lord, don’t stop there, wash my feet, my hands and my head!”
A
little after that Peter promised Jesus: “Lord, though all others desert you, I
will never leave you.” “But, Peter, I
tell you the truth that before morning you will have denied knowing me three
times.” And Peter denied him, the
rooster crowed, and Peter wept bitterly.
Do
you really feel comfortable that Jesus would have his church built on a man
like Peter? This impulsive Simon bar
Jonah?
Personally,
I’m delighted. No one represents the
Church better than St. Peter.
Think
about it, about your own feelings. And then,
look around you—all these others bringing all their own feelings, ideas and
needs, and yet we are singing, praying and listening together, like one voice
and one people
In
fact, I haven’t done something like this with you in over a year, but we’re
going to do it today. I’m going to give
us all an assignment to do in the next minute… In just a moment, I want you all
to get up and find someone—I’d like it to be someone with a different last name
than yours, but if that’s too scary, go ahead and use a family member or a
close friend.
Here’s
what I want you to do: I want you to each
ask your partner how s/he is doing or feeling today, and I want you both to
answer honestly—good, happy, motivated, bored, irritated, lonely, nervous,
shy. Whatever you are feeling or
thinking, say it, this is a safe place; we are all promising to keep whatever
you are feeling and whatever you say to ourselves. Tell each other why you might be feeling the
way that you do. And if you really want
a challenge: tell each other how you feel about your faith life today, whether
you feel God in you, or around you. Let’s
take about 53 seconds and do that…right now!
…I
always say, when we do something like this, that I know it is harder for some
than others, many of you could feel your anxiety as I was giving you the
instructions, but just because something is scary or uncomfortable doesn’t mean
that we’re not called to do it. For most
of you, once you started talking to the other person, the initial fears soon
dissipated. And the results are more
than worth the risks.
You’ve
done it once here today, but make a point when you come to church every Sunday
to go out of your way to greet or welcome someone else; especially if you see
someone you haven’t said “Hi” to before.
Or,
especially if it’s someone that you’ve had hard feelings about. We need to remind ourselves, when we come
into this place that we are the Body of Christ.
Mistakes, mean words said, and all.
We are like our dear St. Peter in many ways: Sometimes we have been beautiful in our
witnessing, sometimes we have been impulsive in our actions, good or bad, and
we have often denied our faith just when we needed it the most. Something held Peter together, though, and
made him into a saint. That same
something holds us together and makes us the Church, the Body of Christ in the
world. It’s not us, not our power. I’d say it is Jesus, his love, forgiveness
and sacrifice.
So
today, and whenever we gather, we are to lay down our sinfulness, our regrets,
and we ask for the strength of Jesus to let go of our grudges and hurt
feelings. We are all standing in the
need of grace and forgiveness, from God, and from each other.
Jesus
called Peter a rock—that’s what his name meant.
We get the word, “petrified,” from his name. I’d say that Peter, and this world-wide 2,000
year-old Church, together we make up a kind of “cement.” We are cement.
“Cement”
comes from the old Latin caementum,
which was a collection of sharp breakable rocks, packed together, held by a
clay…very close to what we call cement today.
This cement, held together is both vulnerable and invulnerable. Its individual rocks are crumbly, they scrape
and hurt. But it is all held together as
a whole by an invincible clay. That clay
is the living message of Jesus Christ.
He
said to Peter: “On this Rock—that is—on all of these people who proclaim that
same message of ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Messiah’—on that Rock, on that
message, I will build my church—and the gates of Hades, the gates of Hell, will
never beat it down.”
The
church is as human as Peter. We are
crumbly, and we sometimes wonder if it’s all just headed toward a hot picnic in
a hand basket. But Jesus says that
promise: “The Gates of Hell will not
prevail against it.” It may crumble at
the edges, but it will never fall. That
is only because of Christ and his
message that cements us together.
That’s
why Jesus carefully said to Peter that it was not him, not his flesh and blood
that revealed that message, but his Father in heaven. It was the message, not the man. This is the cement of our faith: Jesus Christ,
Son of God, Messiah.
And
then Jesus gave us what he called the Keys to the
These
keys are the primary role of the Christian Church. These keys are the way that we unlock the
grace and mercy of God’s Kingdom, now, on earth. Everything we do as a church should be
related to those two keys.
You
have the keys to heaven. For your own
soul, it is called forgiveness, loosening the bonds of sin, on earth as in
heaven. Whenever you hear that your sins
have been forgiven, it comes from the throne of God. Forgiveness is that powerful.
But
it is more than that. Jesus placed these
keys in your hand and said, “I will give you the keys of the
So,
let’s talk about them. Most of us have
an idea about the loosening. That’s about
forgiveness. If you forgive someone,
those words once offered have the power of heaven. It is as though God himself has declared
it. The sin is wiped out before the
throne of God.
And
here’s the frightening thing to think about:
You’ve been given this gift, this key to heaven, to forgive others. What does it mean, then, if I tell someone, “I
forgive you,” or that “It’s okay,” but in my heart I keep harboring that
resentment?
Here’s
what happens: Whether they accept it or
not, that other person has been offered true forgiveness, on earth as in
heaven. If they accept it, then rest
assured that, for the sake of his Son, God declares it completely forgiven. But if I’m still harboring anger for what was
done, even after the words of forgiveness, then I become the one in need of
prayer, not that other person. Now, it
becomes like they’ve done nothing wrong, and the sin falls on my head! I need Christ’s strength to truly let go, to
forgive them, and forgive myself, and to move on.
And
truly, I may not be able to let go unless I let God give me the strength—and
that sometimes takes a long time.
Forgiveness is a gift, it is grace, unearned and undeserved. You cannot force it out of yourself until you
are truly ready to let go.
On
that note, we often think that forgiveness is our own gracious gift that we can
give or withhold from others. It’s not
our gift. Forgiveness, and the ability
to forgive, is God’s gift to us! It’s
true that sometimes when you forgive other people, they experience God. But even more often, when we find the
strength to forgive someone else, the experience of heaven comes to us—because
we are finally letting go of some hurt or anger that has prevented us from
experiencing God’s love.
Jesus
said we also have the power to bind.
This is harder to understand, but I believe that this is about
confrontation. Here’s an example: Imagine
that Silly Sally is stealing money from the till at work. If you went up to her and said, “Silly Sally,
you are stealing money from the till,” that is binding sins.
Binding
sins is about naming the sin and attaching it to the people who are doing
it. “Mom, you are an alcoholic.” “Dad, what you did to me when I was a little
girl was wrong and criminal.” To say, “This
company, or our way of life, is enslaving the third
world, or misusing the creation,” these are all examples of binding sins,
naming the sin and attaching it to the culprit.
It is one of the Biblical roles of the prophets. And it is a key of the Kingdom, placed into
your hand.
We
do have this key, this ability to bind sins. However, we need to use it very
carefully, because—whenever it leads to grudges, manipulation, revenge,
blackmailing, or anything like that—then the guilt falls back on the one who makes
the accusation, but withholding the forgiveness.
So,
there are only two reasons for Christians to bind sins: the first is to lead to
forgiveness. You confront the person and
the wrong in order for them to confirm or deny it. If they are ready to accept it, then you and
I need to be ready with the forgiveness that must follow. Binding must lead to loosening, confrontation
to forgiveness.
If
they ask for forgiveness, with any kind of sincerity, then God will already be
giving it to them, and we are called to do the same so that we can let go and move
on. Even if they deny the sin, we are
called to have forgiveness ready in our hearts for the day they are finally ready to hear it—because,
whatever their sin, whatever their attitude, we need to shake the dust off our
feet and move on. We need to let go, so
that we can experience release and get on with our lives and God’s business. I know that’s hard to do. Maybe you can’t do it.
I
know that there are secret hurts that I still harbor in my own life, and that
is what brings me to this church week after week, to ask for forgiveness, and for
the strength to let go and move on. I
can also tell you that there are some old grudges that I have finally let go,
with Christ’s strength—so I know it can happen.
The
second reason to bind sins is for God’s justice. And this is justice, not in the sense of,
“Finally those nasty people are going to get their just deserts.” No, that sense of retribution and vengeance
belongs to God only.
This
Biblical justice that God has called you and me to concern ourselves with is
about loving the neighbor: trying to help the poor receive their basic
needs. Are the orphans and widows are
being cared for, the imprisoned visited, the resident aliens protected? Are our children are growing up unmolested or
are they being taken advantage of.
That
is the kind of justice that the prophets and God have made the job of his
Church, Christ’s body.
So,
“binding sins”: the only reason to bind sins is to lead to forgiveness, or to
care for others. If it used for anything
else, then it has been misused. We are
called to love, above all other laws; we are called to love, in words and
action.
Let
me summarize today’s message:
1)
We are cemented
together by our faith in Christ, the Messiah, Son of the Living God.
2)
From that cement
we have been called to this primary job, to love God and all the people and
creatures of his universe.
3)
And this is how
we do that job, we use the keys he gave us to spread his forgiveness and work
for his justice. That is the job of the
Christian Church.
…Forgive
our sins as we forgive the sins of others.
…Thy
Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven. Amen.
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