[RCL]: Exodus 1:8-2:10; Psalm 124; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20 Fun fact: before there was coronavirus, the last time “corona” was in the news was during the solar eclipse of 2017. Back then, it didn’t refer to a virus, but to the dazzling light of the sun’s plasma or “atmosphere” that is usually invisible to us,…

“You promise you won’t tell anyone?” is usually the preface of a juicy story. It means someone trusts us, wants to confide in us, thinks we can keep a secret, or at least thinks we will only leak it out to one person at a time. Secrets are hard to keep. Have you ever kept…

Ask a group of people to keep a secret, and you’re looking for trouble. More than likely, somebody will let it out. Especially if the secret is astonishing. Simon Peter is the first disciple to recognize that Jesus is the Messiah. He’s the first to discover that this man he knows so well is the…

It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church. It is Peter’s day – the day he is renamed by Jesus. No longer Simon, but Peter. Which in the New Testament Greek makes for a kind of pun – for the word for “rock” is petra, while Peter is Petros. Petros is petra –…

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,…

Think of South Dakota and one thinks of Mount Rushmore. Carved into the mountainside are the heads of some of the great leaders of the United States. It’s ironic that this monument is in the heart of an area sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people whose ancestors possessed the land centuries before George Washington’s…

This text ends with a puzzle. Peter has named Jesus as God’s own anointed one. The language used here is “Messiah.” It means the anointed one. But then Jesus tells his disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. Why? There are several theories. One is that it was not time for this…