Matthew 16: 13-20 (links validated 7/11/23)

A few weeks ago, a headline kept popping up that, “NJ should expect a colder and snowier winter this year.” That prediction came from the annual publication of The Farmers Almanac. This was one of those moments when my A.D.D. reared its ugly head as I asked myself, “Didn’t they say this last year, and we had zero snow?” And thanks to Google, I wasted more time than I wanted to learn about The Farmers Almanac, their predictions, and their accuracy rate (the publishers say they’re 85% accurate, but Wikipedia says 50% ). In my ongoing research, I came upon a list of other claims that were historically dead wrong. From bankers advising Henry Ford to abandon his pursuits in production of cars, not to waste his money because, “The horse is here to stay… the automobile is a fad – a novelty.” Investors passed on backing this invention called a television for the same reason: “Televisions won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months; people will get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” Even when Alexander Graham Bell went to sell someone the patent to the telephone, he was dismissed. The guy who passed on it said, “The idea is idiotic on the face of it…why would any person want to use this ungainly and impractical device when he can send a messenger to the telegraph office and have a clear written message sent to any large city in the United States?” Ironically, people haven’t learned from history. Back in 2007, the CEO of Microsoft said, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”...

includes several short synopses of those who lived heroic lives.

When Christian Herter was governor of Massachusetts, he was running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes (and no lunch), he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and Herter was famished. As Herter moved down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line. “Excuse me,” Governor Herter said, “do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?” “Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.” “But I’m starved,” the governor said. “Sorry,” the woman said again. “Only one to a customer.” Governor Herter was a modest and unassuming man, but he decided that this time he would throw a little weight around. “Do you know who I am?” he said. “I am the governor of this state.” “And do you know who I am?” the woman said. “I’m the Lady in Charge of the Chicken. Move along, Mister.” —This is a short, and simple, and humorous story about two people viz. Governor Herter and the Lady in Charge of the Chicken, each trying to exert authority over to the other by telling – ‘who I am.’...

My late father-in-law was a geology lecturer. I think it would be fair to say that his life revolved around rocks. Clearing his house after his death last Christmas has shown us that, if we didn’t know it already. We’ve come across box after box of carefully labelled rock samples, gathered on working trips, but also on family holidays. Coming back from the seaside with rock is nothing unusual, but it’s usually the sort that’s made of peppermint candy, with the resort name running through the middle of it. Not for the Le Bas family – they came back with the real thing, packed in the car around the luggage. To us, as we wondered what to do with all those rock samples, one looked much like another, but to Philip’s father each one was unique, coming from somewhere specific, with its own story to tell. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug”, says Isaiah to the people of Israel...

(includes lots of Greek exegesis!!)

(always interesting insights!)

("This particular spot where Jesus and his disciples stood is at the base of Mount Herman. It was the site of a number of pagan temples. To the left of the ruins you'll see the mouth of a large cave partially filled with water. In Jesus' day water would gush up out of this cave without warning, as if it were spewing up from the depths of the earth. When the water was calm, people tried to measure its depth. Try as they may, they couldn't reach the bottom. It became known as the 'gates of hell'..." and other illustrations)

(excellent exegesis)

A few weeks ago, a couple found their wedding plans completely upended with the continued fall out from the viral pandemic. The ceremony in front of family and friends – the lavish reception all had been revised, then altered, and eventually cancelled due to changing regulations and limitations from the state and city of New York. The couple decided they just didn’t care anymore, they just wanted to get married. So they got an officiant to join them on the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset on a Saturday night in July, the bride had her dress on – a rather simple, but obvious wedding gown – the groom got into a business casual outfit, and they exchanged vows on one of the most iconic landmarks in the city. It just so happened that this woman who was riding her bike on the bridge crossing from Manhattan to Brooklyn spotted the very intimate moment. She said she felt compelled to snap a picture on her phone. Not wanting to interrupt and intrude on them at that special moment, she decided later to post it on twitter with the note “If you were getting married on the Brooklyn Bridge this evening, I’ve got some photos for you.” Remarkably a few days later the couple were identified and were happily surprised to have what turned into the only pictures, capturing the most important moment, from one of the greatest days in their lives...

What if you risked asking, quite simply—and without being sure of the answer—“Who is Jesus Christ?” Once upon a time I did. In the late 1970s I was at the beginning of my teaching career at Yale Divinity School and visiting friends who were housesitting in Stonington, Connecticut. Our absent host was the poet James Merrill, a friend of my friends, who was then in the process of writing what would become, by 1982, a three-part, 560-page epic poem, The Changing Light at Sandover. Crucial to its composition was a Ouija board that became the stage for sessions of serious play undertaken by Merrill and his partner David Jackson, not only on their own but often in the company of friends. (The board was given to Merrill by his best friend from high school, Frederick Buechner.)

Frederick Buechner grew up among the elite of the very sophisticated East Coast. He rubbed elbows with very urbane people, many of whom fancied themselves too mature as modern-day folk to engage in anything resembling traditional pious talk about God or spirituality. Indeed, when as a young man Buechner mentioned at a high class dinner party that he was going to seminary to become a pastor, his hostess for the evening fixed Buechner in an incredulous gaze before asking, “A pastor? Really. Tell me, was this your own idea or were you ill-advised?” Many years later, Buechner taught a semester at Wheaton College. At lunch one day, sitting with some students, he overheard one student very casually ask another, “What has God been doing in your life lately?” Buechner observed that if a question like that were asked in New York City, the ground would open up, buildings would crumble, and grown men would faint dead away. Many times how a question sounds depends on where you are!

There is one news clip which has been played several times and every time I see it, it gives me pause — especially now as I consider the gifts of this week’s Gospel lesson. It is that of an interview with former white supremacist. When asked how he was able to leave his old life behind, he replies simply , “Kindness.” Arguments would not, did not work. Violence only ignited his anger more deeply. But the repeated, intentional kindness of others pushed him to re-evaluate his life choices and today he can say the hatred he harbored so deeply is in his past.

Sr. Rachel Hosmer, of the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross, tells about a dream she had about ordering from a Sears Catalogue. Only this was no ordinary catalogue. In it, she could order the Jesus of her choice. The dream flowed on: there was Jesus as a seminary professor, with pipe and tweed jacket. There was Jesus the farmer, with calluses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails. There was a suburban, church-going Jesus in a suit and tie. There was a Latino Jesus, and an African-American Jesus. There was a feminist Jesus, who enabled bent women to stand up. In her dream, Sr. Rachael chose one and ordered that Jesus. She received a Jesus, but it was different from the one she had ordered. She ordered another Jesus, and again she got a Jesus different from the one she had chosen. This happened again and again. Every time she received a Jesus who differed from the one she had ordered. And every time, it really was Jesus whom she was given. The message of her dream became clear to her the next day. If she started where she was, with what she really longed for, Jesus would come into her life. And he was always different from her expectations, always wonderfully surprising.

In the 1950s, there was a professional wrestler making the circuit of small towns and county fairs by the name of William Dee Calhoun. Now, as you know, most wrestlers have some kind of trademark, some gimmick or schtick that makes them stand out. William Dee Calhoun's trademark was that he was 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighed over 600 pounds, and wrestled wearing a huge pair of farmer's overalls. He was a heap of a man, and because of this no one called him William Dee Calhoun. No, he was known, for obvious reasons, as "Haystack Calhoun."...

The secret to prayer is not to try to make God present, but to make ourselves present to God. The secret to finding beauty and love in life is basically the same. Like God, they are already present. The trick is to make ourselves present to them. Rarely are we enough inside of our own skins, present enough to the moment, and sensitive enough to the richness that is already present in our lives. Our experience comes brimming with riches, but too often we are not enough inside of it.

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, but which we can see during a solar eclipse. It is that type of “corona” that we’ll be talking about today. For a moment back in 2017 – in a year that seems like it was decades ago – the world stopped and people stepped outside to observe the strange phenomenon happening in the sky. These days, we plan for months and perhaps years to observe solar eclipses, but obviously, the first recorded solar eclipses were quite a shock to humanity. The Greek historian Herodotus tells us about when the path of totality crossed a battlefield as the Medes and the Lydians fought a long-standing war. When the sky became dark, the soldiers immediately stopped fighting, and their leaders took the eclipse as a sign that they should agree to a truce. It’s called the Eclipse of Thales, named after the philosopher who is said to have predicted it ahead of time. That battle, eclipse, and truce occurred on May 28, 585 BC...

In one of his famous “letters to a young poet,” writer Rainer Maria Rilke encouraged his protégé to sit with what he doesn’t know, and trust that the questions themselves have great value. “Be patient,” he wrote, “toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”...

("This is an extract from a With Open Heart by Michel Quoist: 'This morning I discovered the extraordinary power of Christ's love at the bedside of a dying man. I sat there not knowing what to say. What can anyone say to a dying man? I watched him. I thought him ugly, this old man with a face ravaged by wrinkles, oiley with perspiration, where who knows what mysterious bombardments dug those red and black craters in the stubble of his beard...")

("Maybe I don't really wanna know How your garden grows cos I just want to fly Lately, did you ever feel the pain? In the morning rain as it soaks you to the bone Maybe I just want to fly I want to live I don't want to die Maybe I just want to breathe maybe I just don't believe Maybe you're the same as me we see things they'll never see you and I were gonna live forever - Oasis...")

("This summer I read the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It is a story about how race and place shape our personal identity and sense of belonging. Ifemelu, the protagonist and narrator, never thought of herself as black until she moved from Nigeria to America. The color of her skin and the texture of her hair were only two aspects of her personal identity that assumed new meaning in a new place...")

("I read a story about a woman who was alone. Very ill. And she was at home dying of AIDS. It would be hard to overstate how depressed and discouraged she was feeling. A friend was so concerned that she called a priest to come by and visit the woman. The woman candidly told the priest: 'Look, I've made such a mess of my life. I've made so many mistakes. How could God ever forgive me?'...")

("It's difficult to imagine a more confident, capable actor than Laurence Olivier in 1956, the year he signed on to appear in the movie The Devil's Disciples with the American actors Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. According to Philip Ziegler, his most recent biographer, the man, whose Henry V and Hamlet had already become the stuff of legend, wasn't easily coached by his comrades. 'Privately he admitted that Lancaster, who was coproducer but not director, infuriated him by forever making suggestions as to how he should play his part...")

("A hundred years ago, Europe was at peace, enjoying the most beautiful of summers, still at the start of a new century, one promising all good things to humanity. Science and technology were remaking the world. Enlightenment was spreading, even to the darkest parts of Africa and Asia, albeit under colonial aegis. In Europe the Ottoman Empire was waning, the last remnant of the Islamic invaders, who, two centuries earlier, had threatened Vienna itself...")

("Two nuns were out shopping and passed through the aisle displaying beer. The first nun mused how nice it would be to have some beer with their pizza that night. The second nun agreed but said she wouldn't feel comfortable buying it. What would people think about them? The first nun replied that she had an idea. She picked up a six-pack and took it to the cashier who had a surprised look on his face...")

(" I read In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? when I was in high school, and it's pretty powerful. In it, a pastor encounters a destitute man who he more or less brushes off. The man disrupts the Sunday worship service, calling the pastor and congregation out on their hypocrisy. He dies a few days later, and the pastor is deeply shaken. He vows, and urges his congregation, to try, as seriously as possible, to only do what they believe Jesus would do in any given situation for the year ahead. The story follows the transformation that occurs in peoples' lives when they commit themselves fully to doing what they believe Jesus would do...")

["Moses and Jesus each had several occasions of naming and revelation. And still it is difficult for us to name them. Each, in death, is difficult to name as well. Part of the difficulty is that our names are intricately woven with theirs, and when we name them we have to name ourselves..."]

It is a scary thought, and a humbling one, to realize that God has put the Gospel, the Keys to the Kingdom, into our hands. It is a thing that is so, so big, and we are so, so small; that we don't even know where to start. 'It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.' Those are the first words of what is being called The Prayer of Oscar Romero...

("In the 1980's, a man became an expert in East-West business relations and attended a conference in the Soviet Union and got into a conversation with a female delegate from the Soviet Bloc. 'You are a Christian', the Soviet woman said, 'I am an atheist. Tell me, when is the last time that you did something because you stopped and asked yourself, "What does God want me to do in this case?"...")

("Since Jesus asked this famous question in the shadow of the elite powers-that-be in his day, here is a possible illustration to display how the gospel can look/appear/sound in a similarly high-end setting: Frederick Buechner grew up among the elite of the very sophisticated East Coast. He rubbed elbows with very urbane people, many of whom fancied themselves too mature as modern-day folk to engage in anything resembling traditional pious talk about God or spirituality...")

("There were days in high school history class when the teacher would fire off a question out of the blue, and most of the class was not prepared to answer it. Or, at least, I wasn't prepared. You remember that experience? It was an awful feeling...")

("Without a doubt, the person who has been depicted in art the most down through the centuries is Jesus. We have seen pictures of Jesus in Bibles and Bible storybooks, all of them radically different in how they depict him. Rembrandt's Jesus is very human, all light and shadow...")

("A zebra dies and appears at the pearly gates where he encounters St. Peter. The Zebra says, 'St. Peter, can you help me with something? I've always wanted to know if I'm a white zebra with black stripes or a black zebra with white ones?....")

If you have a set of keys with you this morning, I want you to take them out of your purse or pocket. Everybody got their keys? Hold them up for me to see! Now, if you have a set of keys, what I want you to do is to find someone around you who does NOT have a set of keys and I want you to give them yours...

("Once upon a time there was a terrible tragedy. Only two years after marriage a young husband died suddenly of an aneurysm. His wife, who loved him very much, was devastated...")

("Frederick Buechner grew up among the elite of the very sophisticated East Coast. He rubbed elbows with very urbane people, many of whom fancied themselves too mature as modern-day folk to engage in anything resembling traditional pious talk about God or spirituality....")

In Nikos Kazantzakis' novel Zorba the Greek, the boss asks Zorba what a man is. Zorba replies with a story about his father. Every day his father would leave the house early in the morning and walk seven miles to begin plowing and planting a field. Before he would begin his day's work, he would sit down under a tree, fill his pipe with tobacco, and have a leisurely smoke. One day when the father opened his tobacco pouch, it was empty. He went into a rage and ripped the tobacco pouch to shreds. Then he stopped and realised what he had done. From that day forward he never smoked again. Zorba ended the tale with, "That is a man" (Shea 1996:158). The teller of the story story, Jack Shea, went on to say: “To be human is to be transcendent - to be a little bit more than our habits and behaviors… We humans are constantly breaking out of the prisons we ourselves have constructed. We play all the roles – warden, guard and inmate. But the moment we most enjoy is when we are dancing in freedom on the far side of the wall”...

("Let me start with a confession. My eleven-year old son and I love dining in McDonald's. And it was at one particular lunch that we were sitting together discussing the life, universe, and everything. And like you do, we found ourselves musing on the speed of light....")

("Jacob's stone marks that spot as a thin place, to borrow a notion from Celtic traditions. Celtic folk have long held that in the physical landscape and in the turning of the year, there are places where the veil between worlds becomes thin...")

("Scott Peck says that he finally became a Christian because Christianity has the only way of dealing with sin. 'Christianity says that we cannot not sin, but when we do God has to forgive us.'...")

("One night Rachael Hosmer had a dream about ordering from the Sears Catalogue. Only this was no ordinary catalogue. In it, she could order the Jesus of her choice. The dream flowed on: there was Jesus as a seminary professor, with pipe and tweed jacket. There was Jesus the farmer, with calluses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails...")

("The Divine Comedy contains an instructive example of a man who thought the gold key was all he needed. A certain Guido da Montefeltro had practiced a life of deception, tricking many people in order to get the things he wanted. At a certain point he experienced a change of heart and gave up his fraudulent practices to become a Franciscan Friar...")

("I'm thinking of the emperor Constantine, who underwrote the Council of Nicea, giving him opportunity to decide which bishops got invited and the final say on any statements that came out of that gathering...")

("But Elaine Pagels begins her new book Beyond Belief with an unusual--for her-- anecdote and a very powerful witness.On a bright, cold Sunday morning in New York, she interrupted her daily run by stopping in the vestibule of an Episcopal church to get warm. Two days earlier, her two-and-a-half-year-old son had been diagnosed with an invariably fatal lung disease. I cannot even begin to imagine how devastating that experience must be. She writes...")

("A few years back, I hired a facilities manager for the church I was serving. Up until that time, we had limped along with one longtime custodian and multiple part-time custodians. Over the years, though, the congregation and the plant had grown too large and we needed someone to manage the property...")

("Once upon a time not so very long ago, there was a parish with many problems. The beloved pastor had retired. During his pastorate, the various and quite diverse groups in the parish still felt part of the larger community...")

("A famous stained-glass artist was commissioned to make a huge portrait for the window of the cathedral in Chartres, France. First he laid all of the pieces he was going to use out on the floor of the cathedral. Among these awesome pieces of glass was a small, clear piece about as big as a fingernail...")

"In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy demanded that Linus change TV channels, threatening him with her fist if he didn't. 'What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?' asks Linus..."

("One morning many years ago I went out of the apartment house where I lived in Chicago's Black West Side ghetto and found a little ten year old neighbor, whose nickname was 'Boo', sitting in his grandpa's old Cadillac car, with a set of keys in his hands, busily working to get the padlock off the steering wheel...")

("Once upon a time a mom and dad were packing up there things to go home from their summer vacation. They were very sad. They had to home because the evil people who run schools make kids come back in August...")

("Once upon a time, back in the 1940's, there was a terrible automobile accident in which a Dad and his twelve year old son were killed instantly. A nine-year-old son crawled out without a scratch...")

("There is an old story about the death of St. Peter in Rome during the persecution of Nero. Peter heard about Nero's plan to burn the city and blame the Christians. He figured as the one who presided over the church in the city he would be arrested and put to death...")

("This happened yesterday. A group in Detroit celebrated the 40th anniversary of the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march down Woodward Avenue, a march for freedom, a march for justice, a march for peace. The march he led in 1963 was in commemoration of an event from 20 years before...")

("One August I was hiking with new friends just 15 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge. They wanted to show me a favorite trail, a path that winds its way through summer-golden hills, past ravines of alder, oak and eucalyptus, and then straight on to the Pacific...")

("Sitting in a Doctor's office waiting room this week, I picked up the latest issue of Money magazine. In it I found an interesting question and answer in an advice column called Do the Right Thing. Something in what I read nagged at me long after I put the magazine down. Let's see what you think...")

"This past week I was reacquainted with an old friend whose music has touched my life in a deep way. Keith Green died almost twenty years ago, but his music lives on as fresh and challenging as it was the day he sang it..."

C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and many wonderful books, put it this way. 'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God...

("I am reminded of an old TV show where the object was to see how well people could lie. As a matter of fact the better one could lie, the better the prizes were. After the allotted time for the telling of lies, the announcer would intone 'Will the real Mr. Jones please stand up!'...")

One Sunday morning the congregation of an affluent church had, what was for them, quite a stir. Just minutes before the service, a man arrived, dressed—by their standards—pretty shabbily...

("Malcolm Muggeridge, for most of his life a skeptic, following his conversion became wonderfully reflective. In his book, Jesus Rediscovered, he writes, 'Beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, a silver star marks the alleged precise spot where Christ was born...")

("Brendan Mark Manning, a Roman Catholic priest, in his book The Wisdom of Accepted Tenderness: Going Deeper Into The Ava Experience, tells a story about the power of words, the power of speech. It is a tale of Zacharias Warner, a romantic poet who had turned priest...")

Herbert O'Driscoll uses a wonderful image for this. His idea is to look at all of the last 200 centuries as rings of time, as concentric circles of time, scores and scores of such circles, we are in the very outermost circle, farthest away from the center and at the center is a Cross...

("A man named Frank told this story about his brother, Walter. 'We always wondered what Walter was good for. He was a prankster, never took anything seriously, and was always in some kind of mess...")

("In her book, Final Payments, Mary Gordon tells the story of a young woman who devoted the best years of her life to caring for her father. She was nineteen years old when he suffered a stroke. Instead of going out with her friends and having a life of her own, she spent the next eleven years of her life at her father's beck and call. When he died, she ventured out into the world of dating...")

("The following was written by an eight year old for his 3rd-grade homework assignment to 'Explain God'. 'One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth. He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies...")

("I have often been asked why I do not have a picture of Jesus in either my office or my home. They are surprised that a minister would not include such an obvious picture amongst his gallery of pictures. Personally, I find such pictures distracting to my understanding of Jesus..." and other quotes)

("A rock singer, Joan Osborne, had a song out this past year called One of Us that was nominated for a Grammy Award. It immediately gets the attention of the Christian community because it raises the question, 'What if God was one of us?... Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home'...")

("I've recently been subscribing to a magazine called Relevant Magazine, aimed at twenty and thirty something Christians. In the most recent issues, I happened on an article entitled 'O Jesus, Who Art Thou?'. The author, Jason Boyett, talks about society's quest to figure out what kind of Jesus they want...")

("Peter is the gas station attendant whose language burns our ears, but is the first one to show up when a neighbor is in need. He's the waitress whose ideas on race relations make you cringe, but when the black single mother down the street ends up in the hospital, she's the one who steps in...")

("Take Dr. Joyce Brothers in her book How to Get Whatever You Want Out of Life. 'Only you can truly know what you want out of life,' Brothers writes, 'lover, power, riches, success, a good marriage, exciting sex, fulfillment…can be yours if you want them.'...")

("The coed came to the campus chaplain to discuss the differences between Christianity and the Jewish faith. She was in love with a young man who was Jewish and they were discussing marriage. She wanted to know how to deal with the differences of two related but disparate faiths...")

("An organist was practicing one day in a great church in Europe. A man came up to the organ and asked if he could play. The organist looked at him and thought to himself. I shouldn't let this man play, just look at him, he is unshaven, his clothes are soiled, he looks like a bum...")

Daddy loved preachers, both his and Mama’s, and he often lent a sympathetic ear to them. But I remember frequently his remarks as we were headed home for Sunday lunch: “I don’t go to worship to hear about Tillich or Bonhoeffer or Bultmann. I want to see Jesus. And I can tell in five minutes whether a preacher is sold on his product or not!...

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