Are there problems that seem intractable to you? Poverty here or abroad? Disease? An unsatisfying job or the lack of a job? A challenging relationship? A bad habit? A person who drives you crazy? Or one who makes you despair of all hope? Peter says there is no such thing as an intractable problem.
This Gospel lesson is called the Confession of Peter. Most of the time when this confession is spoken about, the spotlight is on the word “Messiah,” what that might have meant to Peter, and what it can mean to us. But there is another word in this confession that deserves focus: the word “living.” Peter claims to know a God who is not only powerful, but active and involved. The Dictionary I consulted defines “alive” to mean, “being in force or operation, sensitive, animated.” Peter knew a God who is in touch with events and responds to them.
Peter did not invent this living God. He inherited this understanding from his Hebrew roots. But what Peter learned as a child was not as important as what he himself experienced walking and living with Jesus. In Jesus, he saw God active and responsive in his time and place. He saw Jesus bind demons that were causing despair to the suffering. He saw Jesus loose hope for people who had become hopeless because of their own regrets or society’s harsh judgments. These are the powers to bind and loose that Jesus sought to pass on to Peter (and two chapters later will pass on to all the disciples, including us: the powers to bind despair and loose hope). Most importantly, Peter experienced Jesus binding despair and loosing hope in Peter himself, when his own doubts left him falling into the Sea of Galilee in our Gospel lesson just two weeks ago. Jesus’ hand reached out to Peter, reached out to Peter in his despair over his own frailties, reached out and lifted him up with God’s steadfast offer of love. Peter wants us to know that the living God is still offering us that hand, offering to pull us up out of despair and into hope around all the issues of our lives that cause pain. With such a living God in the picture, there is no such thing as an intractable problem. That is Peter’s testimony. How should that affect our day-to-day lives?
I recently got back from a beach vacation with family. Needing a quick lunch one day en route to fishing, we took my grand niece and grand nephew to a favorite chain restaurant. Not wishing to promote any particular chain, I won’t mention the name; we’ll just call it a McRestaurant. They loved it. They loved ordering familiar, favorite food that was just like what they eat at home 3,000 miles away. When we got ready to leave, they said, “Can we come back here again tomorrow?” I said, “I’m sure we’ll have another occasion during the week to visit another McRestaurant.” They both chimed in one after the other, “No! We want to eat at this exact place. And we want to eat at this exact time! And we want to sit in this exact booth! And we want to order these exact meals!” They were taking a human trait we all share to the extreme. We want security. Things feel most secure if they are exactly the same. Something in us prefers known imperfections to the insecurity of the unknown. This ignores the basic reality that “better” is necessarily “different,” and the Kingdom of heaven cannot further unfold without change.
The God Peter knew, our living God, is not willing to leave bad enough alone. Everything that is alive changes, and our living God is in the change business. With the loving force behind all life in the change business, there can be no such thing as an intractable problem. Let me say that again: With the loving force behind all life in the change business, there can be no such thing as an intractable problem. That is the core of Peter’s confession, and as his successors, our first job must be to proclaim this truth, to bind despair and loose hope on every front of concern to humankind. Peter’s promise does not mean that every story will end with the ending we would like to write. But it does mean that God is in every story, striving to draw us and others to the joy and peace that is God’s desire for every human being, striving to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth.
So here is the affect on our day-to-day lives Peter proposes: He proposes that we pray for change every single day, around every issue of concern to us, in every moment that challenges us. He encourages us to pray for change, trusting the presence and activity of the living God.
This past week, we conducted the first of two focus groups with randomly selected midtown residents, hoping to learn more about how we can serve the needs of people in our context. You will be hearing more about that along the way, but one result is worth sharing here. To a person, everyone said they would be drawn to a church that is involved in serving those most in need. The world is crying for our leadership in tackling the problems that seem intractable. The world needs us to act upon our first vocation of binding despair and loosing hope. Every Sunday, we say words through which we offer to be part of God’s work toward change for the better. We pray, “Thy will be done, thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven.” May we pray those words with ever deeper meaning this day. May the prayer of our hearts be: “Thy kingdom come. Bring it on!!!”