As the body of Christ, all of us are claimed as God’s children through baptism, gathered to be church together and to grow as disciples, and sent to serve our neighbors and live out our faith. The Holy Spirit blesses us with a variety of gifts, everything we need to fulfill the mission to which God calls us.
Today’s sermon looks at Romans 12:1-8 and Peter’s confession of faith in Matthew 16:13-20. The sermon also references Eleanor Nystrom’s baptism, which we had the joy of celebrating at Christ the King this Sunday!
Here’s the sermon audio and livestream:
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen
Before we get into today’s readings, let me say it’s good to be back with you today for worship. I spent last weekend with Lighthouse youth learning about hunger, and we had a great time serving a meal, packing food; even our time of fasting went well.
In fact, this might have been the first 24-hour famine I’ve done where I don’t recall hearing anyone complain about being hungry! We’ll have a video to show you in a few weeks, but it was a great experience.
In the meantime, some of you were here last week for an excellent sermon from Pastor Wendy Wirth-Brock looking at the question of who God’s mercy is for. I listened to the sermon podcast, and I’m serious – you got a much better sermon from her than anything you would have gotten from me on that story.
If you weren’t here, go to the church website and listen to last week’s message.
One of the main points Pastor Wendy made is that God’s mercy extends beyond one particular group of chosen people. For a while in history, the story of salvation centered on the Jews, but eventually in Jesus’ ministry—and especially after Easter as the church grew—it became clear God was doing something new, extending salvation, extending God’s mercy to the Gentiles as well, so that today we can proclaim that God’s grace and love are for everyone. Everyone is invited into God’s salvation. All are welcome at the Lord’s table.
In today’s first reading from Romans, Paul talks about how the church is one body—we’re unified in Christ, and we’ll come back to that in a minute—but even though we’re one body, we’re not all the same. We come from different backgrounds, with different experiences, different expectations, we grew up in different communities, and we have different gifts and talents.
Paul lifts up some particular gifts, and we have people in this church who are gifted in teaching, leading, generosity, encouragement, and all the rest. All those gifts come from the Holy Spirit, and the church needs all of them.
Our unity as a church begins with baptism.
Every time I get to do a baptism, I meet with the family ahead of time so we can talk about what baptism means, and one of the primary things I try to impress on families is that baptism is an entrance rite.
When you’re baptized, you become a member of the church. And I don’t just mean this particular congregation of Christ the King / Living Hope—although that’s true too—I mean the capital C-Church.
Baptism is the tangible, physical sign of joining the Body of Christ. It’s a means of grace, a channel through which God works to gather us together and transform us into the one Body Paul describes.
We don’t lose our individuality, our particular gifts and character, but baptism calls us to conform ourselves to God’s will, to put Jesus in first place in our lives, God’s will before our own will, our own desires. Baptism changes our perspective.
Some of you know I’m a huge Apple fan. I think we got our first Mac when I was seven years old, so I’ve used Apple computers basically my whole life. In the late 90’s, shortly after Steve Jobs rejoined the company, Apple had a famous marketing campaign titled “Think Different.”
They did a whole series of posters with famous inventors, entertainers, teachers, people who in some way didn’t fit into society’s norms. The ad text talks about the misfits, the rebels, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently, about how the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who actually do.
That’s not a bad explanation of what it means to be baptized. In baptism, we are claimed by God. We are marked as belonging to God, made members of Christ’s body.
So if you are baptized, you no longer belong to this world. We are set apart as God’s people, called to live differently. We are called to see the world from a new perspective, through God’s eyes.
Rather than trying to fit into the world, worrying about the things this world says are important like how much money you make, how popular you are, what your job title is, that sort of thing, we are transformed to be more like Jesus. We are called to be more loving, more caring, more compassionate, to live with kindness, gentleness, patience, all those gifts of the Spirit.
What does it look like to live your life as a Christian, to be transformed by God rather than conforming to the world? There are all sorts of examples we can look to of saints through the ages. Perhaps it looks like Mother Teresa, voluntarily living a life of poverty to help the poorest of the poor in India.
Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, founding an underground church to resist Hitler’s Nazi ideology. Brother Andrew, known for smuggling Bibles into communist countries during the Cold War. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest who served prison time for his anti-war protests.
Rich Mullins, a Christian musician who donated all of his tour and album profits beyond the average salary for a laborer in the US. 78-year-old Norma Thornton of Bullhead City, Arizona, arrested in March, 2022 for the crime of distributing free food to homeless people in a public park, motivated by Jesus’ command to love your neighbor. People who a few decades ago looked at this community, recognized the need for a new church, and took the step of faith to found this new congregation.
How does your life look different because you believe in Jesus? Where is God calling you to think, to live differently?
In two weeks, we’ll be starting a five-week series exploring how you and I are called to practice our faith in response to God’s claim on our lives. Each week, we’ll look at one of the promises in the baptismal covenant: Living among God’s faithful people, hearing the word of God and sharing in the Lord’s supper, proclaiming the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, serving all people following the example of Jesus, and striving for justice and peace in all the earth. The life of the baptized is shaped around those covenants.
Beloved, you belong to Christ. Do not be conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect…We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.
And when God’s people are gathered together, you get a church.
Because that’s what a church is, right? It’s not a building, or an institution, or a service club; the church is God’s people. You and I, doing our best to live as the Body of Christ, growing in faith and seeking to live out God’s will, using our diverse gifts and talents to build God’s kingdom, living out that covenant.
As God’s people, we are claimed by God and united in baptism, and we are united by our confession of faith, the same confession of faith Peter makes in this Gospel story.
With Peter we confess, we boldly claim, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. The church, Jesus says, is built on that confession of faith.
And it is a radical confession. It’s an audacious statement to claim that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is God with us, our savior, the ruler of our lives.
I want to point out one of the little details in the story that you probably missed. Did you catch where Jesus and his disciples are? Matthew 16 verse 13: “Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi…” and he asked his disciples what people were saying about him.
Do you remember King Herod the Great, the king who’d been so threatened by the birth of the baby Jesus that he’d had a bunch of baby boys around Bethlehem killed?
That King Herod had given a region of land to his son Philip, who used it to build a city, which he named in honor of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus: Caesarea Philippi. Literally, it means “Philip’s Caesar.”
This is what’s left of his palace. That’s the region where Jesus and his disciples are, a place symbolizing the Roman empire’s power, a city dedicated to Caesar Augustus, who had himself claimed “son of God” as one of his titles.
In this place, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” The world has lots of opinions about Jesus. But then Jesus asked them directly, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
This is our answer as well. As the church, we are united by this claim that the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth is the messiah, God’s son, our savior.
As God’s people, we have the audacity to publicly declare that Jesus is our Lord, not just a great moral teacher or some historical role model, but our Lord, our ruler, here and now. Jesus is alive today, present among us, calling us to follow him as disciples, calling us to allow him to be the ruler of our lives, our Lord.
This Jesus who is God with us has claimed you in the waters of baptism, united us as his body in this world.
Our ultimate authority is not Caesar, not the government of the United States or any other earthly nation; our loyalty is to our living lord Jesus.
You belong to Christ. May God’s claim on you transform your life today and always. Amen