0:0 - Our scripture reading begins with the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 16, verses 13 through 18.
0:8 - And as we read these words, I pray that the Holy Spirit will come upon us to help us take these words deeply within ourselves, and in fact even more so, to place us in that place and at that time to hear those words, as though we were standing there together with Jesus and Peter and the disciples.
0:31 - Matthew 16, verses 13 through 18.
0:35 - When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is?
0:45 - And they replied.
0:47 - Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
0:57 - But what about you?
0:59 - He asked.
1:0 - Who do you say that I am?
1:5 - Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
1:13 - And Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
1:23 - And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
1:36 - We follow this up with the Gospel of John, Chapter 20, Verses 30 to 31, where John writes, Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.
2:3 - Thanks be to God for the reading of his word.
2:13 - Jesus and the boys needed to get away for a bit.
2:17 - What with things becoming just too crowded in their hometown of Capernaum and throughout all of Galilee.
2:26 - Jesus' reputation was such that the news that he was here or that he was there was enough to clog the streets with hopeful crowds, enough to jam the lawns with stretchers.
2:37 - And while Jesus was more than generous with his time and his energy, often working to the point of exhaustion, the disciples were ready to drop.
2:47 - So to get a break, they hike all the way up the Jordan Valley to the very mouth of the Jordan River itself, to the hopping pagan tourist town of Caesarea Philippi.
3:0 - Now, Caesarea Philippi on the very northern, far northern tip of Israel was, in Jesus' day, a religious Disneyland of sorts, a kind of theme park of the gods.
3:14 - All the religions and gods in the known world were represented with their own place, their own statue, their own temple, dozens of gods, maybe even hundreds of gods.
3:26 - Gentiles and pagans would visit all the possible shrines in the hope that if they worshiped every known god, well, you'd eventually get lucky with the right one.
3:39 - To this day, to this day, on the face of that of that massive, massive red, red sandstone cliff, you can still see the niches in which the idols were kept and read the inscriptions.
3:52 - You can still lean on the pillars of the temples.
3:56 - It was a must see stop on the many pilgrimages which, which I've led, including with some of you.
4:3 - Oddly, it was where Jesus led the disciples to get away from it all, far from the Galilee, for once safely anonymous among the crowds.
4:15 - Jesus crosses his arms and he looks around, kind of shaking his head in amazement.
4:22 - Temples here, temples there, temples to Pan, to Zeus, to Caesar, to Aphrodite, even the gates of Hades, massive marble columns flanking the entrance to a cave, reputed to be the door to hell itself.
4:41 - And Jesus turns to his disciples, small town boys, dazzled by it all, and he says to them, who do people say I am?
4:55 - Which is to say, all these gods, every known god, some long forgotten, with all of this, what about me?
5:6 - Who do people say I am?
5:10 - It takes them a moment, but one suggests John the Baptist, others try, another tries, well, maybe Elijah.
5:20 - A few come up with another prophet or two.
5:24 - Well, that's what people are saying anyway, he says, Andrew.
5:29 - Jesus smiles, shakes his head, takes another look around that the gods are us, and then turns his eyes back to his friends and asks them the question to which Mark has been building in the eight previous chapters of his gospel.
5:46 - Jesus looks them in the eye, and he says, what about you?
5:52 - Who do you say I am?
5:59 - Silence.
6:1 - The disciples are looking at one another, they're looking at the ground, they're looking at the sky, everywhere but looking Jesus in the eye.
6:10 - Until, of course, Peter opens his mouth.
6:14 - And for a change, not just to insert a foot.
6:17 - In fact, he says just about the most important thing he's ever to say.
6:23 - Just about the most important thing he ever will say.
6:29 - You are the Christ, he says.
6:33 - And again, he says, you are the Christ.
6:35 - In fact, he says more.
6:37 - And Matthew, standing right there, remembers it like this.
6:42 - Simon Peter answered, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.
6:50 - And Jesus replies, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my father in heaven.
7:1 - And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
7:13 - You're the Christ.
7:15 - You are the Messiah, the one we've been waiting for.
7:17 - You are God's own son, the son of the living God, not the son of one of these dead gods.
7:26 - Jesus takes him by the shoulders and says, Peter, no one here told you this.
7:32 - That's my father in heaven.
7:35 - And from now on, I'm going to call you Peter.
7:37 - I'm going to call you the rock, because it's upon this rock that I'll build my church, and not even these gates, he says, pointing to the massive gates of the underworld.
7:49 - Not even the gates of the heavens will overcome it.
7:55 - There they are, standing in the shadow of the immense rock wall of Caesarea Philippi, a rock upon which a hundred temples are built, but it is upon the rock of the confession of Peter, the rock built of words, the rock which says, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
8:14 - That's the rock upon which the church will be built.
8:18 - That realization, that truth, the rock of our faith, the foundation of our faith, the belief that we have, the relationship of faith that we have with Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
8:35 - That's a rock that will never be shaken.
8:39 - That's a rock for all time.
8:41 - You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
8:46 - That's the rock, the rock upon which Christ will build his church.
8:53 - But the church that Jesus builds, it's not a building.
8:59 - It's not a brick and mortar thing.
9:3 - It doesn't have a foundation of stone or concrete or God forbid sand.
9:8 - It's a living thing.
9:10 - It's a gathering of people.
9:12 - The word church from the root word ecclesia literally means to be called and gathered together.
9:20 - A gathering of people with faith in Christ, uniting them as one, uniting them as the children of God, uniting them as the brothers and the sisters of Jesus Christ, uniting them as this thing called the church.
9:36 - It is in this very passage that the word church is first found in the entire Bible.
9:43 - It's here that this word is conceived.
9:46 - And the seed of its conception is faith, a seed that would grow and flower and come to include you and come to include me.
9:58 - We are the church.
10:1 - We are part of that gathering, the gathering, the church that began in that most unlikely of places on that very day.
10:11 - So when I tell you that it is now time for our relationship with the church to come to an end, you're completely entitled to look at me as though I've lost my mind.
10:28 - But you know I believe it to be true.
10:32 - It is time for our relationship with the church to come to an end.
10:41 - Because I think for many of us, our relationship with the church has become a substitute, an inadequate substitute, for our relationship with God.
10:55 - I think that for many of us, there is a need for a fundamental part of who and how and why we are to change, to be transformed, to become new.
11:6 - And that can only happen when our relationship with the church comes to an end.
11:16 - Now, this might sound counterproductive from a church growth standpoint, but it's no less true for all of that.
11:24 - For if that which is most vibrant, vital and necessary about our relationship with God is to grow and blossom and flourish and become transformational, then it may be necessary for us to cast the church aside.
11:40 - It may be in the way.
11:43 - Rather than a bridge, rather than the pathway, the church may instead become for some, for many, the barrier, obscuring God from view.
11:56 - Now, before you say, ha, I knew it all along and stand and leave, vowing never to return, I'm going to ask you to stick with me for another 10 minutes or so and then you can go, if you want.
12:12 - Notice I'm preaching this particular sermon when Brad isn't here.
12:19 - What I'm saying may sound new, but it's not.
12:23 - Jeremiah State started this sermon some 2600 years ago, and I'm just writing on his coat tails.
12:29 - Jeremiah preached, this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord.
12:37 - I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
12:44 - No longer shall they teach one another or say to one another, know the Lord.
12:52 - For they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
13:4 - It's nothing, nothing here about a church, nothing here about an institution.
13:12 - Rather, God's teaching would be within us, and we would know God personally and be forgiven by God.
13:19 - Nothing about a system, an institution, a religion.
13:23 - Jeremiah is talking about faith.
13:28 - Jesus' preaching was along much the same lines, not surprisingly, causing the religious professionals to tear their hair out in frustration.
13:36 - People were leaving the synagogues and the temple and following Jesus.
13:41 - Come to me, says Jesus.
13:43 - Hear my words.
13:44 - Have faith in me.
13:47 - Never build a building.
13:51 - No, come to me.
13:53 - Enter into relationship with me.
13:55 - That was the message.
13:58 - But in 2,000 years of church history, we've sort of made it all backwards.
14:4 - The church, both the physical structure and the institutional structure became the thing.
14:12 - And Jesus was pushed aside in favor of building projects, financial campaigns, religious military crusades, institutional self-perpetuation, professional religious hierarchies, the whole bag of tricks that we think of when we think of the physical and institutional church.
14:31 - The tragic consequence of all of that is that our relationship with God through Jesus Christ became confused with our relationship with the church.
14:43 - And if our relationship with God through Christ is to be alive, our relationship with the church needs to take a distant second place.
14:54 - It needs to be cast aside, or at least very, at the very least put in its proper perspective, because we have by and large come to believe that Christianity means coming to church on Sunday, saying grace before meals, giving money to support the local congregation, listening to servants, having the occasional potluck, not engaging in any completely over-the-top amoral behavior, that kind of thing.
15:24 - But while that may cover the behavioral basis, it's missing the primary relationship out of which those behaviors are to flow.
15:37 - We've institutionalized the relationship, and that's a dangerous thing.
15:46 - Let me explain.
15:47 - Maybe I've told you before about a couple who came to see me.
15:51 - Don't worry, it's not one of you.
15:55 - Their marriage was in trouble.
15:59 - I asked the husband, Do you love her?
16:3 - Sure I do, he said.
16:5 - And his wife gave a snort.
16:9 - If you say, if you say I love you, and your wife goes, you know you're in trouble.
16:16 - The husband then described how he went about loving his wife.
16:19 - He went to work, held a steady job, provided a home, a car, worked around the house to keep it nice, didn't often stay out late, didn't fool around, that kind of thing.
16:32 - He talked at some length about how he believed in the institution of marriage, and how couples should stay together.
16:39 - He talked about commitment and how our society and our tax laws don't support marriage like they should.
16:46 - Talked for about 10 minutes or so.
16:51 - Every man in the place is going, sounds good.
16:55 - I turned to his wife.
16:58 - She said, you asked him if he loves me.
17:4 - He talked for 10 minutes.
17:7 - He didn't mention me once.
17:11 - He wants an institution.
17:14 - I want a relationship.
17:17 - I want someone who loves me.
17:24 - Now, the husband in this story is not a bad man.
17:29 - He was just mystified, as all we are, as to just what his wife wanted.
17:37 - He failed to see that perpetuating the institution of marriage, while honorable in and of itself, did nothing to support, uplift, and deepen the relationship of love between him and his wife.
17:50 - The institution was alive and well.
17:55 - The house was in good shape.
17:57 - The relationship, as described by his wife, was dead, or perhaps had never really lived.
18:9 - He missed the boat altogether, because he missed the primary relationship altogether.
18:21 - Christianity and the way we practice it can fall into the same kind of cycle, the same kind of trap.
18:34 - God reaches out to the world in Jesus Christ, offering us life and love through coming into relationship with Christ, and we respond with the construction of an institution through which this might happen.
18:48 - And in doing so, we lose sight of the primary relationship altogether.
18:53 - Or at best, the primary relationship is secondary to the needs of the institution.
19:1 - And here lies danger.
19:7 - What sort of danger?
19:10 - Well, for one thing, the institutional church has done some absolutely wonderful things over the years.
19:15 - Our society and our world is unquestionably better for it.
19:19 - But the institutional church has done some pretty foul things over the years, too.
19:25 - Big and small.
19:27 - All the way from inciting and perpetuating ethnic and cultural prejudices to abuses on personal and institution-wide scales.
19:38 - The institutional church has, throughout its history, subjugated women, misdirected financial resources, justified tyranny, traded sound theology for cultural trends, and on smaller scales, broken hearts one by one in countless, heartless ways.
19:56 - It would be all too easy to make a bigger list.
20:0 - A much bigger list.
20:3 - So, the danger here is that in making the institutional church synonymous with the primary object of the relationship, Jesus Christ, people in turning away from the all-too-fallible institution turn away from the one whom the institution is designed to serve, Jesus Christ.
20:31 - And they turn away because the church has let them down.
20:39 - And at some point, some day, in some way, maybe already, the institutional church will let you down.
20:53 - Let me say this again, because these are hard words.
20:58 - Some day, some way, somehow, sometime, the church is going to let you down.
21:5 - On the local level, maybe somebody will say something cold and uncaring to you.
21:12 - Maybe you'll be sick, and nobody heard, and nobody comes to visit.
21:17 - Maybe you'll do something that was a lot of time and effort, and nobody says thanks.
21:22 - Maybe you'll sit alone for three weeks in a row, and nobody says hello.
21:30 - Maybe you've done something that you thought was nice and all you get is complaints.
21:37 - Or on a national level, maybe the church, the institutional church will make a theological decision that you feel is betrayal of core Christian values.
21:49 - Maybe it'll be one too many scandals of financial impropriety or wastage or God forbid, abuse.
21:56 - Maybe this, maybe that, maybe the other thing.
22:0 - But someday, someway, somehow, sometime the church, local, national, international, a church made up of people just like you and me, imperfect people with our own catalog of hurts and faults, is going to let you down.
22:18 - And here's the danger.
22:19 - Here's the danger.
22:22 - If your relationship with God consists solely of your relationship with the institution of the church, then when the church lets you down, you will make the all too natural, but all too wrong assumption that God has let you down too.
22:45 - I know too many people who have turned away from God because the church has let them down.
22:56 - All too many people.
23:2 - Or worse, worse.
23:6 - Maybe you're here because of me and my once a month visits.
23:14 - Maybe you're here because of my winning personality and my irresistible good looks or my brilliant soaring sermons.
23:21 - Admittedly, unlikely.
23:24 - But if you are here because of me, worse yet, if your relationship with God is based upon your relationship with me or any particular pastor, I've got some very bad news.
23:38 - Here's something I warned my former congregation of Zion about when I first came to them 20 years ago.
23:46 - I told them that someday, someway, somehow, sometime.
23:51 - I told them this in the first month I was there.
23:59 - And sometime, I'm going to let them down if I hadn't done so already.
24:5 - I said, someday, inevitably, I'll say something you find offensive, or I'll miss a visit, or I'll forget your name, or I won't follow through on a request, or I'll make a mistake of some kind or other, and I will let you down.
24:26 - And if I represent the church to you, and the church represents God, well, once again, if your relationship with God consists solely or even primarily of your relationship with me or the church, when I let you down, when the church lets you down, you'll make the all too natural but all too wrong assumption that God has let you down to.
24:49 - And I'm sure that if Pastor Brad were here, and I'm so glad he's not, make no mistake, a wonderful pastor, a great guy whom I hold in the highest possible regard, if he were here, he'd say the same thing goes for him.
25:10 - But listen carefully, because what I'm about to say next is the most important thing that you will hear all day, maybe all year, maybe your whole life long.
25:32 - If your relationship with God consists of your relationship with Jesus Christ, I've got good news for you.
25:41 - Jesus Christ will never let you down.
25:56 - Jesus Christ isn't an institution.
26:0 - Jesus Christ isn't about budgets.
26:3 - It's not about whether we paint the church hall blue or green.
26:7 - Jesus Christ isn't about whether there's a rummage sale this year or not, or whether we don't like the hymns or choruses, or whether drums should be or shouldn't be in church, or where did the organ go, or whether we say debts or sins or trespasses in the Lord's Prayer.
26:24 - Jesus Christ isn't about denominational identity.
26:28 - Jesus isn't a Presbyterian or an Anglican or a Baptist or even a Christian Reformed.
26:35 - Jesus Christ isn't about any of these things.
26:40 - Jesus Christ is about God reaching out to us in love and grace and truth and joy and hope and forgiveness, and about whether we embrace that through embracing Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord or not.
26:59 - And if your relationship with God consists of your relationship with Jesus Christ, again, the good news is Jesus Christ will never let you down.
27:19 - So, why the church?
27:22 - What place does the church have?
27:25 - Why did you build one here and then add this expansion and now plan for yet a bigger one?
27:32 - Why do we bother with it at all?
27:36 - Well, the institutional church does indeed have a role.
27:40 - And it's a very important role, and it's threefold.
27:44 - First, to invite people into relationship with God through Jesus Christ, through proclaiming him in word and in deed.
27:56 - Secondly, to be the place to which we are called to gather to grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, supporting and encouraging one another and figuring out how best to live, live out that knowledge and love in our lives and in our world.
28:13 - And thirdly, finally, to be that place out of which we work and act in service and love to one another, bringing Jesus Christ into our communities, our country, and our world.
28:29 - Short, bringing in, growing up, sending out.
28:36 - That's what the church is all about.
28:39 - It's there to kindle that primary relationship, the relationship we have with Jesus, to support and to strengthen that relationship, and to help that relationship make a difference in our lives and the lives of those around us.
28:56 - The church is not the basis of our relationship with God.
29:1 - It is the support structure, the deeply necessary support structure for that relationship.
29:10 - Without the church's support, it's close to impossible to get the relationship going, or to maintain it, or sustain it, or grow it, or pass it on.
29:21 - The church is vitally important, because it's here that we learn the story of God reaching out to us in Jesus Christ.
29:30 - We learn what it is to respond to God's love in Jesus Christ.
29:35 - We learn how to love in loving community with the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.
29:42 - And we learn how to work together in sharing that love with our families, and our community, and our world.
29:50 - The church, at its best, communicates in word and in deed God's love for us in Jesus Christ.
29:59 - The end goal, though, is not the church.
30:4 - The end goal is our relationship with Jesus, and the sharing and the outworking of that relationship with others.
30:17 - Surrounded by the institutionalization of every known God, Jesus asks the disciples, Who do you say I am?
30:30 - And Peter replies, You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
30:37 - And it is upon that confession of faith, of who Jesus is to us, who do you say that I am to you and to me?
30:48 - It is upon the basis of that relationship, that personal relationship of faith, that Jesus builds his church.
30:57 - Others build on stone.
31:0 - Jesus builds on our hearts.
31:6 - The Gospel of John put it brilliantly and succinctly.
31:9 - At the end of that astonishing book, that breathtaking Gospel, that masterpiece, we read this.
31:17 - Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.
31:23 - But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.
31:38 - At the end of it all, says John.
31:44 - This is what matters.
31:47 - The church itself isn't the end goal.
31:50 - It's the invitation.
31:52 - It's the pathway.
31:54 - It's the support.
31:56 - The end goal of all that the church does is so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.
32:7 - The church must always be evaluated and re-evaluate in the light of this, its primary mandate, and be continually renewed and reformed to ensure that it's doing the work that God would have it do.
32:25 - So my prayer for each one of you, each one of us, is that if you have not already done so, this will be the day when your relationship with the church changes and is transformed into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
32:45 - Open your heart to God reaching out to you in love and grace and truth and joy and hope and forgiveness and embrace it all through embracing Jesus as Savior and Lord, and following him with us.
33:2 - Pray that even now, God might help your spirit to come to life within you.
33:8 - That even now, the life of Christ might become inseparable with your own.
33:13 - That God would make you new.
33:16 - And as God does, be prepared for the new life that God has in store for you.
33:24 - A life of love and grace and truth and joy and hope and forgiveness.
33:33 - Live and are strong and real and alive and new.
33:39 - Commit your life to Jesus Christ.
33:44 - He will not let you down.
33:50 - Who do you say that I am?
33:55 - You're the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
34:2 - May you come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, you may have life in his name.
34:12 - Thanks be to God.
34:15 - Amen.
34:18 - Let us pray.
34:28 - Lord God, help us ever and always to maintain our focus upon you, upon Jesus, upon who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.
34:49 - And as a result of who we are, we are people loved and forgiven and given the strength of the Spirit by you.
35:4 - Bless us, we pray, with truth.
35:7 - And as you bless us, bless the Church through which we experience our faith and live our faith and reach our faith out into the world.
35:20 - But above all, Lord God, help us to remember and to know that Jesus, our Savior and Lord, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God, will never let us down.
35:38 - Thanks be to God.
35:40 - Amen.