A Sermon for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost 

This week’s lectionary is a treasure trove of stories and lessons.  

We have baby Moses being sent down the Nile in a basket after two midwives named Shiphrah and Puah lie to Pharaoh in protest of an unjust law.  

We have the Romans passage about being members of the Body of Christ, which has, probably, been the number one image that has informed my understanding of the church. 

And then we look again, and we get to the Gospel passage, which is basically the moment that Jesus founds the church, with Peter as its first minister! 

So much glorious theological content!  

— 

Paolo Emilio Besenzi: Saint Peter, Creative Commons License

And yet, this whole week, I have been fixated on the fact that Peter is a nickname. 

Maybe this has been obvious to you when you read your Bible. But for me, I think I have always kind of glossed over the fact that when “Simon, who is called Peter,” is labeled that way, this isn’t some ancient naming system that I simply don’t understand. 

This is just your normal nickname…Which is to say, it’s basically an insult cloaked in intimacy. Like my nickname growing up – Leah Whiner – it’s a name that describes your worst quality. 

And this is the reality: Peter is not a complimentary nickname. (My apologies to any Peters in the room.) 

In fact, it’s not really a name, strictly speaking. Peter comes from the Greek word for rock or stone: petros. And in other places, we’ll sometimes see it translated as Cephas, which is simply the Aramaic word for stone or rock.  

While today’s Gospel passage seems to suggest that being called “the rock” is a good thing – after all, Jesus says, “upon this rock I will build my church” – there seems to be near universal-consensus among biblical scholars that being called rock is more like being called rocky. Rough around the edges, unpolished, and difficult. 

I picture what a person must look and act like to be given this name by the Son of God, and I don’t see a man with nicely coiffed hair and smooth skin, wearing a tie and a Sport coat. 

To be honest, what I picture is my old friend in Charlottesville, who lived outside, and who hadn’t held down a job in at least a decade.  

This is a person who is disruptive to polite society. Someone who has sunbaked skin and dirty clothes, and doesn’t think too much before he acts. A person who always seems to be saying and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. 

Someone nicknamed Peter would disturb those of us who want to live “respectable” lives.  

I have a hunch that he wouldn’t pass a background check. So why in the heck is Jesus giving him keys? 

In naming Peter as the first apostle and the foundation of the church, Jesus is making a rather bold statement, and I would argue that it hearkens back to the Beatitudes. 

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!” 

When Jesus calls this leather-skinned fisherman, uneducated, rough-and-tumble, Peter, “blessed,” and when he hands over the keys to the kingdom, he is proving that he was serious when he called the poor, the persecuted, and the grieving “blessed.” 

In naming Peter as the rock and the cornerstone of the church, we are to understand that the church that Christ is building is not a polite, genteel place where nice, middle-class people bless the huddled masses outside their door.  

No! The church IS the huddled masses! With rocky Peter holding the key. 

This means that the church is only the church because sloppy, unsophisticated, outsiders are named as the blessed ones of Christ! 

— 

Those first Christians were called to be proud of the fact that their lives and their bodies did not reflect the values of polite society. 

They were called to build a world where keys are about opening doors, not closing them. 

I think we get so hung up on slick branding and marketable programs that we forget that the church was never meant to be a sparkling diamond in Jesus’ heavenly crown. It is meant to be rocky and rough around the edges. 

And “Christian living” was never meant to make us more palatable or polite. It is meant to make us ungovernable. 

— 

In a society obsessed with decorum, with not rocking the boat, the church has too often become a willing partner.  

• We have cut off the hair of indigenous children and forced them to learn English.  We have moved our soup kitchens into church basements, hidden from the sight of stained glass and polished stone altars.  
• We have segregated our worship. 
• We have cooperated with the authorities.  
• We have allowed our siblings to suffer,  
• while we thank God we’re not like them. 

I mean, think about it:  

If a weirdo like Peter walked into churches across America today, how many Christians would call the police on him? 

It’s a sobering thought. 

— 

And yet, where the Holy Spirit moves, the church has also been sanctuary…. 

Here are the stories that give me hope: 

In Nashville in 1985, Catholic priest Charles Strobel noticed people sleeping in their cars in the church parking lot.  

He invited them into the church every night that winter. With other local churches, he founded a winter shelter called Room in the Inn. Today, there are dozens of similar programs across the country. 

In Martha’s Vineyard in 2022, an Episcopal church provided emergency shelter to migrants caught up in a cruel political stunt. The church had access to cots, because they participated in a program modeled after Room in the Inn. 

Across the country, churches are defying city ordinances and feeding their hungry neighbors, while absorbing thousands of dollars in fines. 

And in my former home of Charlottesville, VA, Maria Chavalan-Sut, an undocumented asylum-seeker fleeing violence in Guatemala, sought sanctuary in a Methodist church.  

Federal officials threatened her with over 200 thousand dollars in fines. But she, and the church, persisted. Maria lived inside the church for three years before Customs Enforcement granted her a temporary stay. 

After years of advocacy, in 2022, her children traveled like Moses on the Nile, as unaccompanied minors.  They were reunited with her there in the church. Maria and her kids now have their own home, and she sells tamales at the City Market. 

Here is the church, acknowledging blessedness. 

— 

How often have we considered the fact that we’re here, in church, today, because 2,000 years ago rocky Peter opened the door to let us in? 

By the same token, how often do we remember that you and I are not named as the keyholders of the Kingdom of God? That it is, in fact, not up to us to offer sanctuary?  

The doors have already been unlocked, and the people have already been called blessed. Christ has already invited everyone in.  

The question is: are we going to figure out how to see it through, or are we going to try to stop it? 

— 

Thanks to our friend, Peter, we know that the church is a place for outcasts, not insiders. It will always be messy in exactly the way humanity is messy. 

And this Body, with its many members, will always be caught up in the struggle of admitting that our good, respectable, “Christian names” don’t mean anything to a Savior who prefers nicknames. 

When we, really understand that, it becomes common sense to make room for anyone else who walks through these open doors. 

Through our baptismal vows, we have followed Peter through the unlocked doors of the Kingdom.  

We now claim to live according to the values of the Kingdom of God: to proclaim the Gospel, love our neighbors, and respect the dignity of every human being.  

To do life together. Even though it can get pretty rocky. Amen.