Rocky
Sermon
Church People Beware!
It is said that Winston Churchill never liked talking to subordinates. He always wanted to go to the top because he figured that was the only way he could get any action. So, as the story goes, when Churchill went to heaven, he met St. Peter at the gate and said, "Who are you?" When Peter said, "I'm St. Peter," Churchill said, "To hell with you, get God!"
How did poor Peter get this job in the first place? It all started with the story recounted in this text when Jesus renamed him "Rocky" and gave him the keys to the kingdom. Actually he called him Cephas which is an Aramaic nickname which means rock. Its Greek counterpart is Petros which also means rock. Thus on that day at Caesarea Philippi about 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee, Simon Johnson, as he was known to his fishing buddies and his family, got a new name and his new name was Rocky.
Rocky was the big one, bigger than lifelike boxers by that name: Marciano or the character Sylvester Stallone played in the movie called Rocky and all its sequels. I can just hear him calling the other disciples with a tough Philadelphia street kid accent, "Hey you'se guys, let's go get some fish."
Rocky was aggressive, loud, bombastic, a ne'er-do-well who always wanted to be somebody, but he wasn't sure what. He'd do anything to make a name for himself. But he was stuck catching fish and living with his mother-in-law, and this Jesus, the street preacher from Nazareth, was his ticket out. So when the carpenter called to him from the shore one day when he was knee-deep in nets, he said, "Hey, why not?" and set out on the greatest adventure of his life. You can almost hear the theme song for the movie Rocky bursting forth in the background.
Rocky was the big one, bigger than life. In fact, Rocky was big in three ways that make you wonder why Jesus made him the rock on which he built the church and gave him the keys to the kingdom. Rocky was big in three ways.
First of all, he was a big bumbler, which should endear him to us immediately when we think of all the ways we have made a mess of our Christian lives; all the times we have tried to do the right thing in our lives and blown it and figured, ‘‘Well, that does it. Surely God is going to give up on me now." Surely I've had my last chance. About the time we think we're doing everything pretty well, we go and pull a boner. 'Course Peter never did it halfway. When he made a mistake, he did it so everyone could see and hear it loud and clear. Rocky was the kind who never looked at his bulletin so that when they got to the hymns he sang with great gusto when all the women and children were supposed to be singing, not aware at all until someone pointed it out after the service. That's the kind of thing Rocky would do. He rarely made little mistakes. His were always the kind everyone could see.
Peter wasn't a pretty Christian with everything in line. He was rough-hewn like a rock. Buechner is right: "A rock isn't the prettiest thing in creation or the fanciest or the smartest, and if it gets rolling in the wrong direction, watch out… (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, New York, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1979, p. 134)." That's why being called a rock wasn't the greatest thing Jesus could do for Peter. A rock could mean a solid foundation, but it could also mean a stone of stumbling, the kind of "scandalon" that Paul talks about later. So it is for us in our Christian lives. Sometimes it seems like we're really holding the fort down for God and the kingdom in the ways we act and in the ways we treat each other. And at other times it seems like we're just in the way. A stumbling block. A real blockhead.
You ever feel like that? Like everything you do turns out wrong? You're trying your best to do what's right, but you just can't seem to get it right. That's the way Peter was, and I suppose it's at least small comfort that Peter blew it over and over again and was still named a saint and has survived the microscopic inspection of demythologization. Peter not only got in the way the way a rock sometimes does, he got stuck in his ways. Rocks have a tendency to do that. They have a tendency to solidify, to petrify, which heightens the difference between Peter and Paul, and Peter and Jesus.
Jesus was talking about something entirely new. Peter wanted to stay with the old like the hardliners in the former Soviet Union. Jesus was the utopian, Peter the conservative. Frank and Fritzie Manuel, in their book Utopian Thought in the Western World, suggest, "The utopian often emerges as a (person) with a deeper understanding of the drift of his society than the hardheaded problem-solvers with their noses to the grindstone of the present, blind to potentiality (George Keller, Academic Strategy, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, p. 100)."
Remember Peter with Jesus at the mountain of transfiguration? Jesus is changed, transfigured, glorified. He is talking about where he is going, about new life. And all Peter wants to do is to freeze the moment. He wants to build a booth around it and keep it safe. "Peter, the rock, the brick-andstone believer, the builder, the contractor…" wants to keep everything exactly as it is. And Jesus kept having to say, "Peter, you knucklehead. Get out of my way! Don't you see where I'm going with all of this?"
"There's not a lot you can do to change a rock or crack it or get under its skin, and, barring earthquakes, you can depend on it about as much as you can depend on anything. So Jesus called him the Rock, and it stuck with him the rest of his life. Peter, the Rock (Buechner, op. cit.)." And on this rock, on this knucklehead, said Jesus, I will build my church, which should give us all hope to see that Jesus would pick such a bumbler as Peter to be the foundation-stone for his church.
But Peter was not only a bumbler; he was also a big talker. It's like the vacation church school kid who came up to his pastor one day during the week and said, "You're the guy who's always talking in church." That's the way Peter was, always spouting off about this subject or that. Always mouthing off about how much he could do on his own and how he didn't need anybody else. "I can walk on the water all by myself, thank you very much," and then sank like a rock because that's what rocks do in the water, weighted down by their own self-centeredness. "I can wash my own feet, Jesus, so you can keep your towel to yourself." "I can do it myself!" says the four-year-old and the first grader and the first day on the jobber and the elderly invalid. "I don't need anybody else," say so many in our time, "least of all God!" "I can make it on my own," say dear friends of ours who are sicker than they think or whose marital life is a shambles, but they're afraid to burden anyone else with their problems, so they suffer quietly and alone.
Peter especially thought he could make it on his own. And time and time again he blew it the way you and I do. We're such big talkers when we join the church. All these promises. All these things we're going to do for God. Right!
"No Jesus," said Peter, "no way that I would deny you." 'Course the bigger they come, the harder they fall. What was it that gave him away in that early morning dark? Was it his Galilean dress? The slave girl picked it out in a flash, "Look, he's one of them!"
Was it his Galilean accent? That was enough to do it by itself. You could tell a Galilean a mile away. All he had to do was open his mouth. It'd be like plopping someone from New Jersey down in the middle of Cajun country. Galileans had a heavy accent, so ugly an accent that they weren't even allowed to pronounce the benediction in the synagogue. No one could stand it. And the slave girl picked it out just like that. "I know you. You're one of them." And Peter, the big talker, said, "No way, lady. Never met the man."
Then came the cock-crow or was it the trumpet or was it the haunting cry of his own conscience? Whatever it was, Peter couldn't take it any more. He wept like a baby. The big talker who thought he was somebody, was now a nobody and routed by a slave girl at that! Down to the mat one more time and Rocky finally throws in the towel.
Somehow Jesus knows he will. Somehow he knows we all will when the chips are down. Jesus is no easy optimist. He looks at all of us, big talkers that we are and says, "I know that some of you are going to peter out, just like Peter himself." After all, where do you think the Peter Principle came from in the first place? "I know when it comes to your faith," says Jesus, "that most of you will rise to your level of incompetence. You won't witness. You won't share. You'll find excuses not to give of yourself sacrificially. I know all this."
Somehow Jesus knows all this and yet he still forgives us on the way to the cross. Why? Do you suppose he sees in us what he saw in Peter? Some spark of goodness, some spark of penitence? Do you suppose that he sees in us despite all our bumbling and all our big talk that, like Peter, we are ready to risk something for God?
Certainly Peter was a risk-taker. It was a risk to leave his stable income and head out to God-knows-where with a wildhaired street preacher who had no place to lay his head and who seemed set on turning everything upside down. It was an enormous risk to proclaim Jesus the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, especially at Caesarea Philippi which was full of religious symbolism. Not only was this the place of former Syrian Baal worship, and supposedly the birthplace of the Greek god Pan, the god of nature, but here also stood a temple built by Herod the Great for the worship of Caesar.
In short, Rocky, I mean Peter, was risking the accusation of blasphemy and treason which would have meant certain death when he called Jesus the Anointed One. Somehow he knew that a new regime was coming in and he couldn't stay with the hardliners anymore. Now it was time to move on into a new order, the new kingdom which God was inaugurating with the coming of Jesus. And now he was beginning to see it all more clearly. He could see the effect Jesus was having on the hardliners and he could see that history was changing right before his eyes as it has been in our world in recent years.
How similar that period of history was too our own. In Jesus' day the hardliners suddenly realized that they were losing control. So they tried one last effort, one last coup and their coup was the cross. And for a few dark days it seemed that evil had won. Even the faithful like Peter began to falter, but then something happened that so shocked the world that it changed history forever. Evil was defeated, and the people rose up for their leader was alive and had come back among them and the hardliners scattered for somehow they knew that now there would be no turning back. That's what Peter knew the moment he saw the empty tomb and saw his risen Lord and heard his command to "Feed my sheep." He knew that from this day forward the world would never be the same.
Nothing would stop him now. Nothing, nothing at all. Not even his own bumbling or his own big mouth. Now he was ready to risk his life if need be, the way those Russian protestors did in August 1991 because in so doing he could help bring in the new order that God was inaugurating right before his eyes. Now was the time to stand up and be counted for a cause greater than himself. No more timidity. No more denial. No turning back. Just the recognition that his strength came only from Christ. And on that strength Peter started a new life. And on that life Jesus started a new church and a new era in world history.
So, in the end, you see, Rocky came through. But that's not the question, is it? The question is, will you?
How did poor Peter get this job in the first place? It all started with the story recounted in this text when Jesus renamed him "Rocky" and gave him the keys to the kingdom. Actually he called him Cephas which is an Aramaic nickname which means rock. Its Greek counterpart is Petros which also means rock. Thus on that day at Caesarea Philippi about 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee, Simon Johnson, as he was known to his fishing buddies and his family, got a new name and his new name was Rocky.
Rocky was the big one, bigger than lifelike boxers by that name: Marciano or the character Sylvester Stallone played in the movie called Rocky and all its sequels. I can just hear him calling the other disciples with a tough Philadelphia street kid accent, "Hey you'se guys, let's go get some fish."
Rocky was aggressive, loud, bombastic, a ne'er-do-well who always wanted to be somebody, but he wasn't sure what. He'd do anything to make a name for himself. But he was stuck catching fish and living with his mother-in-law, and this Jesus, the street preacher from Nazareth, was his ticket out. So when the carpenter called to him from the shore one day when he was knee-deep in nets, he said, "Hey, why not?" and set out on the greatest adventure of his life. You can almost hear the theme song for the movie Rocky bursting forth in the background.
Rocky was the big one, bigger than life. In fact, Rocky was big in three ways that make you wonder why Jesus made him the rock on which he built the church and gave him the keys to the kingdom. Rocky was big in three ways.
First of all, he was a big bumbler, which should endear him to us immediately when we think of all the ways we have made a mess of our Christian lives; all the times we have tried to do the right thing in our lives and blown it and figured, ‘‘Well, that does it. Surely God is going to give up on me now." Surely I've had my last chance. About the time we think we're doing everything pretty well, we go and pull a boner. 'Course Peter never did it halfway. When he made a mistake, he did it so everyone could see and hear it loud and clear. Rocky was the kind who never looked at his bulletin so that when they got to the hymns he sang with great gusto when all the women and children were supposed to be singing, not aware at all until someone pointed it out after the service. That's the kind of thing Rocky would do. He rarely made little mistakes. His were always the kind everyone could see.
Peter wasn't a pretty Christian with everything in line. He was rough-hewn like a rock. Buechner is right: "A rock isn't the prettiest thing in creation or the fanciest or the smartest, and if it gets rolling in the wrong direction, watch out… (Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, New York, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1979, p. 134)." That's why being called a rock wasn't the greatest thing Jesus could do for Peter. A rock could mean a solid foundation, but it could also mean a stone of stumbling, the kind of "scandalon" that Paul talks about later. So it is for us in our Christian lives. Sometimes it seems like we're really holding the fort down for God and the kingdom in the ways we act and in the ways we treat each other. And at other times it seems like we're just in the way. A stumbling block. A real blockhead.
You ever feel like that? Like everything you do turns out wrong? You're trying your best to do what's right, but you just can't seem to get it right. That's the way Peter was, and I suppose it's at least small comfort that Peter blew it over and over again and was still named a saint and has survived the microscopic inspection of demythologization. Peter not only got in the way the way a rock sometimes does, he got stuck in his ways. Rocks have a tendency to do that. They have a tendency to solidify, to petrify, which heightens the difference between Peter and Paul, and Peter and Jesus.
Jesus was talking about something entirely new. Peter wanted to stay with the old like the hardliners in the former Soviet Union. Jesus was the utopian, Peter the conservative. Frank and Fritzie Manuel, in their book Utopian Thought in the Western World, suggest, "The utopian often emerges as a (person) with a deeper understanding of the drift of his society than the hardheaded problem-solvers with their noses to the grindstone of the present, blind to potentiality (George Keller, Academic Strategy, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983, p. 100)."
Remember Peter with Jesus at the mountain of transfiguration? Jesus is changed, transfigured, glorified. He is talking about where he is going, about new life. And all Peter wants to do is to freeze the moment. He wants to build a booth around it and keep it safe. "Peter, the rock, the brick-andstone believer, the builder, the contractor…" wants to keep everything exactly as it is. And Jesus kept having to say, "Peter, you knucklehead. Get out of my way! Don't you see where I'm going with all of this?"
"There's not a lot you can do to change a rock or crack it or get under its skin, and, barring earthquakes, you can depend on it about as much as you can depend on anything. So Jesus called him the Rock, and it stuck with him the rest of his life. Peter, the Rock (Buechner, op. cit.)." And on this rock, on this knucklehead, said Jesus, I will build my church, which should give us all hope to see that Jesus would pick such a bumbler as Peter to be the foundation-stone for his church.
But Peter was not only a bumbler; he was also a big talker. It's like the vacation church school kid who came up to his pastor one day during the week and said, "You're the guy who's always talking in church." That's the way Peter was, always spouting off about this subject or that. Always mouthing off about how much he could do on his own and how he didn't need anybody else. "I can walk on the water all by myself, thank you very much," and then sank like a rock because that's what rocks do in the water, weighted down by their own self-centeredness. "I can wash my own feet, Jesus, so you can keep your towel to yourself." "I can do it myself!" says the four-year-old and the first grader and the first day on the jobber and the elderly invalid. "I don't need anybody else," say so many in our time, "least of all God!" "I can make it on my own," say dear friends of ours who are sicker than they think or whose marital life is a shambles, but they're afraid to burden anyone else with their problems, so they suffer quietly and alone.
Peter especially thought he could make it on his own. And time and time again he blew it the way you and I do. We're such big talkers when we join the church. All these promises. All these things we're going to do for God. Right!
"No Jesus," said Peter, "no way that I would deny you." 'Course the bigger they come, the harder they fall. What was it that gave him away in that early morning dark? Was it his Galilean dress? The slave girl picked it out in a flash, "Look, he's one of them!"
Was it his Galilean accent? That was enough to do it by itself. You could tell a Galilean a mile away. All he had to do was open his mouth. It'd be like plopping someone from New Jersey down in the middle of Cajun country. Galileans had a heavy accent, so ugly an accent that they weren't even allowed to pronounce the benediction in the synagogue. No one could stand it. And the slave girl picked it out just like that. "I know you. You're one of them." And Peter, the big talker, said, "No way, lady. Never met the man."
Then came the cock-crow or was it the trumpet or was it the haunting cry of his own conscience? Whatever it was, Peter couldn't take it any more. He wept like a baby. The big talker who thought he was somebody, was now a nobody and routed by a slave girl at that! Down to the mat one more time and Rocky finally throws in the towel.
Somehow Jesus knows he will. Somehow he knows we all will when the chips are down. Jesus is no easy optimist. He looks at all of us, big talkers that we are and says, "I know that some of you are going to peter out, just like Peter himself." After all, where do you think the Peter Principle came from in the first place? "I know when it comes to your faith," says Jesus, "that most of you will rise to your level of incompetence. You won't witness. You won't share. You'll find excuses not to give of yourself sacrificially. I know all this."
Somehow Jesus knows all this and yet he still forgives us on the way to the cross. Why? Do you suppose he sees in us what he saw in Peter? Some spark of goodness, some spark of penitence? Do you suppose that he sees in us despite all our bumbling and all our big talk that, like Peter, we are ready to risk something for God?
Certainly Peter was a risk-taker. It was a risk to leave his stable income and head out to God-knows-where with a wildhaired street preacher who had no place to lay his head and who seemed set on turning everything upside down. It was an enormous risk to proclaim Jesus the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, especially at Caesarea Philippi which was full of religious symbolism. Not only was this the place of former Syrian Baal worship, and supposedly the birthplace of the Greek god Pan, the god of nature, but here also stood a temple built by Herod the Great for the worship of Caesar.
In short, Rocky, I mean Peter, was risking the accusation of blasphemy and treason which would have meant certain death when he called Jesus the Anointed One. Somehow he knew that a new regime was coming in and he couldn't stay with the hardliners anymore. Now it was time to move on into a new order, the new kingdom which God was inaugurating with the coming of Jesus. And now he was beginning to see it all more clearly. He could see the effect Jesus was having on the hardliners and he could see that history was changing right before his eyes as it has been in our world in recent years.
How similar that period of history was too our own. In Jesus' day the hardliners suddenly realized that they were losing control. So they tried one last effort, one last coup and their coup was the cross. And for a few dark days it seemed that evil had won. Even the faithful like Peter began to falter, but then something happened that so shocked the world that it changed history forever. Evil was defeated, and the people rose up for their leader was alive and had come back among them and the hardliners scattered for somehow they knew that now there would be no turning back. That's what Peter knew the moment he saw the empty tomb and saw his risen Lord and heard his command to "Feed my sheep." He knew that from this day forward the world would never be the same.
Nothing would stop him now. Nothing, nothing at all. Not even his own bumbling or his own big mouth. Now he was ready to risk his life if need be, the way those Russian protestors did in August 1991 because in so doing he could help bring in the new order that God was inaugurating right before his eyes. Now was the time to stand up and be counted for a cause greater than himself. No more timidity. No more denial. No turning back. Just the recognition that his strength came only from Christ. And on that strength Peter started a new life. And on that life Jesus started a new church and a new era in world history.
So, in the end, you see, Rocky came through. But that's not the question, is it? The question is, will you?
