If you could pick a quality for yourself, what would it be? If someone were to say, “Oh, Joe (or Jane, or whatever your name is) he is a very (blank) person.” What would you hope they would say? I suspect in our culture we might put words like “authentic” or “adventuresome” or “brave” or “fun.” As a culture, we value people who are “themselves”—people who know who they are and live without pretense. We value creative people, brave people and people who have their own values and live by them. Independence, integrity, fearlessness—these are words many might hope for themselves. I suspect very few would say, “holy.” For some that might be a negative word, implying that we are “holier than thou” type people—self-righteous and judgmental. I want to suggest to you that “holy” is an awesome word. In fact, holiness is the key to all those other qualities that we think we want for ourselves. For example, authenticity without holiness is probably going to veer into self-indulgence. Fearlessness without holiness can easily become callous. In order to have the best of life and to be best of ourselves, we need to be holy. If holiness sounds boring and stifling, we don’t understand what it means to be holy. Being holy is the gateway to freedom. Just us as we continue to allow Peter to show us who we truly are as Christians and a church.