Many of the utterances we hear these days are not worth the time it would take to listen to them. The trend appears to be the use of words without proper consideration of their meaning nor the truth value of the statement being made.

There are a few utterances well worth listening to and discerning the meaning they offer.

This morning’s reading from Matthew 16:13-20 contains words from and about Jesus we do well to take careful note of. A whole world of meaning rests on the declaration that Jesus is the Christ.

This can flow on to impact the worth of our own utterances and the power these have on the lives of those who hear us.

When was the last time you had a sense the call of Christ was bidding you to place your feet where you had no reasonable expectation that your weight would be supported?

Have you had that experience?

How did you respond?

The life of faith, responding to the call of Christ, is always bidding us to follow Jesus to places the culture of our world does not sustain. We are called to be, and to respond to the world around us, not just like everyone else.

For all the grand statements we might hear about diversity, it is always a step into the unknown to allow one’s self to be identified as different.

You might even say it is quite like walking on water!

We like to have more than enough to go around - especially when it comes to the essentials. Scarcity is an experience that triggers our survival instincts and heightens our competitiveness for needed resources.

Imagine there was a way to overcome the reflex that causes us to focus on our own requirements and treat others with less regard. Imagine we could become instinctively generous and thoughtfully inclusive of others.

Jesus shows us the way. In the midst of potentially life-threatening developments in the politics around his ministry, Jesus turns his attention to the crowds, and helps them become a community. Soon they have more than enough!

Every now and then elements within the church dabble in triumphalism. There is something perpetually attractive about the notion of the greatest power in the universe being on one’s own team. The reality is, of course, that God never joins anyone’s team. We are invited to participate in God’s kingdom.


The difference may sound subtle but it is significant. The conquering we do has far less to do with vanquishing threats or enemies around us. It has far more to do with overcoming destructive urges within and between us. When we become overwhelming conquerors, it is our victory over self-centredness, fear deception and violence that we are touting.


This conquering is more profound and its impact more far reaching than any other. We grow into the new humanity that God is calling us to be. We become increasingly free from destructive impulses. As a result we are liberated to offer ourselves to the world in life-giving ways. That is conquering!

What is it that keeps you going?

Day to day life changes and we all have our ups and downs. What is it that keeps you going when there is more down than up?

Another way to ask this is, What do you hope in?

What do you hope to see happen? What is it that you want to participate in? What are you longing for?

St Paul is quite paradoxical here. He would have us fix our gaze on that which is unseen! Yet, this is of the very nature of hope. We eagerly wait with perseverance for what we do not see!

What are you hoping in?

The grace we enjoy as those set free from the fear of condemnation opens new opportunities to us to be transformed in the most profound ways. The fear of condemnation drives a kind of slavish obedience to the rules. Obedience undertaken in the hope that we might be judged somehow acceptable.

Now that there is no condemnation for those in Christ’s Jesus, we no longer need be motivated by fear. There is a gracious space to reconsider what life is about and where fuller life is to be found.

This re-evaluation in the context of grace has opportunity to go all the way through to our motives and desires so that we not only desire new things, we desire them in new kinds of ways.

This transformation holds the hope of living the richest life to the full.

The internal tussle between what we know to be good and what we seem to find ourselves doing despite our knowing what is good, is as old as humanity itself. It is a universal experience to have unconscious drives within us that take us places our conscious weighing of things would never direct us!

St Paul says it like this: “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”

How familiar are you with this experience in your own life? What have you discovered to be the most useful way to reign in unconscious wayward drives? Does faith in Christ offer us anything helpful here?

St Paul certainly believes Christ does!

The people a person welcomes and the people they turn away from can tell us a lot about that person. Who we like to associate with and who we avoid, can offer insight into what we hold as most important. Insight that looks past our capacity for self-justification.

When Jesus speaks of receiving the prophet and the righteous, we might self-assuredly think ‘of course we would receive such people’.

But we should remember, the prophet and the righteous are the people most often shunned and ostracized by their community. To welcome and be associated with them can be risky business!

St Paul made a lot of Christ’s death and resurrection. He saw it as the pivot point on which all of human history and meaning turned.

For Paul, these events were not simply historic. They were events that the believer somehow participated in through identification with Christ.

What does it mean that we have died in Christ? How do we live the resurrection we have in Christ? What is your experience of such things?

The kind of authority that has been given to Jesus is different to the style of authorities we have become accustomed to in the world.

Jesus’ authority is uniquely powerful without being over powering. We become fully immersed in it without being overwhelmed by it. It disciples and builds us without tearing us down.

We are given the privilege of both sharing in this authority AND sharing it with others, that they might taste also the richness of kingdom life and be transformed by it..