On This Rock...
“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.”
“PETER”
This one Knew dependence on the creation.
He knew that daily life depended on some kind of a catch.
Fishing was his trade…
but he would trade that in for a different kind of dependence
and a different way of “catching”.
“Who do you say I am?” Jesus asked.
The weather beaten fisherman said,
“YOU ARE THE CHRIST!”
The Lord said, “You, Peter, are like a rock.”
And so, he was…or was he?
“Come to me on the water,” Jesus said. When “Rocky” got scared,
he started to sink…but then, what can you expect
from a rock.
He learned the mathematics of forgiveness: 70 × 7 =
a whole bunch (and then some). And yet, he had to distill
its deepest meaning in the depths of his soul
after he denied
“THE CHRIST”
three times - having said he never wood…
that wood was a part of the cross or…
at least his crossed purposes.
Ol’ “Rocky” wasn’t very steady when the heat was on.
They “had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold.”
And there he declared he didn’t know Jesus.
(John 18:17 & 18)
And after the rock of the tomb was blown open, He came to them
by another fire there on the beach.
And he asked Peter three times,
"Do you love me?”
"Do you love me?”
"Do you love me?”
Well…do you???
See you for worship in and from the place built on a “rock” of faith
as we celebrate Palm Sunday
and the beginning of Holy Week!
Rev. Dr. David D. Young
Senior Minister