Jesus was a celebrity in his little corner of the world in 1^st century Palestine, and in the middle of Caesarea Philippi, a town full of all sorts of gods and idols, he wants to know what people are saying about him. Who do people think I am? Jesus wants to know.

Of course, the initial answers are the kind of comparisons we might expect: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

In other words, people are saying that Jesus is another spiritual great like others from the Jewish tradition.

But Peter gets it right. When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do YOU say that I am” – Peter understands that Jesus is not just another in a long line of spiritual greats in his Jewish faith. Peter confesses: You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And this is the rock on which God builds the church: Peter’s confession of faith. We follow Jesus who is both fully human and fully God – and we are most certainly not. We are 100% human. And that’s what Peter confessed: He recognized that Jesus was not just some wise sage or Houdini-like miracle worker. He saw Jesus for who he was – the very presence of the living God who has come to save us from all that keeps us separated from God and from each other.

Human beings hurt each other. We act out of selfishness and pride. But God is love. Following Jesus is about following and being transformed by that love. And that’s the work of the church that is built on Peter’s confession – that Jesus is our Messiah.

As the old childhood rhyme says: Here is the church and here is the steeple; open the doors and see all the people.

We don’t go to church. We become the church when we confess our faith in Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And that’s not just about the words we say on Sunday morning. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, we “present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship” (Romans 12:1). We confess our faith with our eyes, that don’t see strangers or enemies but neighbors who are dearly loved by God. We confess our faith with our ears that listen deeply to the stories of injustice and heartbreak our neighbors share, when we listen to their hopes and fears, when we stay curious about their perspectives and their experiences. We confess our faith when we use our hands to hold each other when our hearts are broken and when we need to remember that we are not alone in this world. We confess our faith when we go in search of the people who never find themselves in a place like this one, when we befriend those who don’t belong, when we show up for others.

We are “one body” with “many members and not all members have the same function” (Romans 12:4), as Paul says to the Romans, so we do not all confess our faith in the same way. We have different gifts and talents that shape our confessions to be as beautifully diverse as we are. And the church needs it all.

May God grant us all that we need – the courage, the strength, the grace, the wisdom – to keep confessing the faith that Jesus is Lord with our very lives.

Amen