Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord today. We welcome guest reader Deacon Eric Bissette.
Deacon Eric is a beloved spiritual leader in his home parishes of the Diocese of Rochester, New York.
Little Book's listeners will recognize Deacon Eric as a regular narrator for our daily reflections.
And now, here is today's gospel and homily.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.
Jesus went into the region of Caesarea, Philippi, and he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of man is?
They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
He said to them, but who do you say that I am?
Simon Peter said in reply, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.
Jesus said to him in reply, blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the nether world shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
The Gospel of the Lord.
This is an interesting passage in Matthew's Gospel because Jesus uses the word church.
Jesus will do it again two chapters later.
And these are the only two times in the Gospels when Jesus uses that word.
In the other 23 books of the New Testament, the word church is used 83 times.
The whole New Testament was written in Greek, and the Greek word we translate as church means people called together.
That in itself is worth thinking about.
Often when we hear the word church, we tend to think of an institution, an establishment, or even a building.
But it's not what the word means.
It means people, people who are called to come together as a group.
Sometimes it can be helpful to step back from something that is part of our lives, and instead of looking at it from the inside and up close, look at it from the outside and from a distance.
For example, there's a famous photograph of the Earth taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts when they were on their way to the moon in 1972.
You've seen the picture, our beautiful planet as it looks from 25,000 miles out in space.
It became one of the most famous pictures in the world, and it's had a profound effect on us.
Perhaps if we look at the church from the outside and from a Distance. It can help us better understand who we are.
To do that, we have to use our imaginations.
Let's pretend there was a group of people who had been cut off from the rest of the world since the second century.
We'll imagine they were living in the immense Australian outback, where there's plenty of room to stay separate.
Let's imagine a contingent from this group discovers the rest of the world. And of all the places they travel. They arrive in your own home parish.
They talk to you, the parishioners, and they want to know more about this group called a parish, a church.
They spend a couple of days asking questions and then they return to their own people to tell what they've learned.
What would they say?
It might go something like this.
We found this group of people who, believe it or not, can trace themselves all the way back to Jesus Christ.
They go back that far and are direct descendants of Jesus and his disciples.
After Jesus died, his disciples continued as a group.
Peter and Andrew and James and John and Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus. And they invited others to join them.
They explained to new members who Jesus was, how he lived and what he taught.
As they died off, all this was passed on to others who passed it on from one generation to the other.
And this group can trace itself all the way back to the beginning.
Besides that, they have writings from the middle of the first century.
They have writings about Jesus and writings about the very first generation of the disciples of Jesus.
It's remarkable.
Besides that, this group of people has a real sense of being called by no less than Jesus himself.
Imagine, after all these years, they still feel Jesus is here on earth, calling disciples.
There's more.
These people experience some life force within them that is more than human life.
They say they have running through their body and soul a life force that is God's own life.
Can you believe that?
Human beings who claim to have God's own life coursing through their body and soul.
You see, they believe Jesus is still alive and that Jesus had breathed his own spirit upon them, just as he did upon his first disciples.
This life force is what most of all binds them together as a group.
They say it's stronger than a bloodline.
Ties of blood or race or country, it goes far deeper.
And they're joined together in a way that goes far beyond any human bonds.
That's not all. Listen to this one.
They believe they're in touch with the dead.
These people believe when people die, they go through death, sort of like through a doorway. And they're still alive.
Different, but still human and still alive.
These people still include the dead as part of their community.
They call it something like the communion of saints.
They can talk to them, pray for them. And those who are dead can pray for those who are still here on earth.
In other words, the dead are still connected with them.
They're still considered part of this group they call church.
There's more.
And this next may be the strangest of all.
These people have a different way of life.
In some cases, really different.
For example, they believe that instead of hating our enemies, killing them, we're supposed to love them, forgive them, and do good to them.
They talk about turning the other cheek when someone slaps you.
It makes you wonder how a group like this could have survived all these years.
They also believe this world, this universe, and everything in it belongs to God.
So what they're supposed to do is share what they have, especially with people who don't have much.
They remember all sorts of quotes from Jesus about this. And they consider themselves as stewards, managers of what really belongs to God.
There's lots more, but this is the one we found most startling.
These people come together once a week for a meal, a banquet. And they believe Jesus is the host of the banquet. They believe Jesus is right there with them.
They actually get together around a table.
They call it an altar. And Jesus, as the host, speaks to them and eats with them.
Now, understand, they believe they're not simply imitating what Jesus once did with his disciples or remembering what Jesus did.
They believe Jesus is right there, really there, and having a meal with them.
But not only that. And here's the part we couldn't figure out. They believe Jesus gives himself to them as food.
They call it the bread of life.
They say they receive Jesus into themselves, and because of it, they're shaped more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ himself.
They do this every week, and for them, it's the most powerful, awesome, wonderful thing they do.
They sing and pray and listen to the words of Jesus and join with him in giving themselves entirely into God's hands, as he did in his own life, and especially in his dying on the cross.
This is the heart of their life as a group called together by God.
So that's how we look to people who look at us from the outside.
We're not a perfect group of people.
We go back to Jesus Christ, and in the course of those 2,000 years, we've had a great mixture of success and failure, holiness and sin.
Why? Right from the beginning, Peter denied Jesus three times and all the disciples abandoned Jesus when he was arrested.
And not too many years later, Paul and Peter got into a public disagreement and people took different sides.
Oh, you can go back to the early days, the middle days, and the present days of the church and find plenty of evidence of how human we are.
But our faith is not in ourselves.
Our faith is in Jesus Christ, who promised to be with us all days, even to the end of the world.
The church isn't the only place he said he would ever be.
It's the only place he said he would always be.
What a gift to be a part of this gathering we call Church.
It's a cause for celebration and celebrate. We will.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today.
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