August, 21 The Rev. Melissa Campbell-Langdell In Benyamin Cohen’s amazing book, My Jesus Year, he talks about how he, an orthodox Jew by birth, comes to a deeper understanding of his Jewish faith by exploring Christian churches. One of the things he is struck by as he explores Christian worship is the fact that we tend to think that Moses was just a regular guy like any other; that God would be able to talk with anybody. This is the way he puts it: “As Jews, we are taught that when God gave the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, He first started speaking to the entire Jewish population gathered there. His voice was so “powerful” that whenever he spoke, the people simply fainted.  They just couldn’t handle direct conversations with the Almighty. So God gave the rest of the commandments to Moses, who, in turn, passed them down to everyone else.” From Cohen’s perspective, ”throughout [Jewish] biblical history, Moses was the only human to ever actually speak with God.”[1] Cohen’s point here is that Moses was not some regular Joe. The piece of biblical history that we see here beginning in this piece of Exodus is actually more along the lines of legend. In fact, some have noted that the whole piece about scooping Moses up from the river, sounds awfully close to the “Legend of Sargon” a similar middle-eastern legend of the time.[2] Moses is a first, a unique actor, not just some regular guy. He is the stuff of legend. And along the same lines, in this Gospel passage today, we learn that Jesus is not just some dude from Nazareth. No, he is in fact “the Messiah, the Son of God,” as Peter says. Now, the word “son” here is interesting, because it can mean a literal son, or if you look back into the use of the same word in the Bible, in Exodus for example, the son is Israel, kings and sometimes a wise person. The point is that Jesus is someone who has an especially close relationship with God, and he is an agent of God’s will.[3] We learn here, or better said, we have reaffirmed here, that Jesus is not just some regular guy.  Now after word of Jesus’ exceptionalism, as the disciples stand here at Caesarea Philippi, the main temple ground for the God Pan, do they try to raze the temple of Pan and build a temple for Jesus?[4] Nope. Well at least not in the way that they were used to doing.  No, instead of building a big temple with a carved figure of himself (which we learned from Moses was a no-no), Jesus says, you, Peter, people like you are going to be the building blocks of my church. Peter, Simon whose nickname was something like stone, was the example of the kind of faithful person that Jesus was counting on to build his church.  Instead of the exclusive community of many Roman temples, Jesus was founding an inclusive community, much like our church strives to be today, an alternative to the order that the disciples saw around them.[5] Instead of the typical order where there is one teacher, Jesus founds a community where, as it says in First Peter, we are like living stones (2:5), all following in Peter’s footsteps, all having to follow the teachings that Jesus imparted.[6]  We are the living stones building the church each and every day, because as beautiful as buildings are, the church is really about the people—about the real people that come here to worship today, that come to eat at Bread of Life.  You may know that St. Peter’s in Rome is a church, but the St. Peter that Jesus founded his church upon was a person, flesh and blood, a living stone like each and every one of us. And living into this inclusive community means listening to St. Paul here when he says we have many gifts, but are one body. We have many gifts, but we have one mission. This really speaks truth to me as I look at All Saints’ Oxnard today. There are folks whose gift is in giving financially, and we need that, but there are also folks who can give a little money but they can give a lot of help, whether it is in the office, in a ministry like Bread of Life, or in the garden.  We have many gifts but no gift is better than the other, and no gift is given for the glory of any one individual, but it is about being a stronger whole, the Body of Christ in the world. And we are broken at times, and we struggle at times, but we also rejoice with Christ and are made whole again, just as eating the broken bread on the altar feeds us each week and makes us whole again. St. Paul says what we need to do is give ourselves, these living stones that we are, as a living sacrifice, and that is right, because we need to give selflessly of ourselves to the ministry of the church. This does not mean that we don’t live full and happy lives. In the Quinceañera service there is a point at which the girl says “I offer you, Lord, my youth.” She makes a promise to dedicate her life and service to God.  I explain to the young women—this does not mean you don’t get to live a normal and happy life, to the extent that it is possible, but it means in everything you do, you try to think of God first. This being said, your life may not be normal in some ways, because putting God in first place tends to wreak havoc with your carefully laid plans. But our gifts are given not for us to keep but to share in the ministry of the church, as I have been learning from so many of you. But one commentator I read has a good corrective on Paul here—it is true that we shouldn’t think too highly of ourselves if it means holding back our gifts, but on the flip side, sometimes we don’t think enough of our gifts.  I encourage each of you to encourage each other, if you see a gift in someone that they can offer to the church or to the world, which they may not think enough of in themselves to have noticed, share it with them.[7] Encourage them to share it with us; with the world! We have many gifts, but we have one mission. We are many parts of the One Body of Christ. How will you live into that today? [1] Benyamin Cohen, My Jesus Year (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 88. [2] Thomas B. Dozeman, “Notes to Exodus”, New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003). [3] Warren Carter, “Notes to Matthew,” New Interpreter’s Bible. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Inspired by Feasting on the Word: “Matthew 16:13-20”, Year A, Vol. 3. [7] Rochelle A. Stackhouse, “Pastoral Notes on Romans 12:1-8,” FOTW Year A, Vol. 3