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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text today is from the gospel reading commonly called the Confession of St. Peter. Please be seated. I’m a distance runner by hobby and, well, admittedly by habit, maybe even addiction. And runners, runners are different. In the early 90s, the Nike Corporation had an ad campaign that was aimed at runners. And it had pictures of runners doing different things, things that make them different. Things like putting Vaseline on their legs before a race. And running up a hill in San Francisco when there’s a perfectly good cable car to take. And my favorite, a guy running and blowing his nose at the same time. And each of the pictures said underneath it, the caption was, Runners, yeah, we’re different. And that’s true. But it’s also true for Christians. Yeah, we’re different. In the Gospel reading today, again commonly called the Confession of St. Peter, Jesus asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? And they’d answered before, John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets. And then Jesus asked them directly, Who do you say that I am? He asked before, who do people say I am? Who do you say I am? And Peter, one of the times when he wasn’t talking with his foot in his mouth, he gives a different answer. He says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Later in the reading, in fact you’ll hear it next week, Peter reinserts his foot into his mouth, but that’s another sermon again for next week. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Amen. That is indeed a different answer than what the other people give, what the disciples said. And much is confessed in that different answer. See, it’s not just His name, Christ. Christ wasn’t Jesus’ last name. Christ is a title. It’s who He is and what He does. The word Christ translated means the chosen or anointed one, and that’s Jesus. He’s the one sent by God into our world to save his people. Jesus is the Messiah who had been promised for so long to come into the world. And to confess Jesus as Christ is to confess all of these things. And Peter does that, really wholeheartedly. He confesses that Jesus is that Christ. And here’s something I think is pretty interesting about this event, that it took place around Caesarea Philippi. It’s a town in modern-day northern Israel, and it was a Gentile area, settled by Greeks and then inhabited by the Romans. And it was a Gentile area, And there was a very large place of several small shrines and temples devoted to different Greek and Roman gods. And all these temples and shrines are situated in front of a fairly large hill that has little niches cut into it, carved into it, where there are statues of all these different so-called gods That they’re devoted to, all these statues on these niches. In fact, you can still see this place. And if you’d like to go there in January, I’m leading a group to go there and you can see this place. Shameless self-promotion, back to the sermon. Okay, it’s reasonable to believe that Jesus and the disciples were either very near or even right there. Okay. Jesus asked the disciples this question, who do you say that I am? Surrounded by all these other temples and shrines and other so-called gods right there. And Jesus asked them, hey, you know what people say about these gods. What do you say about me? Who do you say I am? And so really, what a response by Peter. In the presence of all these other so-called gods and these shrines and these temples who are competing against the only God, despite standing right there on their own home turf, despite their popularity with the people and the government at the time, Peter confesses something completely different, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, sent to save his people. That’s a way different answer than Then, and it’s a different answer for Christians today who continue to confess who Jesus is. Because today, we can get asked that same question. What do you think about Jesus? Who do you say that Jesus is? That question gets asked a lot about Jesus. Every year, it seems like, especially around Easter and Christmas, Jesus becomes a big topic of discussion. And he even gets on the front cover of Time magazine or Newsweek, usually questioning about who he was. And there’s a lot of talk about he was just a great teacher or a moral person or a great example for people to follow, but never that he was the Christ, the Son of a living God. That’s a different answer that Christians make. And that makes us different. And this same question can come up directly to you, your friends, your relatives, classmates, roommates, neighbors. They may question you about this as well. But what a difficult situation that can be, can’t it? Difficult when asked that question to actually confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. Because when you’re at work, at a meal, over coffee, in class, in the dorm, in an email, or even on the treadmill at the gym, traveling on a plane, or just talking to your neighbor across the fence, you can get tongue-tied and just plain scared to answer that question about who is Jesus. Sometimes we’re not bold like Peter to do that, and we may even seem ashamed sometimes. about what we confess about Jesus and that we’re different. We have a different answer than the rest of the world gives. I know being different can be hard. It makes you odd. It makes you stick out. And I know about this. Being on campus at UT and being a Christian on campus, I know, you’re different. You stick out. And being different as a Christian can mean being criticized, spoken ill of, or even persecuted. Right? Like the disciples, we’re also surrounded by lots of so-called gods and idols and temples and shrines. We believe something different and we stick out. In fact, Christians, really, we believe some pretty strange things, right? Angels, demons, a virgin birth, resurrection from the dead. We are different and it’s a good thing. But we’re not different because we’re better or morally superior or somehow we have our life together more than the rest of the world. Really, it’s quite the contrary, right? Christians, we too are worried, troubled, stressed, imperfect, broken, hurting people just like everybody else. We’re sinners. And we’re in need of something different, like a Savior. Like the anointed, chosen one, Jesus. The one sent by God to deliver and save his people. And Jesus saved us by doing something so different than any other so-called God or idol has done. Jesus did something different even than John the Baptist or Jeremiah or Elijah or any of the other prophets. Jesus was falsely arrested. He was arrested. He was mocked and spit on and beaten and then nailed to a cross where he died a horrible death there. No other God has ever done that. Jesus is different and he did it for you, for the forgiveness of your sins, for the relief of your worry and trouble and stress. And for the healing of your imperfect, broken, hurting life. That’s the difference that Jesus makes in your life. See, we’ve got a different God who does different things than anything else in the world. He’s a living God. That’s no coincidence that Peter confesses Jesus as the son of the living God. We have a God who’s alive. A God who does things. Other gods, they just sit in a niche on a hill or in a shrine or a temple in Caesarea Philippi. Other gods around us, they do nothing. They promise nothing. Other idols of life, success, fame, money, sex, status, nothing promises what the living God does. And He continues to… To do that for us. He continues to make a difference in our life. By hearing or reading his word, you hear the forgiving words from the living God. And in baptism and at the altar in Holy Communion, God comes to us in a very special way, in a different way than anything else that we experience coming to us with that forgiveness. Yes. Jesus is always in action, a living God making a difference and making us different than other people in the world. And that’s what makes us different, okay? Again, it’s not that we’re different because we’re better or got our life together or like that. We’re different because Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He makes us different, not us. And that’s Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and our confession too. That’s what Christianity is built on. When Jesus said this, upon this rock I will build my church, it’s on that confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And that’s different than what any other organization or religion or people group is built on. And being different, we’re not different just for the sake of being different, okay? Jesus didn’t forgive us of our sins to make us different just for the sake of being different. But because Christ, the Son of the living God, has made a difference in our lives, we can make a difference in other people’s lives too. We can make a difference for those people we know who are worried, troubled, stressed, imperfect, broken, and hurting. We can help them. We can make a difference for them because we have a different message for them. Amen. We’ve got good news for them. We can tell them about the different God, about the living God, about the difference that Jesus has made in your life and can make in their life. We can tell them about Jesus and what a difference he can make for them. Yeah, I know, it can be scary to be different in this world. And it may get harder as years go on. It may be even more different among more idols. It may become more different with the animosity toward Christians about how different we are. And as I said, you may even get persecuted for being different. But fear not. Fear not. Confess Christ anyway. Did you catch that in the Gospel reading? Jesus says, “…the gates of hell will not prevail.” When you tell other people about the difference Jesus has made in your life and that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, when you confess that to other people, no matter how difficult it is, how different you are, or odd, or what they think of you, the gates of hell will not prevail against you. Even the worst thing that Satan can throw at you, in light of this confession, it’s nothing. Nothing. It will not prevail against you because we have a living God who can’t be stopped, even by hell. There’s the whole, Austin is weird. Keep Austin weird, that whole thing going around for a long time. You see the bumper stickers and the t-shirts and everything about that. And I think we pretty much know what they mean by that, what keeps Austin weird, what weird is. I think we all kind of know what that is. And you know what’s funny about that is what’s considered weird has actually become normal. What’s now weird is just every day. Just go shop at the Hancock H-E-B. That’s just, anyway. What’s weird, what the world considers weird is now normal. You know who the weird ones are? It’s us, Christians. We are the weird ones because we have a different message than the rest of the world gives. Some people say, keep Austin weird. I’m like, yep, I’m doing my part. Y’all do your part, alright? We’re different and that’s good. This city, this world, this country needs what makes us different. It needs the difference maker, Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. You see, for runners, Being different really is a badge of honor. We love it. We even look for weird things to do so people make fun of us. Yeah, please, there’s a blow in your nose. That’s great. Do you use your forefinger or do you use your thumb? That’s the discussion. But it’s the same for Christians. Being different is a badge of honor. Wear it proudly. Confess it proudly. Be ready to share with people you know who need that difference in their life. Difference because of Jesus. It’s in Him that we give honor and glory to. Amen. Would you please stand? Would you pray with me? Gracious Lord, we thank You for Your Son, the Christ, the Son of the living God, who has made a difference in our life with His death and resurrection. And our confession of that makes us different. We pray for courage and strong faith to, like Peter, confess that also in whatever times we have an opportunity to do it. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
