See Where The Moment Of Confession Takes You

Acts 12:1-11 Matthew 16:13-19 Acts 9:2 2 Cor 11:25

There is a section of the Cleveland Way that links up with two other long distance footpaths, namely the Coast To Coast trail which stretches for 192 miles from one side of the country to the other and the Like Wake Walk – a 42 mile circuit which traditionally you are supposed to walk in one go – keeping going for 24hours if necessary, to complete the challenge.

The place where the trails meet is high up in the Cleveland Hills and it’s a breathtaking and spectacular terrain. One thing you soon notice is that you are never on level ground for long. You are either climbing up a steep bank or sidling down into a valley. Scaling heights or plummeting depths – with nothing much in between, and soon your muscles begin to know it.

As I struggled manfully up and down in pouring rain and high winds, I began to see how this was something of an analogy with the Christian life. There is a lot of talk amongst believers that we should aspire to become more Christ like and whilst I’m all for that, we need to be aware of the dangers and challenges. That to confess Jesus as Lord is to subject your life to a series of crucifixion and resurrection experiences and not much in between. Ascending and descending between blessing and curse, life and death, inspiration and desolation, suffering and joy.

I discern this modestly in my own mood swings and inclinations , but particularly in the two apostles we have been commemorating today.

Our readings tend to concentrate on Peter, but the trend is clear.

Our Gospel reading marks his turning point and ours for this is where all Christian tracks converge.

The first step of a disciple is the confession of a true faith and it all comes down to the answer we give to the question – Whom say ye that I am – and Peter answered Thou art Christ, the son of the living God.

Then see where the moment of confession takes him and us.

A variety of switchback experiences like a lifetimes’ climb amongst wild hills.

Outbursts of courage and truth followed by foolhardy waffle, pledges of faith and devotion mixed in with denial and betrayal. The sadness of Jesus lost, the joy of Jesus found.. Crucifixion and resurrection. Up hill and down dale, through it all being molded into the likeness of Christ.

When I read through our Epistle reading I see all this mirrored especially closely.

Like Jesus, Peter is arrested for challenging authorities.

As with Jesus, it is the time of the Passover.

Peter is imprisoned – with a ridiculous number of guards on patrol outside – just as the guard placed on Jesus in the tomb.

There is the great line which says Herod intended to bring him forth to the people after Easter – more parallels.

Then a light in a dark place, then the presence of an angel figure, then the instruction to rise up quickly, the loosing of bonds, the sleeping of guards and a miraculous escape at dead of night at Easter to be delivered to a community who could not believe it was happening.

See where a confession of faith gets you. Fast bound in prison with a death sentence maybe looming, then set free for new life and new possibilities almost beyond imagining.

The same seems to happen in the life of St Paul. The well known story of his conversion does not lead to life of great well being. He is on the switchback out on the wild hills. Changing lives one moment, sent to prison the next. Miracles on one day, beatings the next. “We are afflicted in every way” he writes “but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed”

He veers about between crucifixion and resurrection with rarely a plateau in sight.

The knives are out for the church and they will be increasingly sharpened in the coming weeks. Exposures of weakness will come thick and fast. The Lambeth conference and the notorious Gafcon alternative, the fallout following the same sex blessing, clergy threatening to leave in number over the admission of women to the episcopate.

It’s the same switch back that we’ve traced in the lives of the apostles and that we originally found in Christ. Old wounds festering whilst new opportunities multiply.

And these are easy things when compared to the plight of Godfearing people in Zimbabwe, the little Christian community in Iraq and people of faith in Tibet and Burma.

Here it’s not just heart and mind that knows crucifixion, but literally –body too!- and then the resurrection moments are much more elusive.

Here is where the solidarity between present day experience, early church life and the redeeming saviour is really known for what it is, at the heart of the on going crucifixion that same cry – Whom say ye that I am – thou art Christ the son of the living God.

What courage such a confession takes in the circumstances we hear about around the world – and in our own lives too.

When we make our confession of faith – let’s never do it routinely, but remember the precipiece on which we all stand and that it is in our proclamation of the truth about Christ that all pilgrim trails converge and we find ourselves in the most unlikely company.

RH 29.6.08