God plants us on a rock – 2 Tim 4:6-8, 17-18; Mat 16:13-19

Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul; St. Casimir and Holy Cross parishes.

God plants us on a rock.  I find that a very realistic image for what it feels like to live out our lives in the Church.  We don’t live in a rose garden, yet, and we don’t experience perpetual banquet, yet.  Now we get glimmers of those realities here and now, furtively we perceive the grace God is pouring out for us, the wonders prepared for us, and we’re given in foretaste, but for now the experience of living in the Church can be pretty well summed up by that image: we live on a rock.  It’s big and it’s craggy and it’s home.

When we hear about living on a rock in Matthew’s Gospel, we’ve been given a parable to help us understand what that’ll mean.  We didn’t read this passage this year, because some Ordinary Time Sundays get displaced by the post-Easter feasts, but the Sermon on the Mount ends with a story about a rock, about a house planted on rock.  Like the house planted on sand, it is buffeted by storms.  Unlike the house planted on sand, it remains standing.  Friends, that sounds a lot like our life as Church.  We’re not promised an easy storm-free ride, but we are promised groundedness, rootedness.  We are promised that we won’t be abandoned; that the house won’t fall.   

Look to the rock from which we’re hewn.  Look to these two saints whose lives were rocked by an encounter with the divine.  God didn’t shield them from the storm, but he was with them through it all.  A successful fisherman and a well-respected Pharisee become itinerant preachers, followers of the crucified one.  They would endure arguments (even among each other), ridicule, persecution and eventually martyrs’ deaths.  But, God was with them through it.  And we celebrate these saints not primarily because of their achievements, great though they may be, no we devote a feast day major enough to even be celebrated when June 29^th falls on a Sunday to them to not because of their resume of what they did, but because of the window they provide to us of God’s care, concern and presence through the fiercest storms.  Our hope is not hope of evading the stormy blast.  Like an anchor, our hope does not evade the chaotic water but pierces through it confident of hitting secure resurrection rock.  We celebrate these saints, because of what they reveal to us about God.

Paul is presented in Second Timothy as steadfast in longing.  Yes, it also mentions his work, his striving, his competing and his running.  But, the crown is promised to all who are steadfast in longing.  In the midst of the storms, he recognized God standing by him and trusted enough to long for the day he could feel that presence unmediated, unbuffeted.  Through the storms of his life, through that constant experience of God’s accompaniment, he was built up in confidence.  At times, his strife and trials must have left him feeling as afflicted as Christ as the cross.  But he knew too the confidence of Christ on the cross.  And so, he makes reference to Psalm 22, the psalm of the confident sufferer which begins with the pain of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” and ends with the confidence that “God rescues me from the lion’s mouth.”  He has been through enough storm that his trust in the steadfastness of the rock, of God’s constant presence is unshakeable.  He can confidently say, as he commissions Timothy as his successor: I have been rescued from the lion’s mouth.  God does act to save.

Peter knew storms too.  In fact, the first time he heard Jesus called “Son of God” was in the aftermath of a storm.  It was after Jesus had done that miracle with the loaves and fishes that had left him so puzzled and then he was sad to have been sent off in a boat with other disciples but without Jesus, even though he promised them he’d be back soon.  Why couldn’t he be with them in the boat?  He had so much to ask!  A storm started brewing and heavy waves lashed the boat.  Suddenly, they had spied something coming over the water.  What was it?  A ghost?  Slowly, he realized… could this be Jesus?  With them, as he promised, to be with them when they needed it most?  And this Jesus figure called out, “Come to me,” so Peter started walking, he found himself walking on water out of love for Jesus who he so wanted to be close to.  But then the fear came, and he started sinking, and Jesus had been there, holding him, lifting him up.  Somehow, they’d gotten back to the boat, and the storm had stopped.  And then, the disciples had cried out “Truly, you are the Son of God.”  And Peter remembered this and accepted it, and held it close to his heart.  Yes, this is the Son of God.  This is how God is present to us in our storms, and how he’s present to us always, it’s just that sometimes we’ll only dare try to walk on water to him when it’s stormy enough, but he’s always there, he’s always calling, he’s always Son of God.  And that leads him to make this confession. 

And Jesus says “yes.”  Jesus builds his church on the rock of that confidence.  On that awareness of God’s presence throughout the worst storm, on that longing that still seeks him when the storm is past.  Because we know God is always more.  And we know he’s always present to us, always Son of God.