Rev. Melanie Miller

August 25, 2002

First Congregational Church

Chappaqua, New York

Psalm 124, Isaiah 51:1-6, Matthew 16:13-20

In our gospel lesson this morning Simon answers a difficult question. Jesus asks, who do you say that I am? This is a great question! Who do you say that I am?

I wonder why Jesus asked it? I imagine him wondering about his friends and how they perceive him. I imagine him wondering about the crowds and what they think.

Who do you say that I am? What a great question. Have you ever asked this question?

Ever have an identity crisis?

I hear they happen in different ways to different people.

Sometimes they happen gradually, over a period of time. slowly questioning one purpose and path, cautiously evaluating one’s goals.

Sometimes they happen suddenly, like a panic attack, one wakes up not being able to breathe, as questions mount and fill one’s mind;

Who am I?

Is there meaning in my life?

Is this it?

Is there anything more?

What have I become?

Who am I?

Ever been there?

I’ve been there, more than once. I’m there right now.

These questions have plagued my mind since my return from Kenya. Along with other questions:

What does it mean to be human if others are living in poverty?

How am I connected to Kibera, a slum where 1 million people live on 300 acres?

How am I part of a political structure that demands rent for a cardboard structure?

What does it mean to believe in Jesus, the Christ, when one third of Kibera’s population is infected with the aids virus?

Kenya was an amazing experience. From the questions I just listed don’t assume the entire experience was negative. It wasn’t. We saw amazing and wonderful things. Grass roots movements addressing the issues of poverty and changing the structures that create oppression.

We lived and worked and learned from the Green Belt movement.

The GBM began 25 years ago. Women came to the Kenyan National Council of Women and complained of having to walk for hours to gather enough firewood to cook for their children. Women told their stories of lack of water, lack of food sources, lack of fuel. Women told their stories and Wangari Maathai listened. At the time she was the president of the National Council of Women and Wangari listened and took action. She began organizing tree nurseries and women began planting trees. In the last 25 years the GBM has planted over 20million trees in Kenya. The trees have drastically changed the lives of women. The trees have drastically changed the environment. Clean water, fruit, rich soil, sustainable farms, clean air, are abundant in GBM communities.

The GBM now does more. They are empowering women and men and children through civic education. They are informing Kenyans that President Moi does not own public lands. They inform Kenyans that President Moi does not have the right to give public lands to his friends to exploit and plunder. The public lands belong to the people and so they organize public tree plantings for which they are beaten and imprisoned. But they keep organizing, they keep educating.

The GBM is helping farmers find alternative coffee markets. For the past two years the Kenyan coffee farmers have been paid nothing for their crops. You see the farmer gives her coffee to the miller. He mills it and gives it to the roaster who roasts it and gives it to the broker. The broker sells it, keeps his profit and pays the roaster, who does the same and pays the miller who keeps his profit and may or may not give anything to the farmer. And guess what the miller, the roaster and the broker are all friends of the president. So the GBM looks for alternative markets; actions for which they are beaten and imprison. But they keep organizing, they keep educating.

We were touched deeply by the GBM, their commitment and love were tangible. The work they are doing is transformational.

We saw other things. We saw very distressing things. We saw charities that in the name of Jesus the Christ, are using money to manipulate the poorest of the poor. They say, “here, you can have this bowl of food but you have to worship in our church first. You can have this medical attention, but you have to accept our path to God first. Here you can have this micro loan, but you have to be a member of our church.”

What does it mean to be human in a world where Simon Peter’s Christ is used to manipulate and imprison people?

What does it mean to believe have a belief system that so often is used to oppress people?

What does it mean to be human?

Who are we?

Who am I?

How would Simon answer these questions? What would Simon say about Kenya?

When Jesus asks the disciples, “who do you say that I am?” I don’t think he was having an identity crisis. I think that he was curious. Wanting to know what people were saying about him. Wanting to know how his story fit in with those around him.

And so this morning I ask how does our story fit in with those around us?

How is our story told in Kenya?

What does it mean to be the church in a postmodern era?

What would Simon say about us?

It is important to know who we are. It is important to know were we come form and where we are going.

The bible is about our common human story. The stories about what make us tick.

Stories about how we handle mistake, how we handle hardship, how we forgive those we love, how we forgive our enemies. How we live in relationship with others, with the world.

Who we are is important.

Fred Beuchner talks about the importance of our story. These are his words. (Beuchner, Frederick. Listening to Your Life, Harper, San Fransicso (1992), 321.) Who cares about your story? What in the world could be less important than who I am and who my father and mother were, the mistakes I have made together with the occasional discoveries, the bad times and good times, the moments of grace. If I were a public figure and my story had some impact on the world at large, that might be some justification for telling it, but I am a very private figure indeed, living very much out of the mainstream of things and my life has had very little impact on anybody much except for the people closest to me.

But I talk about my life anyway because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My story is important not because it is mine, but because if I tell it right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also your story. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God is known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but spiritually.

Who are you?

What is your story?

Briefly, I want to talk about Simon’s story, what Simon says to us.

In our gospel lesson Jesus gives Simon a nick name. Jesus calls him Peter, which means rock. This makes Simon something like a jewel of the community a stone in the sense of a precious stone. Peter is a diamond in the rough being offered to the world. Peter is given the keys to the kingdom. Peter is called to open the realm of heaven to believers. Peter is called to open the gates of life that had been locked and chained. People had been oppressed and locked out of God’s dominion by religious laws and standards that Jesus challenged. Jesus unlocks the gate and hands the keys on to Peter.

Peter’s story is amazing. Although the power to bind and loose is assigned to Peter in our Gospel lesson this morning, later in the gospel of Matthew, we are all called to join Peter in this story. We are called to use the keys of the kingdom to unlock chains of oppression. We are called to be a part of the story of freedom.

Is this your story?

Who are you?

What is your story?

Does it involve unlocking chains that bind and loosing the chains of oppression? Who are we in relationship to those living in bondage?

Do we have the keys to free? Do we use them?

We are called to use the keys as Peter did. We are called to offer hope and light and freedom. We are called to offer stability and security. We are called to share the love of God.

Let us tell our common story.