Now, I’m no architect, but I do admit to having extensive experience with…Legos. As a mom of two boys, and the once preferred babysitter of a whole bunch of kids in my teens, I have an advanced degree in Lego building. And if you go way far back, before my own kids, before the $3/hour babysitting gigs, you’d find me holed up somewhere in a corner of my house with the brightly colored blocks spread out before me, inventing my machinations of spaceships, pirate raiders, and most of all, a house of my very own, with my very own room and my very own bathroom and my very own flowers in the pots outside my very own windows. I mean, a girl can dream.
Now all experienced Lego builders know that in order to build a stable house where the walls won’t cave in on your very own kitchen table and your very own bathroom sink, you have to start with the “two bys.” The longer, the better. So I’d search through piles of Legos to find as many as I could. Two by threes would do in a pinch, but two by fours, fives, and sixes were ideal. These longer, but thicker bricks provided just the right base upon which to build your walls, include your very own windows, and tuck in your very own front door. These bricks were all the same width, clicked securely into one another and could withstand most imagined torrential downpours, earthquakes, and forest fires, if not a giant toddler stomping through the village Godzilla style. These bricks made clear lines, smooth edges, and a solid foundation. Everybody knows that this is what you start with. Basic “two bys” - even, predictable, steady, safe. So naturally, that’s what we should start with if we want to build a church, then, right? Right?
Well, like the aforementioned Godzilla toddler, Jesus has come to knock down all our ideas of what it takes to build a church.
Before we get that characteristic clatter of Legos spilling to the floor, Jesus has an inquiry. Before anything gets built, Jesus founds the church on a question. Not on a solid, stable set of answers, a black dot to end a sentence, but on the curved, unpredictable swerve and sway of a question mark.
Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” is fundamentally tied to what the Church should be. The question of who Jesus is is in direct relationship with what the church is. How we answer the question, “Who do you say that I am” determines how we do Church.
If Jesus is a prize to be won, then our church becomes a carnival where those with the best shot and the strongest arm get to take him home.
If Jesus is a commodity to be bought, then our church becomes the stock exchange, full of people shouting and where meaningless trades are made, and Jesus’ stock wavers with the price of oil and consumer confidence.
If Jesus is a warm fuzzy, then the church becomes “Build A Bear” - that place where you fill a lifeless Jesus with polyester stuffing and dress him up in a tutu or a fireman rain jacket.
If Jesus is an academic exercise, then the church becomes the university where Jesus wanders around in texts and in elevated conversations, and the ones with the degrees get the best and the clearest access to the Kingdom.
If Jesus is a secret code, then the church is a computer, a series of zeroes and ones, that, if put in the right order, will reveal an operating system, a way to plug in the right algorithm and get the correct answer for every possible scenario.
If Jesus is Santa Claus, then the church is a shopping mall, and we wander from store to store, making lists, sitting on laps, asking for more stuff.
Jesus asks his friends, “Who do you say that I am?”
And Peter blunders forward, without thinking, without questioning, without processing or weighing the costs. He comes to the feet of Jesus and shouts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”
And Jesus says, essentially, “because of the way that you’ve answered, because of your floundering, and stumbling, and your commitment and your willingness to make such a pronouncement of your faith in me and in the Living God, I’m giving you the keys to the kingdom.”
“You, Peter, who speaks before thinking and does before counting the costs, who jumps in and forgets that you can’t walk on water, you, who have no filter, who blurts out whatever is on your mind, to you I give the keys, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
The one who has no filter is the one who is put in charge of the Kingdom of God.
Peter, the blundering idiot who is an organizational and categorical mess, whose heart is in the right place - unless he’s scared to death of course, is the one who is the Rock, the foundation of the Church.
I don’t think too much emphasis can be put on this point. See, the Church’s foundation is fundamentally faulty. It’s crumbling. It’s enthused and ready and all in one moment, and then running off and denying Jesus the next. And this guy is given the keys - the filter - that will determine who is in and who is out. The one who has no filter becomes the filter.
Because it’s not the answer to the question that is important. It’s the how of how we answer the question.
Because I don’t really care who you think you are, whether a cradle Catholic or a rational atheist or a born again Christian, your attempt to answer the question, “Who do you say that I am,” will be wrong. You’re going to get it wrong. We’ve all got God a little bit wrong. None of us truly, fully, get it. Or if you do get it right, like Peter, you’re not really going to understand what you’ve just said. Jesus just doesn’t fit in a stable two by four, or six, or eight.
It has never been about answers — if it was, then Jesus would have reneged his offer to Peter to be the foundation of his church. After all, just a few verses later, Peter is going to be called Satan by Jesus, and then later, he’s going to deny Jesus three times, and then he’s going to get into big theological fights with Paul at the church’s earliest inception.
It’s not about the answer, really. But about HOW we answer the question.
Jesus wants us all in. All of us. All the way in. With whatever answer we’ve got for this moment. Jesus wants our messy humanity. He proves it by making Peter the cornerstone of everything else that will be built upon it.
I think the church has been worrying about getting enough people into a building all nodding in unison to the “right” answer to the question. So of course, when put this way, the Church is dying. We no longer have churches thronging with folks ready to contort themselves into acceptable shapes to help build some sort of stable building. After all, Peter is far from stable. He lands on the right answer one moment, and then blunders it the next.
I think that Jesus is telling us that it’s not about getting it right or wrong at all; faith is not a Scantron sheet or a true/false quiz, or an easy sell. Faith isn’t about conforming to some shape that you think will build the sturdiest building.
And Jesus knew this. That’s why he gave Peter the keys to the kingdom, precisely because he goes all in, he flails around, because he believes and then he doesn’t. He gets the keys precisely because he has no filter, because he speaks before he thinks, he jumps in before he remembers that he doesn’t have a dry change of clothes. He just goes for it. And he’s the one with the keys. He’s the gatekeeper. The one who has probably forgotten where he left his keys, or lost them in the parking lot, or has them tucked in his pocket the whole time he’s frantically tossing pillows and looking under tables in search of them is the one in charge. He’s the brick upon which the church is built. Not stable. Not sturdy. Not consistent. One big ol’ question mark. One messy human. That’s our rock. Our cornerstone.
Peter jumps in, blurts out, flails around and tries and tests and falls on his butt. So, everybody come on in. Peter has the keys, and he’s got no filter. No straight lines. No predictable perfect fits.
The kingdom of God is built on people. Not “two bys.”
The Church is built on the precarious foundation that is humanity.
This is a little scary, but it's really good news.
When it comes to humans, there are no guarantees.
When it comes to humanity, anything can happen.
Jesus bids us to enter, to be the bricks. Enter the kingdom of God where you don’t have to have the answers, where you don’t have to fit into a mold in order to belong, where you don’t have to be consistent or sane or sober or a straight-A student. Where you don’t have to have it all neat and tidy and where everything must have its place. Enter the kingdom of God where we don’t build stable structures made out of uniformly sized Legos, but where we build community, made up of messy people and their messy shapes, where we will definitely get it wrong, and disappoint each other, and our walls will be knocked down again and again by the Godzilla Jesus toddler so that more and more can come in, more can belong, more can blunder and flail and hold hands until the kingdom is built.
Thanks be to God.
Amen❤️
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