August 23, 2026 - sermon - Michael Anthony Howard

Who Do You Say That I Am? 

The Federated Church / Pentecost 13A 

Matthew 16:13–20/ Confession Sunday 

Rev. Michael Anthony Howard 

Sunday, August 23, 2026 

Please join your heart with mine as we lift them up to God— 

Welcoming Creator, Living Word, 

Take flesh among us once more. 

May the words of my mouth, 
and the meditations of all our hearts, 
bear witness to your Kingdom, 
for you are our strength, 
our hope, 
and our peace. 

Amen. 

1. Here Are the Keys 

What do you call a teenager with car keys? 

A prayer request. 

There comes this terrifying moment 

when the State of Ohio 

looks at the child you have 

spent sixteen years 

trying to keep alive and says: 

Looks good to us. 

And now you are supposed 

to hand them the keys 

to a two-ton automobile. 

You stand in the driveway. 

You watch the taillights disappear. 

And suddenly your prayer life 

becomes very serious. 

I thought about that when I read this story. 

Because what do you call Peter 

with the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven? 

The Church. 

And that should probably 

make us a little nervous. 

Because this is Peter. 

Peter, who gets it gloriously right today. 

And Peter… 
who six verses from now 

gets it so spectacularly wrong 

that Jesus says: 

“Get behind me, Satan.” 

This passage gives us Christology. 

It gives us ecclesiology. 

And apparently it gives us petrology. 

Which sounds like the study of Peter. 

It isn’t. 

It’s the study of rocks. 

Of course it is. 

But before Jesus 

hands this particular rock the keys, 

he asks him a question. 

2. The Christ 

“Who do you say that I am?” 

Peter answers: 

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 

There it is. 

The Great Confession. 

And Christians have been confessing it ever since. 

But Jesus isn’t asking Peter a trivia question. 

Because Peter doesn’t simply say something about Jesus. 

He calls him the Christ. 

And Christ isn’t Jesus’ last name. 

Christ means Messiah. 

It places Jesus inside a story much older than Peter. 

A story about covenant. 

Annie Dillard once wondered 

why Christians come to worship so casually. 

If we really believed what we say happens here, 

she suggested, we ought to be 

wearing crash helmets. 

The ushers ought to be handing out 

life preservers and signal flares. 

She imagined us like children 

playing on the floor with chemistry sets, 

unknowingly mixing up a batch of TNT. 

Because maybe we have forgotten just how dangerous this stuff is. 

We gather here week after week. 
We say the words. 
We sing the hymns. 
We confess what we believe. 

… 

It’s the story of God calling… 

Calling Abraham and saying: 

I will bless you. 

But the promise doesn’t stop there: 

Through you, 

all the families of the earth 

shall be blessed. 

That’s the pattern. 

God calls a people. 

God binds their lives together. 

And their life together 

becomes a calling 

for the sake of the world. 

So when Peter says, 

“You are the Christ,” 

Jesus turns the confession back toward him. 

“And you are Peter.” 

You have told me who I am. 

Now— 

who will you become? 

3. The Ekklesia 

Jesus says: 

“On this rock I will build my Ekklesia.” 

We usually translate that word church. 

But forget church for a moment. 

Forget steeples and pews. 

Forget denominations and clergy. 

Forget committees and budgets and Sunday mornings. 

Ekklesia. 

An assembly. 

A people gathered because they have something to do together. 

An audience gathers to watch. 

An assembly acts. 

Peter says: 

“You are the Christ.” 

And Christ responds: 

“I will build my Ekklesia.” 

The confession becomes a community. 

Christology becomes ecclesiology. 

The Word begins gathering a body. 

Church isn’t primarily something we attend. 

Church is something God is making of us. 

And then Jesus does the dangerous thing. 

He gives us the keys. 

4. The Risk 

He doesn’t give the keys to angels. 

Not to perfect people. 

To Peter! 

This Peter. 

The one who misunderstands. 

The one who gets frightened. 

The one who makes promises he cannot keep. 

The one who will… 

deny three times that he even knows Jesus. 

Jesus knows all of that. 

And still: 

Here are the keys. 

There is something astonishing about the God of Scripture. 

God takes the risk of human agency. 

God calls Abraham. 

God calls Israel. 

God calls prophets. 

Jesus calls disciples. 

Jesus builds an Ekklesia. 

And apparently God’s dream for creation 

includes us actually participating in it. 

Which is beautiful. 

And terrifying. 

Because look at what human beings can do with keys. 

We can open doors. 

We can close them. 

We can welcome people in. 

We can lock people out. 

We can build things. 

We can destroy things. 

Keys mean our choices matter. 

So what are we supposed to do with them? 

5. Bound Together 

Jesus says: 

“Whatever you bind on earth 

will be bound in heaven, 

and whatever you loose on earth 

will be loosed in heaven.” 

Binding and loosing was language of discernment— 

decisions about what was… 

permitted, prohibited, required, released. 

Our children helped us see another dimension of it this morning. 

You hold one end of the cord. 

I hold the other. 

I move— 

you feel it. 

You move— 

I feel it. 

That’s covenant. 

We are still different people. 

But our lives are bound together now. 

And I can no longer pretend 

that my decisions affect only me. 

That’s true of families. 

It’s true of communities. 

It’s true of churches. 

It’s true of nations. 

We live inside one another’s decisions. 

Look around. 

This world did not simply appear. 

Someone planted the trees, 
built the roads, 

drew the boundaries. 

Someone else established the institutions, 

decided who belonged, and decided who didn't. 

Someone built this congregation. 

Still, others made a million ordinary decisions— 

and we inherited them. 

And right now we are making decisions 

that people we will never meet 

will inherit from us. 

The Apostle Paul says: 
Whatever we sow— 

someone will reap. 

Whatever we build— 

someone will inhabit. 

So the question isn’t merely: 

Who do you say that I am? 

It becomes: 

What are we building together? 

6. Put Flesh on It 

We are building something together… 

Because we know something is broken. 

We can feel the disintegration. 

In our communities. 

In our politics. 

In our relationships. 

In our relationship with the earth. 

Sometimes, we can feel it in ourselves. 

And Christians can become very good 

at standing beside the broken pieces and saying: 

“Look. That’s broken.” 

Sometimes truth requires that. 

But Jesus didn’t give the Ekklesia an opinion. 

Jesus gave us the keys! 

There is a beautiful phrase in Jewish tradition: 

Tikkun olam. 

The phrase has a long history, 

but one way it has come to be expressed is: 

repair the world. 

Think of the audacity of that! 

Because repair begins with hope. 

It says: It doesn’t have to stay this way. 

Something is broken? 

Repair it. 

Something is divided? 

Reconcile it. 

Someone is hungry? 

Feed them. 

Someone is lonely? 

Call them. 

Someone has been pushed outside? 

Make room. 

Something is crushing 

your neighbors, Federated! 

Loose it. 

When something gives life? 

Bind yourself to it. 

And most of this will not look spectacular. 

It will look almost painfully ordinary. 

A ride. A meal. A card. 

A phone call. A doctor’s visit. 

A prayer. 

A letter written on someone’s behalf. 

A committee meeting. A child welcomed. 

A stranger becoming a neighbor. 

A place at the Table. 

And suddenly— 

something happens. 

Little by little. 

Decision by decision. 

Relationship by relationship. 

The Word gets flesh. 

“The Word became flesh.” 

We Christians confess that. 

But incarnation isn’t a trivia question. 

We don’t just confess it. 

We put flesh on it. 

Compassion gets hands. 

Hunger gets bread. 

Loneliness gets a phone call. 

Belonging gets a place at the Table. 

Justice gets a voice. 

Love gets a body. 

And that… I proposed to you Federated… 

Is what Christ has been building all along. 

Not an institution for its own sake. 

A people through whom the Word can take flesh in the world. 

And the Church isn’t even the destination. 

At the end of Revelation, 
John sees a new heaven and a new earth. 

The holy city comes down. 

And a voice declares: 

“See, the dwelling place of God 
is among mortals.” 

And God says: 

“See, I am making all things new.” 

That’s the destination. 

A healed creation. 

A repaired world. 

God dwelling among us. 

So— 

Who do you say that I am? 

“You are the Christ.” 

Good answer, Peter. 

Now put flesh on it. 

Become a people. 

Bind yourselves to what gives life. 

Loose what keeps your neighbors from flourishing. 

Repair what has been broken. 

Build something beautiful enough 

to hand to those who come after us. 

And somehow— 

knowing perfectly well who Peter is, 

knowing perfectly well who we are, 

Christ still holds out his hand and says: 

Here are the keys. 

Amen.Top of FormBottom of Form