|
There are seasons when the ground beneath us feels less steady than we would like. Life changes. The people we love change. Our bodies change. Communities and churches change. The world around us shifts, sometimes slowly and sometimes all at once. In those moments, we naturally reach for something solid, something that can hold us when so much else seems uncertain.
This Sunday, Isaiah gives us one of the most beautiful invitations in Scripture: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” The people hearing those words knew uncertainty well. They had lived through exile, loss, and the collapse of the world they once knew. Yet God does something surprising. God does not point them toward their strongest season, their wealthiest season, or their most powerful season. God points them back to Abraham and Sarah, back to the beginning, back to two people whose future seemed impossible, yet through whom God created something new.
Then, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples a question that reaches just as deeply: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus responds, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”
The connection between these two readings is striking. Isaiah says, in essence, remember the rock from which you were cut. Jesus says, on this rock I will build. One asks us to remember where we come from. The other asks us to remember whom we belong to.
That feels especially important in a time when so much competes for our loyalty, our attention, and our fear. The Church has never been strongest when it has mistaken power, prestige, or certainty for faithfulness. We came from wandering people, prophets, fishermen, women who stayed near the cross, disciples who misunderstood and still kept following, and saints who trusted God long before they could see what God was doing. That is the quarry from which we were cut.
Fear can make us forget that. It can make us clutch tightly to what we know. It can convince us that safety is found in control, in stronger walls, in smaller circles, and in keeping others at a distance. Yet in this Gospel, Jesus gives Peter keys. And throughout the life of Jesus, we see what those keys are for. Jesus is constantly opening what others have closed. He makes room for the hungry, the sick, the stranger, the sinner, the child, and the outcast. He keeps making space for grace.
Perhaps that is part of what it means for us to be the Church now. We are called to become a people who open what fear has closed, who make room where the world has narrowed, and who bear witness to the possibility of grace when others have given up on it. The Church is most faithful when it remembers that the kingdom of God is larger than our anxieties and more generous than our boundaries.
Isaiah promises that the wilderness can become like Eden, that ruined places can know joy again, and that even deserts can become places of song. That is the kind of hope Scripture gives us. It is deeper than optimism. It does not pretend that the wilderness is easy or that change does not hurt. It simply refuses to believe that devastation gets the final word.
So wherever life feels unsettled, perhaps this is the invitation before us: remember the rock. Remember the God who called Abraham and Sarah into a future they could not yet see. Remember Peter, imperfect and faithful, standing before Jesus and declaring, “You are the Messiah.” Remember that the Church is still being built, still being called, and still being sent into a world that desperately needs communities of mercy, courage, and hope.
The ground around us may shift, but the faithfulness of God remains. That is the rock from which we were hewn, and that is the rock on which we stand.
See you Sunday!
Faithfully,
Mo. Allison+
| 
