Transcript of Sermon St Oswald's 23rd August 2026
Matthew 16: 13-20
I Keep Honest Serving Men by Rudyard Kipling
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small-
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends' em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes-
One million How’s, two million Where’s,
And seven million Whys!
Questions, questions, questions – the world is full of questions.
Each and every day we are asking questions and making
decisions.
Some of those questions will be mundane, like, what I am
going to have for breakfast. However, that question may be mundane to us, but for
many families, even in Britain, that is not a mundane question.
So, we live with questions
some of which will have little or no impact, and others that will set our lives off
on a completely different direction.
That’s as true for
individuals as it is for communities and for nations and the decisions made by
governments.
However, I want to suggest
this morning that there is one question that outranks all other questions.
I think there is one
question that is the most important question of all time, place and history.
The question is the one that
Jesus put to the disciples and that Peter answered.
‘Who do you say that the Son
of Man is?’
And people have answered
that question variously over the years.
C.S. Lewis famously
presented what has come to be known as the trilemma. Although the concept was
written first in 1846 it is Lewes who has brought this to popularity.
It is a bit of long quote so
bear with me and try and follow the logic of the argument. Quote…
"I am trying here to
prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him:
I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his
claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a
man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached
egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either
this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You
can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you
can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God but let us not come with any
patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left
that open to us. He did not intend to. ...
Now it seems to me obvious
that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or
terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and
is God." End quote.
Now we must tread a little
carefully here and in particular when we are reflecting on Peter’s confession.
We must be careful we don’t
rush ahead at this stage in the Gospel narrative and assume an acknowledgement
of a full-blown concept of Jesus as the second person of the Trinity, being both
God and man. All that is to come, but in the Gospel story so far we aren’t
there yet.
Indeed, I was listening to a
podcast the other day where Lewes’ work was being discussed and this trilemma
came under scrutiny. One of the scholars said that Jesus did not out and out
claim to be God as Lewes here says that he did.
(https://open.spotify.com/episode/1t3zptkGN3EF2qvh60at2J?si=a7d9d4e38ba74cc9)
Therefore, the question as
we have it presented in our Gospel reading (which is in all three synoptic
Gospels) is a good way of approaching what I am suggesting is the most
important question which presents as two-fold.
The first part of the
question from Jesus to the disciples is, ‘who do people say that the Son of Man
is.’
It’s intriguing to note that Matthew has Jesus speaking in the third person, Son of Man, and that Luke and Mark use the first person, I am. We know that Mathew writes obliquely, e.g. Kingdom of Heaven instead of the Kingdom of God. However, it does slightly change the tenor of the question, something perhaps to mull over later.
Be that as it may, we still have
the first part of the question, “who do people say that Jesus is?”
Now that is a huge question
in and of itself.
If you went and asked
somebody from the Church of the Latter-Day Saints you would get one answer, and
from the Jehovah’s Witness another answer. From a Muslim something else and
from a Jew something different again.
From most orthodox Christians, (small o) the answer would reflect two thousand years study, debate, including textual scholarship and archaeological evidence, and not unimportantly, the lived experience of many millions of people. But our primary source must remain the Scriptures.
The standard orthodox
Christian view would claim that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the
second person of the Trinity, both human and divine.
The first part of the
question therefore invites us to spend some time considering what others say
about Jesus.
Having done that we are then ready for the next and most important question, ‘who do you say that Jesus is?’
Not what Lewes says, or Tom
Wright, or Gordon Banks, or the person next to you or the Pope or the
Archbishop, but you, in your heart of hearts, who do say that Jesus is?
This is a deep question
asked deep into your heart, deep into your soul, deep into your very being.
We know how Peter answered
the question – but this isn’t the sort of question that has a right and a wrong
answer.
Now we can of course concur
with Peter, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
And I sincerely hope that
you do agree with Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus.
Romans 10.9 “If you
openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
from the dead, you will be saved.”
But - saved from what and saved for what?
For if we do believe and
confess faith in Messiah Jesus then we have another question to answer.
In the light of this
confession of faith how should I now live.
In the light of this
confession of faith that we share with this community of Jesus’ apprentices, here
at St Oswald’s, how should we then live in the world, in our community?
If we had also read the
Epistle set for this day we would have heard Romans 12. 1-8 that opens by
saying…
Therefore, I urge
you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as
a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper
worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve
what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
In answering the question of
‘how should we now live’ at both an individual level and at a corporate level,
as a community is going to take some work.
One place we could begin is
to explore the term Messiah and what was and is meant by that term. What were
some of the expectations. Messiah –
simply put, means an anointed King, like David, who would bring restoration and
peace.
That pushes us back to the
Scroll of Isaiah, especially chapter 42. From there to further exploration of
the Scriptures as we seek to discern and discover God’s will for the whole of
creation.
Jesus wasn’t simply an interruption in the purposes of God for the world, a plan B, but integral to it, as beautifully portrayed by John in his opening prologue to his Gospel.
In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And it is this confession of
Peter that Jesus says is what the Church will be built on as upon a rock, a
solid foundation.
Tom Wright says of this
confession,
‘Jesus isn’t going to build
an actual city, or an actual Temple. He is going to build a community,
consisting of all who give allegiance to him as God’s anointed King. And this
movement, this community starts right there and then at Caesarea Philippi.
And we here at St Oswald,
August 2026, are part of that same community, making the same confession and carrying
the same hope. And like Peter, occasionally making mistakes even after this
Confession. But as we study and reflect on Scripture, as we look to God and
engage in prayer and meditation, we respond to God’s call to be co-workers with
God pushing back the forces of darkness and making way for the King of Kings
and Lord of Lord’s, God’s anointed King, Messiah Jesus.
David in his sermon last
Sunday talked about external action not matched with an inner reality.
“’These people honour me
with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
This is reflected in the
beautiful Choristers Prayer…
“Bless O Lord us your
servants that minister in your temple, grant that what we sing with our lips
may we believe in our hearts and what we believe in our hearts may we show
forth in our lives. Amen”
If Jesus is the Messiah then
what we have breakfast matters because every aspect of our lives matters to
God. As St Augustine said, ‘If Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at
all.’
But we need to learn that alongside the question about what we might have for breakfast, a much more important question asks why our neighbours aren’t able to have breakfast!
Matthew 7.21 ‘“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
Who is Jesus to you?
https://youtu.be/UjER7McRbzc?si=JnrBW0XfDCwbt2YR
To view the sermon in context follow this link.
https://www.youtube.com/live/7KdR7g549Mw?si=YewOdTLkZYx1hbjC
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