Deacon Jim Knipper discusses the dialogue between Jesus and Peter, emphasizing the contrast between Peter's divine insight and his human responses to Jesus' predictions of suffering. The sermon explores the voices that influence our thoughts and actions, distinguishing between God's loving voice and the ego-driven mental voice that often leads to fear and unloving behavior. Knipper encourages reflection on the sources of our thoughts in challenging situations and highlights the importance of following Christ's teachings of love and self-denial.

1. 1 Deacon Jim Knipper
30 August 2020 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Princeton, NJ
Every so often our lectionary takes a setting and a story and will break it up into parts just as they have done
with the discourse that began last week between Jesus and his disciples and finishes up this week. So, in
order to get a better understanding of this week’s Gospel we need to begin by recalling the dialogue and
location of this story.
For Jesus brings his followers some 30 miles from the Sea of Galilee, into the region of Caesarea Philippi, to
the base of a 1,200 foot tall rock terrace upon which stands a temple to the Roman Emperor Augustus. And
into the side of this rock face are carved-out niches with statues and idols made to several other gods. With
this physical backdrop of false gods, Jesus then asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And it is
Peter who replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To which Jesus replies, “You are Peter
and upon this rock I will build my Church.
The conversation picks right back up this week with Jesus then explaining to his disciples that he must head
to Jerusalem and will suffer greatly and will be killed and on the third day raised. This brings an immediate
response of protest by Peter that no such thing shall ever happen. And Jesus rebukes Peter, saying, “Get
behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.”
Wow! So how did Peter get it so right to the point where Jesus will use Peter as the foundation of his
Church and then in the next moment Peter gets it so wrong as to be called Satan? The answer and, indeed
our lesson, is rooted in the source of Peter’s comments.
So remember, last week when Peter names Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ – Jesus says that that answer
did not come from flesh and blood – meaning it was not something that could have been derived from
human thought – but was revealed to Peter through the heavenly Father. On the reverse, when he protested
about Jesus having to suffer and die, Jesus told Peter that he was thinking not as God does, but as humans
do…and of the necessity to take up his cross and to follow Christ.
So why the big swing with Peter? First, we find him comfortable with grace and glory and filled with
heavenly insight and the next moment, faced with the suffering and death of his friend, his human thoughts
have the ‘rock’ of Peter being called out as a stumbling stone by Christ. Part of Peter’s challenge was his
own personal desire and expectation that the Messiah would go to battle and defeat the multitude of armies
and would reign from on high as King, wearing a crown of gold. But when Christ goes on to explain that as
Messiah he will suffer greatly and will die as a King wearing a crown of thorns…it fails what Peter expected,
and, filled with fear, Peter’s response comes from his human emotions and thoughts.
Can you imagine how much Peter’s head had to be spinning – at first he is called a foundational rock and
will receive the keys to heaven...and the next moment, when things point to a direction he does not want, he
is called a stumbling block and is told to get behind Christ and to follow him. And in following Christ they
were told of the necessity to take up and carry their crosses and that they will need to lose their lives in order
to save them. Seems clear why so many of us opt to focus on worshiping Christ than necessarily following
him!
So, looking at the full story, spread over the two weeks, we are given two different voices our spirit can be
influenced by. There is God’s voice – or what some call the inner voice, that feeling of sudden knowing, that
gut feeling – which leads us to a knowledge that has us acting with unconditional love towards ourselves
and others. And then we have our mental voice – the home of our ego - which is not necessarily governed
by love and often influences our spirit to be unloving, encouraging us to dismiss that competing inner voice
we each have. So how can we distinguish which voice we are hearing?

2. 2 Deacon Jim Knipper
Perhaps the easiest way to discern this is to look at how we approach the situations in our lives. For when
we find ourselves defending our truth, our world, deciding who is acceptable and who is not, centering on
self-referential thoughts – then we are thinking as humans do, with our mental voice which is most often
triggered by fear. Fear – which can be defined as the opposite of love – will often trigger the fight or flight
response and force our head-thinking to take over and, as we heard in today’s Gospel, lends to building
stumbling blocks on the road ahead of us. No wonder the most common phrase we hear Jesus repeat over
and over again is – Do not be afraid.
But when we find ourselves in a situation where we lead with love and care and honesty…where we are no
longer pushing others away from us to the edges where we feel they belong…when we stop projecting onto
others what we can’t forgive within ourselves, when we take the time to, using the words we hear today, “to
deny oneself,” which really just means give less priority to oneself, where we recognize every person,
without exception, as a child of God, where we love by loving and heal by healing and forgive by forgiving –
then we are listening to that internal voice of God – of the one who dwells within all of us. For this is the type
of knowledge that only comes from the Creator.
Perhaps Franciscan Richard Rohr summed it up best when he wrote:
“If you can trust and listen to your inner divine image, your whole-making instinct, or your True Self, you will
act from your best, largest, kindest, most inclusive self. Rather than consuming spiritual gifts for yourself
alone, you must receive all words of God so that you can speak them to others tenderly. If any thought feels
too harsh, shaming, or diminishing of yourself or others, it is not likely the voice of God but the ego. If
something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can
trust it as the voice of God. For we must listen to what is supporting us. We must listen to what is
encouraging us. We must listen to what is urging us. We must listen to what is alive in us.”
But make no mistake – listening and acting to this divine inner voice – where we give up control to God – to
where we genuinely care for others – it all comes with a price – often referred to as the crosses that we each
carry. But as followers of Christ, this is what we are called to do. For here we are in the middle of a
pandemic where the majority of our public worshiping has been derailed forcing us to refocus on our call to
“follow” Christ – where we can’t control where he leads us, where “thinking as humans do” doesn’t work
anymore, where our journeys are not void of pain and difficulty but… where we are drawn closer to Christ
who calls us to lay our burdens on his shoulders…without fear.
So, I invite you to take some time this week and examine where your thoughts are coming from when faced
with different situations. Is it coming from your inner loving voice that represents God’s help and guidance in
your life? Or it is your mental voice which competes with God’s voice and will routinely influence your spirit
to speak and act in an unloving way? What we spiritually sense a natural love for is a divine guidance which
we are all connected to; where we learn to give up sole control over our lives; where we are open to help
each other in a loving way with the crosses we each bear; and where we freely surrender ourselves to our
inner voice of God’s abundant love.