08/24/2026
Dear Friends,
It was a joy to gather together this past Sunday. Unfortunately we were unable to stream our services. So, I have decided to give you a written, slightly condensed recap.
What's in a Name? More Than You Think
There is a moment most of us know well. You recognize the face across the room, but the name is simply gone. You cycle through every social workaround available — "Hey, friend!" "Good to see you!" — all while silently hoping someone else will walk up and rescue you by saying the name out loud. The discomfort of that moment is worth paying attention to. Why does forgetting a name feel like a small failure? Because knowing someone's name carries a message: I see you. You are not invisible. You matter.
We understand this instinctively, and yet we spend enormous energy doing the opposite. We replace names with labels — homeless, addict, illegal, difficult, disabled — as though one circumstance or one struggle contains the whole truth of a person.
We take a single chapter and treat it like the entire book. But no human life fits inside a label. And the story at the heart of Matthew 16 has something urgent to say about that.
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In Matthew 16:13-20, Jesus takes his disciples north to the district of Caesarea Philippi, and the location is doing heavy theological work before anyone speaks a word. There is a massive rock face. There is a cave long associated with the god Pan and the realm of the dead. The city itself bears Caesar's name. Everywhere the disciples look, something is making a claim about power — empire, religion, death. Right there, surrounded by monuments to every competing authority, Jesus asks: "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
The disciples relay what they have heard. Some say John the Baptist. Others say Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets. These are not dismissive answers. The prophets were not fortune-tellers; they were truth-tellers who stood before rulers, named injustice, and reminded crushed people that God had not forgotten their names. To place Jesus in that company was honorable. But borrowed answers cannot carry the full weight of personal faith. So Jesus steps closer.
"But who do you say that I am?"
The Greek makes the "you" plural. In the idiom of the American South, Jesus is asking, "Who do y'all say that I am?" Peter answers, but the question belongs to the whole community. And that distinction matters. Faith is personal, but it is never merely private. We answer together — not only in a creed recited on Sunday, but in the kind of life we make possible for one another on Monday.
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Peter's answer is stunning: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Messiah, the Hebrew word behind the Greek title Christ, means anointed one. Peter is saying that through Jesus, God is setting things right. It is a powerful confession. It is also, as the very next scene reveals, an unfinished one.
Almost immediately, Peter rejects Jesus' talk of suffering. He has the right title attached to the wrong definition. He wants a Messiah who wins the way empires win. Jesus reveals one who serves, gives himself away, and breaks death open from the inside.
This should slow us down. It is entirely possible to say "Jesus is Lord" while imagining a Jesus who blesses our appetite for control. It is possible to use all the correct names for Jesus while expecting him to despise the same people we despise. But once we begin to see who Jesus really is, we cannot keep seeing other people the same old way.
If Jesus is the crucified Messiah, then power is no longer measured by whom we can dominate. If Jesus is the risen Messiah, then no failure, wound, empire, or grave holds final naming rights over anyone. If Jesus is the Son of the living God, then every person we encounter is more than whatever label the world has pressed upon them.
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After Peter's confession, Jesus speaks Peter's name back to him: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah — you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church." Petros means rock. The wordplay is unmistakable. But look at who Jesus is calling a rock.
This is Simon — a man known for speaking quickly and understanding slowly, for bold declarations followed by breathtaking reversals. He is not named "rock" because he has already become dependable. The next paragraph proves otherwise. Jesus names not simply who Peter has been, but what grace will form him to become.
This is the nature of the names grace gives. Beloved. Forgiven. Called. Child of God. These names do not erase our histories. They refuse to give our wounds, our failures, our worst moments, or other people's opinions any final authority over our identity. Grace names us toward who God is forming us to become.
And if grace names us that way, it changes what we call one another.
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Friends, injustice often begins when a person becomes a category. Compassion begins when a category becomes a neighbor.
This is where the church enters the picture. Jesus promises that the gates of Hades — the realm of death, designed to keep the dead captive — will not prevail against the community he is building.
Notice: gates do not march into battle. Jesus envisions a resurrection people moving toward the places where death has dug in, and those gates cannot hold against God's life.
That movement looks like learning someone's name before repeating the label the world assigned them. It looks like sitting down with the child everyone calls "the problem" and discovering grief and gifts that no one noticed because everyone was too busy managing behavior. It looks like asking what burden someone carried into the room before deciding what to call them.
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Jesus' question still hangs in the air: who do you say that he is? And the answer is not only what we confess with our lips. The answer is the church we become — the doors we open, the shame we loosen, the names we learn, the neighbors we see.
No empire, no label, no wound, no grave, and no headline gets the final word. That is the confession. Now comes the life that proves it.
What's in a name? Everything!
Thanks be to God, Amen.
Rev. Nate Mathews, Pastor
