Sisters & brothers, grace to you & peace from God who knows, Christ who saves, and the Spirit who tests the heart.

Amen

Poor Peter. He was doing so well last week, confessing Jesus to be the Messiah, the son of the living God, and all that. So well, in fact, that Jesus told him that upon the rock of that bold confession the whole church would be built and against which the very gates of Hades could not and would not prevail. Well, not so fast, not so fast.

Today’s Gospel, which follows immediately after the verses from last Sunday’s, paints a picture of eager Peter which looks an awful lot like the same guy who, in the Gospel text a few weeks ago, started walking on water toward Jesus and then, realizing what he was doing, started to sink. It’s sort of like watching a beginning water-skier from the perspective of the speedboat: “Yepp, yepp, he’s up, he’s up! Oh. No, no. He’s not. He’s down. Pull back around.”

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