Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray and to give more than either we desire or deserve:  pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

    Amen.

 

A reading from Isaiah   (51.1-6)

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many.

    For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

    Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples. I will bring near my deliverance swiftly, my salvation has gone out and my arms will rule the peoples; the coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope.

    Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be for ever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

 

This is the word of the Lord.

    Thanks be to God.

 

Psalm 138

1    I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise;

2    I bow down towards your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness;

2a        for you have exalted your name and your word above everything.

3    On the day I called, you answered me, you increased my strength of soul.

4    All the kings of the earth shall praise you, O Lord, for they have heard the words of your mouth.

5    They shall sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.

6    For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away.

7    Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies;

7a        you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.

8    The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord,

endures for ever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

 

A reading from Romans   (12.1-8)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.

    For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

    We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

 

This is the word of the Lord.

    Thanks be to God.

 

Listen to the Gospel of Christ according to St Matthew   (16.13-20)

    Glory to you, O Lord.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’

    And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’

    He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’

    Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’

    And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’

    Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

 

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

    Praise to you, O Christ.

 

Reflection - AE

 

I don’t know how many of you remember when we had all the work done to the church here that was mainly about renewing the roof?  Some of you I’m sure won’t know, but at the same time, to improve the damp in the building they put a French drain all around the outside, which involved digging down a couple of feet, and incidentally uncovering the foundations of the church hidden under the ground.

 

We discovered some extraordinary things.

 

Footings of a different, much older tower than the one we have now.

 

An ancient skull right up against the wall.

 

Under the north end of the East wall, there behind the altar, footings in the arched shape of a Norman-style apse, like the front of a boat, and as we know the church dates back to 1063, that means it was built before the Norman invasion but in the Norman style, and as such is thought to be the only one of its kind in Wales.

 

I don’t know about you, but when I come in here one sense I always feel about this building is that it is solid, held up by the great stones, especially these pillars, which turned out to be not as old as we had thought.

 

So it turns out that although they are solid the foundations are not quite what we thought they were.

 

It’s stood here for a very long time, but not always in quite the way we thought it had.

 

Another thing we found, down in the footings under the North wall there, was concrete, with was surprising in what is apparently a mediaeval wall, but could maybe be explained by the fact that two major pieces of restoration were carried out in the nineteenth century, which was a time when concrete was coming back into use having been out of favour for centuries.

 

Concrete, especially in rural areas such as this, was often a mix where people threw in all sorts of rubble and stone or whatever they could find to contribute to the end result.

 

And I like the idea of the foundations of a church being made up of whatever was to hand at the time that would contribute to the end result, foundations made strong by mixing together a combination of different, possibly imperfect, things that, once working together, worked well and held everything up.

 

With its hidden, pre-Norman apse, a tower that seems to have changed shape, all resting on pillars whose history suddenly became a bit less certain, the whole church building turns out to be a combination of different things, possibly imperfect, but each with its own strengths, and, once working together, working well.

 

Very much like the wider church itself: the very early church, built by Jesus, not out of stones, but out of people, and in particular Peter, our very own patron.

 

Peter, we all know, was not a perfect apostle.  He often got things wrong, immediately after this he began arguing with Jesus, and not much later, as predicted by Jesus, he denied even knowing him - three times.

 

What Jesus understood about him, though, was that in reality he was just like this church here.  He appeared on the surface to be one thing - an outspoken, muddle headed, slightly pugnacious fisherman, but below the surface he was something quite different: At his very core, a true apostle, although that was sometimes a bit hidden, someone who became in time a committed follower, even unto death, who understood at his core exactly who Jesus was - the Messiah, come from God the Father, to bring peace and freedom.

 

It was that solid faith that Jesus recognised as the foundation on which his church would stand, has continued to grow, and to change shape.

 

It began as a group of people, and ever since it has encompassed a mixture of people with all their differences and strengths and weaknesses.

 

Thank goodness that neither Peter then, nor any one person now, had to carry the whole endeavour on their own.

 

It’s always been a joint effort, although with leaders, for better or worse.

 

It is that joint effort Paul wrote about in his letter to the Romans.

 

Each member with different gifts and strengths.

 

Different weaknesses too, but it has been God’s grace in distributing so many gifts, so widely and generously, that has meant that between us we can get things done, and two thousand years later, one way or another, the church is still here.

 

Like the concrete in our foundations, all sorts of things chucked in, for better or worse, but we’re still here.

 

With all our differences, Church is where we come together, instituted by the Messiah when he saw the gifts and faith Peter had, to celebrate that coming among us of God himself.

 

What we all have to think about now is just what gifts Jesus would see in us, and how, especially now when the church here needs all the gifts all its members can bring, we can use our strengths to build the solid church we need.

 

Amen

 

God of compassion, in this Eucharist you have set aside our sins and given us your healing:  grant that we who are made whole in Christ may bring that healing to this broken world, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.