I am very happy that today everyone in the church has an opportunity to walk out into the construction zone and get an up close and personal feel for what about a year from now will be a wonderful expansion of our church home. We do encourage everyone to go into the new chapel and to stand in what will be the entryway to the sanctuary and visualize—as I have been doing nearly every day—how it is all going to look and feel. All of us are in this project together and all of us will benefit in multiple ways for many decades to come, and of course it is not just about us but also about those who do not yet know Jesus. Several months ago when the campaign theme for our second capital funds drive was selected the small group working on this were immediately drawn to two key words: building and together. We are building and we are doing this together. Last week we paused to reflect on how God is the original builder, the one who has been making a people for himself since the very beginning of time, and then how we, as God’s people, in turn construct our own buildings, first temples and synagogues and then churches, as homes for the family of God in which we can worship and be nurtured for our true work out in the world, bringing the love of Christ to everyone who will receive him and us.

This is now the second Sunday of our four-Sunday focus on our project of expanding and enhancing our church. There are also three key themes that we want to highlight in this season, and they are part of the campaign theme: faith, family, and future. And so today we want to think some more about why we are building together and what we are building together. The first answer to why and what is actually the most important one: we are building on the foundation of faith and we are building in order to be faithful.

So let me take you back into the times of the New Testament and to the region of Caesarea Philippi, which is on the northern border of Israel, just a few kilometers from Syria. Jesus and the disciples had traveled there and were no doubt aware of the religious significance of the place. The ancient Syrians had a temple there built to honor their god Baal. There also was a shrine there built in honor of the Greek god Pan. To top it off, there was the contemporary city of Caesarea Philippi, named in honor of the Roman Caesar, who was considered to be a god by all good Roman citizens. It was in the context of these major religions and gods that the wandering preacher from Nazareth asked his few followers a very pointed question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And when they had answered, he became even more specific, “But who do you say that I am?” That is the fundamental question, isn’t it? Who is Jesus? The people of Israel were saying that Jesus was perhaps John the Baptist come back from the dead, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or maybe one of the other great prophets from Israel’s past. Any one of those identities would have been amazing enough for Jesus to claim. But they were nothing compared to what Peter had to say.

Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” That statement has gone down in the history of Christianity as the very first time that a disciple of Jesus proclaimed the truth about who Jesus was. And it is the statement that is the key to the entire enterprise that we call the Christian church. Peter believed and confessed that Jesus was not a prophet, not a great teacher, not a special holy man, but God’s Messiah. Dale Bruner comments that Peter’s confession of belief in Jesus was like saying Jesus is the final King sent from the only true God, he is the answer, the point, the last word. Peter did not say that Jesus was one of many Messiahs, or that Jesus was his Messiah but perhaps not the Messiah for someone else. Peter said that Jesus was the Messiah, or in the Greek, the Christ. Peter’s statement, Peter’s conviction, Peter’s belief in Jesus as the Christ of the only living God is the foundation of faith upon which is built the life of the Christian church and the life of every individual Christian. There is no Christianity without faith in Jesus the Christ of God.

Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” What did Jesus mean by that? Our Roman Catholic siblings in the Christian family believe it to mean that Peter himself and then his successors down to the current Pope were to be the leaders of the church. We from the Protestant branch of the family understand things a bit differently. We believe that Jesus was speaking not so much about Peter as he was talking about Peter’s faith, the realization and the trust that Jesus is the Messiah that is the foundation of the church. In a sense we can reconcile both positions with this understanding: it is where faithful people like Peter will step out and accept Jesus for who he is and point out this truth to others that the true church of Jesus exists. The rock upon which the church is built is both things: faith in Jesus and faithful people who trust and follow Jesus.

Another way to understand this is to hear the further thing Jesus said to Peter, “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.” What Jesus meant by this is that the faith that Peter expressed is the very thing that opens the door for a person to have a relationship with God, or in other words, to enter the kingdom of the heavens. Any person of faith has the keys of the kingdom, so to speak, because they know the truth that must be believed and trusted and lived out, the truth about Jesus. Where that truth is accepted heaven is loosed, and wherever that truth is rejected, heaven is bound, as far as the believer or rejecter is concerned.

We, The Village Church, are expanding and enriching our ministry of sharing and proclaiming the truth about Jesus, that he is God’s Messiah. That is the bedrock foundation of everything else we say and do. If we ever lose sight of that we will cease to be a church. But to help us always remember this fact, the highest point of our new church will be a cross. And so we are building on the foundation of faith in Jesus, and we also are building in order to be faithful to him. Notice that Jesus told Peter, “On this rock I will build my church.” You see, Jesus is the one who makes the church happen. If Jesus is not around, there is no church. Jesus has been building us, the people of The Village Church, into a fellowship of faithful disciples for a long time now. He has been accomplishing much through us. Our process of building—whether it be constructing buildings or building up the ministry and outreach of our church—is really only a byproduct of Jesus’ building, of Jesus coming into our hearts and working his miracle of renewing and reshaping us into the people that he means for us to become. In order for you and me to be faithful to Jesus and faithful to our conviction about who he is, we must continue to build this church and to take part in the expansion of his kingdom. It was no accident that Jesus chose a place on the border between Israel and the rest of the world to have this conversation. For you and me to know that Jesus is the Christ is one thing that we cannot keep for ourselves or keep to ourselves. It is meant to be shared and lived out with the rest of the world. That world starts at the boundaries of this campus and it extends all around the globe.

We are building together. Jesus is building us into the church he wants us to become, and we pray constantly that he will guide us and that we will listen. Jesus builds us into builders of the church, people who by our worship, our service, our nurture, our mission, our fellowship, and our outreach are expressing our faithfulness to living in the way that he taught us to live. For you and me personally, that means that we never forget the fundamental truth about our relationship with God, that it begins with our trust and belief in Jesus as the Christ of God. It means that we trust Jesus enough to let him be the guide for everything we do in life. It means that we accept our place in his family and do our part to build up the family of the church. It means that we be willing to go into the rest of the world, a world full of other gods, other allegiances, other philosophies, and fearlessly proclaim the truth about Jesus as well as fearlessly live by the values and principles that he taught us.

Brothers and sisters, I believe that we are doing the right thing, the thing that Jesus would have us do, by expanding and updating and building for the future, not just in our physical facility, but even more so in our true life as the church, in our ministries and in our personal walk with him. In this season as we build together, each one of us faces a challenge. We face the challenge of completing this project with our faithful stewardship. And we face the challenge of allowing Jesus to build us into a more powerful, more loving, more serving, more courageous church, a church that is filled with the confidence that not even hell itself can defeat us. We are building on the foundation of our faith in Jesus the Christ and we are building so that others can come to discover that same gift of faith from God. There is no more solid rock upon which to build our lives.

Amen.