There is a moment in every serious relationship with God when the sweetness runs out and the cost shows up. Today's readings put that moment right in front of us — first in the mouth of a broken prophet, and then in the mouth of Peter, the very rock on whom the Church is built.

​Scripture quotations from the NABRE (Readings: Isaiah 22:19-23; Psalm 138:1-2, 2-3, 6, 8; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20)

There is a difference between authority and strength, and the readings today ask us to know which one we are trusting.

I want to begin with a question that sits underneath all three of today's readings: who gets to belong? Who gets a seat at the table, a place at the altar, a hand on the door of God's house? It's an old question, and it's a question every generation of believers has to answer again, because the temptation to draw the circle too small never really goes away.

​There is a moment in tonight's Gospel that every one of us has lived through in some form. Peter is out on the water. The wind is against the boat. The waves are doing what waves do in the dark — rising, refusing to be reasoned with. Into the middle of that chaos walks a figure the disciples cannot make sense of. Their first instinct is fear: "It is a ghost." Who could blame them? When we're being tossed around, the last thing we expect is for God to come walking toward us across the very thing frightening us.

There is a particular kind of exhausting anxiety that comes from feeling like we don't have enough — not enough time, not enough money, not enough strength, not enough of ourselves left to give to the people who need us - our families, jobs, church. If you have ever felt this way, you know something of what the disciples felt on that hillside in today's Gospel.