This is what true Thanksgiving does. It changes us at a deeper level than our skin. It acknowledges our true nature as creatures radically dependent on God in times of plenty as well as in times of want. It refocuses our concerns and our desires and our commitments from the things we have or the things we wish we have to the One to whom we belong and on whom we can rely.

As someone whose last name begins with a “W”, I’ve always appreciated those rare moments when a teacher would say something like “and, just for a change, let’s go in reverse alphabetical order” and, just like that, I would be moved from the back to the front of the line, displacing all those smug As and Bs as the last became first and the first became last.

It is easy to lose sight of just how unreasonable Jesus actually is – partly because we – and our forebearers – have worked very hard to make him less so. Finding it impossible to actually live as he says, we have come up with justifications and rationalizations and approximations to make our failure feel more acceptable. We accuse Jesus, either openly or covertly, of being too much of an idealist – of not taking into account the complications of the real world; the necessary compromises of real-politic – whether at the level of the nation-state or of the community or even at the level of our own all-too-human hearts.

As surely as God called Moses out of that burning bush, God is calling us. God is calling us to proclaim the good news of God in Christ in ways that our world can hear; in ways that will set God’s people free. God is calling us to minister to God’s creation with love and compassion. God is calling us to bear witness to the coming of the kingdom by living now as if it were already here.

Today, we hear Peter, full of love and excitement, bravely naming Jesus the Messiah and receiving great praise from his beloved teacher: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” And, with the praise, power: the keys to the kingdom; the authority to bind and to set free.

How Peter’s heart must have soared.

But, with apologies to Peter, we’re going to peek ahead and see what happens next.

This summer, we’ve been reading the family stories in the Book of Genesis, beginning with the call to Abram and Sarai and moving down through the generations to Joseph and his brothers…And although our lives are, by and large, a little less epic; they are not less complicated, bringing both joys and sorrows, ease and anxiety, love and hatefulness. What is God’s involvement in our lives? And where does our own free will come into play?