But it is enough for Mary to understand that she is being asked to serve her God and her people; to participate in something worth the risk; a new chapter in the story of God’s promises. She doesn’t know everything she is saying “yes” to – but she knows who is asking and she is brave and bold and strong so she says “yes”, giving her whole self – body and soul and reputation – to the fulfilment of God’s story.

God has cast down the mighty and lifted up the lowly; God does cast down the mighty and lift up the lowly; God will cast down the mighty and lift up the lowly.

These are declarations of faith and they are powerful. They have sustained people in moments of crisis and over generations of struggle. But declarations of faith are not intended purely for comfort or sustenance. They are intended to shape lives; to direct attention and action in accordance with that faith.

Jesus’ story reveals that the king, sitting in judgement over the nations, was not watching from afar and was not simply travelling with the righteous but was with those the righteous cared for. That is the vantage point from which the king watched the world – this is the centre from which all else flows.

The strangeness of this parable lies in the dissonance between the story and what Jesus usually teaches about wealth and reward in the Kingdom of God… …which should make us suspect that this parable isn’t actually about wealth – and may not be about the Kingdom of God, either.

So what, then, might it be about?

A brief reflection on the Greatest Commandment before the congregation entered into a lively discussion amongst themselves.

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.