A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church on Sunday 23 August.  The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks, you can catch up with the service here.  The sermon starts at 36:39 in.

The Bible passage is Matthew 16:13-20 and Duncan  led and preached.  In the course of the service, Iain Ross presented Erica Cload with a gift on behalf of the Sound Desk Team and the whole church. Erica, a volunteer on the desk, is leaving to study at Edinburgh University.  Duncan welcomed Sheena Thompson, who is completing studies at Highland Theological College and will be attached to Hilton Church for her probationary year before being ordained as an ‘Ordained Local Minister.’

Do listen to Duncan’s sermon on the catch-up.  It was about Jesus questions to his disciples (see Matthew 16:13-20): ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’ and ‘Who do you say that I am?’  The second question comes to us all as Jesus asks us ‘Who do you say that I am?’  It is not enough to know what other people think about Jesus – we need to make our mind about him ourselves, and respond accordingly.

The disciple Peter was very perceptive: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’, he said, glimpsing that Jesus was indeed the promised King of the Jews.  He was commended by Jesus for this insight. But the limitations of his understanding emerged shortly afterwards:

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’ (Matthew 16:21-22)

And Jesus severely rebuked him.  Duncan’s point was that our faith, like Peter’s, can fluctuate:  there are days of clarity, when we see and understand clearly; but there are also days when our perception is flawed, restricted.  And yet, despite knowing the instability of Peter’s faith, Jesus, as Duncan put it:

Still trusts him, still calls him, still loves him.

And that I believe is the ultimate message for you and me too.

Like Peter, we are a mixed bag, faithfulness and commitment, contradictions and inconsistencies, times when we rise to the occasion and times when we run away. And yet to the very end Peter is entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom and so I believe are we!

On the rock of our testimonies and our faith, Jesus will continue to build his church. What a trust Jesus placed in Peter!  What a trust Jesus places in us. What a reassurance we have in the midst of a chaotic and often discouraging world: ‘on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it’. (Matthew 16:18)