Poor Peter
This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, 9/15 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Mark 8:27-38. While living in Bethlehem, in the West Bank of Palestine, trips to the northern part of Israel were our favorite for vacations with our small children. One of the last places we visited was called Banyas, in Arabic. In ancient times, the Greek god of nature, Pan, was worshiped there. The area is located at the headwaters of the Jordan River and is very lush and beautiful. Noted as a center of pagan worship, Caesarea Phillipi, is where Jesus asked his followers the powerful question of his identity. In Jesus’ time, “Caesar was honored in the civil religion as Lord, Savior, and Son of God. The issue of whom one confessed as Lord is already posed by the context in which Mark places this story—in a particularly powerful way if, [since], Mark and his readers live[d] in this area” (M. Eugene Boring & Fred B. Craddock, The People’s New Testament Commentary ). In Mark’s gospel, thi