Proper 16 A + Who are you? + 8.23.26

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M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Exodus 1:8–2:10; Ps.124; Romans 12:1–8; Matthew 16:13–20)

 

Good morning, everyone! I am very happy to be back with you all at All Santos and I hope the time has been an interesting one as you have heard various preaching voices. I am certainly grateful for the time of rest and renewal and a bit of adventure I have had over the past two months. I was blessed to travel to Japan, including the island of Okinawa, to see one of my best friends and my goddaughter, and then I came back for a rest before heading to an eight-day Centering Prayer retreat. After the retreat and a rest, with Dave’s funeral thrown in there, Alene and I headed to my birth country of England and saw some cousins, communicated with my godmother and got to stay with another dear friend in Hull. Then we journeyed on to Wales and Dublin, Ireland. We stopped by Eugene, Oregon, connecting with Monica there, on the way home, to see some other friends. It was a wonderful adventure and a successful one because we felt sufficiently recharged to be excited to be back home and back to our churches and Alene’s therapy work.
The Centering Prayer retreat was very powerful. Let by Fr. Bill Sheehan, an almost 90 year old Roman Catholic priest who was at the first Centering Prayer retreat by Fr. Thomas Keating in the US more than 40 years ago, led the retreat. While we were in silence most of the time, Fr. Sheehan led us in sessions once a day which not only shared Keating’s main concepts around Centering Prayer but also shared personally from his over 4 decades of contemplative prayer practice. And the first day, he asked us a question. Who are you?

And the answer was, of course, a beloved child of God. Because we all have other identities but that one is the most important, the most central, and what we all have in common. After which response, Fr. Bill said, with a thick Massachusetts accent, “so, what’s your problem?” Which of course cracked us all up!

So of course, when I read today’s gospel reading , and Jesus asking “Who do you say that I am?,” I could not help but think of this moment. To Jesus’ question, what does Peter answer? (the Messiah) So how does he know? Jesus implies it is only through God’s inspiration that Peter can know such a thing.

He has a gift of insight. For all his flaws, he can see right through to a thing. Just a couple of weeks ago, we read he was the one to trust enough to walk on water with Jesus. Our passage from Romans talks about spiritual gifts, and this is Peter’s spiritual gift- to be able to see beyond what is apparent to what is wholly true.

We are invited to do something similar in our prayer lives. To see beyond what is immediately apparent. And how do we know? How do we gain this insight? We must be willing to be transformed. In Centering Prayer, we must give four consents. The first is God’s invitation that we consent to the fundamental goodness of our being. The second is that we consent to the gift of our creature, including our sexual energy. I understood this to mean that we embrace all of our energies and direct them in positive ways. The third is that we consent to the gift of our mortality. And the fourth is that we consent to be transformed. That we are willing to die to the external self so that depth of who we are is revealed. It is only then that we can make our unique contribution to the world.[1] That is what St. Paul means when he speaks of us being transformed in the renewing of our minds. In contemplation and other prayer, we receive God’s guidance for us.

But this is never just for us. It is in fact for the good of the world. Which brings me to Shiphrah and Puah. What amazing ladies! They had a whole empire bearing down on them and they said, in the words of one of the queens from the musical Six, “no-no-no-no-no-no-no-way!” They feared God more than Pharaoh and they found a way to let those babies be born. John Lewis might say they were making Good Trouble! But this good rebellion was not just for the individual babies, although that might have been enough. Because in saving Moses, Miriam and Moses and Aaron are able to save a whole people by leading them out of Egypt, through the desert and to the entrance of the promised land, all with God’s help.

No good deed is wasted or for just one of us. Every good deed has knock-on effects that affect others in a positive way. So, going back to the question we started with – who are you? – Can we claim our identity today as beloved children of God? Take a moment and just feel God’s love for you today. Inhale God’s love, exhale God’s love. If you really feel centered in this identity, what does that mean for you today? Are you feeling led to go out and resist in some small way, or show some act of kindness, or just to pray for babies around the world who may need fierce midwives to look out for them? Only you can know what God has put on your heart, but in order to be transformed, you must first listen. So take some time in prayer and meditation – however you do that – in the days to come, and see what you hear. You just might be surprised. But one thing is for certain. God has given you a gift and has a truth for you. What will it be?

Amen.


[1] Fr. Bill Sheehan, Notes from Centering Prayer Retreat at Holy Spirit Retreat Center, July 23, 2026.

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