Matthew 16: 13-20

Reflection

There is a question hidden near the end of our reading from Exodus which, I think, might be one of the most honest questions anywhere in the Bible:

“Is the Lord among us or not?”

It is not a particularly polished question. It is not the sort of thing we imagine we are supposed to say in church. We are more comfortable with statements of faith. God is with us. God is good. God will provide.

But the people in the wilderness do not make a statement.

They ask a question. Is God among us or not?

And we need to understand something about the people asking it. These are not people having a slightly difficult week. They have lived through slavery. They have left behind the only world they knew. They have crossed the sea and entered the wilderness. They are free, but freedom has not immediately made life easy. The old certainties have disappeared, and the new life they were promised has not yet arrived. Now there is no water, and they are frightened. Traditionally, we have sometimes read stories like this and described the Israelites as complaining, ungrateful people. After everything God has done for them, surely they should have more faith? But I wonder whether that is fair.

Thirsty people ask questions about water.

Frightened people ask questions about safety.

People who have been hurt ask whether they can trust.

People whose world has changed ask what happens next.

Their question is not evidence of a lack of faith at all. Perhaps it is simply the most honest prayer they have: Are you here, God?

What strikes me about the story is that God does not demand a better attitude before giving them water.

God does not say, “Come back when you have learned to be more grateful.”

God does not ask them to pretend that the wilderness is wonderful. God meets them there. Moses strikes the rock.

From the most unlikely place, something hard, dry and apparently lifeless, water comes. Not an explanation. Not an answer to every question.

But what they need to continue. I think there is something profoundly gentle about that. Because sometimes Christianity has been too quick to offer explanations.

When something painful happens, we reach for phrases:

“Everything happens for a reason.” “God has a plan.” “Something good will come from it.”

Usually, these things are said kindly, but sometimes there is no sentence which makes what happened all right. Some experiences do not need to be transformed into blessings. Some things should not have happened. Some losses remain losses. Some wounds take a long time to heal. Some questions stay with us. Faith does not require us to pretend otherwise. The promise of this story is not that wilderness is secretly wonderful. The promise is that wilderness is not necessarily God-forsaken. There is a difference.

God can meet us in something without having caused it. God can bring life from somewhere without asking us to call the barren place good.

That matters when we remember our own stories. All of us carry a history. As individuals, as families, and as communities. Some memories bring laughter almost immediately. Some remind us of people we have loved. Some remind us how far we have travelled. Others are more complicated. There may be memories we would rather not revisit. Things we still do not fully understand. Times when people disappointed us. Times when institutions failed.

Times when we failed one another.

Times when we simply wondered: Where was God in all of that?

The Bible gives us permission to ask. It also gives us permission not to rush towards an answer. Because remembering honestly is not the same as remembering neatly. We do not have to divide our history into “good things” and “bad things” and then somehow make everything fit together. Human lives are more complicated than that. Church communities are more complicated than that. We can be grateful for some parts of our story and grieve others. We can treasure what has been good without pretending everything was good. We can recognise hurt without allowing hurt to become the whole story. We can acknowledge that sometimes we simply do not know what to make of something yet.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus asks another question.

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

The disciples give him the answers they have heard. John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah. One of the prophets. They tell Jesus what everybody else is saying.

Jesus makes the question personal: “But who do you say that I am?”

Peter answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Suddenly the conversation is not simply about what has been said before. It is about what Peter has discovered in relationship with Jesus.

Who is God here? Who is God now?

Those two biblical questions belong together.

From the wilderness: “Is God among us or not?”

And from Jesus: “Who do you say that I am?”

Neither question asks us to deny the past. But neither allows us to live entirely within it. They bring us back to the present.

Where is God among us now? Where do we see life emerging? Where do we encounter compassion? Where is someone finding courage they did not know they had? Where is kindness interrupting fear? Where is water appearing from rock? Often, I suspect, God is present in much more ordinary ways than we expect.

In the person who notices someone sitting alone. In the phone call that comes at the right moment. In laughter when things have become too serious. In someone saying, “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here.” In a community choosing to keep caring for one another even when the future looks different from the one they imagined. These things may not solve everything, but neither did the water from the rock solve everything.

The Israelites were still in the wilderness afterwards. There was still a journey ahead. There were still questions to be answered. But there was enough water for the next part of the journey.

Maybe, sometimes that is grace. Not having the whole road mapped out. Not receiving an explanation for everything that has happened. Not knowing exactly what comes next. But finding enough for today. Enough courage for one more step. Enough hope to imagine another possibility. Enough kindness to remind us that we are not alone. Enough grace to keep going.

Churches, like people, travel through different seasons. Things change. People come and go. Buildings change. Traditions change. Plans change.

Sometimes change is chosen and welcomed. Sometimes it most certainly is not. Sometimes we find ourselves somewhere between what has been and what will be, wondering what we are supposed to do with this strange place called ‘now’.

We do not have to do anything spectacular with it. We simply need to be here.

To remember honestly. To care for one another gently. To listen generously. To make room for different experiences of the same story.

And to remain open to the possibility that God is still bringing water from unexpected places. Because our history matters. But our history is not the whole of who we are. The difficult chapters matter. But they do not get to write the ending.

And whatever lies ahead, we do not enter it empty-handed. We carry love. We carry memories. We carry lessons learned, sometimes painfully. We carry the kindness we have received and the kindness we can offer. We carry one another, and somewhere among all of that, perhaps quietly and sometimes almost unnoticed, we discover the answer to that ancient wilderness question: Is God among us or not?

Look for the water. Look for compassion. Look for courage. Look for the people who continue to care. Look for life appearing where nobody expected it. Because there, even in the wilderness, we will find that God is among us still. Amen.

Rev Mhairi Gilchrist

4 October 2026