I was a strange child in many ways. The way I'm interested in today was my habit of collecting stones. Not just any stones – though I'm told I did used to eat gravel as a toddler – I always had a discerning palate. But crystals, rock formations. Specimens. I would save my pocket money all year round and then, once a year, just after my birthday, take a trip to a big hotel in Harrogate where the annual gem and mineral fair was held. Sometimes I would have up to £300 to spend on stones. I was like a kid in a sweet shop – if you like your sweet that you like is rock.

Why did I did I do this, for about – perhaps there was something that appealed to both my inner geek and inner artists. Both regular and classifiable – I could once have told my pyrite from my perovskite in the same way that many children know their PSP's from their 3DS's, but on the other hand unique form – single crystals are largely identical but their combinations into towers, and geodes and tunnels, their colours, their textures from delicate as cotton wool to hard as diamond.

Or maybe I just needed to get beaten up a bit more in secondary school – which I duly did and stopped collecting – although I still have three 6ft glass display cases full of specimens in my living room at home.

Reading the gospel today, where Simon is renamed, rebranded by Jesus – or Peter – the Greek name for rock - I am tempted to unleash my inner amateur geologist. Most rock formations are formed for example by extreme heat and pressure – it is this that often gives them their strength and it is tempting to speculate on Peter's experiences with Jesus as forming him in the heat and pressure of discipleship and persecution and giving him the strength to lead the church through its birth.

And yet I don't think that Jesus had any particular geological point in mind.

And anyway a lot of rock is simply squashed dead fish and mud and this is not too promising a metaphor.

Similarly there are plenty of good cultural references might inform our understanding of Peter the rock. From the strutting, iconoclastic proclamation of Rock music, through to Rocky the boxer, who gets thoroughly beaten up for the first 85 minutes of the film before staging an amazing slow motion All American comeback. Perhaps we might see something of Peter in these.

And yet there are at least as many negative connotations of stone to consider. Petrification is not usually a positive process. Neither is being petrified, in either sense. A heart of stone is not to be prized.

Stony often refers to silence – and a rocky road is only good if its a cake or an icecream by Ben and Jerry.

In most of these things one quality is being prized or frowned upon above others, the hardness, the inflexibility of stone. In what Jesus says in identifying Peter as a rock to be build upon, as a solid foundation, there is something of this quality in view. But is Peter being acclaimed for just his steadfastness? Are hardness and immutability Christian virtues to which we should aspire? Are they virtues Peter actually embodied?

The Old Testament reading chosen for today, like most lectionary readings, is not there by accident but is chosen to shed some light, to provide some interpretive context. There Isaiah says to the people “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug”. Here he is reminding people of their ancestors Abraham and Sarah. Again the image of strength and certainty is not accidental. Abraham and Sarah are the archetypal rocks of the Jewish faith It is also likely that the early church understood Peter to be this rock, and the church to be the new Eden and salvation Isaiah longs for. But Isaiah is talking about more than strength. Looking to the rock from which you are hewn for him is about being true to who you are and where you have come from. Being dug from this quarry does not just mean being strong, it means being faithful. Faithful both to who you are and to the God who calls out what you can be.

The sculptor Michaelangelo believed that in his carving he was not creating a statue, rather he was revealing the form that was already there, hidden inside the lump of stone beneath his skilled hands and chisel. There is something of this spirit which pervades our readings today, and is most expressed in Paul's charge to live out our callings each according to the gifts we have been given. Again it is at its heart a message to build upon the rock of your own foundations, to be faithful to who you are and to what you can become.

If we return to the gospel with these ideas in mind, we can again find these themes there.

We need to understand that names had a meaning throughout the bible. It was common for a child to be given a name that conveyed a message. The most extreme example being the prophet Hosea who named his daughter “Not to be pitied” and his son “ You are not my people”, which must have caused some consternation at registration on the first day of school.

So the act of Jesus renaming Simon needs to be understood in this context. Simon after all already has a perfectly good name with a meaning of its own. It is ironic for us who might think of Simon as the one who says, but in Hebrew Simon means one who listens. Or specifically one who hears the word of God.

In the context of the reading, Simon is the first to truly hear and receive the word of God in Jesus. He is also the first to recognise the true identity of Jesus. In response Jesus recognises Simon's true identity, and calls him to explore that identity further.

His response “Simon son of Jonah, you are Peter” translates therefore as something like this.

Simon – the one who listens, the one who hears, you have lived up to your name. You have truly listened, you have truly heard when no-one else would. You have been faithful to who you were born to be. You are the son of Jonah – named for the reluctant prophet, but a name that also means peace, dove, spirit. You are reminded that you are a messenger, a bringer of the peace of the spirit. You will be faithful to your ancestry, to where you have come from. Faithful to the name of your father as well as your own. But now I have a new name for you, but really it is your old name, Peter, the rock, the faithful one. I give you this new name to tell you that you will build my church, not through your hardness or your strength, but through your faithfulness. Faithful to the rock from which you were hewn, faithful to where you came from, who you are, and who you can become.

So may we, cut from the same quarry as living stones, continue to build his church, through our faithfulness.

Amen