Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (30 August 2020).
Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (30 August 2020). The Scripture readings (Track II) can be found HERE
Image by RAHEEL SHAKEELfrom PIXABAY
Everything changed in a moment. Four simple words meant things would never go back to the way they were before.
Matthew begins today’s passage with these words: “From that time on.” That narrative note is the hinge on which everything moves. For in the scene that unfolds today we begin to shift from Jesus’ Galilean ministry to his passion. From this time on everything will be about preparing for the cross.
The conversation we drop in on today, is the second half of the Gospel passage that was appointed for last Sunday (Matthew 16:13-20). While gathered together Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They tell him, John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Jesus then wants to know what his closest companions have to say. So he asks, “But who do you say that I am?” To this Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” To Jesus’ question Simon Peter makes that profound confession of faith. For that proclamation Jesus blessed him, gives him the name Peter, and declares that he is the rock on which the Church will be built.
In the first half of this transition moment, Peter’s confession is part of a divine revelation. Jesus’ identity as the Messiah is proclaimed. But what exactly does that mean? What does Peter think he is actually saying in his confession?
Peter and the other disciples have clear expectations of what the Messiah will do. They have heard the words of the prophets, they know the tradition that has been handed down, they have a deep longing for the promises of God to finally be fulfilled. The Messianic image they had was of a great and powerful warrior. The Messiah was supposed to come and restore the Jewish kingdom by overthrowing oppressive empires. The Messiah was supposed to gather people together, raise up an army, conquer the occupying powers of Rome, and then claim his rightful seat upon the throne of David.
With this understanding in mind, after making his confession of faith, I wonder if Peter assumed that what came next would be preparing for this ultimate battle for liberation. I wonder if Peter assumed that from that time on, Jesus would be training them as warriors, telling them to sharpen their swords because it is time to go. But instead, “from that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering . . . and be killed.”
It is completely understandable that Peter does a double take. He believes he knows what the Messiah will do, Jesus affirms that he is in fact the Messiah, so therefore, since A+B=C, Jesus must be about to defeat the mighty Roman army and claim the throne for himself. This is the moment generations have been waiting for. For anything else to happen would be anathema.
When Jesus says he will suffer and die, all the hopes of the disciples come crashing down. From their perspective there was no future in a Messiah who dies. So Peter, who has just been given this new role and authority, steps in and declares that Jesus’ suffering and death must be prevented, “God for bit it, Lord,” Peter cries out, “This must never happen to you.” From where Peter, and the rest of the disciples sit, if Jesus suffers and dies then how can he really be the Messiah?
It might be worthwhile for us to pause here. To sit with Peter and the disciples in the shock and grief of Jesus’ passion prediction. They have spent their whole lives waiting, hoping, dreaming, for this moment, and in a breath they are told that it will not be so. Those hopes and dreams and expectations will not be filled in the way they think they should be. I wonder if there is grieving we need to do for dashed dreams, eviscerated expectations, and hopes unfulfilled? I wonder if we need to name the difficulties, challenges, and heart breaks of life and ministry?
It is through the gift of our faith, through the privilege of knowing the end of the story, that we can persist through whatever pain or grief we carry. Not pretending as if it does not exist, nor forgetting it was ever there, but growing through it, allowing God to guide us through, and being transformed along the way.
It this moment, however, Peter does not get the space to pause. His rebuke of Jesus, his trying to control how God will work in the world, is met with an intense rebuke of its own. Jesus turns to Peter and says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Earlier in the conversation, what we heard last week, Peter gets it profoundly right, and here just a few moments later he gets it spectacularly wrong. He goes from being the rock upon which the church is built, to the rock which is the obstacle to Jesus’ vocation as Messiah.
It might be worthwhile for us to pause here, and consider the times when we have been stumbling blocks. It might be good for us to recognize that from time to time, in our desire to control God and have things go our way, that we created unnecessary obstacles for God’s work to happen in the world – we have made it more difficult for others to carry out their ministries. There might just be times when we need to hear Jesus say to us, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
The second part of that rebuke is what we really need to pay attention to. Peter’s reaction is based upon the ways of this world, in this case the understanding that the only way to prevail is by military might. In calling him out, Jesus is saying to Peter, stop thinking the way the world thinks and start thinking the way God thinks.
The rest of what Jesus says in this passage are words to recalibrate the minds of the disciples so they can start setting their minds on the things of God: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
It is necessary for us to stop here, for we need to be recalibrated by these words as well.
I think it is a real shame that the phase “it’s your cross to bear” and the plethora of variations thereof are so casually used in our cultural vernacular. Too often at the first sign of inconvenience or annoyance, when there is something we really do not want to do, we pull out this phrase as a way of saying, “get over it,” “you’ve got no choice” or, “we all have things to do that are not pleasant and we’d rather avoid.” That is not what Jesus is saying here. The crucifixion is not some small inconvenience for Jesus. Taking up our cross is not about a slight momentary affliction, it is about choosing to die so that we might truly live.
Twentieth-century German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship writes about the costly nature of following Jesus and what it actually means to take up the cross. He writes:
If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the Gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering. . . this notion has ceased to be intelligible to a Christianity which can no longer see any difference between an ordinary human life and a life committed to Christ . . . The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world . . . As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death – we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die (Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p.88-89).
Taking up our crosses is about setting our minds on heavenly things. It is willingly choosing to forsake the ways of this world in order to live by the way of God. It means accepting whatever rejection or suffering might come as a result.
This is exactly what we have been talking about during our book study of James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree. This past week in considering chapter 3 we talked about Martin Luther King Jr. and his willingness, though not eagerness, to sacrifice his life for the furthering of the Gospel. He accepted the call to suffer shame and rejection and violence so that God’s people might be liberated from oppression.
The cross is a sign of hope, the source of courage and strength. In it all those who suffer at the hards of oppressive ruling powers, can see their own suffering, their own wounds and scars, their own bodies. There is solidarity in the Cross of Christ. The cross is the most profound and amazing source of love, it is God’s “No” to the world’s obsession with violence and power. It as the ultimate sign of liberation, for in the work God accomplishes on the cross the greatest enemy of humanity, death, is destroyed once and for all. As James Cone writes about Martin Luther King, “The cross protected King from the paralyzing fear of death, giving him the courage to fight for racial justice, no matter the cost” (Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p.82-83). We take up our crosses, not counting the cost, but joyfully accepting our role in the work of God in the world.
We have been called to no less a task than the disciples, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, and all those who surround us in that great cloud of witnesses.
If we are truly to claim the mantle of disciple then we too must be willing to sacrifice, to suffer shame and rejection, to deny ourselves. To be clear we are not called to suffering for the sake of suffering. Denying ourselves is not about self-abnegation or self-deprecation. It does not mean submitting ourselves to others in a way that deny’s our own personhood. This is not encouragement to stay in abusive relationships under a false banner of “sacrifice.”
This is a call to subordinate our will to God’s. It is giving up everything to follow the way of God. It is the process of self-emptying so that God can fill us entirely.
In a commentary about this Gospel passage, writter Debie Thomas wonders what it means for us to deny ourselves in our current national and global context. She writes:
Right now, I am asking myself these questions in the context of a global pandemic that shows no signs of letting up. I am asking in the context of police brutality, white supremacy, racial injustice, and gross economic inequality. I am asking in the context of global warming, mass extinction, droughts, and heat waves. I am asking in the context of fires destroying forests and towns . . . so the question becomes this: where do I locate myself amidst these crosses? What am I willing to lose in these times? What do I stand to gain? (HTTPS://WWW.JOURNEYWITHJESUS.NET/LECTIONARY-ESSAYS/CURRENT-ESSAY?ID=2733)
There is so much in our contemporary culture that encourages us to avoid suffering and death at all costs. Our society is more like the misguided Peter, than it is like Jesus. I cannot help but wonder what rebuke Jesus would offer to the world today in the face of violence, greed, poor environmental stewardship, and the notions of personal liberty over collective responsibility.
To take up our cross means to stand in the midst of the world’s suffering. We are called to more than occasionally glancing in the direction of pain, or simply catching it on the evening news. Jesus calls us to dwell there. To identify with those who are aching, weeping, screaming, and dying. We are called to sacrifice our comfort until everyone is able to share in it as well. We need to ask ourselves where do we stand in the midst of all these crosses?
Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem. From here on out everything is about preparing his disciples for what Jesus will face and for the crosses they will have to bear as well. From this time on, everything in our lives should be focused there as well. The cost for everyone will be different, some will be called to sacrifice more than others, but the call is the same. We must die to the ways of this world, we must give up the false promises and expectations of the kingdom of humanity, so that we might live the ways of the kingdom of God – so that we might have life and have it more abundantly.
Amen.