Pentecost 14

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 14
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: August 29, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 16:21-27 - But Jesus turned and said to Peter, "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. Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? . . ."

ISSUE: This passage is filled with baptismal imagery. It tells of the messiahship as that of Isaiah's suffering servant, and the image of Peter's (i.e. the world's) messiah as demonic. Those who follow Jesus are invited into the servant image, which is God's plan, as opposed to the world's image of an honorable success oriented warrior. It is about re-orientation. The passage speaks of being transformed and is fitting for people looking for new direction in their lives. For a world bent on happiness, security, playing it safe and maintaining one's status, the call of Christ is in sharp contrast to complacency.
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Here's a passage from Matthew that immediately follows last week's passage and we suddenly see Simon Peter suddenly and sharply in a dramatically different light. In last week's passage, Simon has that dramatic moment in his life where he confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, Son of the living God. Jesus says to him that this has been a divine revelation and awareness on this part. Then Jesus says to Simon, whose name is changed to "petros" which means rock or the nickname Rocky, that he now gives him the very keys to the Kingdom, or to the Domain of God. That changing of the name has the impact of a very dramatic and significant change in Peter's life and awareness of his calling into partnership with Jesus the Christ.
Just a couple of verses later in Matthew's gospel account for today, Peter becomes a demonic figure. Jesus says to him, "Get behind me Satan! Your are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." What we have in this passage is a kind of sparing, another situation of riposte on challenging between Jesus and Peter, peculiar to the Middle Eastern culture. It is a scene very much like the Temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. In that scene Satan spars with Jesus quoting Scriptures in order to dishonor or to disarm him. Peter had declared that Jesus was the Messiah, Son of the living God. This confession is followed by Jesus' teaching of the kind of messianic figure that he will be. He will go to Jerusalem, undergo great suffering, and be killed and on the third day rise. This kind of messiahship was not exactly what the peasantry and the Pharisees and Jewish leadership had in mind. Obviously Peter's thinking is quite in line with the common notion of messiahship. The Messiah, the real messiah, would be like the messiahship of their ancient King David. He was a military leader who united the tribes of Israel into one great and relatively powerful nation. For Matthew's period, people expected a messiah to rebuild the destroyed Jerusalem Temple, and take on the formidable task of throwing out the Romans. But Jesus is describing another kind of messiah that was described in Isaiah's passage and especially the Suffering Servant passages. The messiah will have the Spirit of God, be one who will bring good news to the poor, healing for the broken-hearted, and freedom for prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1-2) The Suffering Servant messianic image is also one who shall have no particular dignity or beauty, despised and rejected by men, enduring suffering and pain, and wounded and beaten for the sins of the people. He would be as a lamb led to slaughter. (Isaiah 5213-53:12) Peter following the more popular trend of a 'warrior' messiah rejects the suffering servant image. The 'suffering servant' image was not at this time an honorable image. Remember, a person's honor was most important in this period. People who suffered and died, especially on a cross were not honorable people. Peter wanted no parts of this kind of movement. He wanted honor and success, of course. So he challenges Jesus. "God forbid it! This must never happen to you."
Jesus responds to the challenge with an insult to Peter: 'You are acting like a Satan, a demon.' You are a stumbling block to me. You are getting in the way by thinking like everybody else thinks, and not like God thinks. If you are going to be a real follower then you too will have to take up the cross and follow me. 'You will have to give up your life, lose life as you think of it now, and be changed.'
Keep in mind that Jesus was bright enough to know that he was in big trouble. His teachings, and his healings, his ways were sharply at odds with the thinking of the time. He was not seen as honorable. He was a deviant itinerant preacher and holy man. All the people who had acted in similar ways: Elijah, Jeremiah, other prophets, and certainly John the Baptist met with extreme opposition. Following that same track, Jesus and faithful disciples would likely face similar fates. Yet Jesus calls his disciples to a way that was different. It was a way that was not seen as feasible, or honorable, or that was bent on being successful. To die on a cross was the ultimate humiliation; it was the total loss of honor as the world of that time understood honor. So Jesus is telling Peter he thinks and understands things the way the world thinks and understands. He is going to have to change if he is going to be a true disciple. He will along with the other disciples have to be prepared for a Great Reversal in their thinking and comprehension of what messiahship and discipleship meant. They would have to become dis-oriented in order to become re-oriented into what is true honor and soldier like loyalty. The real, true, valid honor for Jesus and his messiahship is described in the Gospel account of John 15:13, "The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them."
I am also reminded of the passage also from Matthew (7:21), "Not everyone who calls me Lord, Lord, shall enter the Kingdom (or Domain of God), but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do. To be genuinely honorable disciples is to participate in the thinking, in the will, of God. there must be a relinquishing of what the world thinks and commands. Again, it is a matter of re-orientation, and reversal.
I am afraid our modern way of thinking makes us very uncomfortable with this passage. It makes me uncomfortable, because in our culture we resist being victims or allowing ourselves to victimized. The victim is the poor soul thought of in a demeaning sort of way. But in this case, the victimization of Jesus and his disciples by the world was thought to be demeaning and dishonorable. However, the process led to resurrection and new life, the genuine and true bestowal of honor by God.
In this passage Peter is really going though his own death and resurrection. He has to die to his old way of thinking and reclaim a holy thinking, a divine thinking, a new Christ-like way of thinking. This passage is really very baptismal like. It is about dying and rising to something that is new. It's about conversion. We all have our image of things that our important and an appreciation of Jesus as Lord. We look to Jesus for comfort, for strength, for personal salvation. He is our Lord. He is the socially and personally acceptable religious experience. Yet this image is often very compatible with what we might call our cultural respectability. Jesus is something of the sweet one, and respectable, gentle, successful middle class people are the epitome of being successful in the world and at one with precious Jesus. The understanding that we are called into suffering servanthood as baptized into Christ is not exactly what is in the forefront of our religious thinking. We are often more defensive that avant-garde, of sticking out our necks. We are more comfortable for instance with the whole idea that Jesus died for our sins, for my personal indiscretions than that Jesus died for and because of the horrendous injustices that persisted in the world. Jesus died and gave up his life in shear caring for the poor, the lost, the last, and the least.
Today, and for many years people have seen baptism as something you do for babies to keep them living happily ever after in a state of religious bliss. Does that thought not come across as a bit meaningless and trivial? Martin Luther King is reported to have said, "If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live." What is worthwhile in our lives is that for which we are will to give up things. Worthwhile life is a life in which we deeply and profoundly care about something or some person, some cause or purpose. Sometimes I think it is important for us to be very focused or intentional about what it is that god would have us to do and to be as his faithful disciples. This issue is one, I think, of discernment. We have to be intentional about our calling as a parish. The vestry may need to be more disciplined about its intentionality and leadership. Certainly the Rector needs to be clear about what God is calling him/her to be or do. All of us as Christians in the world may need to be intentional about our lives. How do we really resonate, join with Christ to be instruments of grace in the world as opposed to spectators, or as opposed to simply buying in to the ordinary cultural call to indifference, success, personal self-amusement and complacency? We really can become very wrapped up in the way the world thinks, and how we do not want to be different or in some way seen as unusual or counter-cultural. If that is the case, then we really do have to ask who it is to whom we belong. Is it the world or is it partnership as disciples with Jesus Christ?
St. Paul expressed this Gospel passage beautifully in the Romans (12:1-8) Epistle this morning: "Do not be conformed to his world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - What is good and acceptable and perfect." Baptized into the death of Christ we rise as gifted people with purpose and meaning. It is only in the dying to our old selves and to the world that we live meaningfully and with Christ in the new.
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