8 30 20 Sermon

August 30, 2020
P13A 2020 Matthew 16:21-28

Have you ever had a really great day, and then woke up the next day and everything just goes horribly wrong? That’s Peter in Matthew’s gospel. Last week he was the rock on which the church was to be built. This week he’s the stumbling block who tries to get in the way of Jesus fulfilling his mission. But Peter is only the first in an unbroken line of disciples who trip all over their good intentions in a misguided effort to follow Jesus; Peter’s legacy of missing the point lives on today, and it’s an easy trap for us to fall into along with him.
Immediately before this passage Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was, and Peter correctly identified him as the Son of God, the Messiah. So far so good. Then Jesus starts to explain what it means for him to be God’s Son, anointed for the task of living out God’s loving will perfectly as a human being. It means that he will challenge the status quo to the point where he will be persecuted by religious leaders, be murdered by the government, and on the third day be raised. The rising on the third day part sounds good, but Peter has no patience for what comes before that. Suffering? Death? That does not sound very messianic to Peter, or for that matter, to any of the rest of Israel who were eagerly awaiting God to deliver them from the hands of their enemies, which, at that time, meant Rome.
Peter and all of Israel with him anticipated a messiah who was going to take on the empire and win. Their land had been colonized and occupied; the people were taxed and terrified. They weren’t waiting for someone to free them from the power of sin so that they could live a good eternal life; they were waiting for someone to free them from the power of Rome so that they could live this life with some measure of peace, justice, and sufficiency. But Jesus didn’t come to fight the Roman Empire—at least he didn’t come as a military hero or just to challenge the legions of Rome. Jesus came to establish God’s Kingdom on earth, which had and has much farther-reaching consequences than just taking down a single political power.
We have an idea of what the kingdom is supposed to look like because pray for it all the time. It’s where God’s will is done—that is, when my will clashes with God’s will, God’s will wins out. It’s where everybody gets daily bread—that is, not where one person gets a whole grocery store worth of steak while some go hungry, but there’s enough for everyone. It’s where we forgive and are forgiven—that is, not where vengeance and petty competition rule the day. It’s where we recognize who is supposed to have the power and the glory—that is, it’s Thine, not mine.
We can hardly fault Peter for thinking in human terms instead of setting his mind on divine things, because that’s the only example he had. The religious leaders in his day, the ones who should have known God’s word and will the best, still decided that they liked the privilege and power that came from cozying up to the Roman government better than serving the people of God. Peter would have seen the perks and privileges that the chief priests and scribes enjoyed from Rome and expected to get the same from Jesus, especially considering that Jesus had just promised Peter that he was going to be the rock on which the church was built. It’s no wonder that Peter can’t comprehend how, if Jesus is the Son of God, he could possibly be subjected to a future of suffering and violence.
But, as Jesus points out in no uncertain terms, that kind of thinking is exactly the logic Satan tried to use to tempt Jesus in the wilderness: If you are the Son of God…do all these things that claim your power and exploit your privilege. If Peter and the other disciples and we are going to follow Jesus, we’re going to have to get behind a whole new way of life. At it’s root, what Peter’s blunder here illustrates is the age old conflict between what we call the theology of the cross and the theology of glory, or you might have heard it as the gospel of Christ versus the gospel of prosperity. It’s any time that someone tries to say that the way we can tell we are in good with God is when our lives reflect worldly success: health, wealth, power in whatever form we may want to exercise it in our lives. Whatever makes us look like winners. The problem with that is that Jesus himself, the one we’re supposed to be following, didn’t live a life that would be labeled “successful” by human standards. He challenged our whole human perspective, and in the process, he so angered those who benefited from that human system of power, privilege, and exploitation, that they crucified him for it. And, Jesus says, if anyone is going to follow in his footsteps, they had better be prepared to walk right up to their own cross.
How is this good news for us? When we find ourselves engaged in a struggle—especially a struggle that we undertake on behalf of others—we know that it is no more than what Jesus did and calls us to do. We are not taken in, as Peter was, by the tempting but false assumption that if we simply follow Jesus, everything will be good and glorious by human standards. We can stop trying to measure our worth by human metrics that don’t matter to the Divine One.
I knew sooner or later someone would get around to spouting terrible theology in the midst of the pandemic. It was just a couple days ago a pastor I know from seminary had a friend who contracted COVID, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, her church told her that she caught it as punishment for sin. This story right here shows us that that’s never, ever how it works with our good God. After all, they crucified Jesus, and he was the only one of us who lived without sin. It’s just that true resurrection only lies on the other side of death, and there are many, many evils in this world that still need to be put to death before all God’s children will be able to experience life the way God means for it to be. Following Jesus isn’t easy; it isn’t supposed to be. But that’s where the life is. May we be willing to lose whatever in this world would keep us from finding life in God’s kingdom.