A Homily on Matthew 16:21-28
For the Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (and the Twenty Fourth of Covid Worship)
For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
August 30, 2020
*This document comes from an oral manuscript.
Our Jesus story this morning begins with the words, “from that time on…” Which means we need a bit of a reminder here if we are going to do this story justice. We need a bit of an “as previously seen on…” recap.
Our story this morning picks up immediately after the story we heard last week, where Jesus takes the disciples to Caesarea Philippi and it’s there he asks them the question, Who do you say that I am? They all take turns offering what others say about Jesus, but unlike you and me, Jesus does not care what you know about what others are saying about him, he only cares what you are saying about him. So the question again, a bit more direct this remix: Who do you say that I am?
And Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God.”
You are the Savior, you are the one who has been promised, you are the one the world has been waiting for, you are God here on earth, you are Love Incarnate.
Right answer. A gold star.
And once this truth is out there, Jesus then begins to explain to the disciples that this next part of his journey is about to get rough. This journey is going to take him to Jerusalem where he will suffer and eventually be killed only to rise three days later.
The whole thing is a lot for the disciples to take in… it’s a lot for us to take in and we are reading this story way after the fact and we know the ending.
Peter, having gotten the last question right, maybe feeling himself just a little bit, responds “no… that is not how this goes. None of this will ever happen to you.”
And Peter’s response makes total sense… when you have just found the one your heart has been longing for, when you have just found The One, you start thinking about Happily Ever After and Until Death Do Us Part, you don’t just turn straight to suffering and death.
That is not how things work.
This is not the Messiah and Savior they were looking for… the political power, the unconquered warrior, the rich and wealthy king, the one who would stand out front and lead the battle charge, the Goliath.
Except in God’s economy, things are a bit topsy turvy.
And even though we often forget it, we are living in God’s economy, Peter is in God’s economy and he seems to have forgotten this truth.
So with that reply, Peter goes from being top of the class to last in the class. This was a pop quiz that changed all the class rankings, magna cum laude to just hoping he can scrape by and pass.
Jesus turns to him, “Get behind me Satan, you are a stumbling block to me.” In this moment Peter goes from being the Rock to being a stumbling block, it’s really clever word play here by Jesus, if only we were supposed to be caught by Jesus’ ability to turn a phrase.
But Jesus continues. “Get out of my way Peter, you have no idea how God works… Anyone who wants to be part of this, to be in on this, has to understand that this path we follow, the very Way is about losing your life, not finding it. It’s about embracing suffering rather that running from it. You find yourself by losing yourself, by giving it all up.”
And it’s here I want to interrupt Jesus, to step in, to make this all go down a bit easier… To offer a bit of homiletical advice, this might be nicer if you said it differently, make them laugh first, offer some better adjectives, lead with the good news of resurrection and not the suffering and dying part, no one really wants to hear that.
But as I sat with the advice that I want to give Jesus this week, I found myself coming back to a question I had recently discovered: Am I more in love with the idea of following Jesus than in actually following Jesus?
Because I think I might be.
Because all the advice I want to give Jesus, that Peter is trying to give Jesus is about changing the very way of Jesus.
You see, if I had written this story, if God had asked me to be a consultant on this whole Salvation Love Experiment I have to tell you that it would have looked really different. Jesus would have spent a whole lot more time in comfortable places around people who were accepted and influential; isn’t that the way you change things, by befriending influence? And there would have been a whole lot less suffering and mess. And Jesus would have waited to deal with a lot of the issues of the day until he was in a place of political power and had the entire world just eating out of his hands because then he could point out the problem areas, and in doing so the revolution comes without the death and suffering, except for those who have to wait a bit longer for the world to get ready. And that is just the start. There is a whole host of things that I would have changed according to the way I think and the way I love.
I have to remind myself that the way I think and the way I love is not the fullest.
The way I think and the way I love is drastically shaped by the world around me, which means drastically shaped by rugged individualism, the pursuit of self-determination, the false values of popularity and power, the narrative of materialism, the desire to be liked and adored. You know, all the stuff Jesus just hates, all the mess that we constantly fall for.
And that is not love. That is not the way of Jesus.
Love is not individualism, love is not self-determination, love is not power, love is not popularity, love is not materialism, love is not the desire to be liked and adored.
None of that fits in the Kingdom of God, it’s what I pray each day, this pandemic is washing off of me -- off of us, baptizing us from, quarantining us until those horrible symptoms are gone because they spread so easily.
Love is so different than that.
Don’t take my word for it… take Jesus’… “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 if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”
The brilliant Maya Angelou once commented, “I am grateful to have been loved and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold -- that’s ego. Love liberates. It doesn’t bind.”
It’s exactly what Jesus is teaching us this morning: love liberates.
And that means that following love, following liberation is going to take us to the places where things are bound and need to be unbound, and that is going to involve death and suffering. But the Gospel truth is always this: suffering and death lead to resurrection. It leads the place Saint Theresa wrote about when she wrote, “it is all about love melting in love.”
That is Jesus -- love melting in love.
And love means letting go.
Love means community over individualism.
Love means not choosing and creating my own path, self-determination, but following the path Jesus laid out.
Love is sacrifice and not power.
Love is embracing suffering and mess, not running from it.
Love is the suffering, death, Cross and resurrection, not just resurrection.
Love is the least of these and not popularity.
Love is sharing and giving opposed to materialism.
Love is not about being liked and adored because that is all about me, love is me letting my life be a vehicle for more love and Jesus, not more me.
That is the work.
I think it’s really interesting that these two stories, two stories that I think ask central questions of our faith, who do you say that I am and what is your life about, questions we need to be letting Jesus ask us -- who do you say that I am and what is your life all about… to ask these, Jesus takes the disciples away.
Away from routine, away from their normal lives, away from their families, away from the world as they knew it… and then he asks these questions. It’s a retreat of sorts, a Pause.
You know, like the Pause we have right now.
A few weeks ago I was talking to a dear friend, a fellow pastor who is someone who really knows me, it’s a soul friendship and she is one of my people -- one of my abler-souls, we were talking about life and ministry and she said something that caught me; she was talking about some soul work and what is going on in her right now and she said, “Griff, I am not going to waste a perfectly good pandemic.”
I have thought about those words a lot.
This pandemic gives us a chance way beyond simply to not just make sure we don’t have COVID germs, it gives us a chance to get rid of a lot of sickness that we have been spreading: individualism, self-determination, love of power and popularity, materialism. It’s a time that we can let Jesus in for an extended time and I am willing to bet my entire ministry that if we are listening, Jesus is asking us the same questions he asked the disciples:
Who do you say that I am?
What is your life all about?
First Austin, love means letting go.
Love means community over individualism.
Love means not choosing and creating my own path, self-determination, but following the path Jesus laid out for me.
Love is sacrifice and not power.
Love is embracing suffering and mess, not running from it.
Love is the suffering, death, Cross and resurrection, not just resurrection.
Love is the least of these and not popularity.
Love is sharing and giving opposed to materialism.
Love is not about being liked and adored because that is all about me, love is me letting my life be a vehicle for more love and Jesus, not more me.
That is Jesus, love melting in love.
And that is our work. May it be so. Amen and Amen.
*artwork: My Lord, My World, My Style-Flowing through my heart: The Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Aatmica Ojha
0 comments:
Post a Comment