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| Crosses for pilgrims to carry as they walk the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem |
"Hard to Imagine"
Matthew 16:21-28
One minute, Jesus is telling Peter “You’re the rock on
which I will build my church” and the next minute he’s calling him “a stumbling
block.” Can you imagine? Maybe,
as David Lose suggests, that’s the difficulty. Peter couldn’t imagine.
In last
week’s gospel lesson, Jesus asked his disciples who the people were saying he
was, and they repeated what they’d been hearing: that Jesus was one of the
prophets. Then Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God!” And Jesus sternly commanded the disciples not
to tell anyone he was the Messiah.
Many
Biblical scholars believe that when Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah,
he was imagining a warrior-king, like David-- who would drive out the Roman
occupiers and liberate the Israelites. When you think about it, that’s a
reasonable hope. The Romans were foreign occupiers. They imposed Roman law, and
they taxed the people to pay for the occupation. They enforced the occupation and taxation by
violence. So many people hoped that God’s Messiah--the “anointed” would set
them free from the Roman Empire, transform the world and set things right.
The problem
with Peter’s expectation isn’t that it’s unreasonable--but that it doesn’t
really change anything. Rome is holding Palestine by force and violence. If
Jesus were a warrior-king, he would have to use greater force and violence to
drive them out. Eventually, another empire with even more force or willing to
do even greater violence could come along and take over. So, who’s in charge
might change-- but the cycle of force and violence keeps going.
Jesus
knows this. In his preaching and
teaching about God’s kingdom of forgiveness, mercy, and love-- rather than
retribution, violence, and hatred-- he’s challenging the powers that be. And he’s challenging their understanding of
how the world can be, if God’s will is done.
Jesus
tells his disciples that some of their religious leaders will inflict great
violence upon him and kill him. When you step back and remember the gospel
story, it isn’t surprising that Jesus was killed. From the time of his birth,
Jesus was such a threat to the rule of force and violence that Herod was
frightened “and all of Jerusalem with him.”[1]. Herod
was willing to slaughter all male children under the age of two in and around
Bethlehem, to try to destroy the one who might someday replace him as Rome’s
puppet king. Herod counted on the chief priest and scribes to cooperate with
his agenda and that of the Empire.
Peter hears all this talk of suffering
and death. Clearly, this isn’t what he’s imagined or hoped for. He’s sure this
is no way to be the Messiah or to successfully build the kind of organization
he had in mind, so he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him. “Listen, Jesus, this can’t be what God intends for you. There
must be a different way. Our deliverer is supposed to save us from our enemies and
rule the nations with power and might.! That’s what we thought we were signing
on for--not a cross!”
But Jesus turns and looks at his
disciples, and he sternly rebukes Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things
but on human things.”
Then he says, “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, and for the sake of
the gospel, will save it.”
Can we
imagine what that means? What does that look like? I think
it looks different in different times and contexts.
Many of
the leaders of the movements to abolish the slave trade and the institution of
slavery in Great Britain and the United States were Christians who felt called
to speak truth to power, to work for the cause of God’s justice for all. Those who were part of the Underground
Railroad and helped fugitive slaves to escape to freedom faced personal danger
and legal consequences.
During
the most terrible years of World War II, when inhumanity and political insanity
held most of the world in their grip and the Nazi domination of Europe seemed
irrevocable and unchallenged, a miraculous event took place in a small
Protestant town in southern France called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. There,
quietly, peacefully, and in full view of the Vichy government and a nearby
division of the Nazi SS, Le Chambon's villagers and their clergy organized to
save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death. The story of “how goodness happened” there is
told in a beautiful book entitled Lest
Innocent Blood Be Shed.[2]
Also
during World War II, ordinary Danish Christians who saw their Jewish neighbors
being rounded up by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps… and responded by
ferrying many of them by night to safety in Sweden.
These
people knew that taking up the cross and following Jesus would be a way of
sacrifice and risk. And yet, in the book
about what happened in Le Chambon, when villagers were asked about what they
did, they were rather matter-of-fact about it. The people needed to find
sanctuary and safety, they were able to work together and do it, and they
seemed to do it with hope and confidence. Someone even shrugged their shoulders
and said, “It was our hobby.”
A few
months ago, I re-watched the movie “Selma”, which shows how the march to Selma,
along with the larger struggle for civil rights was filled with confrontation
and suffering and sacrifice. And yet the theme song sings of “Glory.”
Why?
I agree
with David Lose when he says, “Precisely because we find glory—and for that
matter power and strength and security—only in those moments when we surrender
our claims to power and strength and security in order to serve others.”[3]
I think
we know this--though sometimes we forget and need to be reminded. Every time we let ourselves be vulnerable to
the needs of those around us…every time we give ourselves in love to
another…every time we get out of our own way and seek not what we want but what
the world needs, we come alive, we are lifted up, we experience the glory of
God made manifest.
We do
this most naturally as parents, sacrificing all kinds of things in the hope of
caring for our children. But we also do it as friends and partners and
neighbors.
But
sometimes it’s hard for us to believe or to imagine. It’s counter-cultural. So much in our culture
wants to make us believe that we’ll be secure and happy if we have certain
things. But none of the things on offer has the power to make us feel more
complete or accepted or loved. The only thing that does is connection to
others, in community, and a purpose beyond ourselves. And this requires
sacrifice.
The good
news is that--when we move beyond being preoccupied with ourselves and look to
the needs around us, and others begin to do the same, we discover more life and
joy and acceptance and love than we could have imagined.
And so,
we work to feed the hungry at the school down the street and in our region and
throughout the world. We send help to
those whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Harvey. We pack bags of
school supplies for needy children. We work to dismantle racism and other injustices. We do these things because the needs are
great. But we also do these
things because we need to do them, as we follow Jesus on the way of the cross…
as we set our minds, not on human things, but on divine things.
On both of my pilgrimages to the Holy
Land, we walked the Via Dolorosa-- the way of the cross. Near the beginning of the Via Dolorosa, I saw
a group of crosses propped up against a wall, where pilgrims could take up a
cross and carry it as they walked the Via Dolorosa.
Paul Shupe suggests that perhaps
what we need is a multitude of crosses, one for each of us, at the doors of our
sanctuaries, to be taken up as we return to the world of home and family, work
and commerce, service and play—symbols of the call to discipleship that we have
heard-- for us to accept anew.[4]
When we prepare to celebrate the
Lord's Supper, we proclaim one of the great mysteries of our faith: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again."
We believe in a God who is powerful
to overcome sin and death in the resurrection.
We believe in a God who keeps promises.
We believe that, in the fullness of time, Christ will return.
If we really believe in the
resurrection, deep in our bones, it changes the way we see everything. When we
pick up the cross and follow Christ, there may be darkness and death on the
road. But we know that the darkness does
not overcome the world, because we have God's promises.
The cost of discipleship seems high. And it is.
But we have Jesus' promise: Those who lose their lives for his sake--
will save their lives.
Thanks be to God!
Amen!
Rev.
Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield
Presbyterian Church
Dearborn,
Michigan
September
3, 2017
[1]
Matthew 2:3-4.
[2]
Philip Halle, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, 2008.
[3]
David Lose, in “The Theory of Everything,” at http://www.davidlose.net/2015/02/lent-2-b/
[4]
David L. Bartlett; Barbara Brown Taylor
(2011-05-31). Feasting on the Word: Year
B, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide (Kindle Locations 2623-2625).
Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
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