15th Sunday after Pentecost Proper 17, Year A
1 September in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 2002
Scripture:
Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm 26
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:21-27
The uncontrollable God
Paul's twelfth chapter in the letter to the church in Rome and the sixteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, both seek to open to us the mysteries of a life lived with God. A life lived with God is the heart of the good news. The most salient lines in these passages are present your bodies as a living sacrifice, Paul's charge to us in Romans [12:1] and Jesus' admonition in Matthew 16:24, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Characteristically, it is good news that sounds like bad news before we find a way to internalize it, live it, and experience it as truly good news. These are not theories, speculations that are placed before us. In fact, it would be difficult to find two passages more central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ than the two before us this fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Although the Bible and the Church often present mysteries, today's readings are straightforward and tightly constructed. They invite us to think, in the manner of the Old Testament invitation:
Come let us reason together says the Lord and His Anointed
Yet, it is hard to imagine a passage subject to more misunderstanding than Matthew 16: 21-27. And it is equally hard to imagine a passage more ardently ignored than the twelfth chapter of Romans. Look at what happens to Peter. One moment he seems to grasp whom this Jesus really is and what he is up to. Who do you say that I am? You are the Christ the Son of the Living God spoke the fisherman. But as soon as Jesus makes clear that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed, and be restored to life on the third day, Peter just cannot accept it. And as often as we hear this passage, one suspects that we are all feeling a lot more like Peter than we admit to. It is possible that Peter sought to protect Jesus from what he prophesied; certainly Peter did not want to suffer himself as is later seen when he denied three times that he even knew Christ so as to avoid arrest. We want Jesus to do it our way. We want a church triumphant and though we do love Jesus we are not so fond of the idea of carrying a cross. The disciples knew what he meant. Crucifixion was a common Roman method of execution and condemned criminals had to carry their crosses through the streets to the execution site. Peter wanted the uncontrollable Jesus to be under his control, rather than to be controlled by Jesus. Following him Jesus appears to say requires true commitment, sometimes even the risk to death and no turning back. Later Peter would better understand these things and became a great evangelist and the first bishop of Rome. And tradition tells us that when the Romans killed him during the reign of Nero he said it was too great an honor to be crucified like Jesus so he was crucified upside down.
Rather than this model many Christians have accepted the cultural expectation that bigger is better and comfortable affluence the unquestioned sign of divine favor. TV evangelists have become kitsch reconstructions of TV anchormen. Senior pastors in large churches often earn more than college presidents and Superior Court Judges. My brother is an elder in a church with 700 members and 6 fulltime ministers. The compensation package for the senior pastor his church just hired is in excess of $150,000. This is a "market driven" situation; Calvary Bible did not hope to find a qualified candidate for less. In a country where corporate greed and corruption has reached new and unparalleled proportions, how does talk about forfeiting one's life for Christ's sake stack up against trying to gain the riches of the world? Wealth gained by acquisitive means -- undisturbed by ethical norms -- has become a daily story on page one of the Business Sections of our newspapers. In such a culture are we even capable of hearing what Jesus says about gaining the whole world and loosing ones own life?
We cannot think that his question about what really brings a good life is simply rhetorical or aimed at his original disciples or the Romans or a few rich and famous. As Dietrich Bonhoffer identified in the midst of the Nazi Holocaust, there is a cost to living as a Christian and that cost is discipleship. What Jesus is saying is that it is not enough to simply acknowledge that God exists or that Jesus is Lord. Jesus had to go to Jerusalem and face his enemies, so there are certain things that we his followers will have to do.
Must is a crucial word here: Jesus must die to redeem us and Peter does not grasp that. In the blink of an eye, Peter goes from being a stone and the leader of the new community of the good news, to becoming a stumbling block, a skandalon or a scandal as the Greek text declares! In his desert temptations Jesus heard the message that he could achieve greatness without dying [Matthew 4:6]. Now Peter gave him the same advice and Jesus rejected it violently as coming from Satan just as it had in the wilderness.
Jesus will take the road of the cross rather than that of earthly glory. He musters no army; he wields no weapons of mass or even limited destruction. Nor does Jesus play the "acquire, accumulate, and consume" game, no matter how good it might be for the economy. He has no shares in publicly traded companies. He has no place to call home. He has no place to rest his head at the end of the day. Jesus relies on God and God's people. He relies on a community of giving and sharing. He relies on others, God and others, not himself. He is not self-sufficient. And whatever he has, he is depicted as gladly giving away for the sake of others and for the sake of the good news. What is ours is yours; he is frequently pictured as saying. And just in case Peter and the other disciples do not get the picture, Jesus promises to return to repay everyone for what has been done. (NRSV) That is, there will be an accounting and that accounting will not be influenced by Arthur Anderson-style book keeping and creative audit procedures.
So what will it be, Jesus tells his men and us? Will you pick up your cross and follow me? Or, does the thought of gaining the whole world or at least some substantial part of it still appeal? As the potential Freedom Riders found during the Civil Rights Movement, you're on the bus or you're off of the bus but the bus is leaving the station. For Saint Paul carrying the cross was to be a full Litany of sufferings
... exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned three times I was shipwrecked I spent a night and a day in the open sea I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food: I have cold and naked. [2 Corinthians 11:23-27]
Yet Paul went on to say that these things were nothing compared to knowing Christ and the glory of his resurrection!
Now this sounds like pretty harsh news indeed. There is often a cost. Dietrich Bonhoffer had to make choices in his stand against the dominant culture of his beloved Germany and its quest for world hegemony. His outspoken criticism of Hitler and the Nuremberg Laws cost him his Professorship, his church position and put him in prison. Like Thomas More, Henry the 8th Chancellor, he would not recant; and it finally cost him his life. Stories like these make the cost of discipleship seem even harsher than we ordinarily think of it. We are so shielded from religious persecution in these United States. Imagine being a Christian in Palestine today. So difficult is it that the Church there has shrunk from 20% of the population in 1960 to 2-3% today. It is hard to carry the burden of the cross, yet those who suffer for his sake count it the greatest joy in life.
Paul sets out in the most transparent and crystalline prose that by the mercy of God we have each been equipped to become cross-carrying stones of discipleship rather than stumbling blocks for ourselves and for others.
And so sensibly, Paul says, we are not to think too highly of ourselves, or reach too far, but rather to accept and rejoice in the measure of faith that God has assigned to us as individuals. Few of us will be among the ranks of those who had to suffer like Paul, yet we will suffer.
In the Catechism on page 855 in the Book of Common Prayer we acknowledge that "according to the gifts we have been given" we are to carry on Christ's work of reconciliation in the world, here and now, where we are and while we are here. We will not all do this the same way. We are to exercise the unique gifts we have each been given in our own unique ways. Not everyone has the same gifts. Not everyone has to follow Jesus in just the same way as the next person. The best news is that no one is expected to do anything that God has not already equipped him or her to do.
But we all should have an open confession of Jesus as Lord and joined with likeminded believers in deeds of love, justice, and loving-kindness extended to all persons and all of creation.
As said Paul, Sisters and brothers, by the mercy of God, present your bodies and yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. For that is who we are: God's holy and acceptable people. Our faithfulness to becoming the people God created us to be will be repaid in terms beyond all that we can ever hope or imagine. We have a King who is out of our control, who leads us into a life of service that sometimes includes suffering. Yet this Jesus will ease our hearts if we trust him and reward us for this service now and in the future life that the Father has promised. I know this better than I know anything else in life and I praise him for it.
I want to conclude with a passage from C.S Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, two children are searching for their brother who is under the spell of the wicked White Witch. They hide in the home of Mr. & Mrs. Beaver. The Beavers speak in hushed tones of a rumor-Aslan the long-gone king of Narnia, has been spotted and is again on the move. The lion is symbolic of Christ.
"Is ---is he a man?" asked Lucy.
"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Bear sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't' you know who the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion-the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he -quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"that you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then he isn't safe? "said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
Let us praise our King and treasure the gospel message that the Master is uncontrollable but good.
Joseph J. Muñoz
Quincy, California