In last week's Gospel lesson, Peter was on top of the world. Intoxicating words of affirmation had been addressed to him...”Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.” All this in response to Peter's declaration that Jesus was “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
One might wonder if only a few heartbeats have passed or a few days. I doubt that Peter and the others have had time to absorb the words – “I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” And what had this binding or freeing on earth to do with heaven?
And what was the point of keeping their awareness of Jesus as the Messiah a secret?
Last Sunday the text ended there – Jesus telling the disciples to tell no on that he is the Messiah. It begins today with “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and undergo great suffering and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Peter, still glowing from the mysterious words of blessing, can't hear past Jesus' remark that he is going to Jerusalem to suffer and die. He takes Jesus aside. He's an insightful kind of guy, perhaps he can disabuse Jesus of his morbid and fatalistic thoughts. With unintended irony Peter says to Jesus, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”
Nothing in the world could have prepared Peter for the response, “get thee behind me, Satan.” What has become of his appellation the rock, isn't he a major support for the Messiah's work on earth? How can he, Peter, fulfill his role if Jesus the Messiah is going to die. It makes no sense. And now here is Jesus calling him “Satan” - the Adversary, of all things!! Now he is an opponent to the Messiah?
I wonder if the words made Peter sick to his stomach with bewilderment and grief? Did the whole incident take his breath away as if he'd been hit with terrific force?
“You are a stumbling block to me,” how those words must have cut into Peter's heart. “You do not think of God's things, but of human things.” Well, he was human. What did Jesus expect?
And then Jesus told Peter and the others what was expected of them -- and of all who would choose to follow in the footsteps of the Messiah. “If anyone desires to come after me, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me.”
If they are to desire Jesus, to continue to walk with him – there must be a saying no to the self, an acceptance of the very thing that threatens their sense of well-being – it is a matter of absolute commitment and profound relationship.
Once again we are confronted with paradoxical words: desire for one's own soul will cause one to lose it and losing it for the sake of Jesus will save one's soul. The whole of the world is not worth gaining if it cost one's soul. And nothing can be given as an exchange for one's soul.
While we are still sorting out what he just said, Jesus is going on, there is compensation for the hard work of losing one soul for the sake of the Messiah. “For the Son of Man is about to come in the glory of his Father, along with the angels. And he will give reward each according to his works.”
Compensation, angels, work?
And in the back of our minds, linked as it is with this idea of soul work, we can hear Jesus speaking in the Fourth Gospel, “This is the work of God, that you believe on the one whom God has sent.” (John 6:29)
Like Peter we must move from intellectual understanding, “you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” to action. And not just any action, we are to live for the sake of the Gospel. We can't say, hey this doesn't make sense. It's foolish to risk our lives for what!?!
No, if we would be people whose greatest desire is for mutual relationship with Jesus we must listen carefully, we must hear and respond to the call to take up our cross and follow Jesus – this very Jesus who must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die
die to rise again...
we need to hold ever before us, the evidence of the empty tomb...
it stands beyond the suffering and the cross. It gives us courage to risk a thousand petty deaths as we are inconvenienced for the sake of the Gospel – as well as when we will face the threat of death to our lives as we know it best - here in this world.
This is no masochistic death cult.
This is the secret of what it means to be human: to be in gracious relationship with all the creatures of this world, with one another and with God. If I live only unto myself, only for what pleases me and gives me pleasure, my life has been a terrible waste – even if it were possible to do so having “caused no harm.”
This is a broken and wounded world. Paul tells us that God allowed the world to be subjected to futility, not willingly, but in hope. For even as we come into our freedom as co-heirs with Jesus the Messiah, so too the world will move into its freedom from death and decay.
From the body of this earth which we break day after day, seeking minerals and other resources in order to live in comfort, even in luxury, through to the seas which we over-fish and pollute, to the animals we abandon and misuse – how have we come to cultivate live beings in horrifying conditions simply as food sources? – to the wounding ways in which humans interact with one another -- the systemic violence of racial profiling, and I don't mean just in airports and the like, I mean the systems of segregation and prejudice that affect our educational systems, our social services – to the ways in which we allow slavery to exist in this the 21st century (because it allows us to have our goods and services at a “reasonable”?!?! cost) to the overt violence of domestic disputes and of civil or international war --- this is indeed a broken and wounded world.
But this brokenness is not the end of the story. The humble bearing of our own particular crosses makes healing and newness of life possible.
Is not our cross – the small cross of inconvenience - worth bearing if it is a way of empowering compassionate and healing change in the world? If we bear this cross because we want to be close to our Saviour, if we bear this cross knowing it is God's will, knowing that it means healing, and the loosing of heaven onto earth, will this not give us the strength to bear our crosses? Won't the weight of such a cross be mitigated by the joy of being one with Christ?
Activism which arises simply from frustration, with hatred for the “perpetrators,” in fear or rage – even if done for the “good” of humanity – will carry that negative energy – will ultimately consume the persons doing the actions. But when a believer bears a cross for Christ's sake, all things gain their perspective. Certainly there will be dark nights of the soul. But when we remember that we are all part of the fallen creation, and remember that we need to be lifted up by the grace of God, we will find the strength that we need to continue. We need God and one another in order to bring about the union of heaven and earth... in order to make real the realm of heaven upon this earth.
You and I are Peter. One moment we have startling insights -- the next minute our fears, our personal agendas get in God's way. We, too, are bits of rock upon which Christ's earthly church rests.
We work by believing, we believe that Jesus reveals to us God's loving intention for humanity. An intention that we live in freedom, but in a very special freedom – the freedom to love, to desire the highest good for this earth, for one another, even for God.
And what would it mean to desire the highest good for God? I think it simply means that we enjoy fulfilling God's plan for our lives –
called to take up our cross, we obey, and as we do so, we celebrate the mysterious and paradoxical truth that, through God's grace, death can always be transformed into new life.
