Text: Matthew 16:21-28 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection
21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance[a] to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
The Cross and Self-Denial
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? 27 For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
On the roller coaster of life, highs are often followed by lows.
For Peter, this was a “low” day – his exuberance at recognizing that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the Son of the living God is now followed by utter shock and even horror at what Jesus now has in mind. “You’re going to Jerusalem to do what? Die? Oh no no no no no NO!”
As I mentioned last week, Peter is Everyman. Like Peter, we often have feet of clay that reach right up to our knees. Sometimes, just when we are about to do something outside of our comfort zone, even if it’s something we want to do and have planned for, we get nervous. We break out in a cold sweat, and wish for a moment that we were anywhere else than where we are. Brides and grooms often feel this way; it’s so much a part of most weddings that we have given it the name “wedding jitters.” So we can understand how Peter and the disciples must have felt when Jesus tells them point-blank that his journey to Jerusalem was going to end in suffering, death, but on the third day he would be raised.
At least, we can understand it to a point. As life-changing as a wedding is, or the birth of a child – which can make new parents anxious in other ways, even as they are overjoyed by their child’s birth – or as shocking, say, as the sudden loss of a job or a relationship, or any other sudden and unexpected turn of events, we need to multiply that shock by a factor of a thousand or more to get close to how Peter and the disciples felt.
They were so thrown by the talk of suffering and death that they completely missed the part about being raised on the third day. All they heard were the words “suffering,” and “killed.” These words were no more pleasant for them to hear then than they are for us to hear today.
Despite what Jesus had been teaching them the past three years, despite what they had seen with their own eyes, and all evidence to the contrary, they still expected a messiah like the one everyone else expected – an anointed king, with ideas and plans for military conquest and political rule. This Messiah was going to sweep into the land and cleanse it of all that was bad – mostly the Romans – and the glory days would be back for good.
But, no, that was not the plan. F. F. Bruce writes, “[the disciples] had to learn that, far from victory over the Romans and a royal throne awaiting him, [Jesus] faced suffering and death. If they believed that he was the Messiah, they must know what kind of Messiah he was; if they were still minded to follow him, they must realise clearly what kind of leader they were following, and what lay at the end of the road he was pursuing. The revelation shocked them; this was not what the expected. Their common sense of shock was voiced (as usual) by Peter, who in his concern took Jesus by the arm in a friendly gesture and began to expostulate with him: ‘Mercy on you, Master! Don’t speak like that. This is never going to happen to you!’”[1]
How often has it happened in your lives, as it has in mine, that, when faced with a reality that is just too hard to bear, too hard even to think about, immediately our brains begin to spin and conjure and reinterpret the reality before us and warp it into something we can tolerate. I sometimes half-jokingly (and sometimes less than half) say that “reality is overrated. Give me fantasy any day.” Peter and the disciples just couldn’t handle the reality Jesus had just revealed to them, so they indulged themselves in some wishful thinking, too.
Jesus naturally makes short work of this attitude in his famous reply to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!” That reply certainly seems harsh – maybe no more than the situation warranted, nonetheless…
But Bruce explains what Jesus was actually saying: “It should be understood that ‘Satan’ is not primarily a proper name. It is a Hebrew common noun meaning ‘adversary.’ When it appears in the Old Testament preceded by the definite article, it means ‘the adversary.’ In the story of Job, for example, where Satan (better, ‘the satan’) is said to have presented himself at a session of the heavenly court (Job 1:6), the expression means ‘the adversary’ or, as we might say, ‘counsel for the prosecution’. This is the regular function of this unpleasant character in the Old Testament.”[2]
So Peter, in his impetuous way, has taken on the role of the adversary to God’s own plan. It’s an ironic twist that he, who just a few verses before was named the Rock by Jesus, should now become a stumbling block. There are two kinds of rock in this story – the kind of rock which becomes a stable foundation, and the kind of rock that makes for broken toes and skinned knees from stumbling over it. Peter had it in him to be either one at this critical moment; and it was thanks to the sharp but gracious intercession of Jesus that he became that rock of stability and a focus of unity.
There is a lesson for us here. That lesson is: God doesn’t call us to be more than we are, but God does call us to be all that we are. Every one of us has the same potential Peter had to either be a rock of stability and a stepping stone for others to use as they grow in faith; or to be a stumbling block, a hindrance that prevents others from achieving their potential.
One way we might be able to determine in any given situation whether we’re helping or hindering is to first take stock of what’s going on inside of us – are we anxious? Are we fearful? Are we angry? Are we taking the side of the prosecutor? If we say yes to any of these, our ability to truly be the agents of the Kingdom God calls us to be is diminished.
A big part of the remedy here is to pray for that gracious intercession of Christ to put oil on the raging waters of our doubts and fears, and above all to accept it when it comes. And we will know when it does – just as we have known it every time it has happened to us in the past, as it most certainly has: For then, our vision is clear, our arms are strong, are steps are steady, and our hearts are full of compassion for all the Children of God!
An equally big part of the remedy is to allow ourselves to imagine – and then embrace – the reality of God: That God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom that is here and not yet, runs on forgiveness, and mercy, and love, and not on brute force and retribution. This is the major point that Peter and the disciples, and pretty much everyone else of that day, failed to realize. Had Jesus really been just another powerful warlord, sure, he could have wiped the floor with the Romans. But eventually, someone else even stronger than the Romans would have come along, and the whole mess would have started over again.
In Jesus, the real Messiah, God broke that cycle. And the world was never the same after that.
Which brings us to that part about taking up our crosses and following Jesus. What does that mean in the context of what we’ve been talking about today?
Whenever we use the term in daily conversation, we almost always put it in terms of some kind of bodily disability (“my arthritis is my cross to bear, I guess”), some unwelcome experience (“that boss of mine is my cross to bear”), some unpleasant companion or relative (“Uncle Harry is my cross to bear until he heads back home next week”). It’s hardly more than a turn of phrase; there’s no sense at all of what it meant in Jesus’ day, when the condemned person was forced to carry the crossbeam, the patibulum, on his way to his grisly death; no sense of the hopelessness and despair the condemned felt as they, step by agonizing step, got closer to the place of execution.
So, somewhere between an easy turn of phrase and a brutal death, there must be an interpretation of what it means for us today to “take up our cross and follow [Jesus].”
Well, for one thing, as we discussed a moment ago, part of taking up our cross involves the death of those traits we have that make us stumbling blocks for both ourselves and others. Self-denial might seem to be a pretty weak response compared to the horrible death of crucifixion, yet Jesus himself says it: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Self-denial is one of the toughest things we can do. It doesn’t just mean “giving something up,” but rather it means making both a qualitative and quantitative change in our lives. Luke’s version of this passage puts it this way: “let him deny himself and take up his cross daily” (Luke 9:23) – so it’s not just a one-time thing, but a change in outlook, a change in attitude, something which requires constant monitoring, but which leads, sooner or later, to a change of lifestyle. Peter could never have been the Rock with his old attitudes; those attitudes had to die on and through the cross of Christ in order for him to truly become the chief of the Apostles.
A change of heart and a change of mind – that’s really the crux of today’s lesson.
So, this week, let’s do our best to be foundation rocks, not stumbling blocks. Let’s put aside a thing or two we carry with us that prevent us from following Jesus.
It will be tough – but we can do it!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Bruce, F.F., Hard Sayings of Jesus, © 1983 by F. F. Bruce, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, pp. 146-7
[2] Ibid., p. 147