The Way of the Cross

Machine-assisted transcript, lightly edited for punctuation, paragraphing, and a few clear recognition errors. Congregational responses are retained.

All right. This is the prayer of illumination. Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit. That as the scriptures are read and your word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen. Our first scripture reading is Romans 12, 9 through 21. Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction. Persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Pursue hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly. Do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.

Instead, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. For by doing this, you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Thank you, Katie Gray. Our gospel reading this morning comes from Matthew Chapter 16. Continues on from where we were last week when Peter was declared the rock, the church would be built upon. when Jesus asks the question of who is the, who does, who do people say that I am? Batteries. In the pulpit, sorry. Continuing on from there, and he orders them to not talk about the fact that he's the Messiah. This is Matthew 16, verse 21 through 28. From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem to undergo suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him saying God forbid it Lord this must never happen to you but he turned and said to Peter get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. Then Jesus told his disciples, 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 for those who will 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 or what will they give in return for their life for the son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his father and then he will repay everyone for what has been done truly I tell you there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the son of man coming in his kingdom the word of the Lord God bless the reading of this word and bless its proclamation Lord. Lord may we hear the truth of your good news through this exchange through these seemingly mysterious words of revelation and hiding God we pray that we would have our eyes opened to how we are to speak of you the Messiah and how we are to live your life in this world the grass withers and the flower fades but your word stands forever amen so Jesus is telling him his disciples he's telling his disciples from this moment on we're going to start talking about what is to come I was looking at this text this week and I came to more questions about it than I could come up with answers or ideas and so I would love to invite some of you to contribute to this part of our service I'm going to ask some questions I'm going to stay up here in the pulpit but that's basically just so I can see everybody's faces and not miss some I'm going to ask some questions of you we're going to walk through this text because it's actually a pretty familiar text to many if you've been in church for much of your life you've heard the phrases get behind me Satan you've heard of this back and forth between Peter and Jesus I'm curious what this means to us today you see every time I set out and to preach and to teach and to work from the Gospels and the scriptures I ask a lot of questions of the text. I want to know what does this mean in that context. What's going on in this particular moment? And then I want to ask how does that relate to perhaps what's going on culturally and why would this be taught in that particular book of the Bible? And then I want to ask questions about what might be analogous to what's going on in our own world today. Like what?

How does this map upon the things that we face as followers of Jesus? Are there moments when we have to get behind him? And then I want to ask the question perhaps of what does this mean for us to then apply it to our lives, to take it and walk with this work, this word, this love, this life in us. So, remember last week, the peace about the Messiah, the son of man, and we hear that hear of Jesus going to Jerusalem. Can I, just a few ideas, what is important about Jesus going to Jerusalem? Shout it out, just quickly. What's going to happen? Crucifixion, arrest. Yes, anything else? Other, suffering, Passover. Yeah, yeah. Okay, anything else. So that statement alludes to a lot of stuff, right? Did I, do we miss anything? The money changers. Betrayal. Yeah. So we, as the readers of this text, have a lot of things in our minds that begin to come up when we hear that spoken of. We think about the suffering.

We think about the crucifixion. And we think about the words that then he even says in here that he will be raised again. Well, we look at that from this vantage point of we know the rest of the story. It was one of the interesting. things that we need to think about with Peter and the disciples is that when they started to hear that he was the Messiah, this idea of the promised son of man coming to help and save, you know, a lot of them did not, or many or all, did not believe that he was going to die. That wasn't the point. They thought he was going to come and rule, come and build something then and there. And so Peter immediately goes, wait a second, no. God forbid it. You can't do that. Do you feel like you understand Peter's dynamic there? Your leader, your friend, is going, starts talking about his own death? How would that make you feel? Uncertain, scared, defeated? And would you interrupt?

Would you pull him aside? I know many of us have those instances where we see, or we hear someone say something, we're like, wait a second, we need to talk. So do we understand how Peter is feeling here? God forbid it. They don't want the Messiah to die, and when he starts talking that way, people start to get worried. And so Peter says, God forbid it, you can't do that. This is no, we're not going there. And Jesus's response is not to calm Peter down, but to respond to his rebuke with his own rebuke. Get behind me. And he uses the word Satan. What do we think about when we hear this phrase, get behind me, Satan? Evil. Jesus is being tempted. Do I hear that? Yep. The enemy. Evil. What else? Leave me alone. Let me, yeah. Lack of trust.

Jesus is calling out Peter for this moment where his rebuke is out of line, even though Peter doesn't understand the fullness of this picture. He doesn't want this Messiah to die. And what Jesus goes on to say is he says, get behind me Satan, because you are a stumbling block. You are a hindrance. You're going to trip me up. My mission here. I love that this is contrasted with the previous story that we heard last week where Jesus calls Peter the rock. It's like, you are the rock upon which I will build my church, but please get out of the way. You're in the path. No, I think there's intentionally a contrast there, where he is called the rock, but then he is called a hindrance or a stumbling block. There's other places in the Gospels where Jesus talks about rocks. Well, he talks about rocks a lot. But one of the times is he speaks about it being better for a rock to be tied to your ankle and you be thrown into the water than you get in the way of the mission of God. You get in the way of children coming to God. So this is...

This is important material here. Get behind me, Satan. Yet, it's speaking of what was called the historical evil one. The satan, ha satan, Satan, Satan is this name for the archetypal evil. The deepest evil. And so it's a very strong word. It's not a word we would use in church, I guess. Yes, it is. But it's a strong rebuke of a an unclear vantage point that Peter has. Think about, you don't have to answer this, but think about a time when you've needed to pull someone aside or you have been pulled aside. And there was that kind of tension and exchange. Did the relationship just fall apart? Or did it actually perhaps get stronger because of that honesty, that truth telling between the two of you? I was wondering about this kind of also in the sense of how Jesus is talking about living in personal or practical human, tactileish ways, versus thinking spiritually, heavenly, ethereally.

And I wondered about as we see that pairing, that your mind is set on things of this world and not above, how do we do both? How do we truly live? as people who embody our faith, who live it in their bones, but also keep their mind on heavenly promises and good news. Where's the kind of the wholeness link there? What are some of the practical ways that Peter would get in the way of Jesus? Some of the human practical ways. What might he be trying to ward off? Preventing it from happening? Yep. Afraid of what might happen to Peter? Oh, to, yeah. If Jesus were to die, what would happen to Peter? Yep. He's complicit. Others? You get it. There wasn't a lot of time to think forward. Emotional response, yes. Absolutely, yeah. There can't be a way. For those you can't hear, it's just that this emotional, this gut response that Peter has. No, no. And so Jesus' Jesus' rebuke and Peter's response go hand in hand. They have this strength to them, this gravity. I think the wholeness that we find is that we have to enter into those kinds of moments with people at times. We may need to trust our gut and say the word like Peter.

And we also may need to be open to the exchange that we might not see the whole picture. You might not get the whole story that Jesus is trying to play out here. So then he goes on. And he talks about how life is found. And when we start to take up our cross, what does it mean to take up our cross? We have this vision of carrying a cross. What does that practically look like? What are some things that we do when we take up our cross? Doing the work. Yes. Doing what you're called to do. Yes. Using the gift. you have, but slanting them the wrong way sometimes. So it was, clarify that a little bit.

Uh-huh. Yeah. So we might, well, and it goes on in that passage to say, like, what is it worth to profit if you lose everything, or if you profit the world and lose your soul? Like, that it could be misdirected towards gain in ways that we wouldn't even see how it could be a negative, but it actually puts us on this wrong, this off trajectory. Well, if you're going to say something. So putting an instant need a side instead of planting a seed that could be helpful. I think that tracks a little bit with what Jenny's saying, too, of like the moment, there's this what happens in the moment between these two, which in Peter's defense, yes, it's short-sighted, but I would have the same response. But then there's also this ability to see beyond that into what this relationship will become and what the church will be. And so in a sense, Jesus is helping them understand that giving up that immediate response or giving up that need that they have to be profitable, to be a good person in the world's riches, et cetera, et cetera, to give that up is to lose your life. And that's not what we want to do in the moment, but in the work of God, losing our lives is how we find it. Losing all of the things that we find it. Losing all of the things that we seek in terms of success, all the things we long for that we just can't ever quite attain, we give that up. We say, I found it in this here. My life is found here. We lose our lives so that we might be saved in our lives. I was in a conversation this last week about it was one it was one of those motivational quotes that came to mind, but it's that old statement of St.

Aranaeus, the glory of God is the human being fully alive. The glory of God is the human being fully alive. That's a very old, old piece of wisdom from the church. What Jesus is doing is showing these disciples what it looks like for him to become fully alive, to become all the he is called to be. And that is not by becoming a general who rolls into Jerusalem and builds up an army, etc. But he's actually showing us that to become fully alive, one must die. One must give up all that we have sought. That is what coming fully alive means. We abandon all of those things to find the life abundant here in Christ. And again, Jesus asks, what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

What do these questions mean to you? What do you hear in those?

Randy? To recap and make sure I hear what Randy said and make sure everybody, the sense of self-sacrifice is so countercultural. And it plays into the ethics that we heard Katie Gray list off from the book of Romans. It also plays into what Jesus is saying here. when we give of ourselves, we find life. But that is not what we're accustomed to or trained in. And so we find the life abundant by that release of these things. Sacrifice. And we don't like sacrifice. We don't like that idea of I've got to give something up or I have to limit a particular vice, et cetera, et cetera. I might have to give a little bit of myself to help someone else. It's nice to not have to do that. But I think this is where we can draw a really clear conclusion of good news. It is wonderful to do it. It is good to sacrifice.

It is good to let go. And I don't say that in a way that we should pat ourselves on the back because we know it. But think about it in the positive. Those moments when you have gone, maybe a a step further for someone else and it was a burden on you or it was a gift you had to give away. If your heart's in the right place and if you're if you really are doing it out of this spirit of sacrifice, I think we all can recognize that actually is pretty wonderful. Right? What does this look like? What are what are things we do as we think about giving up, sacrificing? What does that look like in your life? And again, we're not trying to pat ourselves on the But what are some good examples of that? Parenting. Thank you. Yes. Amen.

Helping people who are struggling. Needy people who are struggling. Yeah, exactly.

It means showing up for people again and again. Being a true friend. Yeah. Yeah. Not beating yourself up by over preparing. See, I think about, I ruminate about how I will do the thing. that I'm going to do and actually just do it. Just do it. Just do the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone, was there someone else? Patience? Yeah. Yeah. Working through the resistance, overcoming the self in order to give and support one another. I also think about the sacrifice of receiving. As I went through this text and I kept trying to pull apart, what does this mean to me? in some ways why we're having this exchange is I need some help. I need your gift to me because this is so familiar in some ways to us that we write it off. We don't think about these words in the depth that we're doing right now. So I need I need to ask for your help and that's a sacrifice for me of a little bit of pride and a little bit of ego and a little bit of authority. Oh, I'm just going to come up here with my manuscript and make sure it's all, you know, and I do that most weeks.

But to receive the gift from others is to sacrifice as well. I pray that we would, in this text, as we see it as a pointer to where things are going, that we would also hear this good news of giving it up, of letting it go, of sacrificing, of giving and receiving in love, and that we would see that that's where life abundant is found. I look around this room and I see so many faces. and I know the ways so many of you invest in the lives of other people, invest in the lives of your partners, as Jenny said, you're parenting, your kids, grandkids, students, students, friends, neighbors, patients, patients, clients, the ways you invests your energy and your clients. The ways you invest your energy and your love in a sacrificial way. because it makes the life-abundant bubble up.

I think it's one of the things that I love to see here in this church, the ways that you all work to support and give to one another in times of need. That is a sacrifice. It's fine to just watch someone be in need. We do it all the time. We look on. We pass the car crash. We pray for the aid car as it goes by. It is easy to observe the suffering of other people. It is sacrifice and life abundant to enter into that, to participate, to get messy with one another. Jesus is inviting Peter to settle down and ultimately see the bigger picture that his life will go on to be a sacrifice as well. That in order to build the church and be the rock, ultimately he has to give it up. He is the one that was called the first pope. He was the big shot after Jesus.

He could have run the whole celebrity gang and done the thing, but he needs to learn sacrifice as well. The story goes that Peter was crucified when he was killed, he was crucified, and the story goes, I don't know how historically accurate it is, but that he did not want to be crucified right side up, as Jesus was, but because he was less, he wanted to be known as someone who was less than Jesus, he wanted to be crucified upside down. Sounds actually like a very Peter thing to do. He's a little bit, like, weird and a little bit, shoots from the hip. But Peter had to learn how to sacrifice. He had to learn how to give up that gut reaction. At the end, we hear Jesus talk about the coming glory of God and the promise that there would be some among them who would not even die before they would see that coming glory.

And we're going to, we have to kind of get comfortable with those type of statements because there's a lot of them in the New Testament, especially we're going to spend some time in Revelation later this fall. And when we think about it. about the coming glory. We also don't know what to do with these texts when they say that some of them were already going to see it. And here's what I think we can actually learn and read from that, is that some of these witnesses who were starting to get the picture that he was the Messiah, some of them would actually see the sacrifice and the life come to its full conclusion and, again, resurrection. They would see the death. They would see him before that suffer. But then, these would be ones who would witness him on the beach, making breakfast with them in the aftermath. And while we don't talk about that as the full coming kingdom of God, the new heaven, and the new earth, one of the biggest and most important parts of our faith is that we are a people of the already and the not yet.

We believe that in those moments the kingdom of God had come. And we believe now that the kingdom of God still is coming presently. And we believe that the kingdom of God will come in God's people. So in this moment, they are witnessing the glory of God. And so, we believe that the kingdom of God will come in God's people. can we? Have you thought about that? That you are a participant in the active work of the kingdom of God now on earth and what will come? That's the good news. That's the promise. I looked at this text from the beginning and thought, how do we talk about sacrifice and Satan and suffering and all this and have some kind of good news that applies to today. Well, it's the invitation to the life abundant that is already here.

How do you see it? This is my last question for you. How do you see the glory of God here and now? In nature? Yeah. In your friend. Yeah. Good. In forgiveness. In music. In music. In children. How do you see the glory of God? In animals? Yeah. In kindness of others. Yes.

We are witnesses in Dolly Parton. That's right. Yeah. In witnesses like her and in each other.

We are the living picture of the kingdom of God. Not just picture. We are the living body of God. The church is our work. to see the glory, to bear witness to it, and to tell about it in our own ways. Let us pray. God, thank you for this work that you call us to. Thank you for your beauty among us and the way we see it. Thank you for the work of your cross. And thank you for your love and acceptance that invites us all to be participants in that kingdom, that life abundant together. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.