Sermon Tone Analysis
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All the AP Classes
This week we went to the Bollman Future-Forward campus: Registering Logan for classes AP.
This is basically a plan to be stressed and miserable (and maybe fail) someday soon.
We want exactly the right balance of suffering.
Enough to help us grow, not enough to see it end in failure.
We understand short-term loss, long-term gain.
And if it’s too much, what are we going to do?
We are going to march into the counselors office and make a change!
It’s “too much!”
What are the symptoms of “too much” for school?
Losing sleep.
Stressed out, maybe not eating enough?
That’s strange, right?
In general we know to avoid suffering and failure.
Fire hot, don’t touch fire.
Pain is a “don’t-do-that” signal hard-wired into us.
Failure is, by definition, a bad state to be avoided.
And yet, at times, we understand that short-term pain is necessary for long-term gain.
When Suffering is Worth It
When I work out, I have learned to LOVE the short-term soreness, the DOMS, because that pain means I am growing and getting stronger.
Getting better.
And whether Logan appreciates it in the moment, and he does now at 17 when he ABSOLUTELY didn’t at 13… taking on academic challenges to break his brain makes brain BIG BRAIN!
We have been talking for weeks about being “cross centric” and cross-centered.
We want to know and follow the crucified Jesus, not because he isn’t resurrected and glorified, but because he said “take up your cross and follow me.”
So we reject popularity to be popular with Jesus.
We reject greatness-ism and success-ism to be great and successful with Jesus.
And that means we have to embrace suffering and failure.
and that goes against every tenet of our culture and instinct of our flesh.
We see it in the life of Jesus in our man, Peter.
Peter - Fight Failure
Peter confession of faith:
… on the rock of your confession I will build my church… and then:
This is what we have known all along, Jesus has known all throughout his ministry: he is on the road to the cross.
Jesus has rejected popularity to be popular with His Father.
He has rejected the world’s ideas of Greatness or Success to be obedient and faithful even to death on a cross.
And now he is teaching this to his disciples.
And Peter thinks this is straight up crazy town!
This is defeatist language!
No one plans for defeat, no one walks willingly into pain and suffering… at least not pain and suffering like this where he doesn’t see the point or the purpose.
Peter doesn’t see the Win in the suffering and failure of the cross.
And so he is respectful about it.
He isn’t going to embarrass Jesus in front of the rest of the crew.
He takes him aside:
Or “God have mercy, Lord.”
Or the Message: “Impossible, Master, That can never be!”
It’s not like Jesus doesn’t get the impulse.
He isn’t pretending he wants this.
He isn’t pretending he is excited about it.
He prays in the garden for God to “take this cup from him...” but also “not my will but yours be done.”
So he recognizes the temptation to turn away, to flee, to avoid suffering and failure of the cross.
He recognizes the temptation coming straight from the devil, through the very human and understandable words of Peter.
Peter who is 100% rational from the human perspective but… he doesn’t understand how God works.
How often God enters into our pain and suffering and works through it rather than removing it.
The way God shapes and reforms us, he stands with us in the fire rather than dousing the flames.
Jesus says:
You want to know how God works?
It’s like this:
Jesus continues with these famous words we have quoted again and again.
That is the upside down economy of the Kingdom of God.
It’s backwards, it isn’t logical, it is divine.
It took Peter forever to learn this.
Not until after the resurrection, awhile after, God worked on him.
Days later, he still didn’t get it.
When they came for Jesus, what did Peter do?
Forget that whole “obedient to the cross” bit, we can take these guys!
Dude.
Peter.
Chill out.
Remember the cup? “Not my will but yours be done.”
This is that.
Jesus is going to walk willingly into suffering and failure, knowing that’s where God is calling him.
Over and over again Peter acts to avoid suffering and failure… and finds himself acting in opposition to the will of God.
Jesus is faithful to obey God, walks the “way of the cross” and commands us to take up our crosses and follow him.
Jesus embraces weakness.
Suffering.
Failure.
How do we actually do this?
The Hair Shirt
One method
In the monastic movement, starting in the middle ages but still today, some wear hair shirts underneath their clothes.
Devotionally “suffering for Jesus!” That’s not it, either.
That’s just self-flagellation.
That isn’t holiness, it is bad underwear.
Jesus didn’t cause himself pain unnecessarily, or seek pain and suffering for its own sake.
He listened to what God was calling him to do and did it, even when it brought suffering and failure.
The “Persecuted” Jerk
Here’s another method.
Just call any adversity or pain you ever experience “persecution!!!” Suffering for Jesus!
I love the Babylon Bee.
No. Peter learned this lesson well, maybe because he lived both the “Jerk” side of things, and the real thing - suffering for Jesus.
First, he counsels Christians to embrace the trial, sufferings of many kinds:
That right there is profound.
We rejoice, not because the suffering feels good.
It doesn’t.
But the honor, the privilege, we are united with Christ in his sufferings when we suffer for his sake.
It is a miraculous alchemy… it doesn’t make us feel any better.
Still feels like suffering.
But there is glory in it.
But there is soul searching here, that you aren’t suffering because you’re just a jerk, or you’ve done wrong.
Quite the spectrum there!
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