A sermon on Matthew 16:21-28 & Romans 12:9-21 by Nathan NettletonAs most of you know, my most time-consuming hobby is training dogs. Most of my Saturday mornings are spent at a dog club, either training my own dogs or teaching other people how to train theirs. The most difficult things to teach a dog are those things which run contrary to the dog’s basic instincts. It is easy to teach a dog to lie down, but it is a lot harder to teach it to ignore a bowl of raw meat placed under its nose. There are lots of instincts that people have in common with dogs, although the irresistible attraction to raw meat is not usually one of them.

One of the powerful instincts we do share is one the behaviourists call the “fight or flight reflex”. When a dog or a person feels threatened by some perceived danger, we have a rush of adrenaline and we make an almost instantaneous decision to respond in one or the other of two ways; to attack the source of the threat, or to run for our lives. Fight or flight. Most dogs, and probably most people, will prefer flight if possible, and most dog bites occur when a dog feels threatened and its escape options have been cut off; it is cornered. Without the option of flight, instinct says that attack is the only remaining option.

When Jesus speaks of going to Jerusalem and undergoing great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and being killed, his disciples instinctively respond with an urge to fight or flee. For them, and again on this occasion it is Peter who speaks up as representative for them all, it is a natural instinct to see fight or flight as the two possible options in the face of a recognised threat. If they are going to Jerusalem, and the authorities there will seek to attack and destroy Jesus, then they must quickly evaluate the chances of winning the fight, and if there is little chance of winning, then the only real option is flight: get the hell out of there. Or in this case, don’t go there in the first place. A natural instinct. Perfectly understandable. Almost unavoidable. But what how does Jesus respond to their natural, understandable, instinctive response?

“Get behind me, you satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

I’m glad, for Peter’s sake, that Jesus admitted that this was a stumbling block even to him; that what Peter was saying was difficult even for Jesus to resist. At least he is acknowledging the almost irresistible appeal of what Peter is suggesting. The Greek word that is translated “stumbling block” here is the same word from which we get our words “scandal” and “scandalise”. Jesus is acknowledging that what Peter is advocating is so much a part of normal and obvious common sense and conventional wisdom that any proposal of an alternative scandalises us. It seems not just ridiculous, but offensive and dangerous.

But Jesus is proposing an alternative. He will go to Jerusalem, and in the face of the violent hostility of the authorities there, he will neither fight nor flee. He will resist that most basic of survival instincts and seek another way. But Jesus doesn’t just stop at announcing that he will, himself, seek to respond in another way. He goes on to say that anyone who would follow him is also called to resist this most basic survival instinct and to seek another way. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

And despite the way he is sometimes perceived, we can’t go running to Paul for a more militant alternative. Did you hear what the Apostle had to say in the reading we heard from his letter to the Romans tonight: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. … Do not repay anyone evil for evil … Never avenge yourselves … If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Paul and Jesus are clearly on the same page here. We are called to transcend our most basic survival instinct, and when faced with injustice, hostility and violence, we are called to push beyond the fight or flight reflex and to open ourselves to another way, the way of Jesus, the way of the cross. And just like dogs, we find it enormously challenging to learn a new way that goes against our basic instincts.

Rather than fight or flee, Jesus walks into the face of the violent hostility, and absorbs it in his own body. The common misperception of this is that it simply lays down and allows injustice and violence to get their own way unopposed. But it is fleeing that allows injustice to go unchallenged, and Jesus does not lay down. He does not allow evil to go unchallenged. Indeed, it is the way he stands tall and challenges evil that draws the full force of hell’s bitterness and rage in his direction. The non-violent challenge unmasks the evil of violence and injustice. It strips it of its cloak of legitimacy and exposes it for all to see. If Jesus had bowed before the fury of the authorities, he would have allowed them to maintain the illusion that their official position legitimised their use of violence in the name of law and order and the national interest. But by standing tall before their assault and refusing to allow their violence to provoke him into a violent response which would have reduced him to their level and justified their elimination of him, he both exposes it and begins to neutralise it by absorbing it in his own body. Thus he saves us, by both offering himself to satisfy the blood lust of the violent mob which would otherwise seek other victims, perhaps us, and by setting us free from the need to meet violence with violence and thus perpetuate the spiral into deadly chaos that threatens to consume us all and destroy all life.

In our congregational covenant, we commit ourselves to responding to God’s call to live like Jesus, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, standing up for the oppressed. And we also acknowledge that the call to non-conformity with the ways of the world includes a call to resist the legitimising of greed, selfishness, infidelity, violence, and exploitation. But it is precisely that refusal to legitimise the very things on which our society is founded which, if really followed through faithfully, will provoke an angry backlash against us. And so our covenant also acknowledges the call to be ambassadors for the one who walked the way of the cross and so to represent his values of forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.

This is no easy call. It may sound okay as a religious theory, but to live by it when we are really under threat is as difficult and counter-intuitive as ignoring a bowl of raw meat is for a dog. We have to work at this. We have to allow the Holy Spirit to train us in a new way, in a way that goes against our basic instincts and scandalises and offends our natural sense of justice and decency. We need to trust God to hold us when we cannot hold ourselves. We instinctively think that the way of the cross leads only to death, but Jesus sees beyond that. Jesus sees it is fight and flight that lead to death, and that there is nothing but death beyond them. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 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?” Peter heard Jesus speak only of the suffering and death that awaited him in Jerusalem, but Jesus didn’t only say that. Peter didn’t hear it, but Jesus had also said that he would be raised to life on the third day. Jesus saw through the reflex to fight or flee and beyond them to the way that leads not only to the cross, but through the salvation of the cross to the new life in the wide open spaces of God’s love and grace.

I know that I can train a dog to refuse a bowl of raw meat more easily than I can myself be trained to turn the other cheek to hostility and violence, but it is only the way of the cross that leads to life. Let us hear the call and together allow the Holy Spirit to train us, despite our instincts, in the ways of life.