A Sermon on Matthew 16:21-28, by Alan Marr

The movement of Jesus’ ministry from Galilee to his crucifixion in Jerusalem has begun.

Things were beginning to get serious for him and his little group. The Pharisees and Sadducees had realised that this person was no fly by night religious fanatic who would disappear as quickly as he arrived and they were becoming pretty worried about it all.

They call a kind of showdown by asking him to show them a sign from heaven but he was not intimidated at all by this. “No signs!” was the quick reply. “Even if I gave you a sign, you wouldn’t recognise it.”

Some time later, they arrived in the district of Caesarea Philippi. “Boys, you’ve been around the traps. You’ve heard the talk. What are people saying? Who do they say I am?”

Almost instinctively they trot out the old chestnuts. “Some say you are John the Baptist. Some say you’re Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

Almost as if that first question was the icebreaker for the main event Jesus turns to them, “What about you? Who do you say that I am?”

Peter speaks up first (as usual) “You are the Christ the Son of the Living God.
You are the one we have been waiting for – -the Messiah.”

Jesus was impressed and told Peter that it was not mere idle human speculation but divine disclosure that had given him this insight and declared that he was going to be the foundation stone for the church. He would be given the keys to the kingdom of heaven with great authority to bind and loose things (whatever that means).

This was a sacred moment. Although Jesus told them not to tell anybody about it I am sure they were pretty chuffed to be in on the secret.

However it was not all good news. From that time on Jesus began to show them that he must go to Jerusalem where he would suffer at the hands of the Sanhedrin, the powerful conglomerate of lay nobility, leading priestly families and professional theologians who would kill him.

Peter was shocked by this. He took Jesus aside and began to have a go at him him. “God forbid it Lord.! This must never happen to you.”

It seems to be hard for him to grasp the contradiction of the Messiah suffering like this. “God would never let this happen to you. Let’s get hold of those keys you gave me last week and we’ll do some binding and loosing. We’ll fix this.”

“Get behind me Satan. You are getting in my way, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

So in just six of Matthew’s verses or after only one week of Lectionary standard time, Peter has gone from being the rock upon whom the early church was to be built to a stumbling block, from being the bearer of divine revelation to an instrument of Satan reflecting not divine thoughts but human thoughts

Talk about a rooster one week and a feather duster the next. This transition in perception is matched only by Terry Wallace’s status in the eyes of Bulldog supporters this week..

Nothing in Peter’s background had prepared him for the notion that Israel’s eschatological champion should have to suffer a shameful death. He was expected to inflict suffering and death on Israel’s enemies and on the wicked within Israel, not to experience it himself.

That Jesus should have to suffer many things would hardly have troubled him, for Israel knew of many religious leaders who have suffered nobly for their faith. But that he should be rejected by the religious leaders in Jerusalem and put to death by them would have been a shock to him. This is what Paul meant when he said that the message of the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews.

“Hush now Jesus, let’s not talk about that. We won’t let that happen to you.”

“Don’t stand in my way” he says, “Get behind me”

I have spent slabs of time over the past eight years visiting the Karen refugees on the Thai Burma border. These people have suffered greatly under the yoke of the military regime in Burma. They have not only taught me a lot about myself. They taught me a lot about God and how I have learned to accommodate my understanding of the Christian faith to my culture and my particular niche in the evangelical world..

When the Karens gather together to worship in the refugee camp and hear the words of Yahweh to Moses:

“I have seen how my people have been chewed up and spat out in Egypt. I have heard their desperate cries for help as the slave driver work them into the ground. I know what their suffering is like and I have come down to break them free to bring them out of the land of slavery.”

they don’t have to spiritualise them or explain them. They receive them as good news

When they read Jesus’s words in the Beatitudes,

“Blessed are those who mourn, those the hunger and thirst for justice, the pure in heart. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you”,

they don’t have a discussion about what it really means. They know.They are the persecuted, the mourners, the dispossessed. They know what it means to be called the blessed ones. Our idea of being blessed is to have a good job, nice house, healthy intelligent kids. Not so for Jesus.

When they hear Jesus say:

“If you try to hold on to control of your life you’ll end up losing the lot. But if you let go, even if you pay the ultimate price for your commitment to me, you’ll discover real life. What’s the point of getting control of your whole world if getting it kills you.”

I discovered they have a better handle on what he means than I do.

Peter represents the tension filled, paradoxical existence of every Christian, caught between faith and doubt, understanding and confusion, obedience and disobedience. In his strengths and his weaknesses he represents us ordinary Christians who strive yet often fail to be loyal followers of Jesus in a consistent sustainable way.

Like Peter, many of us want the faith story to go according to our script and we struggle to remember that the call of Jesus crashes through our dominant religious and cultural understandings and aspirations.

We wish it were different. We may like it to be more of a good time, more comfortable, more successful. We like to dismiss the difficult things from the story.

Ignatius talks about the need to distinguish between the good spirit and the bad spirit within us I have discovered that it is not always easy because the bad spirit seems so reasonable and plays on all of my culture, my innate fears and prejudices and seems happy to open all of my own wounds and keeps them that way.

Within the equivalent of six verses I can move from understanding clearly what Jesus asks of me, to losing it under the layers of rationalisation and explanation.

The Romans passage for today reminds us that the life of faith is lived with intention. It doesn’t automatically come to us. There are choices to be made about how we live and respond to others.

It is also lived in community. It is in our encounters with others who share our journey that we are reminded of the call to follow Jesus. It is with them that we learn servanthood and come in contact with some of the residual fears and and prejudices we may have otherwise nurtured unknowingly.

Peter continued his up and down, near and far journey with Jesus. He discovered the meaning of grace and I hope that I am discovering it too.