Today's sermon is below, and I hope it will be helpful to read since many (very understandably) could not get to church this morning. I look forward to seeing you all again soon. God's blessings!
11th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) – Sunday, August 28, 2011
Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA
Text: Matthew 16:21-28
I love a good story, don't you? We all have our favorite movies, but for me if the movie doesn't have a good story, I'm not too interested. Think to yourselves, how many of you love Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? I love the classic story line – a simple, ordinary person like Luke Skywalker or Frodo gets caught up in the larger, epic struggle between good and evil, gets some training and some friends to help him along the way and then goes down the long road, battling the forces of darkness along the way, until he reaches the final climactic struggle with the villain and emerges with a glorious victory.
We love heroes and happy endings. It's at the center of our culture. I've watched my VHS tape of Star Wars so many times I don't think it'll play anymore. We want the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose. We want people to get what they deserve.
This isn't a new plotline. It's one that Peter had in his mind in our reading last week. Peter had found his hero in Jesus and he thought he knew how the story was supposed to play out. If you weren't here last Sunday, just a few verses above where we picked up today Peter calls Jesus the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of the living God – all of which were titles claimed by the Roman emperors. Jesus and his disciples were standing in a city with important connections to that very Roman empire which occupied, and dominated, Israel, and so these words from Peter were no idle statement. They were a rebellious declaration that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. They were fightin' words.
If this was a movie, we could imagine the preview. “In an ancient world, one man had the courage to stand up to an empire. Jesus and his righteous band of disciples rally the Jewish nation against the foreign invaders. In a final showdown at the palace in Jerusalem, Jesus faces the evil Roman governor Pilate and his Jewish collaborators, the elders, chief priests and scribes, leading to a thrilling conclusion that will leave you cheering. Now playing in select theaters...”
But Jesus rips that preview reel right out of the projector. He slams on the brakes of that tale of glory, showing his disciples that “he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed.” Of course, we'd shout “God forbid!” too. To meet your death on a Roman cross was no glorious or honorable thing in the first century – it was the most humiliating and painful execution reserved for those who challenged the system of power. This is not the way the story was supposed to end. Jesus ain't selling too many movie tickets!
No, Jesus was up to something else entirely. In fact, he was writing a new story with his life and teachings, insisting on turning just about everything upside down. He was eating with sinners and looking past the rules about washing hands and keeping oneself pure. He was showing that mercy and love for the least in society – like lepers, children, foreigners and unmarried women – were higher on God's agenda than keeping the Sabbath. He was saying crazy things like “blessed are the poor” and “those who lose their life will find it.” At every turn, Jesus was shaking up conventional wisdom and exposing that everyone who thought they understood God actually missed the most basic things. In just a few verses, Peter went from being the “rock” of the church to the “stumbling block” ordered to the back. Like Peter, we never quite have Jesus, our Lord, figured out.
We might like a story with a hero like Luke or Frodo, but their world is not our world, and their stories are not the story of the God who came to earth and died on a cross. This God who became human in Jesus Christ came to walk among us, amidst the trials and struggles (and hurricanes) of our lives, insisting on a different storyline. He insisted on breaking down all barriers and on turning over all the tables of hierarchy and power. He didn't fight grand battles or carry an impressive sword. He didn't make daring speeches, but instead he shared loaves and fishes, healed with caring touch and taught in perplexing parables. He insisted on making forgiveness the final judgment and love the highest law. This different story was so jarring to us that we killed him. And Jesus accepted even this. From here on in Matthew's gospel Jesus is headed directly to Jerusalem, directly to the cross. Jesus put all his chips on the table for love – a love that could be never be expressed in a heroic battle, but rather in a death for the sake of his friends.
On the cross Jesus did not slay the infamous villain, but was himself killed by the bad guys. Yet through his death he won the ultimate victory of God over all sin and death, releasing their grip upon all of us who crucified him. On the cross Jesus liberated us, his executioners, and set us free to discover who we really are - his beloved children. This is the power of the cross, the power to set us sinners free, the power to heal all our broken hearts and bind them together in the fellowship of God's grace.
This is not a story we will likely see in a Hollywood epic. From all vantage points, the bad guys win. But hidden in the cross is the victory of God. If you want to see God, look here at the cross. I invite you, look into your own life, right now, later today, all through this week, and think of the moments that our world's story-writers would call failures. Think of the moments of loss, of defeat, of disappointment, frustration, of exclusion or loneliness. That is where Christ is, crucified with you, for you. When Jesus says, “take up your cross and follow me,” he's not asking you to go off on a heroic, personal crusade of faith. Jesus is inviting you to follow him through your life where there are already too many crosses to bear. This is not a God who plants crosses in our lives, nor one who tempts us with promises of fortune, pleasure or success. In Jesus we find the real God who comes all the way down to redeem us in our real lives.
When Jesus says, “those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” I don't believe he's offering us a tidy little transaction, and he's certainly not asking us to inflict pain and loss upon ourselves. What if we heard his words as an insight into a cross-shaped life, a glimmer of God's truth in our world which constantly urges us to avoid all pain, to protect ourselves and hoard as many resources as possible.
There's a woman at a church in a poor section of San Francisco named Sara Miles who has been a companion and inspiration to me on my own journey of faith. She was an atheist and a journalist who is fond of saying that one day she walked into a church, ate a piece of bread and found God. She was talking about communion bread, of course. Converted by the experience of receiving the body and blood of Jesus, she now feeds over 700 people a week at a food pantry she founded. Speaking to a group of children who can't believe they just give food away to anyone, without asking any questions, she has this to say:
So I talked with the kids about “taking advantage,” explaining that it was impossible to be taken advantage of as long as you were giving something away without conditions. “If it's a trade, it's fair or unfair, but if I'm going to give it to you anyway, no matter what you do, then you can't take advantage of me.” […] We had everything we needed because we gave everything away: we were invincible because we offered power and authority, just like food, to everyone. It was one of those Jesus-freak paradoxes that could sound, on the face of it, ludicrous. Whoever loses his life will save it; whoever is last will be first. [from Jesus Freak, pp. 37-38.]
On the cross, Jesus defeated evil by giving in to it. He was all-powerful because he gave away all worldly power. In dying he destroyed death. Jesus has set you free from the storyline this world would have you live, so that you might experience the upside-down, surprising, cross-shaped life of grace and love along with him. We get to live this crazy, unbelievable life together. Thanks be to God.
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