August 30, 2020 Sermon

 

Matthew 16: 21-28     August 30, 2020     My Heart I Offer to You, Promptly and Sincerely.

            So last Sunday, the disciples scored big with Jesus.  They put together all that Jesus was doing and realized that He is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God-contrary to all the other theories the people had.  As we continue in Matthew 16, Jesus begins to explain what it means to be the Messiah, what the plan of God is to be accomplished in him: From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
            So we know this plan very well.  We celebrate this plan every Easter.  We understand that this happened because God loved us so much, that God sent God’s only begotten Son for us.  (John 3).  We know that Jesus loved us so much that He did not count being equal to God as something to be grasped, but took on the form of a servant to be among us (Philippians 2).  We know God’s plan for us. 

            But put yourself in Peter’s shoes, or sandals.  He has just identified Jesus as Messiah, he is the Rock on which Jesus will build His church, he holds the keys to the Kingdom.  What Jesus then lays out as the plan of God is exactly what Peter and all the disciples have been fearing is going to happen to Jesus because of his ministry.  The leaders of the temple are already after his life.  Now he says that the plan is to walk into Jerusalem, get taken by the leadership, and then be tortured and killed.  I don’t think Peter processed the part about rising 3 days later.  For Peter, this is not a plan, it is the worst case scenario.  It is out of love that Peter pulls him aside and rebukes him, saying “Jesus, this can NOT happen to you!”

            Despite the resurrection talk, Jesus is saying that He is going to die.  That’s the part that sticks in Peter’s brain.  This is not the way normal people talk.  But, although it may sound rude on the face of it, we must acknowledge that Jesus is NOT normal people.  Neither is Jesus’ reaction.  He bypasses the love in Peter’s intent.  Rather, it is threat.  He replies, “Get behind me Satan!  You are a stumbling block to my plan to get killed!  Your eyes are on things of the world and not of heaven.”

            Was Jesus so sharp because he’d just ‘given’ Peter the keys to the kingdom?  That what Peter says on earth is going to go in heaven and vice versa.  And in Peter’s first pronouncement, he is undermining God’s whole plan for salvation? 

            Jesus goes on, not sounding normal.  "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 those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  It is language like this that cult leaders use, and in their mouths, it is crazy talk.  Especially the craziest ones who convince their followers to die for them.  The one that still haunts me took place in my first year as an ordained minister.  It was 1997 when the leader of the Heaven’s Gate cult convinced 38 members to take their own lives because they would “gain them again” by the flying saucer hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

            The Word of God is called a two-edged sword in Revelation.  See how that works here?  On the one hand, the cult leader, Marshall Applewhite, used such language to convince all those people to die at “the Gate to Heaven”.  On the other, Jesus uses this language to lay out the plan of God for our salvation. 

            We are conditioned, and properly so, that if we hear a loved one talking about death excessively, oddly, about dying or killing, we are going to pay attention.  It should send up a red flag.  From a human point of view, Jesus talking so excessively about death, and then reacting to a rebuke with “Get behind me Satan…”  I understand Peter’s reaction. 

            Am I suggesting that Jesus is nuts?  Certainly not.  Because he is not talking in human terms.  He is talking in divine terms.  “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.”  It is not about this life, it is about the life to come.  It is about a bigger reality He is just starting to talk about.

            And Peter didn’t get that.  He thought he did, he identified Jesus as the Messiah, but he did not understand what that meant.  Why did Jesus say “Get behind me Satan”?  My best guess is because Peter was doing exactly what Satan would want, interfering in the plan of God.  Maybe Jesus was so sharp in his words not because Peter was interfering in God’s plan, but because it was not Jesus’ first choice.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asks that the cup of wrath pass from him, if God wills, but will obey in love for us (Matthew 26).   

            The divine plan is resurrection, overcoming death, life everlasting.  We die for the Lord, we will be rewarded with our life returned.  Jesus concludes with that interesting bit: “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."  Growing up, the adventurer in me wondered if this was a promise of immortality.  The boring, but more theologically considered opinion, is that the Son of Man came ‘in His kingdom’ when he appeared to them after the resurrection-and Judas, the betrayer, was absent.  

            We have words that surround a crest in our stained glass in the sanctuary.  “My heart I offer to You (meaning the Lord), promptly and sincerely.”  That’s what Peter is doing.  He is wrong, but he rebukes Jesus promptly and with all sincerity.  He loves Jesus and does not want to see him die.  Which is a perfectly reasonable human expectation.  But God’s expectations are at a whole other level. 

            But if we are going to follow in Peter’s shoes, or sandals, if we are going to offer our hearts to Jesus promptly and sincerely, we need to understand what that means.

            Have you heard the pat response to the question, “Why did Jesus die?”  The answer is simple, “so we don’t have to”-we do not bear punishment for our sins, Jesus did.

            If we are going to offer our hearts to the Lord, Jesus’ expectations are clear.  We are to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him.  It is not a cake walk.  It is not “a cushy gig”.  It is hard and it is going to kick back at us if we take it seriously, because we are seeking to show God’s love in a sinful world.

            I think Peter saw in Jesus’ words what we might call today “death by cop”.  Jesus is intentionally going to walk into Jerusalem where the leaders are going to kill him.  “Death by cop” is a method of suicide where someone intentionally threatens a police officer in a way that forces the cop to shoot them for their own protection. 

So I do not blame Peter for trying to intervene-he just did not understand.  Jesus commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, but what if our neighbor is in this worst-case scenario?  What if our neighbor is so broken, so ill, so depressed, they are suicidal?  We know that because of Jesus’ own death and resurrection-we know that the love of God leaves nobody behind, even if our neighbor believes otherwise.  No one has to die for their ‘bad life’, because Jesus has already died for us.  By the grace of God, if we ever come alongside a neighbor who is so in need of God’s love, may Jesus give us the words we need, may Jesus show us the way to let them know that they are loved.  This is one side of the two-edged sword.

            But the reality is that things do not always work the way we want.  Sometimes, no matter what we say, no matter what we do, sometimes our ‘neighbor’ is still going to kill themselves.  And the feeling of failure to those who tried to intervene can be devastating.  This devastation is not just on a personal level, but it can also be on a spiritual level.  How angry and disappointed can we be in the Jesus we claim to love when God’s power did not seem to be sufficient?  Is God weak?  Is God uncaring?  See how powerful that little word “doubt” can be.  This is the other side of the two-edged sword.

            This could very well be the hardest place that God could send us if we are serious about offering our hearts to the Lord.  But it is the very plan of God that provides hope even in the midst of tragedy.  Historically, Christianity is not very sympathetic to suicide.  It is often considered the worst kind of sin, squandering God’s gift of life.  That was one of the most heated conversations I ever had with a colleague in ministry.  I believe these folks are like Peter, they give their hearts sincerely and promptly to the Lord, but they got the plan of God wrong.

            How could Jesus who died for us be so harsh as to reject someone so in need of His love that they think death is their only alternative?  If a person is filled with pain and suffering that they cannot conceive that Jesus loves them, or that life isn’t worth it, is that not the person whom, in His mercy, Jesus would be the closest to?  Even if the person never sees it, would not our merciful Savior carry them as certainly as the promise in the poem “Footprints in the Sand”?

            My prayer is that if we have ever lost someone to death, we can find comfort in the knowledge that Jesus cares for his own, that he died so all may be forgiven. 

            Pastor, this is heavy stuff.  Of course it is heavy stuff.  If we are going to sincerely offer our hearts to Jesus, we need to know that the love of Christ and the plan of God is more than sufficient to carry the heaviest stuff.  One of the crosses to bear is that we can do everything right in Jesus’ name and things still fall apart.  We need to understand God’s plan is still sufficient.

            But what Peter did not understand yet, what we need to understand is that if things fall apart here on earth, they will not fall apart in heaven.  If we give our hearts sincerely and promptly to the Lord, we can, in the love of neighbor, find amazing ways to help others, and, in the love of God, gain God’s help when we, in turn, need it.  Such is the joy and power of Jesus, our Messiah.  Amen.