Forfeit
Matthew 16: 21-28
Click here to view the sermon for August 30, 2020 entitled, "Forfeit."
In a heartbeat, Peter goes from Jesus’ rock, the one on whom he would build his church, to a stumbling block. That was quick. But then, isn’t that the way things go sometimes? It would be easier, I suppose, if the world could be so easily divided between white hats and black hats, good guys and bad guys, friends and enemies. But here in Matthew’s telling of the Jesus story, Peter goes from being top of the class- Jesus’ best friend- to Satan himself. It’s a hard truth that it isn’t some stranger waiting in a dark alley who is likely to do us the most harm, it’s the person we are closest to; the one we confide in who breaks that confidence, the one whom we trust who turns around and violates it, the one we love who breaks faith, and then breaks our heart. It shouldn’t come as that big of a surprise. Jesus is talking about Jerusalem. He is talking about hard things. Things that none of them want to hear, particularly Peter who I imagine was daydreaming about the keys entrusted to him and his power to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. Suffering and death certainly weren’t what he had in mind. It’s a foreshadow of what’s to come when Peter’s enthusiasm for Jesus lasts about as far as the high priest’s outer courtyard after Jesus is arrested, where Peter denies even knowing him.
Jesus’ rebuke of Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” isn’t too far off from the words Jesus spoke at the end of his forty days in the wilderness. This was at the beginning of his ministry, before he ever knew Peter, when, just moments after his baptism by John and the heavens opened and the Spirit descended like a dove and a voice spoke its blessing, that same Spirit led him out into the desert to be tempted. As his forty day fast drew to a close the tempter came offering him a chance to feed his hunger, satisfy his ego, and secure his standing in the world. To which Jesus finally said, “Away with you, Satan!” Peter is concerned about how these things that Jesus says about going to Jerusalem to suffer at the hands of the religious establishment and be killed don’t exactly fit into the church marketing plan he had started to map out. Sounds like someone’s been listening to the tempter. Is it too much, Jesus, to plant a nice little church that’s chicken soup for the soul and a pleasant place to spend a Sunday morning without dragging temple politics and death into it? That doesn’t really sound like anyone’s best life, now does it?
There are two ways of reading all of this, especially what comes next. The first listens to Jesus talk about dying and being raised, about taking up crosses and following him and concludes that Jesus is working a little bit of clairvoyant Messiah magic in an attempt to prepare his peeps for what he already knows is going to go down in Jerusalem. Maybe that was Matthew’s intent by putting it here. But another way of reading it is to see that Jesus didn’t need a crystal ball to know that the path they were on was going to lead to the center of power and a conflict with the religious and civil authorities. And while the image of a cross certainly evokes Rome’s painful and humiliating form of crowd control, it also points to the present moment that Jesus and his disciples find themselves in before they even take one step toward Jerusalem. Because they are at a crossroads.
At the end of the fourth book of the Harry Potter series, The Goblet of Fire, the wizarding world is reeling from the suggestion that the vanquished dark wizard Voldemort has somehow returned. The students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry have just witnessed a horrifying end to the school year’s Tri-Wizard tournament. One of their own, Cedric Diggory, has been killed. Dumbledore, the school’s headmaster is addressing the tragedy and naming the hard truth that many do not want to hear: that it is Voldemort returned who indeed killed their classmate. “We are all facing dark and difficult times,” he tells them, “when we will have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy.” It would be easy to deny any such thing. It would be easy to act as though the boy’s death were an accident, to tell a story about the darkness that absolves us from having to do anything about it and allows us to get on living our best life. At the crossroads, doing what is right will almost certainly cost us something.
An employee witnesses something at work. Someone in the company is doing something, maybe it’s illegal, maybe it’s just unethical, but it isn’t right. Does the witness say something? Go to the boss and disclose what they’ve seen? But what if it comes from the top? What then? It’d be easier to just forget about it, pretend it didn’t happen, wasn’t happening. Say something and you might get fired. Who’s going to pay the mortgage? Who’s going to hire the person who blew the whistle? What about the health insurance, the retirement plan?
A novel virus finds its way into the human population and quickly spreads around the world. Some things are known about how it spreads, in the air, especially through prolonged exposure to groups of people indoors. Some people can be infected and not even know it. Others get it, and it’s not so bad. But it puts some people in the hospital, and sends others to an early grave. There’s a suggestion that it hits older people harder, and people with underlying health conditions. It would be easier if we could just go about business as usual- go to work, go to school, go to church. But what happens if you’ve got it and you don’t know it? What happens if you spread it without meaning to? Maybe you don’t have much contact with older people or know anyone with those underlying health concerns. But what if the person you unknowingly give it to does? If you close schools, what are people supposed to do with their kids? How are they supposed to go to work? And if they don’t work, or can’t work because it’s been closed, how do they pay their bills? What if people stop coming to church because we aren’t meeting in person? Will they stop giving? Stop praying? Stop believing?
We have a strong instinct toward self-preservation. Some might say it’s our biological imperative. When we face dark and difficult times, choosing to do what is easy makes perfect sense. That is, after all, the way of the world. It is not, however, the way of the cross. The road that leads to Jerusalem, the one that puts us at odds with rulers and authorities who prefer what is easy, what saves them from having to do anything about what they don’t want to deal with, what doesn’t disrupt the status quo. Who can blame Peter for his reaction? We say the same thing all the time, whenever we hear that someone might suffer or die unjustly. God forbid it.
Somewhere along the frontiers of Gilder, a man in black, presumed to be the dread pirate, Roberts, has Buttercup, the Princess Bride. She burns with hatred for this man whom she thinks has killed her dearest love, Wesley. Roberts questions this love, as she is now engaged to another and suggests that he might have done poor Wesley a favor in killing him. “You mock my pain,” she cries. To which he replies, “Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.”
In some respects, this is what’s at stake between Peter and Jesus. Between us as Jesus’ disciples and the way of the world. The way of the world is always selling us the idea that we can avoid pain, manage it, minimize it. God forbid it that we should suffer or experience pain. The way of the cross knows what we want to deny, that life is pain. It is. That’s not all that it is. In fact, pain is very much a part of the same fabric that also brings us things like joy, fulfillment, and peace. To wish away or have God forbid the one would be to eliminate the other. To believe and act otherwise is to be sold a bill of goods that in no way resembles reality. We may gain the world as the tempter promised it to Jesus at the end of his 40 days, but we will almost certainly forfeit who we truly are in the process. We will become counterfeit versions of the people God has called into being, worshipping a false god. This is what happens whenever we choose what is easy over what is right, thinking we can keep pain at arm’s length and save our own lives. We end up losing everything else in the process.
It’s only when we relinquish whatever claim we think we have on self-preservation, on a pain-free existence and put our faith instead in what God would do and is doing in response to the painful realities of life that we discover more than we could have imagined. As it turns out, Peter gets so upset and distracted by Jesus’ words about suffering and death that he completely misses the last bit about being raised on the third day. Maybe that’s because we know far better what suffering and death look like than we do being raised. The truth is that the way of the world does not and can never lead to the promise of an empty tomb. Only the way of the cross can do that. When we put our faith in the power of God to overcome the pain and injustice of the world, when take that first step toward Jerusalem with Jesus, we are also on our way to the rising, to a life made new. Not a life that is without tears. Such a life is no life at all. But one in which every tear is wiped away by the love of God in Jesus Christ who stands at the crossroads with us and invites us to follow him on the way. Alleluia, amen.