Text: Matthew 16:21-28
Theme: “The Victory of Suffering Love”
12th Sunday
after Pentecost
August 31, 2014
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
21 From
that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests
and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be
raised to life.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke
him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get
behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the
concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
24 Then Jesus said to his disciples,
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow me. 25 For
whoever wants to save their life[a] will
lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for someone to gain
the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange
for their soul? 27 For
the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then
he will reward each person according to what they have done.
28 “Truly
I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the
Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Your worship folder left off one word from the title of
today’s Meditation: Love. The theme should read: “The
Victory of Suffering Love.” Our theme is
a five-word description of Christianity.
My addled memory banks are going to try to remember this. I want to have it in my mental Rolodex if
someone asks me for a short explanation of the faith. It is the victory of suffering love.
In that great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13 (a passage
most often used at weddings), Paul states:
“Love bears all things.” He did
not say: “Love bears all that we have decided it is going to bear.” It says it bears all things, and that
includes, but is not limited to, suffering.
Oh, for goodness sake.
I’d much rather have our theme be “The Victory of Love.” Take the dadgum
suffering out of it. There’s enough of
that in the world as it is, right? And isn’t church a chance to escape from
that for a little while with friends and then have brunch afterwards?
Two thousand some odd years ago, they didn’t have a long
Labor Day Weekend in that part of the world where Jesus did His thing. Yes, they observed the Sabbath Day. That, of course, was one of the Ten
Commandments, and how you kept that commandment was covered in a smattering of
lesser laws designed to help you keep the big ones.
No, it wasn’t
Labor Day and it probably wasn’t the Sabbath, but some scholars think that
Jesus was on something of a retreat when he was way up North in Caesarea
Philippi. That’s the place on the map where our text took place.
Jesus asked a
big question: “Who do people say that I
am?” The disciples gave Him the results
of the polling question. Then, He gets
closer to home: “But who do you say that
I am?”
Simon Peter
replies: “You are the Christ, the Son of
the living God.” “Blessed are you, Simon
son of John,” Jesus replies. “For flesh
and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven.” Give the old boy his props and creds. He confessed his faith. He got it right! Bravo!
But hold on to
your hat, mother! Things are about to
get real interesting., and I’m as serious as a heart attack about this. It
starts right where our reading does:
“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must
go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, and chief
priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third
day be raised to life.”
Did you catch
it? Did you hear the word “suffer” in
there? He suffered, specifically, at the
hands of people who interpreted their religion in a certain way.
I wonder: to what extent does an interpretation of faith or religion, if you will, cause people to
suffer today? It’s a most interesting
question. And, brothers and sisters in
Christ, I’m not just talking about ISIS or radical Islam.
Well, all this
mention of suffering didn’t go over real well with the guy who had just
affirmed his faith. At one moment,
it’s: “You are the Christ, the Son of
the living God.” At the next moment,
Jesus pipes up about suffering, and then, from the mouth of Peter again,
it’s: “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” It says he
rebuked Jesus. Ouch.
Jesus,
however, didn’t leave that one dangling.
He didn’t say: “There, there now,
my friend. Let’s use out best church
language. Take some deep, cleansing
breaths. Let’s just relax and go out to
the prayer garden. It’s a nice day.” How well does that approach work with
bullies, or, in this instance, with, apparently, the devil?
Jesus says
direct to Peter: “Get behind me,
Satan! You are a stumbling block to me;
you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” My mentor, Rev. Dr. Nagel, with this verse in
mind, exclaimed: “What greater victory
for the devil than to turn Peter into anti-Christ!” Ouch.
It’s time for
some brutal honesty. Sometimes I wonder
if Jesus isn’t thinking much the same thing in view of a whole bunch of
churches these days! Here we are – and
the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other ecclesiastical entities are included in
this – and we are LOSING AN ENTIRE GENERATION of young millennials. It’s a statistical fact. Our liturgies, our sermons, our organs, our
stained glass windows, our we/they, member or non-member thinking just isn’t
cutting it. Keep it up, and all we’ll
do, if the statistics mean anything, is rearrange deck chairs on an
ecclesiastical Titanic. Somehow I think we have managed, in the last
two or three decades or so, to turn Jesus in a new Moses, a new Law-giver, a
fundamentalist, right-wing zealot who is going to return to earth some day with
an AK-47 assault rifle and set things straight—as some decorated, retired
general who now heads a “family research council” thinks. We’re about God and country and decency and
good order and rules and regulations and coffee and cookies and mints and nuts
and finery. But these young millennials see the world a
bit differently – with its guns, pipes, needles, booze, bongs, pills, debts, lack of job, lack of future,
lack of hope, dysfunction as far as the eye can see, and what are they looking
for? Should it really surprise us that they prefer a tune by Snoop Dogg versus
a hymn by Isaac Watts? I mean, who are
we kidding? What are they looking
for? I can answer it in one word: mercy.
I can answer it with another word:
grace. I can answer it with
another word: hope. I can
answer it with another word: inclusion. If they’re looking for a church at all,
they’re looking for the one that behaves like this: “Whatever you do for the least of these my
brethren, you’ve done unto me.”
If the
Presbyterian Church is to survive, Satan is going to have to back up. And it takes Christ alone to do that! It takes the suffering love of Jesus to do
that. It takes people who REALIZE that
and get out front with it.
The good news
is that Jesus DID go on to Jerusalem. He
did suffer much at the hands of a certain interpretation of religion. He was put to death. And He rose on the third day. He didn’t do it as a victim of fate. He did it on His terms, and He did it because
He loved His people – all of them.
Christianity is a victory. It is
the victory of suffering love. You may
lose your life in the process, but Jesus promised that you will find it.
God bless the
churches – and, please God, let it be ours as well – that take Jesus up at His
Word. More fully, more richly, they will
know the victory of suffering love. They
may even discover – to their unexpected and pleasant surprise – church growth.
Amen.
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