WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.636 --> 00:00:07.485 "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves 2 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:11.175 and take up their cross and follow me." In the name of the Father, the Son, and the 3 00:00:11.220 --> 00:00:13.860 Holy Spirit. Amen. 4 00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:18.600 Well, we have a few strange things in our gospel this morning. 5 00:00:18.930 --> 00:00:23.820 Jesus, after just praising Peter, turns and calls him Satan. Wild. 6 00:00:26.610 --> 00:00:32.190 He goes a particular place this week, Jesus does, in that we won't really be able 7 00:00:32.220 --> 00:00:37.440 to understand what he's doing if we don't place it in context with the Gospel 8 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:42.000 narrative from last week. This ties on to that in a very important way. 9 00:00:43.110 --> 00:00:46.170 Peter, last week, got the answer exactly right. 10 00:00:46.590 --> 00:00:50.280 He confessed Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the living God. 11 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:55.801 But then, also last week, Matthew adds another strange element to that. 12 00:00:55.890 --> 00:01:01.875 He says, "Then Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone 13 00:01:01.875 --> 00:01:07.336 that he was the Messiah." Why? I thought that was what we're supposed to be doing, 14 00:01:07.410 --> 00:01:10.500 is telling people that Jesus is the Messiah. 15 00:01:10.560 --> 00:01:14.580 The disciples, likewise, were wanting to do the same thing. Why? 16 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:21.510 Because they didn't yet understand who and what the Messiah was. 17 00:01:22.290 --> 00:01:26.100 They didn't really understand what it means. 18 00:01:27.090 --> 00:01:32.940 So Jesus, this morning, tells them that he must undergo great suffering and be 19 00:01:33.030 --> 00:01:38.130 killed, and on the third day, be raised again. 20 00:01:38.220 --> 00:01:40.305 This is where Peter really had the problem. 21 00:01:40.470 --> 00:01:46.230 Ultimately, Peter had a problem with the idea of the Messiah suffering 22 00:01:46.245 --> 00:01:51.976 and dying. Jesus is pushing us to see that the Messiah came to suffer and 23 00:01:51.990 --> 00:01:56.190 die, then he calls us to follow his lead. 24 00:01:57.211 --> 00:02:02.820 If we misunderstand Christ at this point, eventually we misunderstand the 25 00:02:02.880 --> 00:02:08.340 Christian life and miss the fullness of life that Christ has promised us. 26 00:02:09.271 --> 00:02:13.860 Peter thinks suffering means something has gone terribly wrong. 27 00:02:13.921 --> 00:02:18.210 Jesus says suffering and death are precisely where he is going. 28 00:02:19.546 --> 00:02:25.351 This text is about perseverance through suffering, not because I am strong enough 29 00:02:25.380 --> 00:02:31.260 in myself, but because life is only secured through participation 30 00:02:31.380 --> 00:02:35.880 in the cross of Christ and following where he leads. 31 00:02:36.930 --> 00:02:40.440 So the question is not simply, is Jesus the Messiah? 32 00:02:41.115 --> 00:02:44.490 The question is, what kind of Messiah is he? 33 00:02:46.050 --> 00:02:51.690 And first, as we see, he is not a Messiah, he is not a Christ of our own 34 00:02:51.750 --> 00:02:57.601 making. Peter immediately realizes that what Jesus is proposing is a terrible 35 00:02:57.660 --> 00:03:03.585 strategy. He's not wrong. From the standpoint of human ordinary power, 36 00:03:03.990 --> 00:03:08.145 it makes perfect sense. No one who wants power or to be a success or to have 37 00:03:08.160 --> 00:03:11.550 authority goes and immediately gets themself killed. 38 00:03:13.171 --> 00:03:17.880 If you really have power, you prove it by avoiding weakness. 39 00:03:18.060 --> 00:03:19.664 If you matter, you prove it by winning. 40 00:03:19.830 --> 00:03:23.250 I can just hear Peter in the further conversation that surely was taking place. 41 00:03:23.564 --> 00:03:28.470 "You, Jesus, must not know anything about messiah-ing. The Messiah doesn't die. 42 00:03:28.500 --> 00:03:30.240 The Messiah makes the bad guys die. 43 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:36.465 A dead Messiah is a failed Messiah." If Jesus suffers and dies, 44 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:42.046 he can't be a ruling Messiah, just another failed revolutionary. 45 00:03:43.201 --> 00:03:46.590 Evidently, what they wanted was a king like David, who would slay the pagans and 46 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:51.900 make Israel great again, a savior to liberate them by whatever means necessary. 47 00:03:53.101 --> 00:03:58.650 And in front of this, Jesus uses the strongest words anywhere in the 48 00:03:58.680 --> 00:04:04.590 Gospels. He turns to Peter, who he just said, because of his confession, 49 00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:09.960 was the rock on which he would build his church, and says, "Get behind me, Satan. 50 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:17.880 You are a stumbling block to me." What? Wild. Why Satan? 51 00:04:17.910 --> 00:04:21.720 Why does he call him Satan? Satan literally means adversary. 52 00:04:22.305 --> 00:04:27.345 He's calling him his chief adversary because Peter is putting before 53 00:04:27.390 --> 00:04:33.060 Jesus the same basic temptation Jesus had already faced in the wilderness. 54 00:04:34.110 --> 00:04:39.451 Peter's vision for the Messiah represents the easy way to power and authority, just 55 00:04:39.480 --> 00:04:44.430 as Satan had done in the wilderness. "You're hungry? Make these stones bread. 56 00:04:44.820 --> 00:04:48.480 We all know you're going to do it in a little while anyway. Go ahead. 57 00:04:48.510 --> 00:04:52.531 Why don't you throw yourself off the temple and become a big spectacle, so everyone 58 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:56.820 knows who you are? Why don't you just worship me, and then I'll give you all the 59 00:04:56.880 --> 00:05:02.460 kingdoms of the world." Notice, those are all things that 60 00:05:02.520 --> 00:05:07.260 Jesus would do and acquire anyway. They're central to his vocation. 61 00:05:08.310 --> 00:05:14.220 But the temptation is to use the forces and the tactics of empire, force, control, 62 00:05:14.281 --> 00:05:19.951 and top-down authority to achieve his goal and bypass the 63 00:05:20.010 --> 00:05:23.250 road to suffering, death, and the cross. 64 00:05:24.420 --> 00:05:28.949 Peter is telling Jesus to be the Messiah in the way that we, the world, knows how. 65 00:05:30.060 --> 00:05:35.490 The way we know how to be powerful. He wanted a Messiah who would save by 66 00:05:35.580 --> 00:05:41.220 avoiding the cross. But this would be no Messiah, just another example of a 67 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:46.650 human attempt to clamor to power. For you, Peter, 68 00:05:47.145 --> 00:05:52.980 and us, we set our minds not on divine things, but on human things. 69 00:05:54.750 --> 00:05:59.880 And then just as Jesus has turned and changed the way the disciples understand the 70 00:05:59.910 --> 00:06:03.494 Messiah, so does he do with discipleship. 71 00:06:04.650 --> 00:06:10.620 Now, if these aspects of the temptation to avoid suffering and 72 00:06:10.650 --> 00:06:15.600 death were such a core and hard temptation for Jesus and the disciples, why do we 73 00:06:15.630 --> 00:06:17.701 think it would be any different for us? 74 00:06:18.870 --> 00:06:24.540 In this place, in this time, suffering feels like a 75 00:06:24.599 --> 00:06:28.634 failed Messiah or a failed following after a Messiah. 76 00:06:29.790 --> 00:06:32.849 So Jesus moves directly to that place. 77 00:06:33.901 --> 00:06:37.875 He moves from having a debate with Peter to a general pronouncement about 78 00:06:37.920 --> 00:06:41.970 discipleship. From Peter to all of us as disciples. 79 00:06:42.570 --> 00:06:48.331 The type of Messiah you follow is the type of person you become, and 80 00:06:48.390 --> 00:06:51.901 Jesus refuses to be a Messiah of human making. 81 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:58.800 "If you want to be my followers, deny yourself, take up your cross, 82 00:06:59.670 --> 00:07:00.420 and follow me." 83 00:07:01.620 --> 00:07:04.440 Now, we've all heard that sentence many times. 84 00:07:04.725 --> 00:07:09.061 We've heard that so often that the cross can sound not only religious but 85 00:07:09.091 --> 00:07:14.550 respectable. Did not sound that way to Jesus' first listeners, his hearers, his 86 00:07:14.581 --> 00:07:20.130 disciples. His listeners knew what the cross meant, not only suffering and death 87 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:25.110 and utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation, but also a traitor, 88 00:07:25.740 --> 00:07:31.365 incompetence, weakness, shame, abandonment, deprivation of 89 00:07:31.470 --> 00:07:35.865 all dignity, an affront to reason and respectability, 90 00:07:36.151 --> 00:07:38.670 completely reprehensible. 91 00:07:39.901 --> 00:07:44.880 The Roman orator Cicero famously described the cross as the arbor infelix, the 92 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:50.880 unlucky or shameful tree, and declared that the very word cross should be 93 00:07:50.940 --> 00:07:55.710 far removed, not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, 94 00:07:56.040 --> 00:08:02.010 his eyes, and his ears. He's not only speaking about death on the cross, but all 95 00:08:02.070 --> 00:08:07.545 that it brings. Jesus' words here about picking up your cross and 96 00:08:07.710 --> 00:08:11.370 following are not to be taken as metaphor. 97 00:08:12.331 --> 00:08:14.790 The cross is not respectable jewelry. 98 00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:19.365 It's not a metaphor for a difficult week or, as I am now quickly discovering, 99 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:22.815 Dallas traffic, as I sometimes want to say it is. 100 00:08:23.640 --> 00:08:29.100 The way of cross is still foolishness and scandalous. 101 00:08:31.050 --> 00:08:36.675 But just as the Messiah is not a Messiah of our own making, so too is the cross not 102 00:08:36.750 --> 00:08:41.640 a cross of our own making. The shape our cross takes is not something we get to 103 00:08:41.730 --> 00:08:46.635 choose for ourselves. But we can choose to follow Jesus with 104 00:08:46.651 --> 00:08:51.151 it. That does not mean that every bad thing that happens to us is our cross. 105 00:08:51.750 --> 00:08:55.770 It does not mean Christians are supposed to seek pain, remain in abuse, or call 106 00:08:55.980 --> 00:09:01.651 evil good. After all, Paul in Romans this morning says, "Hate what is evil, hold 107 00:09:01.681 --> 00:09:06.912 fast to what is good." The cross is the cost we accept 108 00:09:07.002 --> 00:09:12.312 because of our following Jesus. When fidelity to Him asks us to surrender the 109 00:09:12.372 --> 00:09:15.613 instinct to secure ourselves by the world's method, 110 00:09:16.812 --> 00:09:22.122 all that comes at us in life may not be called good, but it can be a tool to carve 111 00:09:22.182 --> 00:09:26.142 us into Christ's image and teach us how to love. 112 00:09:27.462 --> 00:09:33.057 The question goes then from how do I get out of this, to how do I 113 00:09:33.133 --> 00:09:36.312 follow Jesus through this, whatever it may be. 114 00:09:37.182 --> 00:09:41.187 The good news here is that what at one time by our human thinking was only 115 00:09:41.352 --> 00:09:46.932 suffering and the end, something to be avoided at all costs, it has now 116 00:09:46.962 --> 00:09:52.392 become, because of Jesus going before us, the very path of life. 117 00:09:53.142 --> 00:09:59.082 And that's good news, because we know the one who has gone before us and promises 118 00:09:59.113 --> 00:10:03.102 that He will repay everyone for what He has done. 119 00:10:04.482 --> 00:10:10.122 And beneath every lesser suffering stands the one cross that none of us gets to 120 00:10:10.182 --> 00:10:15.837 refuse forever, our own death, and all that it entails, the 121 00:10:15.883 --> 00:10:17.892 diminishment of self. 122 00:10:19.242 --> 00:10:23.547 There can finally be no greater confrontation with self-preservation than that. 123 00:10:23.892 --> 00:10:29.097 Everything we spend our lives accumulating eventually encounters a boundary it 124 00:10:29.172 --> 00:10:34.962 cannot cross. "For what will it profit them," Jesus says, "if they gain the whole 125 00:10:35.052 --> 00:10:37.242 world but forfeit their life?" 126 00:10:39.133 --> 00:10:43.272 In thinking about this, I was immediately reminded of a children's book that my 127 00:10:43.332 --> 00:10:44.051 grandmother would 128 00:10:45.702 --> 00:10:49.752 gather all the grandkids around and say to us in this very animated way, perhaps 129 00:10:49.782 --> 00:10:52.122 you know it, "The Bear Hunt." Anybody? 130 00:10:52.152 --> 00:10:55.587 We're going on a-- Don't leave me singing alone, okay? 131 00:10:56.037 --> 00:10:58.812 We're going, right, remember? There we go. 132 00:10:58.872 --> 00:11:04.722 And it comes to this final clause, "You can't go over it, you can't go under it, 133 00:11:06.282 --> 00:11:11.172 we've got to go through it." Right? This is what Jesus is telling us. 134 00:11:11.202 --> 00:11:16.617 The suffering of the cross, that we don't necessarily get to choose, we can choose 135 00:11:16.722 --> 00:11:22.302 to associate that with Jesus, by which he encourages us to follow him with 136 00:11:22.363 --> 00:11:27.732 it and through it. This cross is where our compulsion to save 137 00:11:27.822 --> 00:11:33.102 ourselves is put to death. Which means the cross will expose places where we are 138 00:11:33.162 --> 00:11:38.787 still trying desperately to secure safety or significance for ourselves, setting 139 00:11:38.832 --> 00:11:42.492 our minds not on divine things, but on human things. 140 00:11:43.782 --> 00:11:49.258 Perhaps part of Christian discipleship is learning, in a thousand smaller deaths 141 00:11:49.272 --> 00:11:54.912 beforehand, that our life is already held by God, that we have what we 142 00:11:54.972 --> 00:11:58.842 need, that we're safe and secure and belong. 143 00:11:59.742 --> 00:12:01.752 The death of always needing to be right. 144 00:12:02.142 --> 00:12:06.312 The death of always needing to be admired, of getting the last word, of controlling 145 00:12:06.342 --> 00:12:10.692 how the story turns out. The death of the fantasy that enough achievement, money, 146 00:12:10.842 --> 00:12:15.522 influence, competence, or approval can finally make us secure. 147 00:12:17.262 --> 00:12:22.122 What does save yourself look like when no one is threatening to kill you? 148 00:12:23.383 --> 00:12:27.852 Where do you attempt to hold onto control? 149 00:12:27.942 --> 00:12:32.922 It's not just losing your life. It's not a cross alone. 150 00:12:33.522 --> 00:12:38.292 But it's following this Messiah with whatever shape your cross happens to take. 151 00:12:39.672 --> 00:12:44.667 So Jesus is not simply saying, "Take up a cross." You likely already have 152 00:12:44.742 --> 00:12:50.682 one. He says, "Deny yourself, carry the cross, and follow 153 00:12:50.742 --> 00:12:50.907 me." 154 00:12:52.152 --> 00:12:56.727 What does that look like for you? Perhaps it looks like taking that first step in 155 00:12:56.742 --> 00:13:00.147 baptism where, in baptism, we associate with Jesus's death. 156 00:13:00.462 --> 00:13:05.952 We die with him in baptism, so to be raised with him in fullness of life. 157 00:13:06.012 --> 00:13:07.077 In fullness of life. 158 00:13:08.382 --> 00:13:14.127 Jesus, through being baptized in death and suffering, and 159 00:13:14.233 --> 00:13:17.172 raising again, has given us a path to follow. 160 00:13:18.702 --> 00:13:20.412 But what does it look like after that? 161 00:13:21.553 --> 00:13:25.363 Listen to Paul's description of a people shaped by a crucified Messiah. 162 00:13:25.977 --> 00:13:31.182 "Let love be genuine. Outdo one another in showing honor. Be patient in suffering. 163 00:13:31.422 --> 00:13:36.672 Persevere in prayer. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. 164 00:13:37.212 --> 00:13:41.561 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Never avenge yourselves. 165 00:13:42.192 --> 00:13:44.667 If your enemies are hungry, feed them. 166 00:13:45.567 --> 00:13:51.432 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." This is what the 167 00:13:51.462 --> 00:13:55.212 cross looks like when it becomes a way of life. 168 00:13:56.412 --> 00:13:59.083 Peter wanted a Messiah who would save by avoiding the cross. 169 00:13:59.412 --> 00:14:05.248 Jesus reveals a Messiah who saves by going straight through it, through suffering, 170 00:14:05.562 --> 00:14:09.867 through apparent defeat, through death, and into resurrection, and then says, 171 00:14:10.557 --> 00:14:16.452 "Follow me." Because the life we are so afraid of losing is the very life that, 172 00:14:16.542 --> 00:14:22.347 in Christ, we finally find. So take up your cross, but 173 00:14:22.392 --> 00:14:25.873 take it up and follow Jesus. Amen.