22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 16:21-28
August 31, 2008

Get Behind Me

Today’s Gospel reading provides the second installment of a story that began last Sunday. The scene is Caesarea Philippi, and Peter has just responded to the altar call. He came down the aisle while the choir sang "Just As I Am" with every eye in the congregation closed and every head bowed. He stood before the preacher, who in this case was Jesus himself, and professed him as his Lord and Savior. "You are the Christ," he told Jesus, "the Son of the living God."

A picture-perfect conversion. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Kathee Winsead was waiting in the wings to give Peter a pledge card. "You are Peter," said Kathee, "and upon your checkbook I will build this church." Someone from the Outreach Council snapped his picture and stuck it up on the "Welcome New Members" bulletin board. Mark Hohmeister, the Clerk of Session, breathed a sigh of relief. "Maybe this year we won’t have to report a membership loss to the General Assembly," he thought. "Things are looking up."

That was last week. Today we hear the rest of the story.

Before Peter can put the First Pres bumper sticker on his car, Jesus has some news. This Messiah, this Christ, he has just confessed, will not be on the career track Peter had anticipated.

Wait a minute! Hold the phone! Stop the presses! Cancel that check! This isn’t what Peter signed up for. There’s nothing on the church website about this. Suffering? Death? Resurrection?

Peter joined the church because he thought it would meet his needs. He could use the intellectual stimulation of well-crafted sermons, the contacts he could make in the Inquirers’ Class, the support for parenting available in the Faith and Families Class, the free childcare on Sunday mornings if he chose to drink coffee at the Doubletree.

What’s this about suffering, death, resurrection? Are you sure this is a Presbyterian Christ?

"God forbid it, Lord!" Peter blurts out. "This must never happen to you."

You see, Peter has high hopes for the Messiah and for his church. With a little organization and a proper marketing plan, this could be the start of something big, something really successful. It can go far if only Jesus will adjust his attitude.

"God forbid it, Lord! You can’t build a church on a suffering Messiah. How’s that going to play to play in the current market? Consumers these days want accessibility, non-judgmental hospitality, Starbucks coffee -- mocha grandes, hold the whipped cream. What you describe would be a public relations nightmare. "This must never happen to you."

Jesus looks at Peter for a very long time. Peter sees the anger in his eyes, and then the love. He expects to hear Jesus offer a compromise, I think. Something a bit more palatable. Instead what he hears is a rebuke harsher than anything Jesus will ever say to a Pharisee or scribe.

"Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me . . ." Your mind isn’t on what God wants; it’s on what you want. I can be the Messiah you want me to be, which is no Messiah at all, but just the incarnation of your expectations, or I can be the Messiah I was born to be. I have made my choice. Now you make yours.

Get behind me right now. In front of me you’re Satan, my stumbling block. Behind me, you’re Peter, my disciple. I can’t build my church on you if you’re standing in my way. Get behind me, where followers belong, where the church belongs.

These are not the words Peter wants to hear, and they’re not the words you and I want to hear, either. "If you want to be my follower," says Jesus, "Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me."

If there were some other way, I’m sure Peter would have taken it, but Jesus makes it more than clear there’s only one way: the way of the cross. Dietrich Bonhoeffer hit the nail on the head: "When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die."

I don’t know what that means for you. None of us knows without taking the first step, then the next, and the next. The point is not to know for sure where we’re going. The point is to follow Jesus.

This much at least seems clear to me: To follow Jesus means to measure success not by what we gain but by how we follow. If our acquisitions get in the way of following Jesus, they’re stumbling blocks, and we need to put them behind us.

"Cross bearers," writes Tom Long, "forfeit the game of power before the first inning; they are never selected as 'Most Likely to Succeed.' Cross bearers are dropouts in the school of self-promotion. They do not pick up their crosses as means for personal fulfillment, career advancement, or self-expression; rather, they 'deny themselves' (16:24) and pick up their crosses, like their Lord, because of the needs of other people." (Thomas G. Long, Matthew: The Westminster Bible Companion, Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, p. 190.)

In recent decades, Presbyterians have watched our denomination shrink in both numbers and influence. Gone are the glory days of the 50’s when churches were packed, and upward mobility meant moving from Baptist to Methodist to Presbyterian, and even to the zenith – Episcopalian.

Some say our denomination is declining because we’re obsessed with sex. We want to know who’s doing what with whom between session meetings. Others say we’re shrinking because we don’t take the Bible seriously.

It’s probably a little of both. We do seem to be far more interested in sex than was Jesus, who had a lot more to say about money than sex. (This is something we’d have noticed by now if had taken the Bible seriously.)

This text suggests, however, that our denominational decline could just as easily be a sign of faithfulness to the gospel. A cross-shaped church is not necessarily a prosperous one.

If a church is not taking up its cross, if it is not responding to the needs of others, if it is not risking its life for the sake of the gospel, then perhaps it should die. On the other hand, not every church that is growing by leaps and bounds is following Jesus to Jerusalem.

At the General Assembly meeting last June there was loud lamentation about the decline of the Presbyterian Church (USA). "What can we do to stop the hemorrhaging?" the commissioners wanted to know.

Perhaps the answer is, "Don’t stop the hemorrhaging." Continue to build those water purification plants in the Third Word. Pour more resources into AIDS and HIV prevention. Build more Habitat for Humanity homes – something Presbyterians are particularly good at. Keep arms open to embrace the different and the hurting. Don’t stop bleeding. Bleed more. Don’t focus on survival. Focus on Jesus.

Matthew doesn’t record what Peter says in response to Jesus’ stern rebuke. Perhaps that’s because he didn’t say anything at all. He just stepped out of Jesus’ way and took his place behind him, behind the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

For even though he was headed toward Jerusalem, Jesus was on the road to life, the kind of life that pleases God, the kind of life that is more abundant than anything we can imagine. Jesus said as much. "Those who lose their life for my sake will find it." Those who try to hold on to life on their own terms will surely lose it.

It’s hard to sell that kind of Messiah to a culture that worships success. Just lately, however I’ve noticed a shift in our culture. Folks are a little less confident, a little less sure of themselves, a little slower to condemn the person who declares bankruptcy, a little more sympathetic to those who struggle to pay their mortgages or fill their gas tanks so that they can get to work.

In other words, people are hurting. It’s not suffering for the sake of Jesus, of course, but it is a kind of suffering, and it puts a different light on a suffering Messiah. If nothing else, Americans are learning the meaning of humility – something Peter learned the hard way, walking behind, not ahead of, Jesus.

"Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim," says the hymn. You can’t lift up the love of Christ unless you bear the cross of Christ.

Take it from Peter. There is no better, and no other, way.

 

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