Matthew 16:21-28
Jesus “Showed” Them
For our LCM Wednesday Night
program this week, the students put on their creative hats and made cards to
send to the young adults serving as YAGM volunteers around the world. It has been two years now since Clemson had
an alum among the group of 65 or so young adults serving communities through
the ELCA’s Global Mission Office, but this does not mean we are any less
engaged or prayerfully supportive of the work being done in the name of Christ
by these recent college graduates.
For the benefit of first year
students, we arranged for Sarah Delap to talk a bit about YAGM. Sarah graduated three years ago. The year after graduation she lived and
worked as a YAGM in England. Sarah has many
stories to tell, but the one she shared on Wednesday was her reaction to a
conversation she had shortly after arriving in England. She was speaking with a youth there, who
pointed out that in those parts of England, it is not socially expected that
you would be connected to the Church. In
fact, it is typically socially unacceptable.
“It isn’t that way where I come from,” Sarah replied. Then came the questions from her conversation
partners about life in such a place. If
it acceptable that Jesus be named and claimed, if it is somewhat expected that
Jesus be given a role in our lives, is the community different? Is there less crime? Are there fewer folks who go hungry or
homeless? What about racism and bigotry?
I am going to assume you realize the
answers she was obliged to give. She had
to be truthful, even if she could not report that our society, in which it is
perfectly acceptable to claim Jesus as Lord and Savior, doesn’t necessarily
look all that different from them one in which allegiance to Jesus is the last
thing one would claim publicly
Should our lives be different, as
a result of confessing Jesus as Messiah?
Ought the society in which we live be shown a different way of living?
We are in that section of Matthew’s
Gospel where Peter confesses Jesus as Messiah.
Today’s reading asks us if we are prepared to live out that
confession. Is there to come some transformation
of our lives when we come to see Jesus not just as some prophet or messenger or
powerful leader, but as the very embodiment of God’s presence in our world?
Is it to make any difference at
all?
I am not sure which bible you
read from, and whether it’s editors have inserted paragraph headings. The bad thing about such paragraph headings
is the way in which they pre-determine what you think you are about to
read. The good thing is it allows you to
see the various building blocks as they are stacked one on another.
If your bible has paragraph
headings, and you look at the paragraphs just before today’s reading, you will
see how we got to where we are. It does
help to look all the way back to Matthew 15.
Jesus feeds the 5,000 (Mt 15:32ff).
Then we have an encounter with the religious types of Jesus’ day who seem
to want some other indication that Jesus is to be listened to. Next comes Jesus’ warning to his followers
about the false piety of the Pharisees and Scribes. That is in Mt 16:5ff. In Matthew 16:13ff we have last week’s
reading about the confession of Peter, his acknowledgement that Jesus is
Messiah.
“You got it right!” Jesus
congratulates Peter in that reading. And
Jesus shares with Peter, or bestows upon him, the opportunity and/or
responsibility of weighing the confessions of all those who are to come
after. “You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” “Great!”
Jesus seems to be saying, “Now you have set aside are the half-truths of
the Pharisees and scribes. Great! Finally we have a handle on God’s promise and
hope for the world. Great! But then not so great.
If you have one of those bibles
with paragraph headings you will see that the next building block (the first
half of our appointed text for today) is labeled something like “Jesus
Foretells his death and Resurrection.” I
am going to come back and take issue with that title in a moment, but for now
look at the title given to the second half of our reading. It is typically referred to as “The Cross and
Self-Denial.” Peter gets it right, and
we think we are home free. Jesus seems to think we are, too. So Jesus begins to lay out what Messiahship
looks like. Not the Messiahship hoped
for by those with the false piety dealt with back in the opening verses of
Matthew 16, but true piety. Jesus speaks
to those who seemed to have made a confession that they were prepared to
embrace him as their Messiah. He tells
them what his Messiahship will look like.
But they don’t like this part of
the picture. Peter, who spoke for us
earlier in confessing Jesus as Messiah now expresses our dissatisfaction that
following God’s Anointed One could in any way result in betrayal and suffering
and death. “There is life eternal,”
Jesus promises. “There is an
unimaginable glory in store for you,” Jesus says. “And the way you get there is by setting
aside your own selfish ambitions, by giving up on what is best for you and you
alone, you get there by exposing the hatred and selfishness of those who are
not among my followers.”
And Peter wants no part of
it. What seemed so great in verse 16 has
come crashing down by verse 22.
When we studied this text on
Tuesday night, we stumbled over the word “show.” Jesus doesn’t “tell” his disciples what being
Messiah means, the text says that he “shows” them. How would he “show” them this? ....
(Wait for a few replies……) We
came up with being nice to others, maybe sharing another meal with a hungry
person, perhaps accepting the unacceptable.
Surely these things “show” Jesus as loving and caring Messiah. But how do you “show” that you are going to
go to Jerusalem, be rejected, suffer, die, and be resurrected?
Maybe you can’t “show” that,
actually. This is surely something of
which Jesus would have to speak. But the
choice of the word creates a stumbling block for any of us who would want to
think that following Jesus means saying certain words or believing particular
thoughts. Following Jesus involves
something that can be seen, observed, shown.
It means living one’s life quite differently.
I want to say that one more
time. Using the word “show” creates a
stumbling block for any of us who would want to think that following Jesus
means saying certain words or believing particular thoughts. Following Jesus involves something that can
be seen, observed, shown. It means
living one’s life quite differently.
Let me go back to my criticism of
the paragraph titles. To refer to
Matthew 16:21-23 as a “Foretelling” implies that the purpose of these verses is
to set up some sort of a test as to whether Jesus has the ability to know the
future. If he does, then we have further
evidence that he is Messiah. How
differently we might approach those verses if they were given a title like
“Jesus speaks of what Messiahship looks like.”
Then, we wouldn’t skim over them to see whether they reinforced the
things that we have made part of our confession of faith, rather we would study
them as guide for our own future.
Jesus isn’t some
better-than-average soothsayer. He is the One who came to show us how God
desires we live our lives.
The way God wants us to live our
lives is to be concerned less about our own hide and our own prosperity and our
own ideology. Forfeiting our lives means
focusing on what is best for the whole of God’s creation. It means turning our attention from that
which allows us to move ahead, giving attention instead to that which will
return the dignity and promise due each of God’s children.
It took a lot of courage for
Peter to confess Jesus as Lord. And it
is no small thing when we make a similar statement of faith. But in a culture where such confessions are
acceptable (maybe even expected) it is way too easy to assume that what Jesus
would do is what everyone around us is already doing. But such an assumption is built upon a faulty
set of rocks. The rock upon which Jesus’
church is built is the one in which self-denial and service and sacrifice are
shown as the way.
Amen.
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