“CrossWords”
Matthew 16:21-27
If you were to visit Jerusalem,
especially during the season of Lent chances are pretty good that you would
probably see a spiritual pilgrim or two carrying a cross on the road they call
the Via Dolorosa. This is route on which many think Jesus carried his cross,
from Pilate’s Praetorium to Golgotha, the place of the skull.
Believers from all over the world, for
reasons known only to them will travel to this place and repeat that journey
carrying their own wooden cross. Most of
this route cuts through the old market district, so people will be buying and
selling all sorts of stuff from religious knick-knacks and doodads to fresh
fruit and vegetables; and not one of the people who live there give a second
glance to these cross toting pilgrims.
It is part of the routine of living in the “old city”.
But, when I saw these people, I gawked
a bit and wondered why? Why were they doing this? Is it a form of penance? Are they trying to make amends for sins past
or present or future? Are they doing
this to create a good impression for God? Or, do they see this as an
evangelistic witness? Is carrying a cross their public proclamation of their
faith? Do they hope that people will see
them carrying a cross and so believe?
Or, do these pilgrims just hear Jesus’ words, “Take up your cross and follow me,” and figure this is what he
meant?[1]
If that is the reason, if these cross
carriers are just trying to fulfill the literal meaning of Jesus’ command, I
think they’re mistaken. I don’t think
Jesus meant that we are to walk around lugging crossed beams of wood. I think he meant something entirely
different, and ultimately more profound.
That’s the direction we’re headed this morning, but first let us pray:
Lord,
we are each of us spiritual pilgrims on a journey toward greater understanding
of who you are, of who we are. We carry
within us the means of our own destruction, fears and worry which consume the
soul. Help us to bear our crosses with the same strength and courage with which
Jesus bore his. For on the other side of
the cross is the abundant life you promised.[2] Bring us there we pray. Amen.
Sooner or later everyone bumps into the
question, “Who is Jesus of
Nazareth?” Was he just a nice guy or a good teacher? Are we to look at him as an example or
illustration of what a moral life looks like?
Or, was he a prophet or preacher whose mission was simply to point
people toward God, to act as kind of a spiritual traffic cop? Or, did he do more than simply point to God? Was he in fact a flesh and blood incarnation
of God?
These are the choices we have. They are the same choices Peter faced, when
he and the rest of Jesus’ disciples gathered around a campfire and Jesus asked,
“Who do you say that I am?” [3] Only nobody really had the courage to answer
this question before. Everyone was
holding their cards close to the chest, and squinting out of the corner of the
eye to see who would be the first to put their chips on the table. No one wanted to be the first to place their
bet, because the stakes were incredibly high; they were in fact a matter of
life and death. For all the flowery
words of faith, no one was yet sure that Jesus was the “real deal”. No one was
yet willing to put his life on the line, and say out loud what most were
thinking.
Then Peter pushed all his chips to the
middle of the table. He bet it all. He put his reputation, his convictions, and
his life on the line and answered Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter dug down deep and lifted his eyes, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”[4]
And everyone around the campfire took a deep breath.
Jesus probably put his arm around
Peter’s shoulder when said, “Blessings
upon you Peter, for your faith has come from God.” Then Jesus took that opportunity to lay out
the rest of the plan, the future that lay before him and them. He gave them the big picture.
He spoke of redemption through
suffering. He described salvation
through pain. He prophesied death, his
own death. The suffering he will endure
will span every level. There will be the
physical pain of the whip and wooden spikes driven through hands and feet. There will be the emotional pain of seeing
trusted friends betray and run. There
will be the spiritual pain of feeling totally abandoned by God.[5]
All of this, Jesus said, is the fulfillment of God’s plan to restore a right
relationship with humanity.
But, it was not Peter’s
plan! He plainly he told Jesus he was
mistaken. He even invoked the name of
the Lord, “God forbid it, that any of
these things should happen to you.”
He was in effect telling Jesus that he, Peter, had a better grasp of the
will of God than Jesus. God should forbid the future Jesus foretold, it would
be wrong.
I think Peter recoiled from Jesus’ prophecy for two reasons. First, he loved Jesus and did not want to see
anything bad happen to him. He felt protective to the point that when Jesus was
later arrested, many think it was Peter who took up a sword to defend him.[6] Peter loved Jesus, but I think he also had a
second reason for his revulsion toward Jesus’ words. That is, Peter had an altogether different
understanding of God’s plan and purpose.
Suffering should not be part of that plan.
I think in Peter’s fledgling theology,
God’s purpose should be to reward the good and punish the evil.[7] That seems fair, so that is the way it should
work. That is the way most children look
at their world, and it is very upsetting for them to discover that the universe
does not operate in that way. They believe
people should get what they deserve. Suffering, then will always be the result
of sin or stupid mistakes, and blessing is the reward for righteousness.
If you are good, in Peter’s view, God will protect you. And in Peter’s mind Jesus was as good as good
gets. So, if God will not protect and
shield Jesus from harm, then what hope is there for him, or for any of us for
that matter? That’s where the passion of
Peter’s protest came from. He was as
worried about himself as much as he was about Jesus. Where was his hope to be
placed?
Then Jesus, who had just showered “blessings” upon Peter’s head, had
patted him on the back and given him a big smile, suddenly turned around and
issued the harshest rebuke he ever gave to anyone. “Get
behind me Satan!” Back off you devil!
And Peter’s mouth dropped, and each one of the disciples found something
else to look at, many of them now inordinately interested in the laces on their
sandals.
I believe the level of Jesus warning, the devastating degree of his rhetoric
underscored just how tempted he was to go along with Peter’s plan. Today we see all of this as pre-ordained
history, and so we forget the struggle that took place in Jesus between his
flesh and blood and his soul that desired God’s Will above all things. Jesus had no illusions about what the future
held, and he understood clearly what it would mean for him. We see his anxiety played out in the garden
of Gethsemane when the conflict between the body’s natural instinct toward
self-preservation and the spirit’s desire to follow God poured out of his pores
with sweat and blood.[8]
Two thousand years later, we have sanitized the cross. We plate them with gold and keep them shiny
and polished, so we forget what a gruesome means of execution it was. Death by crucifixion was never short. It could last for days, and the victim’s
anguish often became a public spectacle.
Viewing crucifixions was what some people did for fun before Jerry
Springer came along.
The cross was designed by the Romans to put the “fear of God”, or
rather I should say, the “fear of Rome” in the hearts and minds of any who
would oppose Roman rule. (I’ve read that ISIS is doing the same thing in Iraq
today.) One scholar described it this way; “There were days when the road to Jerusalem was lined with crosses, each
of them bearing the dead or dying body of someone whose public execution was
meant to scare everyone who saw it. It
reinforced the idea that death was the most awful thing in the world and that
people with any sense should do every thing in their power to avoid it.”[9]
When Jesus told his disciples to pick up
their crosses, Jesus defied that idea.
He suggested that there can be things worse than death, and that living
in fear is high on the list. In response to Peter and the rest, Jesus suggests
that if they were going to let fear run their lives, then fear would become
their god. Behavior then, the manner in
which they lived their lives would be measured and determined by how scary
something seems. Fear would rule their
lives.
Jesus knew that scary days awaited,
when people in power would use their power to put those believers down and shut
them off. There will always be those who
stand against God and seek to destroy those who follow the Lord. The fears those disciples would face when
their very existence served to offend those in power are the same fears we
face. For most of us have known what it
is to offend someone who has some power to hurt. Many choose to avoid the thing or person as a
way of avoidance, to live life like a mouse peeping out of hole every once in a
while and then scurrying back to safety.
But, that really is no way to live.
Shakespeare once wrote, “Cowards
die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste death but once.”[10]
Better to face our fears than
flee from them.
In January of 1982, Air Florida’s
flight #90 crashed into the Potomac River. Many of you remember that
event. Initially six people survived the
crash. They were seen in the water
clinging to the tail section of the airplane.
A helicopter was brought in and hovered over the survivors, lowering a
lifeline and flotation ring.
The craft could only handle one person
at a time. Each time the helicopter
returned and lowered the line, one of those in the water, a man described as
balding, probably in his fifties, and with an extravagant mustache, passed the
line on to one of the others in the water with him. We later learned his name was Arland
Williams.
When the other five had been rescued
and the helicopter returned for him, the frigid temperatures of that winter
water proved too much, and Arland slipped under the water.
One of the rescuers in the helicopter
later said, “In a devastating
emergency like that, you’ll occasionally find someone like him, willing to put
off his own salvation to help others.
But, I’d never seen one with such commitment.”
Do you think Arland Williams really
lost his life? Listen again to Jesus’
words, “Whoever would save his life
must lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”[11] It is always a question of commitment. That is always our question. How far am I willing to go? How much am I able to trust? How deep does my faith go?
Jesus offered a valiant life, an
abundant life. Instead of surrendering
ourselves to our fear, better we surrender ourselves to God. Now, God never promised freedom from
suffering. “It will always rain on the just and the just.”[12] God never promised freedom from pain, but He
has promised life able to overcome the fear.
What is this cross we must carry.
One preacher put it this way, “Whatever
it is that scares you to death, so that you are willing to do anything,
anything at all just so that it will go away – that is your cross, and if you
leave it lying there it will kill you.
If you turn away from it with the excuse that this should never have
happened to you, then you deny God the chance to show you the greatest mystery
of them all: that there, right there in the dark fist of your worst fear, is
the door to abundant life.”[13]
All you have to do is believe in God more than you believe in your
fear. How do we do that? Well, we come back to Jesus’ question, “Who do you think that I am?” Find your answer to that question, and I
think you’ll find the answer to your fear.
How do you find that answer? You
listen to God’s Word, you hear the words of Jesus, you gather and worship with
those who may know him in a way different then yourself, you spend time in
prayer, prayer which listens more than it speaks, and finally, you explore your
own heart, your own feelings, your own thoughts about God. After you’ve done that, you come to the time
when, like Peter, you push your chips to the middle of the table, and affirm, “Jesus, you are the Christ, the Son of the
Living God”. And I will carry my cross, my fears, and follow you. If you do, if you make that prayer, those
fears won’t feel as heavy, for your faith will make them light.
Let us pray:
Lord of all mercy, we your faithful people have celebrated that
one true sacrifice which takes away our sins and brings pardon and peace: by
our communion keep us firm on the foundation of the gospel and preserve us from
all sin; help us to carry our own cross whatever that may be through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
[1] Matthew
16:24
[2] John
10:10
[3] Matthew
16:15
[4] Matthew
16:16
[5] Matthew
27:46
[6] Matthew
26:51
[7] Psalm 1
[8] Luke
22:44
[9]
Taylor, Barbara Brown: God in Pain.
Abingdom Press, Nashville. 1998. Pg 59
[10] Julius
Caesar II, ii, 32.
[11] Matthew
16:25
[12] Matthew
5:45
[13] Taylor,
Barbara Brown: God in Pain. Abingdon Press, 1998. pg 60.
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