Rev.
Carl Saxton
The
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost Rom. 12.9-21; Matthew 16.21-28
In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus rebuke Peter and call him Satan. Huh…just six verses earlier Jesus said, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah;
and here we have Him saying, Get behind me,
Satan! Jesus goes on, however, to
explain why he calls Peter Satan, he says, You
are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things
but on human things. This, I
believe, is the overarching message of this reading. The Lord points out to Peter that he is not
seeing things, in particular the Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus,
through the eyes of faith. To Peter the
suffering and death that Jesus declares he must undergo is and evil thing that
must be avoided, especially by the
Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
Peter could not see that Jesus’ suffering and death played a part in
God’s plan of salvation, he apparently missed the part when Jesus said, and on the third day be raised. Peter often just doesn’t get it – even after
this rebuke it is probably Peter who draws a sword and cuts off the ear of the
High Priest’s slave when Jesus is arrested in Gethsemane, is rebuked again, and
then denies knowing Jesus three times.
It’s comforting to know that Peter didn’t get it, because sometimes we
don’t get it either.
Here is a well-worn phrase that Christians are used to
hearing: “It’s my cross to bear…” This cliché makes it seem as if the cross
that Jesus says needs to be taken up by those who choose to follow Him is some
kind of personal suffering bestowed on believers that must be endured, but I
don’t think this is what Jesus meant.
Jesus said: If any want to become
my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow me. The cross, for us,
has become a symbol of salvation and the love of God in Christ, but it meant
only one thing to the people of the Roman occupied land of Israel – death. It’s death that I think Jesus is
communicating when he says that his followers must take up their cross. I’m
certain that Jesus is not calling every believer to a martyr’s death – I think
He calls us to a spiritual death, a death of the self.
In our hyper-individualist and consumerist society the idea
of death of the self is a hard pill to swallow.
Everything we see and hear tells us that we are sovereign individuals
entitled to do what we want, say what we want, and pursue ‘success’ at all
costs. How do we measure success? He who dies with the most toys wins, right? Society tells us that success is having a lot
of money, a nice house, a fancy car, and all the latest gadgets and toys – but
this is setting [our] minds not on
divine things but on human things.
We must understand that because of our baptism, our spiritual death and
resurrection with Jesus Christ, the idea that we are sovereign individuals is a
lie! It’s really a lie for everyone, but
because of our relationship with Jesus the lie should be more obvious to us. We are all members of the Body of Christ -
one Body, not disconnected individuals.
Recognizing this truth is the first step in the spiritual
death of the self. As Dean Kate told us
last week, we show that Jesus in Lord by putting God first, making God a
priority in our lives; and we do this mainly through our deeds. We follow Jesus by deny[ing] ourselves and tak[ing] up our cross. Death of the self – what I want, how I want
it, when I want it must be laid aside for first, what God wants for us and for
the world, and then our focus must be outward, to the needs of others – those
around us and those we have never met.
It is only through such sacrificial love of God and one
another that we can live in the way Paul exhorts us to in Romans, to
·
hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good
·
outdo one another in showing honor
·
be patient in suffering
·
extend hospitality to strangers
·
Bless those who persecute you
·
live peaceably with all
·
never avenge yourselves
·
feed and give drink to your enemies
In the Fall of 1963, a young man named Jonathan Myrick
Daniels enrolled at Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
expecting to graduate and be ordained in 1966.
In March 1965 Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr, asked students and others to join him in Selma,
Alabama, for a march to the state capital in Montgomery demonstrating support
for his civil rights program. News of the request reached the campus of ETS on
Monday 8 March, and during Evening Prayer at the chapel, Jon Daniels decided
that he ought to go. Later he wrote:
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced
in God my Saviour." I had come to Evening Prayer as usual that evening,
and as usual I was singing the Magnificat with the special love and reverence I
have always felt for Mary's glad song. "He hath showed strength with his arm." As the lovely hymn of the
God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining
toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled "moment" that would, in
retrospect, remind me of others--particularly one at Easter three years ago.
Then it came. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath
exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things."
I knew then that I must go to Selma. The Virgin's song was to grow more and
more dear in the weeks ahead.[1]
He and
others left on Thursday for Selma, intending to stay only that weekend; but he
and a friend missed the bus back, and began to reflect on how an in-and-out
visit like theirs looked to those living in Selma, and decided that they must
stay longer.
On Friday 13 August Jon and
others went to the town of Fort Deposit to join in picketing three local
businesses. On Saturday they were arrested and held in the county jail in
Hayneville for six days until they were bailed out. After their release on
Friday 20 August, four of them undertook to enter a local shop, and were met at
the door by a man with a shotgun who told them to leave or be shot. After a
brief confrontation, he aimed the gun at a young girl in the party, and Jon
pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself. He was
killed instantly. We remember Jonathan
Myrick Daniels on August 14th.
Jonathan Daniels’ story is an
extreme example of a follower of Jesus who knew how to take up his cross. Even if
Jon had not died in his pilgrimage to stamp out racial inequality, the simple
fact that he gave up his relatively comfortable place at ETS for the hard and
dangerous road of the civil rights movement shows that he was able to subjugate
his own comfort and desires to follow what he believed was God’s will.
True death to the self means
giving up the self-centeredness that comes standard on nearly every model of
human being. It means listening for the
call of God and being willing to give up the self to follow that call. You do it already – you’ve given up a nice
sleep-in this morning to be here, worshipping God. Recognize that as a
sacrifice you have already been willing to make, and extend that act of
self-sacrifice into other realms of your life.
This is the reason why when you fill out your pledge card, the financial
gift you make to God should be one that requires you to give up something – recognizing
that God is first requires that we deny
ourselves.
C.S. Lewis introduces a new
character to the Chronicles of Narnia,
Eustace Scrubb – the cousin of the story’s protagonists the Pevensie children,
who is described as a boy who liked animals, especially beetles, if they
were dead and pinned on a card, and who deep down inside him[self]…liked
bossing and bullying. Of whom
Lewis wrote, I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none.[2] In short, Eustace was a mean, self-centered
boy.
After being magically turned
into a dragon after falling asleep on a dragon’s treasure horde filled with greedy,
dragonish thoughts[3],
he is healed by the Great Lion Aslan (who is, spoiler alert if you haven’t read
the Chronicles, the Christ figure) by
a process of painful peeling away of his dragon skin (sinful nature) and bathed
in a pool (baptism). After his
transformation back into his real self, Eustace stopped being such an angry,
self-centered boy; so much, in fact, that people began to say how You’d
never know him for the same boy: everyone except [his mother], who said he had
become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of
those Pevensie children.[4]
Another aspect of taking up our
cross and following Jesus is putting away our concern about how others will see
and judge us for living out our new life in Christ. Forgive someone that has injured you,
especially one who has emotionally wounded you, in the sight of most of your
friends and acquaintances, and I’ll nearly guarantee that someone in that group
will tell you that you’re crazy, but that’s setting the mind on human things,
not Divine. Forgiveness and loving our
neighbor mean that we must abandon any concern about human judgment and keep
our minds on divine things. Many people will react to living out of
Christianity as a way of life, rather than as something used to fill the blank
next to “Religious Affiliation” on forms, just as Eustace’s mother reacted
negatively to his change of heart. Our
baptismal vows, however, call us to put our whole trust in Christ’s grace and
love, and to promise to obey him as our Lord.
None of this is easy, and
there’s no telling where responding to God’s call will lead. God may call you to heroic faith like
Jonathan Myrick Daniels, or to giving up an hour of TV a day to spend in
intercessory prayer for the poor, the sick, and the lonely. Either way, the change is bound to be
painful, like Aslan peeling the dragon skin off of Eustace – and some people
will call you crazy. Only remember that
we are called to
·
Let [our] love be genuine
·
to love one another with mutual affection
·
not to lag in zeal, but be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord
·
to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who
weep
·
not to be haughty, but to associate with the lowly
·
to not be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.
We followers of Christ, the
Christ who died for us, are called to set
our minds not on human things but on divine things and to deny ourselves and take up our cross. Put the selfish nature to death and allow
Christ who lives in you to shine forth. Then the promise of
Christ will win out, the promise that you will
have life, and have it abundantly.
[1] http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/228.html
[2] C S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, vol. 5, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New
York: HarperCollins, 1994), 2.
[3] Ibid.,
97.
[4] Ibid., 270-1.
