Year A

Matthew 16:21-28

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Called to a Life of Cross Bearing

Have you ever been a victim of mistaken identity? Mistaken identity is not all that uncommon, especially when there are only so many variations to our same facial features. Years ago on several occasions, people have come up to me and said I resembled Julie Andrews. Of course, I was very flattered but in my opinion the only resemblance we had was the same hair color and haircut. In last week’s gospel, we hear of people mistaking Jesus for John the Baptist, or Elijah or one of the prophets. Jesus had just asked his disciples what people were saying about him and he didn’t seem too surprised with the variety of answers.

Peter then seems to get it right when he professes his belief in Jesus as the Messiah and Lord; demonstrating his faith to see beyond the obvious human characteristics of Jesus. Jesus then pronounces Peter blessed, the rock upon which the church will be built, and the inheritor of the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What a glorious moment for them all. Then very quickly in today’s gospel text which follows the reading we heard last week, the mood of the conversation changes. One minute they are enjoying that moment when friends reach a new level of insight, commitment and trust and the next Jesus is proclaiming he must go to Jerusalem to undergo suffering and be killed.

This didn’t make sense to Peter. He had just voiced that Jesus was the Messiah which would certainly have made Jesus seem invincible. Now, in the next breath, Jesus is talking about defeat and disaster. Peter unable to fathom that this could be God’s plan, refuses to accept the fact that Jesus, about to walk right into the trap set for him in Jerusalem, will suffer, die and be raised from the dead. He misses the raised from the dead part of course and explodes “God forbid it, Lord. This will never happen to you.” Jesus, right away forcefully says to Peter, the foundation rock of the church, “Get behind me Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.”

We have to sympathize with Peter. He loved Jesus and all he did was to say God forbid, Lord there has to be another way. I certainly would say that to someone I loved if they said what Jesus just said. So we have to assume then that Peter’s remarks to Jesus are a real temptation for the human Jesus. Like Satan in the wilderness, the ancient tempter who from the beginning of time has offered humans alternatives to the will of God, Peter in his humanity is offering Jesus another way out to avoid the risk of pain and death and it’s possible for a moment that this seems real and desired to the human Jesus until he comes to his senses.

He then challenges Peter and all of us to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow in his footsteps. Jesus has called his followers to join him in the journey to the cross and if we are really honest, the late theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote, we experience fear when we read these words of Jesus. “Follow me! He calls. But where? And how? And in what way? Can’t we just stay in a little huddle, feeling good about ourselves? Why do we have to hit the road with him? It frightens us. We can’t handle it any more than Peter could and still Jesus stands with us, sandals on his feet, staff in his hand, and says to us, “Take up your cross and follow me!”

And just because this may seem impossible for us to do does not mean we can just shrug our shoulders and walk away from this ethic or assume that this command is something only Jesus, the divine Son of God can do. Paul today slams the door shut on our escape hatch. He says, yes, this way is divine, and not human-but it is not for that reason beyond our reach. Rather, it is for that very reason we have been “set apart” called for our mission in relation to this world. This means Paul says, not simply caring for each other but loving one another with mutual affection. Reaching out beyond the Christian community to extend hospitality to strangers, and incredibly, blessing those who persecute us: a divine choice to extend forgiveness, to interrupt the human cycle of tit-for-tat. Live in harmony with one another.

Even for those of us who earnestly desire to live out this divine ethic and model for a cross-shaped life that mirrors the action of God and the life of Jesus, this calling is not easy. We are being called to live by different standards in all parts of life. Paul’s closing words in this passage demonstrates this. He writes, “Don’t try to get revenge for yourselves, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath” “Revenge belongs to me; I will pay it back, says the Lord.” Instead, If you enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty; give him a drink. By doing this, you will pile burning coals of fire upon his head.” The last word is simply, “Defeat evil with good.” Paul’s instruction can be seen, not as deferral of human vengeance in expectation of God’s punishment, but an asking for God’s assistance.

We can live by a different standard and resist the way of violence, because in leaving room for God, we assume God is indeed with us to do good, in the world even in times of suffering, violence, persecution, and the desire for revenge. This is what the prophet Jeremiah preached many years before Paul to the people of his day. In the decades before the fall of Judah in 586 BCE, Jeremiah confronted an uncaring disregard of God in the land. People’s heads were in the sand as their world came unglued. The prophet’s suffering amid the conflict is laid bare before us today in the text. He cries out to God why and God tells Jeremiah to turn away from the source of the controversy to a renewed focus on God’s mission in the world.

In so doing, Jeremiah will come to know God as savior, deliverer, and redeemer. The promise of God to the prophet and to all since regarding how to survive in an evil world is clear: “If you turn back, I will take you back…and I will make you…a fortified wall of bronze…they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you.” God never has been, and never will be, indifferent toward us. We do not walk alone. When we focus on God’s mission in the world, it will lead us to the cross. Yet, when we leave room for God, we come to know that Jesus is with us every step of the way even when the weight of the cross is beyond our strength.

The cross of Jesus is for us, then both a gift and an invitation. It is the gift of God’s gracious self-giving life through Jesus for the salvation of the world, and it is also the invitation to a way of life. Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? If we are going to be followers of Jesus we cannot turn our backs on the world. But in forgiving, in loving, in living and in dying, we do not lose our lives. We find true life in a world that is restored to us through Jesus’ death on the cross. When we participate in the world in this way of divine ethic we find ourselves being resurrected to new life. And we hear Jesus say to us, “Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the beginning of time.”