This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community on Sunday, September 3, 2023, drawing from Matthew 16:21-28
You know, one of the things I really enjoy in this line of work - outside of the joy that comes from fulfilling God's calling, that is - one of the things I just really like, is finding opportunities to play around with some the weirder, less-known stories and passages in the Bible!
For example, did you know that during the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, there was a young man prancing about in nothing but a loincloth, which he quickly lost to the grabbing hands of a Roman guard before running off as naked as the day he was born?
Or how about this? Did you know that once the Apostle Paul preached a sermon so long, and so boring, that a young man listening fell not just asleep, but completely out of a nearby window, falling three stories to his death below? That's right, Paul preached a sermon so boring it actually killed a guy!
Of course there's always my favorite; the story of the time that the Prophet Elisha got so annoyed with a bunch of kids making fun of him for being bald that he called upon God for the miraculous power to summon bears in order to maul those pesky kids to death!
It's true, all of it! Every one of those stories is in the Bible; Mark 14, Acts 20, and 2 Kings 2, if you don't believe me!
But as full as the Bible is with weird, surprising, and sometimes hilarious stories that most of us haven't ever heard of, today's passage is basically the opposite of that, isn't it?
I mean, sure the story by itself is one that just sort of … blends in to the narrative of the Gospel, if we're being honest. It's a fairly straightforward conversation between Jesus and his disciples, wherein he talks about the upcoming crucifixion and, like any good teacher does, takes their objections and turns it into a teachable moment, ending in that well-known saying in verse 26,
"For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?"
Or perhaps you're better acquainted with the New King James version, which renders this perhaps more poetically as, "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?"
That's a good verse right there, isn't it? The kind of thing that sounds like it belongs on the back of a really judgmental Christmas ornament or something. Like the Hallmark card of passive-aggressive grandmothers everywhere; incredibly well-known, but on its own completely meaningless.
Taken as a verse out of context, this is the exact sort of thing you could just start throwing around as condemnation of pretty much anyone or anything you don't like, and because it not only sounds all wise and biblical-like, but it's the actual words of Jesus Christ, it comes pre-loaded with tons of presumed authority!
It's the gold-star, blue-ribbon, crème-de-la-crème of judgmental Bible verses; tailor made to suit whatever need you might have, just so long as you can call it "worldly" or "profitable" in some way.
Which is why it's all the more surprising when you realize that not only is this not the most flatly, bluntly, even aggressively judgmental verse in the Bible, not only is it not the most judgmental verse Jesus ever said in the entire New Testament; it's not even the most brutally judgmental thing Jesus said in this specific passage!
That's right! Just three verses earlier, in verse 23, Jesus drops the ultimate conversational full-stop when he rounds on Peter - who was at the time offering a fairly sensible-sounding objection to Jesus' portents of impending, violent doom - by literally calling him Satan!
Now I'm sure you've heard that quote a time or two, right? That's probably even more well known than verse 26. So well known is it, in fact, that we even named one of our ongoing YouTube series' after it!
Of course, not everyone who knows this verse actually knows where it comes from. In fact, I've talked to a surprising number of people who think that this is a quote that comes from back in Chapter 4, when Hasatan - God's prosecuting attorney, for lack of a clearer description - took Jesus up on a great mountain and offered him rulership of all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship.
It would make sense for it to come from there, right? This level of condemnation, this kind of aggressive vitriol out of the mouth of Jesus Christ; who else could it be aimed at? It sounds like the sort of thing you'd direct at someone who is obviously, unambiguously, mustache-twirlingly evil.
But it's not. It's directed at Peter.
Peter, the Rock, the first pope and Jesus' earthly bestie. This is the guy who gets hit with the "Get thee behind me, Satan" treatment!
Now it's worth noting here for those of us who aren't familiar with what exactly "Satan" is, that we're not actually dealing with this singular, pitchfork-wielding, horned devil-being out of legend. That's an idea that's almost entirely made up by modern folks, based largely on the works of Dante Alighieri. Here in the Bible however, the word Jesus hurls at Peter is Σατανᾶς (Satanas) which,
despite our cultural assumptions, is a term with a fairly broad meaning and not - at least not necessarily - always a proper name. In those instances when it is deployed as a proper name, its usually referring to the angel I mentioned earlier; a servant of God within the divine council who's own mandate is tempting and testing on God's behalf as a means of refining those for whom God has some special interest or need.
Here though, it isn't exactly clear that Jesus is using the term that way at all. More likely, he's using it descriptively, as a means of explaining how Peter is acting in this moment.
He's acting as a temptation. And the thing that makes temptation dangerous isn't that it's the offer of some overwhelmingly great reward just for doing some obvious evil.
What makes temptation dangerous is that it's easy. Logical. Comfortable.
Temptation isn't just attractive; it's justifiable. It makes sense.
Remember when I said back at the beginning, that Peter was offering "a fairly sensible-sounding objection to Jesus" in that moment? Well, that's it precisely, and his "sensible objection" is so smoothly simple that we can easily miss it completely the first time we read it. Peter's temptation to Jesus is an invitation to just keep doing what he's been doing all along.
At this point in the story we know that Jesus is pivoting away from his earthly ministry of resistance teaching and preaching, intermittent violence against tables, and miraculous healing on a one-to-one basis - things he has been teaching and empowering his disciples to do themselves - and turning towards his ultimate ministry goal of self-sacrifice in order to set right a part of the world's brokenness; something only he can do.
At this point in the life and ministry of Christ, Jesus and the disciples have been doing their current work for around three years, maybe a bit more, and it is unquestionably good work. There's preaching, teaching, snack multiplication, healing, and an occasional raising of the dead for good measure. And as they've been traveling around, they've built up a solid reputation that might best be described as "chaotic good." They haven't broken the law - yet - but neither have they hesitated to speak up against oppression. They have offended the ruling class of Shammai-school Pharisees, but they haven't directly threatened their entrenched power. Yet.
And every time this whole messiah thing has come up, Jesus has played coy, and neither confirmed or denied it, which is a smart move because he knows, as do all the disciples, that the minute he declares his messiahship, that'll mean outright war with the Romans. And not only are the Romans in no mood for anything that even looks like a rebellion, they have some particularly brutal ways of dealing with rebel leaders that would make Darth Vader blush inside his asthmatic helmet.
So what Jesus is saying here, and what Peter quite clearly hears in his objection, is that this comfortable ambiguity that the group of them have been riding for the last three years, this ambiguity which has allowed them to preach, teach, and minister throughout the region, this lukewarm pocket of unclear theological identity which has shielded them from any real harm, this is all going to come to a sudden, painful, violent end, and that right soon.
From Peter's perspective then, in that moment, there is really no upside to Jesus actually coming out as Messiah. The world would be a better place for all of them if he just calmed down, took a breath, and thought it through for a moment. If he just considered all the people who were depending on him to be who he is now, Peter thought, and not who God had made him to become, then surely he would realize that this must never happen to him.
If Jesus would just get back in the closet, then everyone could just stay comfortable with the Rabbi they know, rather than taking the effort of getting to know the Savior who's been here the whole time, unrecognized and invisible, hiding in plain sight because he knew what would happen - violently - the minute the world saw him for who he truly is.
I'll jump ahead for just a second, but can you almost hear the quiet pleading in Jesus' voice here? Knowing what it is that Peter is really asking him to do, what Peter is really asking him to be, after Jesus hits him with not only the strongest possible rebuke but some serious teaching as well, and he just stops for a second to say;
"What does it profit a man if he gains the world at the loss of his soul?"
And by the way, the word we translate as "soul" here, which the NRSVUE translates instead as "life" ; this word comes from the Greek word ψυχή (Psyche), which is where we get the English term of the same name. You see folks in antiquity didn't really distinguish between the biological breath of life, whatever force it is that animates our bodies; the electric energy that is our minds or our sentience; or that ephemeral, spiritual construct that we today call the "soul." To the ancient Greeks, these things were all one and the same thing; the essence of our living, breathing, divinity; the very essence of what it means to be human.
"What does it profit a man to gain the entire world, at the loss of his identity, his very humanity?"
So the next two verses fall upon us, Jesus telling of the Son of Man coming in glory; not the Rabbi sent to teach, or the miracle worker sent to heal and bring life, but the savior of the world meant to connect us all to God. And while this sounds to those of us who love out-of-context verses as a prediction of some apocalyptic future, those of us who read the context know that this is Jesus saying "No matter how comfortable it might be for you were I to stay in this box you have built for me, it is inevitable that I must become that which God has made me to be."
Hear in that moment, from the lips of Christ, the same revelation that the Creator made to Moses in the desert;
I am that which I am. I will be that which I will be.
Life is change, certainly; while God has created the light and the darkness, these things do not remain complete and static, unchanging unto themselves for all eternity untouched. They flow into each other, giving rise to the overwhelming radiance of sunrise, and the cool relief of sunset. God's creation is exploding beauty in an endless dance of evolution, growth, and change, and the greatest temptations we are offered in life are the ones that deny us the sunrise because we've grown comfortable in the dark.
This is why we are called upon by Christ to deny ourselves; not, as some claim, to deny the desires of our hearts, or to deny the very identity that God has ignited within us, or to deny the righteous currents of change that envelop us, moving us forward as an ever-flowing stream, but to deny our desire for comfort, stability, and safety in the face of the fear that accompanies change. We are asked to deny the temptation to remain in the darkness, a temptation often justified by the small goods we are doing right where we are. We are asked by Christ to deny the comfort of relationships unchallenged by truth, to deny the temptation to forgo all the opportunities for growth and change that come in the wake of new life, and to deny the fear that tells us that we're safe here, right where we are; incomplete evolutions of the greater perfection God has intended for us.
But making that choice means following Jesus, cross in hand, up that lonely hill. Relationships will be strained or broken, the hurt that might be will transform into a hurt that truly and painfully is, and sometimes those things which we wished would never come to pass will indeed come to pass.
But remember the words of Christ Jesus here too, who knew very well the many ways that the word "life" could be understood in Greek, when he said, "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."
Those who want only to save their livelihood - their stability and security, safe in the temptation to be only the smallest fraction of what God called to be - will lose exactly that, but those who sacrifice that livelihood for Christ's sake, will find the fullness of their identity made gloriously real.
This is the truth we embrace in Christ; a resurrected people can embrace the loss that comes with change, because even death is not the end. We can walk to the cross with our heads held high, knowing that what we give up for God may pain us today, but tomorrow is resurrection day. We lose the life we had gladly, suffer the indignity of change happily, because we know that tomorrow, in the morning, when the sunrise has broken, we will rise with the dawn as something glorious and new:
Beloved, unique, and blessed children of the Creator God.
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