This Might Hurt a Little

This is the sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community on Sunday, August 30, 2026, drawing from Matthew 16:21-28 and Romans 12:9-21.

Love hurts, or so the 80’s would have you believe…

How do you make decisions?

For me, as I think it is for a lot of us, the instinct is to look at our options, assess which paths have the greatest benefit for us, and which paths have the greatest potential to do us harm, and then choose whichever is most likely to profit us and the least likely to hurt us. Simple discernment, we call it, the living embodiment of nearly every one of our mother’s clarion call to “make good decisions.”

My parents started teaching me to make good decisions when I was really, really young. As with a lot of us who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, I can still feel the spiral pattern of those old built-in cigarette lighters that were in every car back in the day, and I can still remember the fearful gasp of my mother, and the knowing chuckle of my father, on the day when I — like many — poked my finger directly into the red-hot pattern, wondering what it was.

And, while my mother fretted, and got some ice, my father spoke to me about the importance of discerning before making a decision. In his view, a view which I share, it wasn’t necessarily a problem that my lil self wanted to figure out what the weird, glowing, danger dongle actually did. Curiosity, he told me, is not only a natural thing for a person to have, but it’s absolutely vital to the learning process.

The problem was that I didn’t do my due diligence before going directly to poking that red-hot surprise spiral with my lil baby fingers.

He walked me through my decision making process, talked about how I could have let my hand get close enough to feel the heat without making contact, thus realizing that touching probably wouldn’t be safe. Or, since I was sitting right near two fully grown adults, I could have asked what it was, how it worked, and what it was for, and thus learned about it without even touching it at all. In all these scenarios, and more besides, he highlighted ways in which, with a bit of discernment, I might’ve walked away with more knowledge, and less pain.

And he was right. Poking ol’ smokey like that was an objectively stupid choice.

But, as right as my father was when it comes to the necessary discernment one must deploy when developing, and exercising, common sense for things like not touching red-hot cigarette lighters, as I grew older I learned that we apply this way of thinking to everything in our lives, often in terrifying ways.

The basic idea behind how we’re taught to discern is that of a cost/benefit analysis, a very simple calculus in which we look over the options, and choose what’s best for us. We build our entire lives around this single, simple equation; everything from choosing where to go to college, what to study, what career to pursue, what jobs to apply for, when to get married, when to have kids, how many kids to have. Everything in our lives boils down to that same, simple question:

Does this help me, or does this hurt me.

It’s something of a biological imperative to avoid pain and suffering, so on some level it is understandable that we might be inclined to think like this. Self-defense and self-interest are hardwired, part of our very nature. Without an inherent self-interest, the species would long have died out, so it makes perfect sense that our entire world view, our entire understanding of reality itself, boils down to the fundamental principle of the cost/benefit analysis.

If it hurts, don’t do it. Right?

But if our entire worldview is predicated on thinking like this, if we have within us the fundamental belief that everyone, on some level, is always thinking like this, that thinking like this is a survival requisite, then the teachings of Jesus Christ become immediately incomprehensible.

Think about it, for a second; what about today’s passage makes even the slightest bit of logical sense?

In Matthew, just after having finally revealed himself to the disciples as the long-awaited Messiah, Jesus begins to explain what that means. He tells them that the elders are going to hate him. The elders are going to have him tortured. They’re going to have him beaten. And then they’re going to have him killed. And Peter — quite understandably — freaks completely out. Peter, who like all of us is bound to this cost/benefit analysis worldview, pushes back and tells Jesus that if he is indeed the promised Messiah, the literal Son of God, then there is no reason why this has to be the case. Jesus could use that power, over throw the elders; just Annakin Skywalker the heck out of ancient Jerusalem. And the painful truth is that, if we’re honest, every single one of us would, in that situation, say the exact same thing.

Because Peter is right; Jesus could do that.

And that’s what you’d expect, right? That’s what anyone in their right mind would expect, that Jesus would turn away from the “torture, suffering, and death” path and take a verse or two of “hail the conquering hero” instead. That’s the natural, normal, sane decision. After all, if you’ve got an all-powerful, all-loving, miracle working, archon of the God who is love, out here incarnate in the world, eager and ready to do the work, well…that’s an asset for the good guys that’s worth a heck of a lot more in play than in the ground. Why would you ever knowingly, willfully, allow something to happen to that?

But Jesus…doesn’t think like that. Jesus calls Peter Satan for even suggesting it, shutting him down harder than just about anyone else in the gospels for it. And then he lays down a teaching that, to this very day, baffles nearly everyone who reads it:

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? Or what will they give in return for their life? For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done

(Matthew 16:26-27, NRSVUE)

It’s insane. It’s nonsensical. It’s confusing. It runs contrary to every basic understanding we have about what is wise, and faithful, and appropriate. It flies in the face of everything we know about how to live and function in the world. Saving our lives means we lose them, and losing our lives gets us life? Profiting the whole world is…wrong? How does any of this make sense?

Of course Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t really stop to explain, and life goes on…right up until the cross, anyways. But the seed planted here, I might dare to say, is the very heart of everything that it means to be a Christian, and everyone — from the apostle Paul to Dolly Parton — who lived in the teachings of Christ faithfully and well touched, in their span, some part of this truth.

God’s cost/benefit analysis isn’t self-focused.

The pursuit of our own self-interest, our own happiness, is so ingrained that we often can’t help ourselves. We seek after things for ourselves, pursue our own self interest, and ardently avoid suffering for ourselves, day in and day out, and we get angry at those who obstruct our pursuit, swear vengeance on those who take happiness away from us, or who give to us the hurt or suffering we so studiously tried to avoid.

But there’s a reason why even Paul — notorious firebrand and subject of our long-running and just-finished Bible study titled “Paul: Agent of Absolute Chaos” — starts this passage in Romans with “Let love be genuine…” but has to end with “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” with a not-insignificant pit stop at “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord,” along the way. The only way to live a in a truly Christ-like way, to follow that Christian path, is to turn away from self-interest, and to try to live in a different way, a backwards way, where the core of our personal decision-making calculus isn’t what benefits me, or what leads to the most efficient or prosperous solution, or even what minimizes the likely pain or suffering I am to encounter. None of those things matter, in a Christ-like mindset. None of those things go into the cost/benefit calculus of Christ. They don’t matter.

Christ’s only calculus is love.

To live as Christ is to sacrifice, and at times to die, in the service of love. Peter, as well as pretty much anyone who followed Christ in those days, had to give up everything to follow him. Not just their possessions, or their relationships, but their entire worldview, a worldview which was based on the expectation of a conquering warrior-King messiah, who would save them from the sufferings and pains of their lives, balancing out their normal, human, cost/benefit calculus with the love he has for them specifically.

But Christ calls us to serve as his hands and his feet in the world; not to have our human cost/benefit calculus fulfilled by him, but for our calculus itself to be changed by him, so that we might go out into the world as changed people, no longer pursuing the things we want for ourselves, but pursuing the love of others over and above everything else.

Can you imagine what the world would look like if Christians were known for being not just selfless, but utterly and entirely devoid of self-interest? What if we were known for being a people who would pursue the love and support of others with the same biologically-ingrained, fight-or-flight intensity that everyone else pursues their own self-interest? What if we were known for being so obsessed with love that you knew, the moment you stepped into a church, that you were as safe as you could possibly be?

What if they really could know we were Christians by our love?

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, but love in exchange for hurt is how Christ’s ministry is fulfilled in our hearing, in our living. It’s how we make life on Earth as it is in heaven, how we become servants of Christ.

By changing the calculus entirely.

So that’s my call for you all today.

Take the L.

Allow yourself to choose paths where you know you will lose.

Let yourself consider options that absolutely suck for you.

Remove yourself, your own self-interest, from the equation, and lift your eyes up to the hurt and suffering around you instead.

What paths could you take, what choices could you make, right here, now, today that would bring more love into the world, even if it comes at a cost to you?

For what will it profit to gain the whole world but forfeit your life?

Or your neighbors life?

Or anyone’s life?

Nothing.

That’s the part we rarely talk about, the final result, the answer that comes at the end of the calculus of self-interest. When you actually do the math, the answer at the end is that you get nothing.

But the calculus of Christ, though it may start with loss, may start with subtraction, the equation ends with victory, with love, and with life for us all.

Amen.