This is the sermon delivered remotely by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of The First Reformed Church of New Brunswick, NJ, on Sunday, February 25, 2024, drawing from Mark 8:31-38 and Romans 4:13-25
So, I want to start today by telling you a bit of a funny story. Now, don't worry! While this story does involve me playing a video game, I promise that it ends like any good story should; with me making a complete fool of myself!
Ok? Here we go!
In the laughably small amount of free time I have these days, I've been getting back into one of my favorite online video games, Final Fantasy XIV. Now, I'm not going to waste most of your Sunday morning explaining all the intricate details of online games, so if you're not familiar with the game all you really have to know is that it involves you creating a character, and then going off on epic adventures in the game alongside other real people who are also playing the game together with you, at the same time, all around the world.
Honestly, it's a whole lot of fun. And, come to think about it…it's a lot like church…but that's a sermon for another day!
So you've got your character, and as the game goes on you learn different jobs, each with their own roles in the game. Some people choose to be warriors, paladins, and the like; people who stand right in the front of the action, taking hits and defending the rest of the group from whatever attacks might come. Others choose to be healers, standing right in the middle of the fray patching up wounds, raising the dead, and otherwise keeping everyone on their feet.
I quite like that role myself, honestly. Reminds me of someone else I know, who liked to go about healing, raising the dead, and such….
Anyways, the third group of people are the damage dealers. Most people start out with this role because it's the easiest; you just stand in the back and hurl fireballs at the bad guy, bounce around in the shadows stabbing at things from the dark, shooting projectile weapons, stuff like that. This is what I started with, when I first started playing the game a long time ago. For years, I played one of the easier damage-dealers; a Black Mage. All I had to do was stay out of the way, don't get hit, and just keep casting dramatically overpowered magic spells until the battle was won. It was fun of course, but after a while I got access to a different kind of damage dealer; a Red mage.
Now what made this one fun was that, much like the Black Mage, you started out by hiding out in the back casting spells and whatnot, but after a while you gained the ability to change things up a little. When the time is right, the Red Mage has the ability to leap dramatically right into the middle of the fight, draw their sword, and engage in this beautiful, complex dance of bladework and evasion, a series of intricate moves all building up to this grand finishing move where you leap even more dramatically backwards, performing a complicated combination backflip and sword attack before landing safely right back where you started, on the outer edges of the fight where you can once again continue hurling magic spells from relative safety.
Pretty cool, right?
Well, like most cool things…it takes a little work to get the hang of it. So for three weeks I spent time on my own in the game, learning how to use this new class. I'd take solo quests out into the wilderness, go fight monsters and whatnot on my own, getting used to this new and complex pattern of commands and inputs that I had to do in order to make this beautiful and deadly maneuver work. Truth be told, I was probably fine with it after a few days, but I really wanted to make sure I had it down before I started trying to use it with other, real people who would probably be really annoyed if I leapt dramatically into the fight, attacked the wrong thing, lit myself on fire, and fell off a cliff or something.
That would be embarrassing.
So I took my time, learned the ins and outs of it all and when I was sure, when I was absolutely sure, I jumped in with a team, and gave it a try.
That first fight was absolutely bonkers. When loads up you find yourself with a team of 3 other people standing on a giant circle of rock suspended in midair over some great and bottomless pit, and in the middle is this giant rock monster you're meant to fight. So we get started, and things are going really well; we watch as the monster's health gets lower, and lower; victory is nearly at hand! The rock monster is on his last legs so, with a burst of confidence, I start my dramatic finishing attack.
I do everything perfectly. I leap right in, draw my sword, nimbly dodging every attack and landing every blow with scientific precision. Every hit lands exactly where I mean it to and then, with a grin on my face that must've been a mile wide at that point, I trigger the last move in the sequence; that elegant, dramatic backflip move that is sure to land just as the great monster falls.
Now if you've been paying attention to the sermon so far, and not just waiting for me to get the geeky bit over and get into the Biblical meat of things, you may have already noticed just where I went wrong. But in case you happened to miss it, let me remind you of one small fact that I mentioned just a moment ago, but to which my confidence had completely blinded me; one tiny, insignificant detail that I had neglected to notice as I was hammering those buttons with total focus and, to be honest, complete accuracy.
This fight, the fight against the rock monster, was being conducted on a small stone circle suspended in mid-air over a bottomless pit.
Remember that part? Because I sure didn't!
That's right; in my dramatic moment of victory, full of confidence and overflowing with pride at how I had just perfectly executed this complicated finishing move, I had lost sight of the bigger picture. I had gotten so focused on my part of the battle that I had forgotten where I was, forgotten the landscape of the world around me…
…and that's how I found myself cheering in victory as I dramatically chucked myself off a cliff directly to my doom.
Of course, fortunately for me, it's just a video game after all, so it wasn't the end of the world or anything; death is just a minor inconvenience in a game, after all. And the rest of the team were just laughing like crazy since I had managed to land the killing blow on the great big rock monster while simultaneously and unknowingly doing the exact same thing to myself. But boy was I embarrassed!
In the end though, the thing that got me into trouble wasn't actually the thing I had been worried about in the first place; it wasn't my skill with the character at all. I had nailed every move perfectly, but still failed because even being perfect at my one role didn't mean that I was actually being helpful, actually doing what needed to be done. What was needed was more than just one skill set, more than just one perspective. In order to succeed, I needed to see the whole fight, not just my little piece of it.
I followed the rules perfectly, right off a cliff.
We all do that in life, don't we? We think we have something figured out, so we get confident; we get cocky. We start feeling a little full of ourselves, a little proud of ourselves, and in our overconfidence we do something absolutely, mind-meltingly stupid.
Put yourself in Peter's place for a minute. You've spent a good long while in the presence of Jesus actual Christ studying, learning, helping, healing, both seeing miracles and performing miracles yourself. Every day, you get the words of the Messiah directly in your ears, see the face of God with your own two eyes; you get personal, one-on-one time with our Lord and Savior. That's the kind of high-end, limited-edition, 12-people-only-in-history-have-ever-got-it theological training that beats anything that Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, or any other school on planet Earth could ever provide.
With all of that, wouldn't you start thinking you had a pretty good grasp on what's right and wrong? I mean, if you were able to spend 5-minutes with a direct, conversational, real-time link to the Almighty - let alone the years that Peter did - any one of us would have the kind of absolute, rock-solid, unshakable confidence in our own rightness that far surpasses that of every 20 year old white, American male ever!
This is right where Peter is at the start of today's passage. 8 chapters in and Peter knows just enough to be dangerous. He’s not the guy who'll continue Jesus' ministry after the ascension yet, but he knows enough to be a reasonably good and faithful disciple. He's got the basics, and he's got them down well enough that he can start thinking about more than just the next miracle, more than just the next sermon; he can start adding a little flourish to his work.
Maybe a backflip or two, perhaps.
Peter at this point in Mark has just witnessed the feeding of the four thousand (in mark it's four thousand, not five, by the way!), and he's got that "just figured out how awesome this job is" confidence coming out his ears. Peter’s an organizer at heart, the original pastor. Imagine what he must be thinking, having just seen what Jesus is really, truly capable of. He's gotta be thinking about feeding all the hungry in Israel, turning these miraculous powers against the oppressive, occupying Roman forces, raising up an army against them with the literal blessing of God, and building that just and true kingdom on Earth that he knows, just knows is what has to happen next. The people have got to be rallied, power has to be consolidated, and the world must be shown just who this Jesus well and truly is.
So when he hears Jesus talking about suffering, rejection, and death, Peter doesn’t hear the word of God. He hears Jesus talking about defeat, a crushing defeat that would bring an end to this singular path forward, this one and only way to accomplish God's plans; plans that Peter is absolutely certain he understands full well. Peter knows what God’s people need, sees so clearly the path that runs from this dusty desert sermon to God's people standing victorious over the world, and he knows that this path can’t possibly lead to the cross and the grave.
So, like a Red Mage confidently chucking himself right off a cliff, Peter does what he's been trained to do, what he’s seen his teacher do so many times already; he takes the person who's preaching incorrectly, and pulls them aside for a bit of a rebuke.
Like…can you imagine the insane confidence in that moment, by the way? The sheer, unadulterated, overriding confidence you would need to respond to the teachings of Jesus Christ with a stern and forceful round of "you should know better?"
I mean… you'd have to be insane, right? Or at least an American Evangelical…
He's just so…focused…in that moment. So certain about what is right and wrong that even something as ridiculous as telling Jesus - God incarnate - to his face, that he's wrong about what God wants, seems so perfectly and completely rational that he doesn't even think about it.
Of course Jesus is going to build this great and powerful kingdom, the Messiah come to make Israel great again.
Things must be this way; there’s no way anything else could be right, and just, and true, and godly. It's so unquestionable that you don’t even think about it, baked in to the very fabric of life. Like the rule of law. Like breathing. Like a part of your body, or then truth your name. Like the fact that church happens first thing on Sunday morning, with three hymns, a sermon, and a benediction.
It’s just how it is, just who we are.
Why would it be any different? How could it be any different?
Why should it be any different?
"He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?"
Our sense of self, our whole conception of right and wrong, rests on our faithful and unquestioning belief in certain fixed constants. Things happen in repeatable, understandable ways that make sense to us, and which we repeat to others to make a shared, ordered sense of reality. You pay money for something, you receive something. Someone breaks a law, they receive punishment. Ask, and you shall receive. Knock, and the door will be opened. Seek, and you find.
Of course we know that life is rarely that simple, but even when we try to push beyond it a little bit, we still find ourselves bound by the rules of the logical, the sensible, the measured and the reasonable.
We expect grace to be logical, so we administer it logically; someone makes an honest mistake, so we give them grace, but when someone commits an intentional cruelty, demonstrates an obvious ignorance, or acts in clear and demonstrable error, we spare them no such grace, because we hold that they should know better.
There are rules, after all, to how things are supposed to work in this world! Laws, immutable laws if not from humanity then from the very fabric of nature itself! Some things are just wrong after all!
Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice…
Well…even grace has rules, right?
But “…the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
It seems so simple when you think about it, but God doesn’t follow our rules.
Jesus wasn’t meant to fit into our understanding of who and what the Messiah was meant to be today, just as he didn’t fit into Peter’s understanding back then. Nothing about who Jesus is, or how God works, makes sense to us. It constantly violates our flawed, human understandings of what might work, what can work, and what should work. Our logic dictates punishment for error, our hearts cry out for wrath to fall on those who break the laws of our hearts because it is the law.
But God’s way shatters all our laws; not just the laws of our nations or our communities, but the laws of nature, even reality itself. By all logic, Jesus crucified makes no sense, because that kind of grace is absurd, that kind of debasement for someone so magnificent so incomprehensible. It should not be. The teachings of Christ - pray for those who persecute you, turn your other cheek on one who would assault you, if someone takes your coat give them your cloak too, none of that makes any sense! Why would you even do that? How could you even do that?
The sacrifice of Christ - the sacrifice that we are called to replicate and endure; the cross we must take up to follow him - isn’t some logical discomfort, or allowing people to think badly of us because we’re Christian or something.
It means abandoning all our preconceptions, all our rules, everything that holds us back, and submitting to the wild, illogical, rule-braking grace of a God who exudes love with all the restrained elegance of a drunk millionaire chucking hundred-dollar bills out of the sunroof of his limo while careening wildly down the road at speed, never once caring who might benefit from this explosion of unearned, unexpected, uncalculates grace.
Serving Christ, the Christ of the cross, is a surrender of our rules, our laws, our very understandings of what is sensible, correct, and above all fair. Because love is unfair - if it wasn't, I sure wouldn't be married, and neither would a lot of us if we’re being honest. Grace is unfair - if it wasn't, none of us would be saved.
But on these things hang all the law and the prophets, because by these things God is defined. God is love; wild, untamable, irrational, illogical love. The love that surpasses all understanding, the love that confuses, confounds, and leaves everyone who witnesses it sitting dumbstruck on the ground wondering just how it was ever possible that the Savior of the world could wind up nailed to a tree, only to come back three days later in victory over death itself, arms open in salvation, welcome, and love.
So stand up. Go. Go, and do likewise.
Go, and love likewise.
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