Sermon: "The Part of the Story We Miss," August 30, 2020
“Get Thee Behind Me, Satan!” James Tissot, ca. 1890
Matthew 16:21-28
Sermon: “The Part of the Story We Miss”
Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka
Last week if you remember, Jesus was asking his disciples “who am I?” Who do you say I am? One disciple—Peter, his right-hand man—said “you’re the Messiah, the Son of God.” To which Jesus replied, “bingo! Gold star for you. Not only do you rock, you are the rock. I’m gonna build my church beginning with you.” Peter recognized Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, the divine agent of God sent to free his people from their sin and set the world right. And Jesus gave him an A plus.
This week, though, Jesus’ star pupil has lost some of his shine.
Jesus resumes his teaching of his disciples. But this time he says something unsettling. “Look you guys,” he says. “I’m the Messiah. Which means that I’ve gotta head to Jerusalem. And there I have to undergo great suffering at the hands of the religious authorities. They’re even gonna kill me. I’ll be raised on the third day. But there’s no going around Jerusalem. No going around the cross. This is the way it’s gotta be.”
Jesus says that as the Messiah, he’s gotta suffer and die on his way to Easter. There’s no other way.
And this freaks Peter out. He takes Jesus aside. “No no no he says. Lord, you can’t do that.” Messiah’s supposed to ride into town in a victory parade, shove the Romans out, and take his throne at the head of God’s people. Not suffer and die. “Heaven forbid, Peter says. “Literally.” Must be some other, better way.
Jesus, though, doesn’t like what comes out of Peter’s mouth. Dramatically, he turns around and calls Peter the devil. “Get behind me, Satan!” He shouts. “You’re a roadblock to my mission and ministry. Your mind’s not on divine things, but human ones. You’re thinking like a human being, and not like God. So get out of my way and get in line.” I’ve got work to do.
And then, to make matters worse, after Jesus reams Peter out, he doubles down on the disciples. “Listen… everyone! If any of you wanna be my disciples, you’ve gotta deny yourselves. You’ve gotta take up your cross and follow. I’ve gotta go to Jerusalem, suffer, and die to get there. And if you wanna join me, that’s where you’re headed, too.”
So not only is there no way around suffering and dying for Jesus, there’s no alternative route for anyone else who wants to join his merry band. Because Peter doesn’t get that the Messiah has to suffer, he doesn’t get that anyone who goes along with the Messiah’s gotta suffer, too. They may be all in to Jesus’ promise of peace, justice, joy, eternal life. But Jesus says it’s all irrelevant because Peter fails to see that in order to follow Jesus, the last thing you can be is suffering-averse. In fact, you better expect suffering. And embrace it, even.
Now, let’s be honest. As much as Jesus may have given Peter a verbal beating over his aversion to suffering, we all get it. I get it at least. Because what Jesus says goes completely against all our natural instincts, whether biological, psychological or economic.[i] And for good reason, too. Because suffering is the worst. No matter how noble anyone makes it sound, suffering is awful.
And thanks to this pandemic, most of us are experiencing suffering like we’ve never experienced it before. Of course, those of us who are at the bottom of society are being hit the worst, intensifying our already existing pain. The number of overdose deaths in our province are a clear testimony to that. And then there are also those of us who have lived relatively safe lives who are seeing our stable world crack at the foundations. Where ever we look there’s bad news. We’re losing jobs or know people who are, local businesses are closing. We’re in assisted living and can barely see anyone on the outside. We’re anxious about going back school. And to top it all off, we can’t even get together at church, the one place that might give us a little strength to get through this.
No matter who we are, we already know suffering of one kind or another. We know pain. So no wonder we’re at least a little hesitant when Jesus says, “here take up a cross, and add a little more to the mix.” Because life contains plenty enough of it as is. No need to go and search out crosses to bear. There’s already enough to go around.
We don’t need to seek out anymore suffering. We don’t need to seek out death. Peter’s right about that. But Peter’s not right about everything, though. Where Peter’s wrong is that he never seems to hear the whole story Jesus tells.
Peter heard the part where Jesus said that the Messiah must go to Jerusalem, suffer and die. And no doubt he saw his own suffering and death in the shadow of the cross. But he was so terrified because he ignored the last part of the sentence. “The Messiah must suffer and die,” Jesus says, and “on the third day to be raised.” Peter’s so daunted by the prospect of crucifixion, so overwhelmed by the idea of suffering that he’s unable to hear the final word “resurrection.” He’s so focused on Good Friday, that he’s unable to see the end point—which is Easter Sunday.
In this teaching, Jesus isn’t intending to overwhelm his disciples with yet another way to suffer. But here Jesus is preparing them for it. He’s giving them hope and courage to withstand the suffering and pain that they would inevitably face as his disciples. Jesus’ whole point is that his disciples need not fear his going to the cross, because at the other end is his resurrection. And because of his resurrection they can face their own suffering, their own death, because they, too, are given that same promise. That in the light of resurrection, any cross can be taken up. Not as yet another source of suffering. But as the promise of the hidden, life-giving power of God.
That’s the part that Peter misses. And, it’s the part we miss, too. The promise of resurrection.
I know that times are difficult right now. I know that none of you have to go out searching for suffering, nor seeking out any kind of cross. Because they’ve come to us all, in one way or another. But Jesus says that we don’t have to run away from them. We don’t have to turn away from our suffering, or our pain. We don’t have to hide from it, we don’t have to give into it, nor do we have to give over to despair. We can face our sufferings, and embrace them, even. Because we know they’re part of a journey that doesn’t end with them. We know they’re not the whole of the story.
Not our whole story, not the whole story of the world. Not the whole story of God. For you see, the cross for us isn’t simply a logo. It’s not just the corporate brand of Christianity. It represents the very source of our hope. Because in the cross, Christ has overcome the world. “He is with us in all our pains in both love and power,” having reached into every moment of darkness with everlasting light.[ii] That’s the part of the story we so often forget.
So friends, brothers and sisters. Siblings in Christ. Remember this: Christ’s sufferings were inevitable. There was no getting around them, no alternative journey other than the cross. Suffering in our own lives is just as inevitable, because every journey in life makes its way through a cross of some kind. But the good news is that the journey doesn’t have to end there. In following Christ we are not only united with him in his death, but we are united with him in his resurrection. So whatever the cross you bear in these troubled times may be, know it’s not the end. Don’t let it drag you into despair. But instead, may you grab hold of it, trusting that it’s not the end of your story. But that the end is resurrection. The end is Easter. Don’t forget it.
Amen.
[i] “In His form of suffering we are concerned with a phenomenon that is strange, shocking, and quite opposed to what we might for once call the natural feelings and desires and thoughts and beliefs and dreams of men.” See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, 415.
[ii] “The light of the Resurrection means that God is in the cross. He is with us in all our pains in both love and power. Surely, our time, though perhaps only when a worse brokenness has come upon us will leave the shallows and find once more the depth of New Testament joy.” George Buttrick, quoted in Douglas John Hall, God & Human Suffering: an Exercise in the Theology of the Cross (Augsburg: Minneapolis, 1986), 179.