Sermon - 13th Sunday After Pentecost (8/30/2020)
Jer. 15:15-21; Ps. 26:1-8; Rom. 12:9-21; Mt. 16:21-28
Peter took Jesus aside and told him, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”
“God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” (Buzz!) Sorry, Peter, that’s the wrong answer. Last week, we read that Peter got the question right – Who do you say that I am? Peter said, The Messiah. (Ding ding ding!) But now Jesus says, let me show you what must happen to the Messiah – the Messiah must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things at the hands of the religious authorities, be killed, and rise on the third day. And Peter says, “Oh, no, Lord, God forbid! This must not happen to you.” (Buzz.) Not just the wrong answer, Jesus says – Peter’s response is literally demonic. From Satan.
But let me ask a question: If Peter’s response was the wrong answer, what would have been the right response? When the disciples heard Jesus say for the first time that it is necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to be killed, how should they have responded instead? What should they have said?
Because, if it were me, I think I would have said something very much like what Peter said. If someone tells us that they are seriously ill, that they are likely to suffer a lot and probably die, isn’t that our natural first reaction? God forbid! I hope and pray that does not happen to you. What could be a more normal, natural response when someone we love gives us bad news? So if that wasn’t how Peter was supposed to have reacted, then how should he have reacted?
Now some people will no doubt say that Peter’s mistake was being sad and frightened at the thought of Jesus suffering and being killed. Peter should have been happy to hear that Jesus was going to suffer and die, because that’s how we all get salvation. According to this viewpoint, when Jesus said “I’m going to be mistreated and suffer and get killed,” Peter should have said, “Awesome! I mean, it’s tough to be you, but this means God’s anger at sin will be appeased and we all get to go to heaven! So that’s great!”
Whatever the theological merits of that answer, I don’t think Jesus really expected that reaction. It would be inhuman to respond that way to the news that someone you love expects to suffer and to be killed. Dare I say demonic? But if Peter wasn’t supposed to say, May God not allow this to happen to you, and if Peter also wasn’t supposed to say, Thank God this will happen to you, then what was Peter supposed to say?
I propose that what Jesus found objectionable about Peter’s response was that Peter said, “This should not happen to you, Jesus.” Perhaps it would have been better if Peter had said, “This should not happen to anyone.” Because it shouldn’t. It is not the will of God that anyone should suffer greatly. It is not the will of God that anyone should be mistreated and unjustly judged by those in authority. It is not the will of God that anyone should be killed, especially not the innocent, but the Scriptures tell us it’s not even God’s will that the guilty should die – Ezekiel 33:11, “As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”
And yet, as Jesus and Peter would both have been well aware, suffering and unjust killing happened all the time in those days. The Romans crucified people all the time, imposed enormous burdens on colonized people through taxation and war and oppression. The corrupt religious establishment consistently preserved its power and wealth at the cost of great suffering to innocent and poor people. The innocent suffering and death that Jesus foretold for himself were everyday occurrences to many ordinary people in those days. If you follow the news, you might conclude that unjustified suffering and death is all too common in our day.
The problem with what Peter said is not that he didn’t want Jesus to suffer and be killed. No one should want anyone to suffer or die. The problem is that Peter wanted Jesus to be spared the suffering and the dying that befall so many of God’s beloved people, then, and now. I mean, isn’t that the point of being the Messiah? The Messiah crucifies his enemies, who are God’s enemies; the Messiah doesn’t get crucified by his enemies. The little people suffer and get killed; they always do. But it’s the Messiah’s ultimate victory that is supposed to give meaning to the losses of all those losers. The Messiah can’t be a loser! Then what’s the point of being the Messiah?
What Jesus hears in Peter’s response is the same temptation that Satan presented Jesus with in the desert: to use his power, his unique relationship with God, for his own comfort, to ensure his own safety, to exempt himself from the burdens that weigh so heavily upon so many people, then and today. And Jesus firmly rejects this temptation, both in the desert and now again with Peter. Because Jesus has come not to save himself from the all the pain and suffering that human evil has imposed on those who powerless to save themselves from it. Jesus has come to defeat the power of evil and death by coming alongside those who suffer and die, by suffering and dying with them, and then by rising again with them.
But when confronted with the reality of suffering and death, there is something very human, very normal and natural, for us to try to protect ourselves, at least, and if we can those who are close to us, to exempt ourselves and those we love – insofar as we can – from as much suffering and death as possible, and too bad for those who can’t. When suffering and death hit close to home, our natural response is God forbid it! This cannot happen to me, or to you. But when it happens to them, to people we don’t know, to people who don’t look like us, to people whose lives we can’t really imagine ourselves – it is very easy for us to rationalize and passively accept what we’d never tolerate for ourselves.
But that is not how God sees it. There is no suffering or death in God. And God does not use suffering or death to accomplish God’s purposes. Suffering and death are evil, and God does not do evil to accomplish good. Rather, as Paul said in the second reading today, God overcomes evil by doing good.
And so Jesus embraces the necessity of his own suffering and being killed – not because suffering and death are good. They’re not. Jesus knows that suffering and death are not from God, but resurrection and new life are from God, and God is stronger than suffering and death. God, unlike us, does not fear suffering and death, and so in Jesus God willingly joins with all those who suffer and all those who die, so that all of us who suffer and die may see that we are not alone, that God is with us in death and also beyond death into the new creation and new life that God promises us.
We want to hide from this world’s suffering and pain, there’s only so much we can take, and if we can be exempted from what falls on others we naturally feel relieved. But God neither needs nor wants to hide from this world’s suffering and pain, from your suffering, or mine. And Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple – my student, my apprentice – if you want to live out of that same faith in the goodness of God and the power of resurrection – then get behind me, take up your cross, and follow me.
Not because there’s anything good about suffering and dying and crosses – there is nothing good about them. I would not wish carrying a cross on anyone, not even Jesus. But there is great good in faith in the power of God to bring new life that is strong enough to overcome our natural fear of running away from suffering and danger. A faith that is wise enough to overcome our natural fear to think of those who suffer as other than us, not our problem, different and somehow less than us. A faith that is deep enough not to run away from any evil but to overcome it with the goodness of God.