Thirteenth Sunday
after Pentecost (A—Proper 17)
September 3, 2017
Text: Matt. 16:21-28
“From that time Jesus began to show his
disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matt. 16:21; ESV; emphasis
added). He must. He must go to the Holy City. He must
suffer. He must be killed. He must rise from the dead. The Greek word is δεῖ, indicating a divine
necessity. All of which is to say,
salvation in Christ is not God’s plan B.
This is God’s absolute determination to save us in this way from before
the foundation of the world, from all eternity.
He sends His Son to Jerusalem, the place of sacrifice, to suffer at the
hands of His own people, the leaders, the clergy, and be killed. And on the third day be raised. And He does this because from before the
foundation of the world, from all eternity, He has desired you for Himself, to be His own and live under Him in His Kingdom,
to be His child.
Now,
these facts, beloved, the facts of our Lord’s death and resurrection (namely,
the things we confess about Him in the Creed), and why He died and rose again
(namely, for you, for the forgiveness
of your sins and eternal salvation), this
is the Gospel. And there is no
other. “Love your neighbor” is not the
Gospel. It is the Law, and it is good,
but it is not the Gospel. “Be a good
person” or “live up to your full potential” is not the Gospel. It is the Law. I’m all for being a good husband or wife, a
good student or worker, and a good Church member who gives generously to the
offering and witnesses to Jesus. But
that is not the Gospel. That is the
Law. The Law of God is good and wise,
but it cannot save you. You cannot live
up to the Law’s demands. The Law must be
preached because it is God’s will for you, but its primary function is to
demand and kill and damn you. Even nice
sounding words like “love” do that.
Because you do not love. Not
perfectly. Not as God demands. The Law commands, “Love!”, and then shows you
your lack of love in all its selfish and self-seeking ugliness. So if a preacher leaves you with, “Go love
your neighbor and witness to Jesus,” and that’s it… the preacher doesn’t preach
anything else… that preacher has not preached the Gospel. He has left you in the Law, which is to say,
he’s left you either in despair or ungodly pride. Shame on him.
Shame on me, if ever I leave you in the Law. Dear holy nation, dear royal priesthood of
God, demand that your pastor preach
Christ crucified for your sins, and raised for your justification. For that alone is the Gospel, and that alone
saves you.
The
preacher must never assume you know this Gospel. As the old cliché goes, “The Gospel assumed
is the Gospel denied.” The plain fact
is, our fallen flesh is incapable of believing the Gospel apart from the Holy
Spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes to us and does His work in the Gospel
preached. Luther reminds us in his Large Catechism, “For neither you nor I
could ever know anything of Christ, or believe on Him, and obtain Him for our
Lord, unless it were offered to us and
granted to our hearts by the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the Gospel.
The work is done and accomplished; for Christ has acquired and gained the
treasure for us by His suffering, death, resurrection, etc. But if the work remained concealed so that
no one knew of it, then it would be in vain and lost. That this treasure,
therefore, might not lie buried, but be appropriated and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to go forth and be
proclaimed, in which He gives the Holy Ghost to bring this treasure home
and appropriate it to us… for where
Christ is not preached, there is no Holy Ghost who creates, calls, and
gathers the Christian Church, without which no one can come to Christ the Lord.”[1]
Why
do we so often get this wrong? Not only
the preachers, but every one of us? Why
do we gravitate toward the Law and works and “love” (by which we usually mean
“being nice”)? Because Old Adam, who is
a card carrying Pharisee and Pietist, our sinful flesh thinks that if he can
just whittle down the Law of God to a manageable size, he can master it. He can justify himself. He can be his own savior. He can
be like God. We love to think we
play some part, even if just a little part, in our own salvation, because that
is the original temptation. To be like
God. To be my own God. Repent.
In
our sinful flesh, we do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of
men (Matt. 16:23). Peter is scandalized
by our Lord’s plain preaching of the Gospel.
“Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (v.
22). And this gets him the sharp rebuke,
“Get behind me, Satan!” This, fast on the heels of Peter getting it
right in his confession, “You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16).
We heard that just last week. Our
Lord is not being mean to Peter when He calls him “Satan.” He is not harsh without a purpose. Peter is not speaking for God. He is speaking out of the foolish wisdom of
man. Worse, in tempting Jesus to bypass
the cross, he is echoing Satan in the wilderness temptation: “You don’t have to
die to make these people your subjects.
Just bow down and worship me, and I will give you all the kingdoms of
the earth and their glory.”
What
we have here is the difference between the theology of glory and the theology
of the cross. The theology of glory is
what makes sense to man. This is our kind of theology. God comes down in a blaze of majesty and
knocks out all His enemies with a show of might. We, of course, love Him and dedicate our
lives to Him and do all sorts of good for Him in the world, because we’re very
fine people, good Christian folk. And
God, in turn, blesses us with the best that this world has to offer, health,
wealth, and prosperity. That’s an
exaggerated version of the theology of glory, but I submit to you that that is
American pop-Christianity in a nutshell.
And it is the theology of Old Adam.
We all believe this in some sense.
But we do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men,
nay… the things of demons. Repent.
The
theology of the cross is the antithesis of human wisdom. Old Adam is incapable of understanding it or
believing it. Only the Holy Spirit can
bring you to this theology. God comes
down in the humility of a newborn babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in
a manger, because there is no room for Him anywhere but the animal pen. He cries.
He soils His diapers. He is
totally dependent on His unwed, teenage mother.
He grows. He learns. And then He suffers. He dies.
The death of a criminal. It
doesn’t look like God is winning, here.
But in that death, precisely in His shameful defeat, He conquers your
sin for which He has made the full payment, He conquers your death which He has
taken upon Himself, He conquers the very devil and the hordes of hell so they
have no claim on you. And then, after the cross, after Good
Friday, after the blood and the shame and the gore of it all, then comes Easter. Then
He is risen. Then there is glory. And
it’s a real glory, not the knock-off
bargain bin glory of Christian bookstore theology. Not the cheap glory of man’s wisdom or the
tyrannical glory of the devil’s indecent proposal. This is God’s
glory, that cost Him everything. To die
for you. To save you. To make you His own. It was divinely necessary for Jesus to go to
Jerusalem and suffer and be killed. For
you. And on the third day to be
raised. For you. Any other theology is from the evil one.
Now
the theology of the cross also has something to say about your own life, your
life of faith, your life in Christ, the baptismal life... It will not be a bed of roses. You will suffer. Your Lord promises it. It is actually not the case that if you
believe in Jesus enough and serve Him, He’ll give you a new car and a big house
and a dream job and a beautiful spouse with 2.5 kids and a dog and a cat. He may give you some of those things, but not
because you’re a Christian. He gives
those things to unbelievers, too. In
fact, unbelievers receive these things more often and more easily than you
do. Because they live for these
things. This is all the heaven they’ll
ever have. God is good, even to those
who hate Him. So He gives them health
and wealth and prosperity. They receive
their good things now. They will not
have them in the end. You receive many
good things now, and you should thank God for them. But they are not God’s best gifts to you. His best gifts are the crosses He lays upon
you. That is to say, the sufferings you
are given to bear in faith, as Christians.
These crosses do not save you.
You are saved by Jesus’ innocent suffering and death on your behalf. Your salvation is complete. It is finished, in Jesus. These crosses mold you and shape you into the
cruciform image of your Savior. They
cause you to despair of yourself and your own resources, including all the
material things God has showered upon you, and they drive you to Christ alone
for help and salvation.
To
bear the cross is simply the Christian life this side of heaven. “If
anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me” (Matt. 16:24). This may
mean persecution for the sake of Christ and the Gospel, the loss of home and
possessions, family members and friends, and even your life. Or it may mean God will lay the cross of
cancer upon you, or some grief like the death of a spouse or a child, or simply
the decline of the body in old age. The
cross is to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. It is to witness to Jesus even when it means
you are mocked and scorned. Whatever the
cross, it is to be borne in patience and faith, calling upon the Lord for
relief and strength to bear up. And it
is not to be sought out. The Christian
doesn’t seek the cross, the cross seeks the Christian. Trust me, it will find you. It probably already has. It can be discouraging. But you bear the holy cross in hope and even
in thanksgiving. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits
his life,” or better, “his soul?” (v. 26).
You know the answer. Nothing. And you know the end of the story. Your good things are coming. Easter always follows Good Friday. Resurrection always follows the cross. The Son of Man, Jesus, will come again with
His angels in the glory of His Father.
He is coming to judge. He is
coming to raise you and all people from the dead, and give eternal life to you
and all believers in Christ. Then there
will be no more cross and suffering.
Only glory and life and joy in the risen Christ. All because He went to Jerusalem. He suffered.
He was killed. And the third day
He was raised from the dead. For
you. It was divinely necessary, God’s
plan from all eternity. Behold, our God
does all things well.
Finally,
there is this bit about some of the disciples standing here who would not taste
death until they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. The apostles all died, so what does this
mean? I think in some sense it is a
reference to the Transfiguration which happens in the next few verses after our
Holy Gospel (Matt. 17:1-8). But it is
also a prime example of the theology of the cross. Where does Jesus come into His Kingdom? Where is He crowned, lifted up, and
officially declared (by the Roman Empire, no less!) to be King of the
Jews? Where does He, in fact, win the
whole world as His Kingdom? …. The
cross. In His suffering and death on the
cross. “The cross is our theology,”
Luther says. “We preach Christ
crucified,” (1 Cor. 1:23) says St. Paul.
It is the crucified Christ who is risen from the dead. It is the crucified Christ who saves
you. That is the Gospel. There is no other. We preach that. For that alone is your life and salvation. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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