Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17A)

September 3, 2023

Text: Matt. 16:21-28

            I don’t want to suffer.  I want an easy life.  I want to be healthy and prosperous.  I don’t ever want to be sad.  I don’t ever want to be angry.  I don’t ever want to be anxious.  And I don’t want any challenges.  I confess to you, my brothers and sisters, any number of times, I’ve thought (and I’ve even said something to the effect out loud): “If only I were independently wealthy, and I didn’t have to worry about my paycheck from the Church… or whether the people liked me, or were generous, or whether the outward institution of the congregation (or Church body, for that matter) were in good shape… THEN I could finally trust God’s Word to do what it promises.  THEN I could finally let God be in charge of the Church, instead of me.”  Which is just another instance of this idea that if things weren’t so hard, if I didn’t have to suffer, if we could just get this cross business out of the way, THEN we could get down to the real business of Christianity.

            “Get behind me, Satan!  You are hindrance to me.  For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt. 16:23; ESV). 

            Maybe you’ve had similar thoughts to mine.  In fact, I know you have.  This is simply the condition of fallen man.  “If only God would… smooth things out at work… get my mother through the cancer… get the right folks elected to office… make people nicer to me… fill in that 401k, and yes, make me independently wealthy… THEN I could get down to the real business of being a faithful Christian.”  Whatever it is.  We don’t want to suffer.  We want it easy.  We want a religion of glorious sunrises and thornless rose gardens.  Or maybe even just puppies and cotton candy.  We love Christmas and Easter, as long as these don’t actually entail a tangible, flesh and blood God, who dies a bloody death on a wooden cross.  And then has the audacity to say to me, “Take up your cross and follow Me!”

            You are what you worship.  You are either being fashioned by God into His Image once again, or you are fashioning gods in your own image (Cf. Ps. 115:8; 135:18).  God’s Son, Jesus Christ, the Man born of Mary, who suffered, bled, died, and was buried, is the Image of God.  If the Image is to be restored in you, that is what it looks like.  Yes, resurrection.  But resurrection necessarily entails death.  You have to be dead to be raised.  And so, the cross.  All that is not Christ must be crucified, killed, destroyed, in order that the new man may emerge and arise to live before God in all that is Christ.  Beloved, you must die, in order that you may live.

            Life in Christ is cruciform.  That is, it is shaped by the cross.  Notice, what Peter objected to first, was not his own suffering, but this whole idea that Jesus had to suffer and die.  For all the time he had been with Jesus, he missed the whole point.  “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).  He must.  δεῖ in Greek.  That is, it is divine necessity, God’s unalterable plan.  Why?  Why is it necessary?  To fulfill the Scriptures.  Indeed.  Because of God’s love for sinners and desire to save us, yes.  And because God is just, and therefore must punish sin.  It is necessary that atonement be made.  And that is why God the Son became a flesh and blood Man.  To make the Sacrifice of Atonement for us all.  To be the Sacrifice of Atonement for us all. 

            But Jesus knows, and Peter may know instinctively, that you are what you worship.  Jesus knows the heart of the objection.  “Wait a minute!  If You have to suffer, Jesus, that means I have to suffer.  If You have die, Jesus, that means I have to die.”  Yes.  Yes.  And so, never mind that Peter had only objected verbally to Jesus’ own suffering and death.  Jesus drives the point to its conclusion.  “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (v. 24). 

            Now, why do we have to suffer?  Why do we have to die?  If Jesus’ Self-Sacrifice was sufficient to make atonement once and for all, for all our sins, why is it necessary (and divinely so) that we also be crucified?  Of course, it is not to make atonement.  It is not to make satisfaction for our sins.  That is all done, now, in Christ.  No, it is to get you out of the way.  To clear out your idols.  This is what St. Peter is talking about in the first chapter of his first epistle (by then, he’d learned a thing or two).  He writes: “In this you rejoice,” namely, in your living hope in Christ’s resurrection and your eternal and imperishable inheritance with Him, “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7).  Why suffering and death?  To refine the gold.  To melt you down by means of trial and tribulation, so that all that is not pure faith, all that is not pure Christ, may be removed.  So that when Christ comes again in glory, you may be found in Him, Image restored fully, all to His honor and praise. 

            Now, we don’t like this.  Of course we don’t.  We resist this.  And in some measure, we’ve all bought into the Satanic lie that true happiness and satisfaction in life result from self-actualization, self-care, self-fulfillment, which are really just euphemisms for selfishness, that is, self-idolatry.  On some level, we all think we need to live for self, catering to the comforts and appetites of the flesh, self-preservation at all costs.  Ultimately, even when we do make sacrifices for others, first of all, we tend to blow the greatness of the sacrifice out of proportion, and second, and above all, we harness them to serve for our own honor and glory.  It’s all an endless quest to make a good life for ourselves.  Repent of that.  That isn’t life.  That “you” must die.  “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25).  Only if you die with Christ, can you be raised with Christ and live with Christ.  What does it profit you to gain all the comforts and pleasures you could possibly desire, indeed, the whole world, if it means forfeiting your soul (v. 26)?  Better to suffer now, and receive your eternal reward in the end, than to claim your reward now, and suffer eternally. 

            But see how this recasts all the suffering you experience, and even death itself, in a new light, the light of Christ?  Your suffering has a purpose.  Not just this “God is trying to teach me some kind of lesson through this” business.  That cliché is so near sighted.  You may never know what the lesson is, this side of the veil, beloved, so let’s not hang our hats on that.  No, the purpose is that God is molding and shaping you into the cruciform Image of His Son.  He’s stripping you of that which leads to death.  He’s doing this so that you have nothing left to you but Christ alone, in whom to believe and trust, to cling to and live.  He is driving you to Christ.  He is doing this for your salvation, so that you don’t fall away.  He is driving you to His Word, and to prayer.  And to love for your neighbor, who is likewise suffering.  In this way, God turns everything on its head.  He works through the things our flesh considers foolish, shameful, weak, and nothing, to accomplish His great purposes.  He works through suffering and death to bring about life and eternal salvation.  He works resurrection by means of the cross.

            Christ is risen.  The tomb is empty.  Take up your cross and follow Jesus, and that is where you end up.  So, you can know with absolute assurance, that it is as St. Paul says: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).  God works them all for good.  Which is not to say that they are good, or that you will feel good about them as you suffer them, or that you’ll even ever feel good about them in this life.  It is simply to say that God has His purposes, and those purposes are good, and it is those purposes that save you.  You’ll see it then, when Christ comes again.  So, in the meantime, just trust Him.  Keep following Him.  Keep clinging to Him.  Live your life as it is shaped by Him.  He will not fail you.

            And then, know this, too.  The Kingdom of God has come in the incarnation, life, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Man, Christ Jesus, Son of God.  “(T)here are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. 16:28).  That’s not just later.  That’s now!  You confess that the Son of Man has come in His Kingdom to you by wearing a cross.  And adorning your home with it.  And above all, proclaiming it with Paul: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).  See, the Kingdom comes wherever Christ crucified is preached.  Wherever one dies with Christ in the baptismal waters, and rises up again to new life.  Wherever the Lord’s crucified and risen body and blood are distributed into the mouths of hungry sinners.  Wherever you bear the cross for others in your testimony and works of love; in your bearing their burdens, and bearing with them in patience and longsuffering.  The Son of Man coming in His Kingdom is not just the End.  It is now.  To be in that Kingdom, self, lost in Christ, and in His body… that is life. 

            I don’t want to suffer.  But suffering has its purpose.  It has God’s purpose.  And in the End, it gives way to unending consolation.  And the one who has lost His life in Christ, the Crucified, will find it eternally in Christ, who is risen.  For Christ is his life.  May it be so for you.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.