2023-09-05
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
9/3/2023 Homily: What? Lose my life to save it? Rev. Betsy Wooster
Today’s Scripture Reading:
The setting of today’s text from the gospel of Matthew is near the end of Jesus’ ministry, as he prepares to go to Jerusalem and face the powers against him. In the lead up to today’s passage Peter has named God the “son of the living God,” and God name’s Peter as the one on whom I will build my church,” and goes on to say that he will give Peter the key to the kingdom of heaven. Our scripture text picks up here, where Jesus’ words take a dramatic turn. Today’s reading from Matt 16:21-28:
21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ 23But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 ‘For the Son of the Human One is to come with angels in the glory of God and will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of the Human One coming in God’s realm.’
Let us pray:
Come Holy Spirit inspire our hearts this day; Enlighten us with understanding. For if you are with us then nothing else matters and if you are not with us, then Nothing else matters. Be with us, we pray, in the name of your beloved Son. Amen.
Today we begin a fall sermon series in which the overarching theme is “God’s inscrutable good news is seldom what we think it will be.” Today’s scripture passage certainly gives us fodder for this theme and it’s worth hearing once more what Jesus says after rebuking Peter, for Jesus is also speaking to us who identify ourselves as disciples. Here are those words again:
25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
Jesus calling Peter Satan sounds harsh to our ears and it must have sounded harsh to Peter, too. And yet, Jesus is telling him the difficult news that his ministry will not go as they expect. He wants them to understand the full measure of his devotion. In the gospel of Matthew and indeed, in all of the gospels, the ministry of Jesus was filled with miraculous events….baptizing people, walking on water, turning water into wine, healing multitudes of people who were sick or infirm, feeding the five thousand, casting out evil spirits, cleansing those with leprosy, more curing and healing.
Jesus brought an endless list of miracles and good news for those who were suffering under Roman occupation, and Jesus’ brought hope and healing to their spirits, to their bodies, to their capacity to endure the many forms of illness that occupation by an authoritarian regime brought upon the innocents subject to their power.
The hope and healing promised by God was the center and heart of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ gift to the people was astonishing and the invitation to follow him was compelling. Following Jesus would transform their lives, it would heal them of the societal illness that plagued them. Who wouldn’t say yes to the healing and hope that Jesus preached? That was the definition of good news. So, the disciples said yes! There were hints along the way that following Jesus would require some sacrifices, that following him would not always be easy.
The disciples left their homes and families because they knew that was what it meant to be a follower of Jesus, what would need to be sacrificed in order to call Jesus Lord. Those sacrifices were absolutely worth it. Jesus was promising them new life. They had a leader who would take them to their generation’s version of the promised land. They said YES. Sometimes we all say yes to things when we really have no idea what we are getting ourselves into. Often with the best of intentions we are drawn to someone or something that so captures our interest or attention that our hearts are compelled to learn more, or to follow, or to tell everyone we know about this person or this event that we experienced.
It changed us or saved us, and we want to share it with everyone we know. And it is good. This good thing has opened our eyes to something new, something marvelous, and part of the miracle of it is that once we have encountered it, we sense that we have known it all along, and yet for the first time, our eyes have fully opened, and we can see the miracle that has always been hidden in plain sight. Sometimes it even feels like this new, good thing will save us in some way, and often, it does.
Maybe you once accepted a new job or a volunteer position that changed your life in amazing ways, and at some point, you looked at what you were doing and you said, “it’s good that I didn’t fully know what I was getting into when I started this because I probably would not have done it…but I’m so glad I did.”
I remember being at the emergency animal hospital, 11 p.m. a few days before Christmas - just last year - because our 8-month old puppy needed emergency surgery. I was worn out and so worried, and I thought “I don’t remember signing up for this.” And what parent has not reached a point of being exhausted, worried, and spent, and thinking “I had no idea what I was getting into…and I would not change a thing.” That might happen when your child is 2 months old, or 13, or 27. There is so much that is good, and life-transforming, and miraculous, that demands that we give more of ourselves than we had thought we could give.
And so, we say yes! Like the disciples, we are not blinded to the things that can go wrong, but we cannot imagine saying no. Hope and Love are powerful motivators. Hope and Love speak to the willingness to do the right thing even when we know there will be consequences.
The disciples had said yes to Jesus long before he began telling him about his pending death. They had said yes to becoming Jesus’ chosen disciples, yes to the call to follow him wherever the path took them. They knew Jesus was a bit of a rebel, but they liked that about him. He wasn’t afraid to tell the truth about things, he wasn’t afraid to tell the truth about God. What they did not predict was that their savior would be executed, and that that was the plan all along. In today’s passage Jesus tells them both that he will be killed and that he will be resurrected. But they didn’t seem to hear or understand the second part. His death was unfathomable to them.
Jesus was walking with them through their lives. Teaching them how to love. Teaching them how to serve. They couldn’t imagine going on without him. Following Jesus, living our faith, is going to cost something. It might have consequences that we aren’t expecting. It may break our hearts.
The ministry of Jesus is worth the cost. Jesus knows it. The work that he was doing—to teach about God, to bring the realm of heaven near and make it real in people’s lives, to heal bodies and communities, and to resist the powers that opposed the will of God—was worth giving everything, even his life.
The injustice of the world, then and now, is resistant to challenge or to transformation within people that becomes a movement for justice, a movement toward love and forgiveness even when that love and forgiveness is seen as wrong. Of course it’s going to cost something. As today’s scripture tells us, Jesus will give his life for his ministry. And Jesus tells his disciples to follow him: to take up their crosses and follow him.
Wouldn’t we expect anything worthwhile to cost something? If a Genie were to grant me a wish, and my wish was to be a concert pianist, would I actually be one?
Without the hours and years of practice required to be a concert pianist, I would never understand the instrument, or how to truly make it sing. The Genie can’t really make me a concert pianist. It takes work. It takes commitment. It requires one to give up some other things. There is a cost to devoting oneself to the unwavering time and practice required to become the best pianist one can possibly be.
You will never have the life fulfilling, lifesaving way of God without giving your life to it. And what does that mean?
-Giving time to open yourselves to love, always love.
-Finding a community where God and Mercy find you.
-Being part of worship and other practices.
-Finding all ways that you can to offer thanksgiving for your life,
and for the miracle of life itself,
-and for the gifts your life has brought you.
- Being allies and in solidarity with the marginalized or those whom society deem to be outcasts.
It will undoubtedly make us bump up against entrenched interests of those with power to end our efforts of loving all of God’s people at all cost. And the reality is that we will hold back and fall short of giving our full lives. The disciples did too. But we have tried, and this is where the mercy and grace of God makes complete our incompleteness, and our lives are saved. We will fall short, but I am thankful that our faith has such a grand and wonderful vision for our lives. I am thankful that we are called to a way of life that is aspirational in the best sense. A faith that we learn for our whole lives.
If it wasn't, If Jesus had set the bar lower to make it easier, how could that kind of faith be compelling or transformative? Giving our life to God can mean many different kinds of things, depending on who we are and where we’ve been planted, and it does not happen overnight. Becoming the fullness of oneself as a follower of Jesus naturally happens inch by inch, day by day, year by year. Letting go of what we want so that we might help keep others from suffering is a form of wisdom. Wisdom that comes inch by inch, day by day, year by year, over the course of our lives.
The children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, has an interesting parallel to what Jesus is telling the disciples about losing and saving one’s life. As you may remember, it’s a story about a stuffed animal, with a velveteen coat, whiskers of thread, and ears lined by pink sateen.
He is a new toy, lying in the nursery next to the Skin Horse, one of the very old toys, and he asks the Horse about a word he has apparently been hearing. “What is Real?”
Does it mean having things that buzz inside…?”
The Horse tells him “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time…REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the skin horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
When Jesus told his disciples to take up their crosses, it was good news that sounded like bad news. It sounded like bad news because that is too much to give. But then Jesus told them that it is in giving their lives, that their lives will be saved. Inch by inch, day by day, year by year. It is in the giving of our lives that our lives are saved. We get to live out our lives in love and embrace who we’ve become.
And we are made real, by the grace of God. Amen.