A sermon on Matthew 16:24 for a Borders Centre of Mission joint service on 30th August 2020
You can listen to this sermon by clicking/tapping here.
‘Anyone who wants to be a follower of mine must renounce self; he must take up his cross and follow me.’
Our gospel reading today is a continuation of last week’s. It carries on immediately from the story of Peter’s recognition at Caesarea Philippi of who Jesus really was. Indeed, it’s an essential part of that story. One minute Peter is commended for his insight; the next he’s criticised for being a stumbling block. The two parts of the story ought not to be separated.
And this story plays a really important part in Matthew’s Gospel. It’s the hinge on which the whole of Matthew’s telling of the good news turns. Up to now his story of Jesus has been one of steadily growing success: miracle has followed miracle, a sequence of signs and wonders culminating in the feeding of the 5000; Jesus’s teaching has been heard and received by increasing crowds of people; we’ve had the Sermon on the Mount, the parables of the kingdom – and everywhere Jesus has gone, the crowds have followed; he’s even had several confrontations with the representatives of organised religion in which Jesus has got the better of them every time.
And the conversation at Caesarea Philippi is the climax of this story of growing recognition and success – a climax focussed in Peter’s insight that Jesus is the Messiah –not just another prophet; not just a forerunner like John the Baptist; but the real deal, the one the Jews were looking for – the Anointed One (because that’s what the words ‘Messiah’ and ‘Christ’ mean in Aramaic and Greek) – the chosen king of Israel – the one who would finally usher in the ‘Day of the Lord’.
That’s what the Messiah would do. And that’s what first-century Jews like Jesus’ disciples were waiting for. And no-one really knew what it would be like – except everyone knew it would be about deliverance and restoration. See, the Jews had felt for six hundred years that they’d been in exile. No matter that some of them had returned to the Promised Land when they were released from captivity in Babylon, there was a deep sense in which they felt they were still in exile while living at home: still subject to rule by foreign powers, still trampled on by Gentiles, oppressed by corrupt rulers, their racial purity compromised by the presence of foreigners, their relationship with God undermined by involvement with other nations’ religions. They wanted to be free. And being in exile – perhaps even more so when living at home – was the opposite of freedom.
So the Day of the Lord would mean the overturning of the way things were – an end to exile at last, with Israel finally coming out on top, their enemies and oppressors getting their just deserts and Israel entering a time of prosperity, security and victory that would last for ever. And everyone believed it would be done by God coming to be among his people. And everyone believed the Messiah would be the one who would make all this happen – God’s agent and representative in the great deliverance.
At the time of Jesus, most Jews assumed this would mean economic and political freedom – the end of the Roman occupation of Judea; freedom at last from Gentile interference; and Jerusalem as the centre of a whole new world order. Some Jews also believed it would mean a religious revival, with a new experience of faithfulness to God, a new experience of prayer, and a new experience of obedience to God’s Law, with an outpouring of divine power in signs and wonders. But all Jews longed for it! And now Jesus’ disciples were finally convinced the time had come. It was all going to happen and Jesus was the one to do it.
This is what Peter meant when he recognised Jesus as the Christ. It’s a breath-taking moment in the story of the gospel.
So far, so good – but now everything n Matthew’s story of Jesus changes. Suddenly there’s a darker note. It’s as though Jesus has led the disciples up a gradual ascent to the top of a mountain from which they could see the glories of the future – and the instant they get there the future turns out to be a mirage.
See, it’s one thing to recognise Jesus as the anointed one of God – but quite another thing to grasp the reality of what that meant. And it’s only when the disciples have acknowledged who he is that Jesus can begin to talk about what that reality means.
Because the Day of the Lord was not what they were expecting at all. And Jesus was not the Messiah they and their fellow-Jews were looking for. He is the Messiah – but not as they knew it. In fact he is a profoundly different Messiah – because the Day of the Lord would be about defeat, suffering and death, and the Messiah would turn out to be a victim, not a victor. So – as Matthew says – ‘from that time Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he had to … endure great suffering .. to be put to death, and to rise again on the third day.’
Not surprisingly, Peter didn’t like it. He thought he’d just signed up for world domination and suddenly it turns out to be personal – and national – humiliation! And this reflects the fact that God was not who the disciples had had thought he was. They’d assumed he was the God of unlimited power – the sovereign Lord – the God for Israel, who would impose his will on the world for Israel’s benefit. But it turns out that, although he is the God of unlimited power, he uses that power to make himself vulnerable. He works by invitation, not direction. He works by consent, not compulsion. He works by collaboration, not dictation. And, it turns out, unlimited power is not the most important thing about him, because his true nature is not naked power, but unconditional love. His solution to our human problems is to enter into them with us – even to the point of sharing our ultimate experience of weakness and loss: death itself.
And this has consequences for his people. Look at verses 24 and 25. Following the Messiah is not about triumph, command and control, not a recipe for power, success, fame and fortune. Following the Messiah successfully will never be achieved through domination, imposition, compulsion. Following the Messiah involves being like him. It means taking up the cross.
Those words are familiar to us. So familiar that we’ve lost the sense of shock that Peter and the other disciples must have felt at hearing them. It was actually a quite extraordinary thing for Jesus to say. And remember, he said it before it had become a reference back to his own crucifixion. Taking up the cross was what criminals convicted by the Romans had to do on the way to execution. It was a symbol of weakness, failure and defeat. And it was also a symbol of still being in exile, under the power of aliens, subject to the very things everyone though the Day of the Lord was supposed to set them free from. And it was to be done voluntarily – by anyone who wanted to follow Jesus. In other words, taking up the cross is a symbol of acknowledged and accepted weakness. It means letting down our defences, entering into the way of love, being willing to accept vulnerability and loss, without demanding guarantees. It means living by faith in a resurrection that still lies in the future.
This is a hard saying. Especially when it follows straight on from Peter’s declaration. Jesus – as is his way – turns things on their heads. What we thought was the way to preserve ourselves turns out to be the way to get lost. We thought we’d get the best deal out of life by going for safety and security: by building walls; by locking doors; by keeping things; by excluding others. We thought personal enrichment would come from holding on to what we can get, protecting ourselves from others, avoiding getting mixed up in their problems. But it turns out that the way to real life is through letting things go. The way to real life is through denying ourselves, through handing ourselves over to Jesus, through sharing his vulnerability. And – in the process – discovering that that it’s love that leads to resurrection.
If you want to save your life, you have to give it away.
David D Sceats
25.8.20