Faith Beyond Words
Kingdom Transformation - Part 4
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Matthew 16:21-28

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. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But 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.”
Matthew 16:21-23

“God forbid it, Lord!”

The same Peter who just declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is now telling this same Jesus that he must be wrong. Do we hear how absurd that is? Who would be crazy enough to tell God that God is wrong?

Well… except for maybe every one of us at some point in our lives.

We shy away from identifying with Peter in this moment because we don’t like to think of Jesus calling us “Satan,” and yet we are all more like Peter here than we think. In last week’s sermon, I talked about the book My Imaginary Jesus, by Matt Mikalatos. An “imaginary Jesus” is simply a version of Jesus that we make in our own image, who always fits our preconceived notions of who Jesus should be, how he should act and what he should think. Most of the time, our imaginary Jesus has plenty of scripture to back him up, but it is almost always an incomplete or partial picture, taking the characteristics of Jesus we like and ignoring the rest. Peter was absolutely right to define Jesus as Lord, Messiah, and Son of God. But here we find that his understanding was only partial. Peter’s “Imaginary Jesus” would indeed sit on the throne, but it would be a physical throne from which he would overthrow the entire Roman Empire. This is a bit difficult to do if you are planning to be killed by the very empire you’re supposed to be overthrowing. Clearly the real Jesus had something in mind that didn’t fit Peter’s preconceived idea of who he was supposed to be or what he was supposed to do.

If we’re really honest, that’s pretty typical of the “Real Jesus.” He rarely fits into our neat and tidy categories. He rarely responds to people the way we might expect him to. He’s always looking at things from another angle. Just take a look at the Be attitudes back in Matthew 5. Blessed are the poor, the grieving, the meek, the merciful, the ones who are persecuted… These are not attitudes our culture values. Then of course there is all that talk of turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, loving our enemies, forgiving 70 x 7, which quite frankly is just too many times to keep track of. The list goes on and on. What do we expect when we follow a “crucified savior."

Suffering and death does not fit into Peter’s understanding of success and power. And yet it is only through suffering and death that Jesus himself conquered death and the grave. We, like Peter, are all about a powerful Jesus who rules the world with justice and mercy. A suffering Jesus, on the other hand, we’re not quite sure what to do with. Perhaps that’s why so many traditions like to skip straight from Palm Sunday to Easter and not spend too much time with the agony of Holy Week. Some even ignore the entire Lenten Season, jumping from Christmas to Easter as if nothing bad ever happened. Because of the Resurrection, everything is good. Maybe so, but this does not change the reality of suffering.

That is why our passage today goes on to Jesus’ famous lines about taking up our cross and losing our lives. As Todd Agnew writes in his song, “My Jesus,”

I want to be like my Jesus, but I’m not sure what that means.
’Cause you said to live like you and love like you, but then you died for me…
Can I be like you Jesus?

Let us take seriously pray with the apostle Paul as we consider what it might mean to follow the real Jesus, even to the cross, that we might truly know the power of the resurrection not only for eternity, but for today.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:7-10