The next few weeks we find Jesus talking a lot about one of his favorite subjects… relationships. While we like to beat others over the head about what to think or believe, Jesus consistently says love your neighbor, love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you. He does not make exceptions for heretics or dare I say, people of opposing political parties.
When it comes to relationships. the answer is LOVE… Period.
What else is there to be said?…
“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…
“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Such a simple statement of faith, at least from where we sit in our comfortable and often privatized religious world. How easy it is today to say Jesus is Lord and Messiah. How easy it is to say we believe.
For Peter, this may have been a declaration of faith, but it was far more. Likely standing within eyesight of the imperial cult sites of Cesarea Phillipi where Caesar alone was worshiped as the son of God, this declaration was nothing short of treason under the penalty of death…
…Who in our lives do we see as “less than” in some way? Who do we instinctively turn away from? Who do we assume are the people furthest away from God?
Might it be that those are the very ones God has placed in our path to wake us up to our own prejudice and self-righteousness? Might it be that the very people we assume have no faith at all are the ones who might remind us what faith is really all about?
…Peter walks on the water. Surely he didn’t do that on his own. This has to be the work of Jesus and nobody else.
Well, yes… and no.
You see, if the miracle was only dependent on Jesus, then why would Peter sink? There is no evidence that Jesus was holding him up with some kind of Star-Wars like force and then simply lets go to teach Peter a lesson. Jesus didn’t make Peter sink because Jesus wasn’t actually holding him up to start with. Peter was able to walk on water not because Jesus gave him some magical power, but because he had the faith that Jesus was greater than the wind and the waves around him. Peter always gets a bad wrap for his lack of faith, but remember, Peter is the one who had the faith to step out of the boat in the first place when none of the others even considered the possibility…
…We often look at this miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and celebrate how he saved the day. So long as Jesus is around, we have nothing to worry about. He’ll fix it. He’ll take care of it. If he won’t send them away, he can feed all the people.
The only trouble is that’s not exactly what happens in the text. Jesus doesn’t send them away and Jesus doesn’t technically feed all those people.
Instead, we read in verse 16, “Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’”
“Whoa. Hold up now preacher. What do you mean telling us to do it. That’s what we pay you for?”
“We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish,” they reply. “What do you expect us to do?”…
… God saw you and me and every person who ever lived scraping our way through this sin ridden life and believed we were valuable enough to sacrifice his only Son just to dwell with us as it was in Eden. Do we value God and the Kingdom of Heaven as much as God values us? As one of my former pastors used to ask every Sunday, “Will you say yes to the one who said yes to the cross for you?”
… Odds are the enemy has sown a few weeds in the soil of our hearts. Instead of being so anxious to clear every weed from our sight, maybe we need to pause and give thanks to God for granting us mercy and allowing the good wheat to grow in fullness rather than cutting us off with those weeds before we ever have a chance to bloom.
Jesus said many things in parables. Most of these parables speak to the nature of the Kingdom of God, the very Kingdom Jesus taught us to pray for to “come on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). The problem, if we’re honest, is that while these parables may make perfect sense in God’s Kingdom, many of them do not make sense in our earthly kingdoms. Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Matthew 4:17). If it was at hand over 2,000 years ago, surely it is at hand now. The Kingdom of God is not some far away reality beyond the crystal sea. Perhaps what Jesus is offering us is not a “how-to manual” in building the Kingdom, but rather a new set of lenses through which to see God’s presence in our midst, here and now.
Let’s consider first this “Parable of the Soils,” as it is commonly called…
The next day, which was the day after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate. They said, “Sir, we remember that while that deceiver was still alive he said, ‘After three days I will arise.’ Therefore, order the grave to be sealed until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people, ‘He’s been raised from the dead.’ This last deception will be worse than the first.”
Matthew 27:62-64
If the authorities were terrified of a dead savior, who they were convinced could not truly have risen from the grave, how is it that a living savior who we believe is alive in us be so easily ignored by the world? Could it be that a dead Savior held more power over them than a living savior holds over us? …
