Proper 17 :: Exodus 3: 1–15; Psalm 105: 1–6, 23–26, 45c;
Romans 12: 9–21; 16: 21–28
This is the homily
given by Fr. Gene Tucker at St. John’s, Huntingdon, on Sunday, September 3,
2017.
(Homily text: Matthew 16: 21–28)
In
last Sunday’s gospel text, we heard Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah.
On that occasion, Peter said, “You (Jesus) are the Christ, the Son of the
living God.”
Now,
this Sunday, as Jesus warns His disciples about the events that will happen to
Him once He goes to Jerusalem, we hear Peter’s denial, as he says to the Lord,
“God forbid it, Lord, this must never happen to you.”
Peter
is on a spiritual roller coaster ride:
Last week, he was at the top of the ride, exclaiming that Jesus is the
Messiah, the expected One that God’s chosen people had been waiting for. Now,
this week, Peter stands in the way of the Lord’s plans, and so the Lord
responds to Peter with a sharp rebuke: “Get behind me, Satan![1] You are
a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but
on human things.” (From this low point in Peter’s conditioning to be a
disciple, he will ascend to another high point as he goes – along with James
and John – to the mountaintop where he will witness the glory of God that Jesus
possesses as Jesus is transfigured before them.)
Let’s
back up to last week’s event, the one in which Peter acknowledges Jesus’
identity as the Messiah.
Perhaps,
at the time, Peter thought that that was all there was that anyone needed to
know: Jesus is God’s anointed One, the
Messiah. What more could anyone want to know? What more was there to
understand? After all, with the arrival of the Messiah, doesn’t that mean that the
golden age that so many people had been waiting for had arrived? Maybe these
things ran through Peter’s mind.
But,
it turns out, Peter still has a lot to learn.
Peter’s
desire to hold onto the wonderful feeling that knowing that God’s promises had
been fulfilled is entirely normal. Don’t we, once we’ve grasped some great
truth, want to hold onto not only that truth itself, but to the moment in which
that truth is known? We want to stay at the mountaintop, basking in the warmth
of that feeling.
But
Peter’s journey into discipleship, and our journey, means that we, Peter and
us, must come down from the mountaintop of knowing Jesus’ true identity, as we
walk into the depths of the unpleasant realities of pathways of life that will, inevitably, lie
before us. To do so is to see things from God’s perspective, not from a human
point-of-view. For Jesus tells Peter bluntly that, to deny the fact that
unpleasant things lie ahead, is to think from a human perspective. As rewarding
as it was for Jesus to tell Peter in last week’s gospel text that knowing that
Jesus is the Messiah isn’t something that Peter came to know by normal, human
means; in today’s text, the Lord’s sharp rebuke shoves the unpleasant truth
that Peter has abandoned looking at things from God’s perspective right in
Peter’s face. What Peter is seeing, the Lord affirms, comes from the way people
see things, not as God sees them.
It
will take Peter awhile to get the full picture of what God is up to in sending
Jesus to be the Messiah. That picture will involve all the “good stuff” of
healing, teaching, caring for people, and rebuking the corrupt leadership of
the scribes and the Pharisees. But the picture also involves walking the way of
the cross, the horribly “bad stuff” of suffering and death.
The
“good stuff” and the “bad stuff” come together in the resurrection of Jesus on
Easter Sunday morning. Then it is that Peter will know that God has been
present in all these things, both the good and the bad. Then it is that Peter
will know that the God who sent Jesus is a God who is willing to get in the
trenches of life with us, bearing with us the “bad stuff” of suffering, loss,
pain and separation. Then it is that Peter will know that the bad stuff of life
cannot conquer the good stuff, for God’s power is able to bear us up as we walk
through the depths of life, delivering us from all that would separate us from
God’s power and God’s love.
A
wonderful collect which is used in the Daily Office of Morning Prayer sums up
these things quite well. It is the Collect for Fridays,[2] which
reads as follows:
“Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ, your son our Lord. Amen.”
