12th Sunday after Pentecost --- 31 August 2013

GOSPEL: Matthew 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. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." 23 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." 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. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For 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 Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

• I know and you know that we've heard this Gospel line before. In fact, we've heard it many, many times.
• Of course, just because we've heard it before doesn't mean it isn't worth repeating. Which is probably why it is heard so often in our readings in the Worship service. The really important things bear repeating.
• By taking up our cross and following Jesus, we go the way of being transformed into the image of Jesus in the world around us... which is exactly what being a disciple of Jesus is about.
• This taking up of the cross is more than a way to handle the sufferings that all humans endure. The bumps and bruises, the stubbed toes and toothaches are, as Shakespeare put it, “the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to”, in other words, the pains and troubles every human has. Taking up the cross is far more than this.
• To be a disciple means to place ourselves in opposition to many of the values we may find around us. This will be hard, sometimes harder than we might think. Many of those things can be what the world around us says are important and will make us better people. Really, who wouldn't want that?
• In last week's Gospel reading, we heard Peter's confession of Jesus as the Messiah. This week, Peter is trying to talk Jesus out of saying that he will be the suffering Messiah, something incomprehensible to Peter and the other disciples. The Messiah was not supposed to be a sufferer. He was to be glorious and majestic and powerful and all those things and more as well. Being put to death at the hands of the authorities of his own people as well the foreign occupiers was not part of the definition of the Messiah. That was loser-talk and the Messiah was to be a winner - and so were his followers. So Peter says “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
• Jesus then calls Peter a stumbling block and takes him to task for looking at things from a human point of view rather than a divine point of view. Winning and losing is no longer the question.
• The difference between winners and losers is seen as no less important in our day. To suffer and especially to place ourselves in a position of accepted suffering is often seen as the way of the loser. Yet that is what Jesus tells us we will have to do to be his followers.
• To be a follower of Jesus is to have your daily life shaped and directed by the cross. There are ways of treating others that we will not engage in. There are ways of doing business and ways of speaking that we will not have any part of. There are ways that we will spend our time that will seem worthless and silly to some who do not share our values. We may be excluded from some groups or circles because of how the cross shapes our lives.
• Taking up the cross of Christ as our own will set us apart and that can often mean suffering beyond the normal and even the extraordinary pains of all humanity. It is at that time that any Christian disciple will come to realize that proclaiming “Jesus is the Messiah” or “Jesus is Lord” will bring with it a cost that we must pay to make those proclamations the cornerstone of our daily lives.
• One more thought – I don't think any of us would question that taking up the cross is accepting weakness since it is the weakness of God in Jesus that is the redeeming act for us. It is this very weakness that defeats the strength of the old trio that opposes grace – the world, the flesh, and the devil. For us, grace takes the form of the cross and the one nailed to it.
• We live in this world that has been turned upside- down by the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. In the light of grace, what seems to be failure is shown to be victory and apparent loss has become a gift beyond all imagining or hope.
• If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
• I know and you know that we've heard this Gospel line before. In fact, we've heard it many, many times. And some day... some day, it will sink in.