15 Pentecost A Matthew 16:21-28 1 September 2002
Rev. Roger Haugen
Ammon Hennacy was a protester against the arms race in the United States during the 60’s. One cold winter day found him at a missile silo in South Dakota. There were very few people, a handful of protesters, two soldiers behind the fence, and a reporter from a small town newspaper. After about 20 minutes of bone-chilling cold, the reporter went over to Hennacy and shouted in the wind, “Do you really think you’re going to change the government by being out here?” Hennacy looked at him and said, “My friend, I’m out here so that the government doesn’t change me.”
Why would anyone want to be a Christian? We are told to take up our cross and follow Jesus. We are told that to want to save our life will mean we lose it. Look back in history and we find those who took Jesus seriously found life tough. It was not popular to protest the war in Vietnam but history has proved that the protesters were right. Those who fought for civil rights in the U.S. met with threats and violence, often ending up in prison. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Germany was executed for protesting against Hitler, and the Lutheran church of his day abandoned Bonhoeffer. The chance are, to take up your cross and follow Jesus, will cause pain and death, and we won’t know if we were right until much later.
The early church, as described in Acts, was faced with persecution and death, yet they continued to grow. People in El Salvador, continued to baptize their children through the 80’s even though doing so was putting the lines of a rifle scope on their foreheads. Bishop Romero continued to preach for justice even though it resulted in him taking a bullet as he celebrated Communion.
Take up your cross and follow?
Presently in parts of the world, to be identified as Christian is to court persecution and death. Only recently the heads of a number of Christian preachers in the Phillipines were found along side roads as a warning to others. Yet others continue to preach. Today, to be identified as a church in China is to bring the wrath of the government down on all those who attend. Yet, Lutheran pastors from Hong Kong continue to travel into mainland China to worship in house churches. Take up your cross and follow?
Society as we know it, doesn’t fit well with Jesus’ words today. Marva Dawn, a writer who teaches in Vancouver, identifies six values of our culture. (Is it a Lost Cause? Having the Heart of God for the Church’s Children)
1.Pain free living. A pursuit of happiness and comfort where we rely on technology to make our live easy and pain free. A drug for every pain and diet pills so we do not need to eat healthy.
2. Materialism. Where we value stuff rather than people. Life is a race to see who can gather the most ‘stuff’. The voids we feel in life can be filled with the right ‘stuff’.
3. Escapism. We are driven to amuse ourselves to escape daily stress and conflict. The day becomes so scheduled that we have no time to consider what is eating away at us.
4. Information overload. We have so much information coming at us that we become overwhelmed and deal with none. The 24 hour bad news habit numbs us to the atrocities the stories reveal.
5. Acceptance of violence. Violent murderers and fouled mouth people enter our homes many times a day through television.
6. Instant gratification. Everything from microwave meals to casual sex that is made popular by our culture’s new heroes on sit-coms.
This is society as we know it. To say anything against it is to face the wrath of many. How does “Take up your cross and follow.” play out in our daily life?
In today’s gospel we hear that Jesus must go to Jerusalem, that he will suffer at the hand of the leaders of the church and be killed. This is something he knows he must do. God’s plan to save humanity is unfolding as intended but you can sense the disciples are becoming agitated. This certainly wasn’t what they signed on to when Jesus asked them to follow. Fishing for people, healing, teaching – that was more like it, but death?!
Peter speaks for all of them, “God forbid it Lord! This must never happen to you.” Not what we had in mind either. The text gets stuck in our throats. Suffering? Poor Peter, being spoken to so harshly after all he had been through. Who would want to be a Christian? The words grate on me because I know how much I am caught up in the values of our society that the words of Jesus grate against. Surveys by church researchers such as George Barna show me not to be alone. He discovered that the suffering part of Christianity is that hardest part for seekers to stomach.
And they are not alone. Ask around and you will find that people see the church as a safe place, a sanctuary from the world. A place where we know each other, a place and time away from the rest of the dangerous world. A place to protect ourselves and our children. We know Peter’s words, “God forbid it Lord!” But there it is, “If anyone want to become one of my followers, let them deny myself and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus puts his fingers on one of the idolatries of his day and ours. We have this wish to save ourselves from pain, our desire for comfort. Our desire to build places where we do not need to consider the needs that Jesus puts in front of us – the needs of justice and healing.
To take up our cross is to choose Jesus’ way over the way of society, often positioning ourselves against very powerful and respectable forces. To take up our cross may lead to nothing more than awkward stares if we were to not allow the murderers and proponents of cheap sex into our homes.
It may involve much more risk. To take up the cross set before us may result in consequences that we would not choose. Martin Luther King Jr. said from prison, “This is the cross that we must bear for the freedom of our people.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote of costly grace from his prison cell where his opposition to the policies of Hitler landed him, and finally cost him his life. Dom Helder Camara, Brazilian Bishop and leader of the nonviolent movement for democracy in Latin America, wrote, “We shall not walk on roses, people will not throng to hear us and applaud us, and we shall not always be aware of divine protection. If we are to be pilgrims for justice and peace, we must expect desert.” If we could ask any of the martyrs of the faith, in the past or today, they would all speak of the terror of inviting the wrath of earthly rulers who have the power to imprison and execute. Ask Jeremiah.
Yet we come and we listen to the words of Jesus weekly. Words that we need to give us the power to pick up the crosses that are set before us daily. They may not be the crosses of a Bonhoeffer, or a Martin Luther King Jr., but they are our crosses and they may incite in us the same fear. We gather as a community of faith, we teach our children and seek to nurture and be nurtured so that we can be faithful disciples. We gather for worship and are fed so that we can live the other six days as disciples of Jesus open to the needs of others. Disciples ready to speak out against injustice and prejudice where we find it.
Jesus does not want us to cocoon in the safety of our homes or our church. Jesus wants us to be disciples, picking up those crosses that often require us to run into the wall of the society around us. Jesus does not want us to do good works in an effort to secure God’s favour, it is already ours. If we continue to try to secure the favour of God through good works we will not secure our lives. Only by giving up our lives, we will find them.
If we could ask Martin Luther King Jr., Bonhoeffer or any of the other martyrs of the faith, they would also tell us of how full and blessed their lives were. They found their lives in the giving up of them. They lived as disciples, as they were created to live and there is nothing like it. We know some of what they speak when we give of our time and energy forgetting ourselves in the service of others. When we comfort someone at the death of a loved one. When we wipe the food from the chin of someone in a care home. When we coach a team of children to be rewarded by a smile. When we invite others to join us for worship, or speak of our faith. When we hold a frightened child and know comfort is received.
Once again Peter looks a lot like us. Peter the rock who could walk on water. Peter the rock who sank like a rock. Peter the rock on which Jesus would build his church. Peter the stumbling block. This was Peter who Jesus loved enough to shake up and push beyond his comfort zone and sends him out as his disciple knowing that he would, indeed, pick up his cross and follow.
The story was not over for Peter because he became the preacher of Acts spreading the gospel to many, baptizing thousands in a single day. Paul who also was martyred for his work.
The story is not over for us either, because Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow. We do not know what that cross might look like but we are assured that it is the cross that will lead to life. The life of which Jesus speaks when he said, “I have come that you might have life in all abundance.” Not abundance in ‘stuff’ but abundance in fulfillment, life which is eternal.
