NR Methodist Church and NC 28-08-05
Mt 16:21-28
Take up your cross and follow me
Story: One man I admire greatly is Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941).
Maximilian Kolbe was a Catholic priest, who was put in a Nazi concentration camp for his faith.
On May 28, 1941, he was transferred to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.
One day a man in Kolbe’s block escaped. All of the men from that block were brought out into the hot sun and made to stand there all day with no food or drink.
At the end of the day, the man that had escaped was not found. So the Nazi commandant told the prisoners that ten men would be selected to die in the starvation cell in place of the one that had escaped.
One man, a polish sergeant was one of those selected.
He begged to be spared because he was worried that his family would not be able to survive without him.
As he was pleading with the commandant, Maximilian Kolbe silently stepped forward and stood before the commandant.
The commandant turned to him and asked him what he wanted.
Kolbe pointed to the polish sergeant and said,
"I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children."
The commandant stood silent for a moment in disbelief. He then allowed the sergeant to go back to his place in the ranks and Kolbe took his place in the starvation bunker.
In the starvation bunker, the guards who removed the bodies of those who had died, were used to the sounds of cursing and screaming. However when Kolbe and the nine others were put in the bunker, all they could hear was the sounds of Kolbe and his companions in the bunker singing hymns and praying.
When Kolbe couldn’t speak any longer due to hunger and lack of energy, he would whisper his prayers.
After two weeks, the cell had to be cleared out for more prisoners to be thrown in.
Only four prisoners were left alive by then and Kolbe was one of them. So the guards came in and gave each a lethal injection.
On August 14, 1941, Kolbe paid the ultimate price for following the call of his Master – “to take up his Cross and follow him.”
1.0 Introduction:
Today’s Gospel reading follows on from the momentous statement that Peter made - when Jesus asked him the question: “Who do people say that I am.”
It was a watershed event in the lives of the apostles –when Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Mt 16:16)
1. 1. But what did Peter mean when he said “ You are the Christ the Son of the living God”
1.1.1 Messiah
Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah – which simply means God’s anointed One
There were three types of people who would be anointed:
Prophets
Priests and
Kings
And in Jesus we find all three.
The Jews were expecting a Messiah who “would exercise God’s rule over God’s people” (The Message of Matthew – Michael Green p, 178)
But Jesus wasn’t the all conquering hero that the Jews were expecting – similar to Judas Maccabeus who had chased the occupying powers out in BC 167.
Indeed, this expectation of a political messiah explains the rather curious question that the disciples ask in Acts 1:6 just after the Resurrection when they say to Jesus:
"Lord are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom of Israel?"
They hadn’t got the message - even by then that rather Jesus was the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
Peter recognised Jesus as the Messiah – the one sent by God.
1.1.2 Divinity
But Peter recognised more. That Jesus wasn’t just human – but that he was divine too.
For a Jew like St Peter was – this was a seismic shift in his thinking – to call Jesus the Son of God.
All his life Peter had been taught that there is one God and never to worship a man as God.
It was one of the reasons which caused both the Jewish and Christian faiths to clash with Roman authority – because emperor worship was the touchstone of loyalty to the regime.
1. 1. 3. Caesarea Philippi
And the city where Jesus asked the disciples the question was not insignificant either.
For he asked them the question in Caesarea Philippi, a city about 25 miles northeast of Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown.
Caesarea Philippi was know for its plurality of religions. In that city alone there were 14 temples dedicated to the worship of Ba’al.
And high up on a prominent mountain peak you could see the ultimate blasphemy for a Jew – a temple dedicated to the worship of Caesar.
The famous Bible commentator William Barclay put it all in perspective:
"Here indeed is a dramatic picture. Here is a homeless, penniless Galilean carpenter, with twelve very ordinary men around him.
At the moment the orthodox are actually plotting and planning to destroy him as a dangerous heretic.
He stands in an area littered with the temples of Syrian gods; in a place where the ancient Greek gods looked down; in a place where the history of Israel crowded upon the minds of men; where the white marble splendour of the home of Caesar-worship dominated the landscape and compelled the eye.
And there – of all places – this amazing carpenter stands and asks men who they believe him to be, and expects the answer, the Son of God."
(William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew vol. 2 from The Daily Bible Study Series, p. 135.)
2. So what does it mean today to us if Jesus is “ the Christ, the son on the living God”
I believe Jesus answered that question in our Gospel reading today when he said
24…….."If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mt 16:24-26).
Being a Christian will bring you into conflict.
Jim Eliot the famous missionary killed in Ecuador in 1955 paraphased it like this
"He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."
I doubt any of us will be ask to pay the ultimate price - as Maximilian Kolbe did - in taking up our Cross to follow Jesus.
But I do wonder how “taking up one’s cross” might be relevant to us today.
We live in a post Christian culture. Choosing to lead a Christian life is not easy. It runs contrary to our culture.
Jesus recognised this when he said in Mt. 7:13
13"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Most, if not all, of us here today are Christians and so, in some way or another we have chosen to follow the Christian way of life.
So I would like to ask the question:
Having decided to follow Christ, what is the level of our commitment?
In other words, what does it mean to “take up our Cross and follow Him”
To explore that conundrum a little further, I would like to suggest that we have three choices in our level of commitment - so far as the will of God in our lives is concerned.
1. We can decide to put His will foremost in our lives some of the time
2. We can decide to put his will foremost in our lives most of the time
3. We can decide to put his will foremost in our lives all of the time.
I believe St. Peter made each of these choices at different stages of his Christian life.
1. The first choice
We can decide to put His will foremost some of the time in our lives
In today’s Gospel reading we see St. Peter rebuking Christ when Jesus told his disciples that he (Jesus) must suffer and die.
At this point in his life, St. Peter wanted a comfortable Christianity to follow.
He loved Jesus and wanted only the nice things associated with Christianity – for example he liked
the miracles Jesus performed, Jesus’ beautiful teachings (such as the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon in the Plain) and simply being around Jesus as his follower.
These all fitted Peter’s theology - but the Cross didn’t.
Today we can be like St. Peter at this time of his life.
We can have two spheres of life. A Christian life and a secular life.
How often do we fear being thought of as too fanatical by our friends and neighbours?
Are there times when we are ashamed of being Christians.
Yet Jesus said in Mk 9:38 "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels."
I think Jesus might have been very uncomfortable as our Vicar.
2. The second choice
We can put God’s will foremost in our lives most of the time
St. Matthew records a little scene between Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin and his trial before Pilate.
Peter has just denied knowing Christ three times and St. Matthew records this:
“Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken; ‘Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times’. And he went outside and wept bitterly” (Mt. 26:74&75)
Peter wanted to follow Jesus totally, but when it came to the crunch he bottled out. I am sure we’d have bottled out too. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.
There are areas in all our lives, which we cannot completely give over.
And it is a sign of our Christian life, that we find the Holy Spirit coming back to these areas time and time again until we surrender them.
We find ourselves wanting, like St. Peter to be totally committed , yet holding back.
3. The Third Choice
We can decide to put his will foremost in our lives all of the time
Before the Crucifixion, we read of St. Peter denying Christ before a servant girl of the High Priest. After the Resurrection and following the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, we see a totally different Peter.
He was bold to preach the risen Lord, even before the High Priest and the Sanhedrin. When they threatened to beat him and made veiled threats,he replied:
“Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have heard” (Acts 4:19)
Here we see a very different Peter, perhaps
having reflecting Jesus own words in the Garden:
“Father , if you are willing, take this cup from me ; yet not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42)
Story: At the beginning of my sermon I told the story of Maximilian Kolbe – a man who gave his life so that one man might live. But this wasn’t a momentary act of bravery. Kolbe’s life was exemplary. A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Kolbe’s block had this to say about Kolbe:
"From my observations, the virtues in the Servant of God were no momentary impulse such as are often found in men. They sprang from a habitual practice, deeply woven into his personality."
When we make a wholehearted commitment to God’s will in our lives - then prayer and reading our Bible will become central to our daily lives.
We will search the Scriptures to know more of the will of God.
Whichever choice we make, whichever level of commitment we have - will affect the type of Christian we become.
Conclusion:
Story: When I was a school, the one poem that really had an impact on me was:
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Let me read it to you in closing:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And - sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could,
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then I took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way - leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I wonder which road you would take
- the well travelled road of self will or
- the road ‘less travelled by’ of God’s will.
