Sermon for 8/30/26

14th Sunday after Pentecost Mt. 16: 21-28

When our younger son, Bucky, was four years old, Elizabeth came home with the game “Mousetrap”. Remember that game? It came out in 1963, nineteen years before he was born. It's a three dimensional board game. You put all these plastic pieces together, twenty-four of them, touch a button and all these parts start working to make a little cage drop down on a plastic mouse.

Bucky dumped the box out on the floor, looked at the picture on the box for a minute and put the thing together in less than four minutes. Then he went outside and caught a frog.

Our Gospel reading today is an important turning point in Matthew's narrative of the earthy life of Jesus. In last week's reading, the disciples realized what they already knew. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. In today's reading, Jesus starts to put together the parts and pieces of what the real Messiah is all about.

There are three words left out from the beginning of the lectionary reading we have today. “From that time”.

“From that time, Jesus began to show His disciples.......”.

He begins to tell them all the particulars of what the real Messiah is all about. He tells them what they, and their ancestors' have been told all these hundreds and thousands of years is 180 degrees away from what they are getting.

He starts, He begins, to put all the pieces together. The where, the who, the what. And the disciples don't handle it well. This is not what they have been taught. This is not what they want to hear. What if the most respected scientist in the world walked in here today and said, “The sky is really red”. That's what the disciples heard.

Mediterranean people of antiquity, and today, are primarily oriented toward the present and the past. Thinking of the future is almost out of their frame of reference. The closest they could come, we would call “forthcoming”. The birth of a child to a woman who is already pregnant. The harvesting of a crop that has already been planted. Jesus is trying to tell them about future events, and they just can't quite get their heads wrapped around it.

Now He starts taking pieces and putting them together. He tells them all the particulars of His suffering, the results of that suffering and what it takes to become a true follower. Something that is doubly hard for them to grasp. It's not what they've been taught, it's in the future, and there's no picture on a box to look at.

He tells them “He must go to Jerusalem”. They are in the town of Caesarea Philippi now, a hundred miles from Jerusalem. He must “undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed”. These are the people who made up the Sanhedrin, the government of the Jewish people.

“And on the third day be raised”. After three days a body would be rotting. He would stinketh. There would be no question about death, about being truly dead. Jesus cannot and will not turn away from what God wants Him to do. Peter's challenge is not even a bump in the road.

Social anthropologists use fencing terms to explain this type of verbal exchange between Mediterraneans. Around here when we say “fencing terms” we think of trying to keep the hogs in. They mean terms used in sword fighting, “challenge and riposte”. That's what Jesus and Peter have here, a challenge and riposte.

Jesus' claim to honor is that God wills His suffering and death at the hands of His enemies. He must die. Then God will bestow an even greater honor by raising Him from the dead, for everyone to see. Peter, being a common man, challenges that claim, “God forbid it, Lord”.

Jesus has just told them what God wants. The disciples, through the lips of Peter, want to divert Jesus from fulfilling it. Peter wants God to change His will, that's his challenge. Jesus' riposte, a sharp, swift thrust after knocking away an opponent's lunge is to call Peter a “Satan”, a tester of loyalties.

Peter only sees the human way of thinking. He does not understand God's plan. Peter's words are a continuation of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Luke's version of the wilderness temptation ends with “when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time”. This must have been one of those opportune times.

Peter spoke only out of love. He could not bear the thought of Jesus going through such torture. What Jesus heard was the words of the tempter, in Peter's voice.

And He tells Peter to get behind me, become my follower again. Satan is banished from the presence of Jesus while Peter is recalled to be a follower.

Then Jesus adds a few more pieces to the puzzle. Here again, they're 180 degrees away from what those disciples, and we, want to hear. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”.

He's telling us to say “no” to our self and say “yes” to God. It's called “the Burden of Sacrifice”. Christian life is concerned with others, not ourselves. It's easy to give lip service to the church and withhold our lives.

Matthew was writing this Gospel about 85 AD. It was a time of great persecution of Christians. His Jesus is telling the disciples not to save their lives by abandoning their faith. Thank God, in this part of the world today, we don't have to worry about losing our lives because we are Christians.

At a bare minimum we could say all we have to sacrifice is an hour a week. Look out the front door there, or just listen to the traffic noise. How many of those people would be willing to meet the minimum requirements if we asked them?

The last two verses of this reading, the last two sentences , are the last two pieces. They're a warning and a promise.

“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.” That's the warning. Life is going to end in Judgement.

“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”. That was the promise. Most of those standing there, saw, and were a part of, spreading Christianity throughout their known world, the kingdom of Jesus. It's just a matter of putting the pieces together.

See these stained glass windows? They're the pictures on our box.

Amen.