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Sermon: The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 28th August 2011
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 and 10 am
Readings: Exodus 3:1-15 Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26 Romans 12:9-21 Matthew 16: 21-28
This week I have decided to use the writings of various people who have written brief reflections on today’s lectionary passages. They are to be found on the web page of the Sojourners magazine, www.sojo.net. They show how different people approach the Bible and read it in their own way; God speaks to us all a little bit differently.
The first one is called “Dangerous Dwellings”, by Enuma Okoro
“... To dwell with God is to willingly open ourselves to God’s burning and seemingly dangerous love for justice. To walk in faithfulness like Moses, and ultimately like Christ, is to be open to the descending way of suffering, humility, and perseverance that is required if we are to live with compassion, with forgiveness, with the radical foolishness of loving our enemies, and with the pursuit of justice. It is not easy to choose the servant’s way.
Yet the testimony of the burning bush and the call of Moses … is that God equips those whom God calls. The testimony of Paul’s letter to the Romans is that in the midst of the descending way, the faithful disciple still finds room to rejoice, hope, live peacefully, practice hospitality and mimic God in Christ Jesus by the power of the Spirit. Our human challenge is to recognize that the descending way of Christ is actually the ascending way away from the evils of the world. Christ reminds us that seeking the place where God’s glory abides means losing our life to truly gain it.”
The second reflection is called, “Rock and Stumbling Block” by Laurel Dykstra.
“Brash, blundering, and undaunted—the character of Peter is more developed in Matthew than in the other gospels. He first appears casting a net into the Sea of Galilee, and the last time he is mentioned by name, Peter weeps bitterly over his denial of Jesus.
This week and last, the lectionary divides a single story about Peter. Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” When Peter responds, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”, Jesus affirms him and his answer: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. ... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven”.
But, as Jesus begins to teach that his path is one of suffering and death, Peter reveals that he has a profoundly different understanding of what Messiah means. He cannot imagine a Messiah who could experience shame, a Messiah who could die, and in the space of four verses, Jesus’ rebuke is as powerful as his praise: “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”.
This complicated portrait of Peter has to do with leadership issues in the early church, but as modern readers—with our minds on human things—we get the gift of a deeply human Peter. He’s both rock and stumbling block; he gets it and doesn’t get it—spectacularly. He is chided for his “little faith”, but he also leaps out of the boat to come to Jesus on the water.”
The next is called, “Wholeness Restored” by Robert Roth.
“God’s fiery words make plain the Creator’s preferential option for the poor and suffering: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters … I have come down to deliver them … to a land flowing with milk and honey”. God calls Moses to lead the people to freedom, wholeness and a multi-layered peace: shalom.
Here is the spiritual-political tradition in which Paul can stand and proclaim the vision of Jesus: “extend hospitality to strangers”; “Bless those who persecute you”; “Do not repay anyone evil for evil”; “If your enemies are hungry, feed them”; and “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”. Paul exhorts in the tradition of God speaking to Moses through a burning bush.
Blessing those who persecute? Feeding our enemies? Trusting God and not (military) gods for deliverance? It will come with the renewal of our minds, the redemption of our dreams, and the consuming voice of God in our ears. One day, a change will come.”
The next reflection is “The Great Paradox” By Kari Jo Verhulst.
“Love, if it is genuine, vastly exceeds feeling. It engages mind and will, directing and shaping our actions so to reflect and develop that love, at times quite despite how we feel. This is the kind of love that requires great courage to allow the beloved to be, to grow, to change; courage to risk our own change, growth and loss.
For love to grow, we have to let go of living for ourselves. The art of genuine love is expressed in the radical giving of self, which requires a radical freedom from self. We learn this in our closest relationships—those people from whom we cannot hide. The more deeply we strain to love, the less free we are to live for ourselves. This is the love that is the antithesis of control. It endures the pain of watching the beloved suffer and struggle, in a constant dynamic of embrace and release.
Can you feel Peter’s heart breaking as he listens to Jesus describe the suffering and death he is about to endure? All that he has allowed himself to hope for—the meaning and energy he has found since leaving his nets behind—is about to be shattered, and so he grasps for Jesus, as he did in the water, afraid for his life and desperate at his impending loss.
Yet Jesus needs Peter to love him well enough to recognize and encourage him to faithfulness in his mission—one born of God’s radical love that cannot be clung to or contained. In his desperation Peter takes on the devil’s strategy, advising Jesus to play it safe, to avoid causing a stir. The love Peter proposes still clings to the self, as though our lives were in our hands.
The great paradox of the Christian life—that by dying, we live; by giving, we receive—comes into its clearest focus in the cross. In denying ourselves, we truly become.”
The next reflection, “Saving Substitutes” by Julie Polter.
“Peter’s statement of faith — “You are the Christ, the child of the living God” — is the turning point in Matthew’s gospel. Once he sees that the disciples believe this, Jesus begins to share the rest of the story: All roads lead to Jerusalem, to suffering, to death, and to resurrection.
There is something heartening in how, within a few short verses, Peter goes from rock of the church to stumbling block. His faith, like ours, doesn’t give him (special) insight into God’s ways. Whether out of a sense of decorum or fear for his friend and teacher, Peter’s initial instinct is to reject the future that Jesus describes.
How does Jesus’ strange math(matics) of saving to lose and losing to save work? It can be interpreted in terms of material goods; it is perhaps too easy to look at an inside trader or a (bank chief executive officer) and assume they are in danger of losing their life since they own a big chunk of the world. But there are countless other things that people try to save that can become a substitute for true life: control, dignity, status as a victim, status as a saviour, even righteousness.
“Everyone has a cross to bear”, goes the old saying. The trick is not letting it become dead wood.”
Remember what is said in 2 Timothy 3:16-17,
“ All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work”.
May our study of the Scriptures make us “proficient, equipped for every good work”.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=resources.sermon_prep&week=A_Proper_17