Sermon for Proper 17, Year A: Caught Up In Christ

Preached on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings for this sermon can be found here.

I was brought up as a Baptist in the Memphis, Tennessee, but in Memphis even if you weren’t a Baptist, you lived by Baptist rules more or less. There were no bars where you could buy a cocktail. Good Baptists don’t drink. Good Baptists went to church three times a week. On Wednesday nights for prayer meeting, on Sunday mornings for Sunday School and the main worship service of the week, and then again Sunday nights for something called Training Union. We were not really Good Baptists in my family just nominal Baptists who didn’t go to Training Union. I’m not really even sure what Training Union is, but it happened every Sunday night without fail. So, once every seven years or so when Halloween fell on a Sunday, trick or treating conflicted with Training Union -- not to mention coming on a ‘school night.’ So, by decree, the Mayor of Memphis would ‘transfer’ Halloween from Sunday to Saturday -- and candy was collected without affecting Training Union attendance.

Such was the case when my little brother Barry and I were kids, and we duly trick or treated on Saturday night and got up for Sunday School the next day. My brother was old enough to know that Halloween was actually on Sunday, and as such, he decided that he ought to be allowed to wear his Halloween costume to Sunday School that morning. That wasn’t going to happen in my family in the 60s, I can assure you, and it wasn’t going to happen on this particular Halloween -- because my little brother’s Halloween costume was bright red and it was comprised of a long pointed tail, a red mask with horns on it, and a pitchfork. My brother had dressed up that Halloween as a devil.

My mother patiently explained that a devil costume was not appropriate for church, and that he’d better go put on his ‘good clothes.’ But my brother persisted. Today was the ‘real’ Halloween and he wanted to wear his devil costume! Finally my mother played what she thought would be her trump card. And this particular trump card always backfires. Either in the moment or later in life, so my advice to the parents here this morning is, “Do not try this at home.” But my frustrated, and by this point tardy, mother finally told my brother, “Barry! You can’t wear your devil costume to Sunday School because Jesus wouldn’t like it.” My brother cocked his head to one side, and wrinkled his brow and thoughtfully considered this argument for a moment. Then, somewhat confused he turned to me and said, “Jesus isn’t in my Sunday School class, Mark. Is he in yours?”

I’ll bet Simon Peter was just as confused as my little brother after the interchange we hear about in today’s gospel reading. In last week’s gospel, which immediately precedes today’s reading, Jesus was telling Peter that he was blesséd, and would be the rock upon which the church would be built. This week, the rock has become a stumbling block, and very Satan himself.

Peter is such an interesting character in the gospel accounts, one of the most complex and one of the most compelling. And that’s probably because, rather famously, Peter makes mistakes.

Now, there’s no doubt that Peter is devoted to Christ. Jesus comes to him on the shores of Lake Galilee and calls him to follow, and Peter drops everything to heed the call. Peter was a fisherman, and Luke tells us that Peter owned his own fishing boat, which means he was a pretty successful fisherman. To walk away from that was quite a sacrifice. But Peter was caught up in Christ. He saw something in this itinerant preacher from Nazareth that he just couldn’t ignore.

In last week’s gospel, Peter confidently proclaims, “You are the Messiah! The Son of the living God!” From the mouth of Peter comes one of the central tenets of Christianity. This Jesus was the Messiah long predicted in Scripture, the Word made flesh, the Incarnate God.

But Peter is less confident when it comes to moving from faith into action. He is inconsistent to say the least; his faith, at times, falters. Earlier in Matthew, Peter calls out to Jesus walking on the water, and steps out of the boat onto the water itself to reach him. But when his faith falters, he begins to sink and Jesus has to save him from drowning.

And we well know the story of how Peter denies even knowing Jesus – not once, and not twice, but three times – at the point when his Lord was at his most vulnerable.

Peter could talk the talk, but he couldn’t always walk the walk.

But Peter’s heart was in the right place. When Jesus called, he followed. He became the greatest of equals among the Apostles. He was often near Jesus at important times in his ministry – at the Transfiguration and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Why, Peter had even introduced Jesus to his mother-in-law, and had him over to dinner at her house.

So, it’s not surprising that Peter reacts so strongly and so negatively when Jesus, for the first time in Matthew, reveals to the disciples that he will undergo great suffering and will be killed. Peter doesn’t want to believe it. “God, forbid!” he says.

Peter doesn’t want his friend to suffer, but there’s something else at play in Peter’s reaction to predictions of Jesus’s death. Peter, like most of Israel, was looking for the Messiah to ascend the throne of David and reunify Judea and. And surely this Messiah-King would wrest control of the nation from the hands of the pagan Romans. Peter’s idea of the Messiah is one of mortal pride and earthly power, of sword and crown, and temple and tower.

But Jesus contradicts Peter. Suffering and sacrifice are integral to Jesus’s mission here on earth; it is inextricable from his vocation. Political glory is not where Jesus is headed. There’s another kind of glory which he is fated to fulfill -- which will include an ignominious execution. And Peter doesn’t want to see that happen to his friend and his Lord.

Peter is, after all, only human. And he, like we, can’t help but set his mind on human things. But there’s more to being human than just human things.

God in Christ calls us into a new kind of humanity. The point of the Incarnation was not God’s humility in taking on human form, but rather God’s sanctification of humanity. We are human, yes, but through Jesus we have a part in the sacred. Through our baptism, we are joined in the new and eternal life that Christ initiated in his resurrection.

We are human, and live in a particular time and place, but ultimately we are not of this world – our true home is with the ascended Lord in the unfailing mansions of heaven.

Theologian Bruce Epperly puts it this way, “When we let go of the small “self,” we awaken to the grandeur of the Greater Self, the Divine, in whom we live and move and have our being. We see our lives, then, not as matter of holding to what we have, but of being our gift to God.”

It is then that our lives can become what the Apostle Paul calls in today’s epistle “a living sacrifice”. Such a way of life is true religion. When we put aside our small selves and take up our crosses to follow Christ, we become Christ for the world today, in our own time, and in our own lives.

We won’t do it perfectly, that’s a given. We will stumble on occasion; we will sink beneath the waves of our own doubts at times.

And some of us will be better at certain aspects of the Christian life than others. Some of us will be more compassionate, generous or diligent than others. Some of us will make great teachers and ministers. There might even be a prophet or two among us. We’re all different and we bring different gifts, but we are one in the Risen Christ, and when we give ourselves over to that reality, when we are caught up in Christ, then we are what the Apostle Paul calls “good and acceptable and perfect.”

We might wear the masks of devils at times, but underneath it all, we are Christ’s body in this world, in our offices, and classrooms, in our kitchens and the voting booth, and yes, we are even the very presence of Jesus in Sunday School.

Like Peter, you and I will undoubtedly falter, in our attempts to live into the reality of our divine humanity. But there is plentiful redemption for flawed humans like us and like Peter. We may stumble, yes, but when we take up our cross to follow Christ, we who follow will not fall.

+Amen.

© The Rev. Mark Robin Collins