Beyond Winning and Losing (Proper 17A)

Beyond Winning and Losing

28 August 2011

Proper 17A

Beijing China

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Romans 12:9-13; Matthew 16:21-28

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “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.” Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? “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. 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.” (Matt 16:21-28)

God, breathe into us a desire to change—
take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend in Washington DC about baseball.  I had become a great lover of the Baltimore Orioles and going to Camden Yards for a lazy afternoon watching and cheering, and, well, what later was to come to be called “just chilling.”  My friend, though from the DC area, hated the O’s and was a loud supporter of their arch-rivals, the New York Yankees.  “How can you love the Yankees,” I said.  “Anticipating my next line, he replied, “The best team money can buy.  Okay, Okay.  But I like to go with the winner.  And the Yanks win more than anybody else.” 

Go with the winner.  It is a common strategy for  enhancing our power and making ourselves feel good.  When I was growing up, there was a song that summed it up pretty well, “I’m in with the in crowd.  I go where the in-crowd goes.  I’m in with the in-crowd, and I know what the in-crowd knows.”    If you want to get ahead in this world, go with the winner. 

Today’s Gospel reading from St. Matthew tells the story of what happens just after Peter first tells Jesus that he believes that he is the Messiah.   Matthew has interposed the “you are Peter and upon this rock” episode we discussed last week between the confession and today’s reading.  But in Mark’s Gospel, Matthew’s source here, immediately after the confession Jesus and Peter have a little set-to.  And it’s all about Peter wanting to be in with the in-crowd, wanting to go with the winner. 

You see, Peter has confessed Jesus as Messiah and Son of God based on what God has told him in his heart.  But he thinks that this means that Jesus is going to quickly fix this upside-down world, punish the bad guys, and make it a great thing to be one of God’s chosen, the ultimate in-crowd.  He thinks Jesus is a winner, and he is going with the winner. 

But Jesus says, “You got the part about who I am right.  But not what it means." Jesus says, “Messiah doesn’t mean conquering hero in the sense you think it does.  What it does mean is this: I am going to have to go to Jerusalem, and there the authorities will torture and kill me.  But I still trust in God and know that there will be a final vindication of our hopes.  But don’t expect a military victory from your Messiah.  It’s not in the cards.  God has something else in mind though I can’t tell you what it is. All I know is that God will come through. But not in the magic way you think he will.’”

Peter reacts strongly:  “Messiah means anointed by God, and that means conquering hero.  Look it up in the Bible.  It means you are going to blast those Romans and those bad Jewish Leaders collaborating with them and oppressing the poor.  Come on, Jesus!  You’ve healed the sick, and raised the dead.  You’ve done marvels never seen.  That means God is with you.  Buck up, don’t be so pessimistic.  Have some faith.  You are Messiah and you win prevail.  You have super-powers, Jesus! That’s why I’m with you.  I’m going with the winner.” 

Jesus’ reply is biting: “Get away from me, Satan.”

He knows that Peter’s pep-talk is not in accord with reality or with what God wants. He must go to Jerusalem to bear witness of the Kingdom of God to the authorities, and he knows what this means. The powers that be will not let it go unchallenged. It is in their nature that they respond brutally to any challenge to their power. Accepting God’s will means accepting that, and in persevering in following God’s call despite what it means for him. To think or feel otherwise is a defection from God’s intent, and to argue for such opposition to God’s will.  So he says Peter is tempting him, just like a devil. (“If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread! Turn these oppressors and pagans into stone!”) 

Both Mark and Matthew tell this story.  Luke has deleted it, probably out of respect for Peter and a desire to not advertise that Jesus called the main leader of his disciples a “devil.” 

The Gospel of John, apparently had similar concerns as Luke.  Though the focus on leadership in the Fourth Gospel is usually on “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” at the distinct disadvantage of Simon Peter, and there is no scene specifically about a confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi per se, the story in John 6 is told this way (John 6:67-71):  when many people following Jesus because of his marvelous works hear his discourse claiming to be the bread from heaven that they must eat, they leave in a huff.  Jesus asks the twelve “Will you also leave me?”  Speaking for the Twelve, Simon Peter replies, “Where would we go?  We know you have the words of eternal life.”  Jesus then replies, “Ah yes.  It was indeed I that chose you all, wasn’t it?  All the same, one of you is a devil!”  John adds, “He was talking about Simon Iscariot” (that is, Judas).  Where Luke has deleted the story as a scandal against the first of the Twelve, John says that the stories going around among early Christians about Jesus calling Simon a devil just after he confesses Jesus were about Simon Judas not Simon Peter!

Anyway, in just a few verses in Matthew, Peter goes from being called the Rock of the Church to being called the Devil himself! 

How can this be? 

The fact that we find it incongruous and a little schizophrenic tells us about our own desire to “go with the winner.”  The question lying behind our discomfort at the contrast is this “Well, was Peter a winner or a loser?  Is he being praised here or condemned?  Is he good or is he bad?”   We are torn, like Peter who does not want his Messiah to be predicting his death by torture, between our expectation (Peter should be the Rock!) and the reality (Jesus calls him a devil!)

Then, as if to answer our unspoken questions, Jesus starts teaching his disciples this, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny themselves, take up their own cross, and follow me.”  The point is that we have to lose our desires, lose our preconceptions and expectations, lose ourselves if we are going to follow Jesus.

What Jesus means is something like “If you want to follow me, you must give up any claims you may think you have of owning yourself. You’ll have to stick your head in the hangman’s noose to follow me.”

Jesus is not praising suffering for suffering’s sake, and extolling the virtues of a stoic victim-hood, or worse, of a vicarious suffering for someone else’s wrongs. “This is my cross, and I’ll have to bear it” is the proverbial expression of the idea. Sometimes this wrong idea is actually used to encourage passivity and enabling behavior by the abused or the oppressed.

What Jesus is calling for is this: He wants those who wish to follow him to actually follow him: follow God’s call, work for God’s kingdom, announce the liberation of the captive, help the sick and the downtrodden—and do this even when we know that it may very well have a high personal price.

His declaration of his future as a suffering Messiah leads the way—just as he emptied himself and gave himself over to do God’s will, even if it spelled horror and disaster for him, so also must we. 

It was clear in Jesus' Palestine who the winners were:  the Roman Pagan occupiers and their Quisling darlings the Temple leadership and Jewish political leadership, the very ones who were oppressing “the poor” to whom Jesus was announcing the “Good news of the Kingdom.” 

Just as he had to give up his desire to “go with the winner,” and stick instead with the path God gave him to walk, so must we. 

Jesus forces us to transcend “winner” and “loser.”  To follow him, we have to stop worrying about results and who wins and who loses.  To follow him, we have only to focus on what God demands of us to do next. 

I get a little uncomfortable when people say, “have you accepted Jesus?” as if “accepting” Jesus made you a Christian.  Jesus doesn’t ask us to “accept” him, to make him part of our life and calculations. 

He demands that we let him take charge entirely.  And not worry about results. 


I also get uncomfortable when people preach the Gospel of Wealth, "if you do what God commands, God will bless you, and you will be heatlhy, wealthy, and happy."  This Polly-Anna take on the world seems too close to Peter's arguing for Jesus to man up and be a winner because God, the ultimate winner, will bless him and make his wishes come true.  It does not sound at all like the Way of the Cross Jesus says he is embarked on and which he calls us all to. 

The fact is, just as Martin Luther so well put it, the follower of Jesus is at the same time a winner and a loser, a righteous person and a sinner, Simul Justus et Peccator.  What really matters is our trust in God, our faith.  If we let it dictate our actions and our judgments, and we stop worrying about whether the results will be success or failure.  We are then on the risky path that Jesus trod. We are then in the life he calls us to. 

The difference between Jesus and Peter in this scene is this: Jesus is open to God and whatever God can throw at him, and trusts. Peter thinks he already knows what he can expect from God, and grasps at that expectation, to the point of getting upset when told that it just isn’t what God is going to do.  But God isn’t finished with Peter yet.  Peter will go on, Rock of the Church and Devil in the flesh, Simul Justus et Peccator, Simul Victor et Victus.   And on this Rock, God builds his Church: his congregation of losers who are winners, his gathering of misfit and messed-up saints, his poor who are rich, his last ones who are first.   They, like Jesus, just keep trying to follow God, come what may.  Like Peter, they do this even when they fail spectacularly.  They get up, pull up their socks,  and, keeping their eyes on Jesus, move ahead.   

Following Jesus means letting go, and letting God. It means doing the right thing even when counting the cost tells us it will be hard. It means stone cold clear assessment of what we face, and not putting on the rosy lenses of self-deception in order to work up a false sense of that all will be well when it won’t be. It means accepting that God’s plans may not be what we thought they were. But through this all, it means trusting God--beyond the limits of reason, beyond the limits of our experience, beyond the limits of our fear—because God’s basic nature is to love us unconditionally.

May we all learn to so trust in God.

In the name of Christ, Amen.