Pentecost 15 Year A 8/28/05

A Holy Identity

Sermon based upon Matthew 16: 21-28

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Peter must have been on some high. Jesus had just given the disciples a pop quiz on who the Son of God was and Peter had gotten the answer right.

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter told Jesus.

And Jesus gave him the gold star of all time: he called Peter the rock on which the Church would be built and then he gave him the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Peter must have thought he was hot stuff. Can you imagine him holding his head high, giving the other 11 that look of superiority that screamed “teacher’s pet”?

But just as Peter was really getting comfortable basking in the glow of his new office, Jesus began to talk about going to Jerusalem and being arrested, tortured, and executed. It must have taken a moment for it all to sink into Peter’s swelled head. Surely Jesus didn’t know what he was saying. He was the Son of the living God. And if this was what was going to happen to Jesus, what would happen to the man that held the keys?

And in his newfound arrogance Peter walked up to Jesus and told him to zip it. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”

Jesus dying at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and the scribes wasn’t exactly what Peter had in mind when Jesus gave him his new titles as the cornerstone of the Church and the gatekeeper of heaven. And it certainly didn’t fit in with his understanding of what it meant to be the Son of the living God.

Back in high school I remember taking algebra tests. On the test you always had to show the work you did in order to reach your answer. And if you got part of the work wrong you had points taken off even if the answer was correct.

Well, the same held true for Peter. He had gotten the answer right when Jesus asked him, “Who do you say that I am?” But his work was all wrong. He had come to his answer through faulty math. And Jesus took off some points for his work.

“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.”

Peter might have known that Jesus was the Messiah, but he had no concept of just what the Messiah was.

It was not about status or power. Being the Messiah did not have perks that came with the job. In fact, the opposite seemed to be true. Being the Messiah, the Son of the living God meant that Jesus was to be a sacrifice.

Last Sunday, when Peter made his confession that Jesus was the Messiah I told you that his confession of who Jesus was also defined who Peter was. When Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah Jesus tells Peter that he is the rock. And then I asked you what you had become because of your confession of who Jesus is. But this week, Jesus complicates that identification by injecting the cross into the equation.

Like Peter, we often get the final answer of who Jesus is through faulty math and that means that we miss the point of who we are supposed to be.

Jesus says this: “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.”

Being a Christian isn’t easy work, it comes with sacrifices which begin by allowing Jesus to be the one who defines us.

We spend much of our lives being defines by others. The world defines us in its own way too… and usually with those definitions of our identities come slanted views of who we really are. The world defines us by human things: what we look like, how much money we make, what our social class is, what our physical abilities are, who we have as friends, our jobs, our cars, and on and on…

But Jesus defines us by divine things. Jesus looks at us through the eyes of grace and sees our actual worth. Jesus looks at us from the cross and that makes us precious things of great value to him. It is because of his sacrifice that he knows how dear we are and it is because of how dear we are that he makes that sacrifice.

Peter had the right answer; he called Jesus the Messiah, the Son of the living God, but he used human terms to define what the Messiah was and he got it all wrong.

The same goes for those of us who wish to be followers of Jesus. Because following Jesus means setting aside human understandings of value and seeing value in seemingly worthless things. It means letting God choose for us what things have value; it means letting God place each one of us on the paths that we are meant to be on, rather than following what the world tells us we are or what we are supposed to be.

During the month of September we are going to be talking about mission. But in order to do that we have to answer some questions. In order to understand our mission as a congregation and as individuals in it we will have to answer Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” We will have to answer the question of who we are and the question of what the world is around us.

So I have more homework for you all. The other week I asked you to observe the world around you, to look and see what God might show you. Now I want you to think about what you care about. What are the things in life that give you meaning, that you would fight for, that are important to you?

Christ’s mission took him to the cross and resurrection. And in that process we were redefined as new people, as God’s people because we are important to God.

And our mission?

Let us live on the path that God has placed us on and see where it takes us…

Amen.