Latest / Belin Memorial UMC / Rev. Dr. Sandra Stevens Poirel - "Road Trip"
Transcript
- Belin Memorial UMC: The scripture comes to us from Matthew chapter sixteen verses twenty one through twenty eight. It begins with Jesus foretelling his death and his resurrection. 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 hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things. And then there is a shift, and Jesus moves the road trip toward the cross and self denial. Then Jesus told his disciples, if any wish to come after me, 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. This is the word of God for the people of God. You may be seated. When a passage begins with the phrase from that time on, it's a good idea to find out what's going on because it sounds like we're stepping into the middle of the action, and actually we are. This passage continues from one that precedes it, immediately precedes it. Jesus is making a sharp turn, surprising his disciples, and he is headed straight for Jerusalem, and there is no looking back, and this they did not necessarily interpret as the best news they could have received for the day. This is a major turning point in Jesus' life and ministry. He is going to be preparing the disciples for what lies ahead. And for what discipleship means, and he is going to make it very clear that there is a cost of discipleship, but he is insistent on going to Jerusalem, knowing what is waiting for him there. So the disciples are gathered with Jesus. They're off to themselves, and in the passage immediately before this one, Jesus sought confirmation. from his disciples, those who were closest to him, about the word on the street. In other words, the gossip, not that there would have been any of that. But he wanted to know, what's the word on the street? What are people saying about me? So he asked them, Who do people say that I am? And they answered that. And then he followed it with a very piercing and direct question. Who do you say that I am? And Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, and Peter got it right. The one who blurts, who thinks and speaks before he thinks it through. He just says what he's thinking. But here he got it right, and you could just see it. He was strutting the colors like a rooster. And just for full disclosure and clarity, This is not a spurred athletic rooster. This is not a mascot, okay? It is a rooster. Strutting his colors. Well, Peter got it right, and Jesus rewarded him. He called him Peter, not Simon Barjona. He is now Peter, which in Greek is Cephas, and it means rock. And not just rock, but he followed it up with You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. And that was great, things were going so well. And then Jesus added this phrase and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So you might wonder why that phrase at That moment. Well, Jesus was gathered with his disciples, and they were at Caesarea Philippi, and he had the perfect object lesson right in front of him. This is where he launches this road trip to teach his disciples about discipleship and the cost of discipleship. And Jesus spoke these very words at the base of a rock cliff side that was the location of a pagan temple of the Greek god Pan. Now over to the side you'll see a dark area on that picture, and that is where a major spring flowed out of a large cave. The locals believed that the deep deep Gaping opening of that cave and its underground water source served as the physical threshold or the gateway that connected the earth to the underworld known as Hades. So this is the place that was thought to be the darkest, scariest place. And this is where Jesus foretells. That he would undergo great suffering, death, and resurrection. And he would continue to teach about the way of the cross and discipleship and the cost of discipleship. All of this was just too much for Peter. He had just gotten everything right, and now Jesus is gathering them off by themselves, and he is giving them this news, and it was just too much, and Peter exploded. And in seven short verses he went from rooster to feather duster. He just couldn't take it. God forbid it, Lord, this must never happen to you. Poor Peter. They're on the road trip and he tries to take the wheel and reroute the whole trip. And again, speaking up, that's probably no surprise, being the spokesman for the entire group, saying what everybody else is thinking, but nobody else dared do it. Surely, Jesus, there's some way to avoid all of this. Not you. He knows who Jesus is. There were a lot of lowercase Messiahs floating around in the first century. There was only one Messiah. The capital Messiah. He has just identified, he's clear who Jesus is, and he's saying, Surely not you. There has to be a way. There's got to be a way around this. Poor Peter. But poor Jesus. This is where we have recorded, where Jesus spoke the sharpest words recorded, directed by him. at a disciple. But maybe more accurately, these words were directed to the source of the statement being made through and by a disciple. But regardless, Jesus was not taking the bait, even if it came through a trusted and a dear friend. He said, Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me. You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. Now you know that had to have come as a shock to Peter. And you know it was a shock to the disciples who were standing there with him. Poor Peter had not expected for Jesus to bite his head off. He was just trying to keep Jesus safe from being killed. He was being protected. He was protesting this horrible scene that Jesus had just described of suffering and death for his beloved friend and teacher, the Messiah. But you see, Jesus could see what Peter could not. Jesus recognized the underlying source and he was speaking very specifically to the necessity of the cross. He was speaking specifically to a specific issue. This was God's plan. And he loves us so much that he was resolved to carry it out. He would reject any temptation to bypass or thwart God's route, even knowing how difficult it was going to be. You see, these tempting words for Jesus were familiar territory. You may recognize some of them. While Jesus is now approaching the end of his Earthly ministry, you may recall a similar scene at the very beginning of his public ministry. The word that flowed through the mouth of Peter mirrored the words that he had experienced firsthand from Satan right after he had been baptized by John the Baptist in an appeal. To have him turn away from God's path even that early on in his ministry. The tempter made offers that of course he could not deliver. They sounded tempting for Jesus to take an easier way. There's a way around this. You do this, I'll give you that. You do this, this will happen. You do that, you know God will save you. You can be comfortable. You can live a grand lifestyle. You will be the envy of the world. The tempter shows up for Jesus like bookends in his ministry. As soon as he was launching his public ministry, that was his first encounter. Here he is making the trek to Jerusalem. And he is dealing with some of those same words again. But in that encounter. with Satan at the beginning of his ministry it's it is notable that in Luke chapter four as that concluded as Satan departed from Jesus he departed from him until an opportune time. And the truth is the tempter stands ready to deceptively offer an alluring alternate path to God's will. It will not always be an easy path to which we are called. It may not always be one that at the moment we understand. The tempter stands ready to capitalize on that and offer something easier, safer, more comfortable. flashier. But for Jesus, it was Jesus. There's a way around this. Just take a little detour around Jerusalem. You can avoid all that sacrifice stuff. But the tempter and Jesus enemies were absolutely certain that the fear of suffering and death, especially a heinous death like death on a cross, in the Roman world everyone knew what a cross meant. They witnessed it firsthand. It meant death, and it meant a horrible death. A painful, cruel, lengthy, suffering death. Most of us don't sign up. If there is a list, we need someone to sign up for suffering and pain. Most of us are not going to be signing up wanting to be at the first of that. I'm not going to be signing up for that just because Somebody thinks that's a good idea. They counted on the certainty of fear and suffering and death to be enough to stop Jesus in his tracks. They were wrong. What Jesus' enemies fail to recognize is that Jesus' life is never ending. The more of himself he gave, the more he had. The more he offered, the more he had to offer. He is a geyser of eternal living water that overflows and drenches a parched, dry world. Jesus' life was not theirs to give or to take away. And Matthew records what Jesus said that started this whole conversation in the first place. So hear again what Matthew tells us. Listen to the verbs. Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering, be killed. And on the third day be raised. And there's the twist. There's the eternal life. There's the gift of life. There's the following me on the road. And we're doing this together. He had them gathered together. He knows that there will be a day coming fairly soon that he will not be with them physically. They're going to need each other. They do now, but he is impressing that upon them. And then there's the twist after all that suffering part, all that death part, and on the third day be raised. Maybe Peter missed it. I mean, he was hearing so much that was so hard to hear. Maybe he got stuck on that death and suffering part, and he just couldn't hear the last part. Maybe sometimes we do too. But there it is in Jesus' own words. When the physical life concludes, that's not the end of life. We still have life in Christ. It looks different. It's lived differently, but it's still life. The promise of eternal life, abundant life, from which we can never be separated. Jesus cares about the quality of Of our lives now and in the future. There is always more life because God will always have more life in store for us, and God never runs out of life. And the road to this abundant life is to spend it, to use it. That's countercultural to what the world is going to say. that we have to keep things and bottle them up and save them and make sure we have enough for us and look at the world, look after number one. This is very counter to all of that. This is you are given abundant life. And the road to abundant life is not to bottle it up, not to hoard it, not to save it, but to spend it, to give it away. And the more you give away and the more you spend of your life in Christ The more you receive. Jesus extends that invitation to join this road trip because we're still on the trip. We're still on this road trip through what is described as one of Jesus' hardest sayings. And this is the this is the statement that has been identified as if not the hardest one of the hardest sayings. of Jesus and many still say it is the hardest. If any wish to come after me, and here it is, if any wish to come out of come come after me, that that's pretty good so far, but then here it is. Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me to wherever that may lead. That is counterintuitive to the world as Jesus loves us and gave his life to save us and refused to let anything thwart the path that he was on because it was God's road trip. God had designed the path God was leading. And he would follow that to suffering, death, and resurrection. And he did that for us. And we dedicate our lives likewise to serving with and serving others, to loving in the self-sacrificing way that Jesus loves us and taught us. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many. We continue on this road trip. But it ends in glory and on the third day be raised. We're on this road trip with Jesus and we travel as cross-shaped disciples to share the good news of the gospel with a parched, dry world. We travel with Jesus to share the eternal living water that Christ offers. We travel with Jesus to celebrate. and share the good news with the entire world. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.