Sermon 28th August 2011
Pentecost P11 Taupo
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.’
Economists often use the phrase: There is no thing as a free lunch. That is true, someone has to pay. We could, to use an example of the moment, say there is no such thing as a free view of a rugby match. The IRB are making sure we, and that includes the taxpayer, that we pay one way or another.
To choose to follow any path in life, especially the Christian path, has its costs. Perhaps it is only as we realise the true costs will we value its worth.
So what does Jesus mean when he says:
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Sometimes you have to lose something in order to find it. Its sounds a paradox, but what I mean by this is that sometimes we need to not have something or someone in order to know their true worth or value to us.
A running friend in Tauranga who worked in a bank told me that once a senior manager came through his particular tier in the bank organisation and said “tell me why we need you to do your job”. The message was, to put it another way, if we got rid of your job would we really notice you were not here?
We were once living in a place, when a local gardener offered to prune a tree in our garden. His pruning was so effective the tree died. That is the risk of the approach: let’s get rid of some jobs and see if it makes any difference. I suspect that those slashers in Government who want to see government reduced regardless, I suspect that was their approach to how many mine inspectors were needed to check on mines like the Pike River coal mine.
Losing something or someone we really need, can have disastrous consequences. It can be dangerous. Losing something in order to find it, may be a dangerous experiment.
Now Jesus said in verse 24:
Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me
To deny my self in this verse literally means to disclaim any connection with myself - it requires that I no longer possess myself. I am not my own person. That is the explanation given in the commentaries, and I find that difficult. The difficulty is a moral one. If I am to be a responsible person, then I need to make my own moral decisions and be held accountable for those decisions. I am not an automaton, nor a slave to another person. So that understanding of this passage I reject.
There is perhaps a different understanding that is less literal. Sometimes we let our ego be the centre of the universe. We can be preoccupied and self centred with ourselves. We can easily get into the state where we expect everyone to walk around after us. Children can go through a phase like this, when their parents, usually the mother, are expected to be their slave.
It reminds me of a little story when our kids were very small. Alyson had had one of those days when she was at the beck and call of a very demanding preschooler. I got home and Alyson announced that she needed a mental health break, and she was going up to her bedroom, she would close the door, and just spend some time on her own. Dad was now in charge. It is very difficult being a mother, she said. Out of the lips of babes and sucklings came the reply: Well you should be father instead!
Well a little role sharing is a very good learning experience. To walk in someone else’s shoes is a good way to put my ego to one side, and be there for someone else. Children grow out of the phase of expecting a mother to attend to their every need.
So to put my needs to one side while I attend to the needs of another, is to deny myself. I do not need to put myself down, nor do I need to be a slave. It is simply to live in relationship, and if I live in relationship, then I may put some of my needs aside to attend to the needs of others.
One of the dangers of those people who expect everyone else to be their slave is they can become dictators. Colonel Gaddifi is a case in point. He has spent most of his life thinking only of his own needs, so it is highly unlikely that he will behave any differently now.
Sometimes we may make the observation that a person is lost. They do not know who they are. They drift. They need to find themselves. When we speak in this kind of way, it means, for example, the person is still in the shadow of their family, or has not cut the ties to home. They need to leave home perhaps, or do some exploring, or enter into an adventure. In this sense, we can say that they need to lose themselves in order to find themselves. It is a letting go experience, a time for searching rather than drifting, to be your own person. If you play it safe in this situation you do nothing. If you lose something, then you find the energy to take charge of your life. It is a time for asking what is the purpose in your life, what is the purpose of doing what you do.
Jesus put it this way:
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
It is only when you are prepared to lose something that you take the risk and find it. It is in such situations that life has an energy, a direction, even a cause.
Jesus firmly believed that in being a disciple on the path of love and forgiveness, there are costs. There are people who are threatened by the path of peace. If you want to make money without any ethical considerations, then to be a disciple will require making some costs. To care for creation requires making some costs. To seek peace instead of war will upset those in the military industrial business who make a living selling weaponry. And to regard my neighbour with the same respect as I respect myself, means seeking some equality in society. These are all costs. I might have to pay more for my bananas or my coffee to know that this produce was not grown with child or slave labour. Or I might have to pay extra for a product that is not harming the planet, or avoiding pollution, or living sustainably. Those will perhaps require some costs.
Let me conclude with the current situation of the Methodist Church in Fiji. It was announced this week that the Methodist Church in Fiji is banned from holding any meetings. The Government has ordered it to not meet in conference. A Church minister said on the radio they thought that did not extend to worship services, and he did not think he would have to submit his sermons to the censors. If there were censors there, it would not have been the first time in church history that has happened. Church history is built on the sacrifice of many martyrs. A German minister during the Second World War wrote to Karl Barth saying that he had military spies attending church, and he had been banned from preaching. Karl Barth replied just preach the gospel. Just tell the bible stories. The point is that the Bible is a revolutionary document. Today’s bible story is about being prepared to accept there is a cost to being a Christian. It will not be the first time Christians have been put in prison for following their master. We may lose something but we find something else far richer.
John Howell
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