Get Behind

 Matthew 16: 21-28

Have you had to do some planning – or some re-planning – lately?  Been talking about “how are we going to do things, now that everything’s different?”

 

Maybe you’ve had an exciting idea about what to do. Maybe you’ve even completed a plan.  A new way to do learning, or church, or work, or family time, in this new reality.

You make your suggestion, put forward your plan, and immediately, someone says “NO! That’s the wrong way to do it!”

You can’t do that online – it loses all value!

You can’t do that in person – it’s too dangerous.

Fundamentally, someone tells you that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done. We’ve never done it that way before.

 

All that care and preparation you’ve put in, to be shouted down? To have blocks thrown in your way?

Jesus knows about that.

 

Or maybe you’ve been waiting for someone else to do their planning – schools, governments, workplaces, nursing homes, church….?

You’ve started adjusting your life to what you think is likely in this new reality, and then the announcement comes from the State, the executive office, the school board, or a member of your family, with a and their plan seems utterly wrong. Insane. Their idea is going to ruin everything.

Peter knows about that.

 

In that story Leslie just told us, Jesus has been trying to create new expectations for a whole new world, now that God has become flesh. He’s explaining the plan about how in this new world God’s salvation is going to involve loss, danger, real suffering – and the complete defeat of death, a victory we hadn’t even dreamed of.

And Peter knows what Jesus is saying is insane, that getting killed by the authorities and rising up again is just wrong. That’s not salvation. It’s going to ruin everything.

Jesus and Peter both know that everything has changed, now that God has become flesh, the Messiah is here.

It’s just that what each of them knows about how the world has changed, and what each expects about this new world is very different.

 

Peter knows what hundreds of years of faith have taught his people: that the Messiah will overthrow the oppressor, Israel will have a king who brings the whole world to God. He expects a triumph the whole world will recognize.

Jesus knows God’s own purpose: that God made flesh will overthrow the oppression of death, not the Roman governor. He expects that God’s salvation will redefine life itself, and humanity will be changed from the inside out, not from the top of government down.

 

You and I also know the world has changed.

We each bring different knowledge and expectations to this change: expectations about leaders should do in crisis, different expectations about what surviving or containing the virus means, different expectations about what justice looks like, and what it means to truly care for one another.

 

Many of us may not even know exactly what our expectations are.  We just know when those expectations are violated:

when the plan of the governor, the boss, the hospital, the board, your family member is just obviously wrong.

Or when someone else call my plan or hopes wrong.

 

Our expectations clash with one another. Our plans break. And we feel the pain.

 

Anger and frustration are easy first reactions. You can hear that in neighborhood groups and town-hall meetings; on the news and in the streets; and in the strong words both Peter and Jesus use – abrupt and full of absolutes.

 

You and I, our communities these days, need a little generosity and grace with one another – well, probably a lot of generosity and grace – to make our way through the pain of disrupted expectations.

Generosity and grace are what make it possible to live together in great change. And one more thing that Jesus offers us.

 

Jesus has an advantage in today’s gospel story that Peter doesn’t, and that none of us have today.  He’s God: he not only knows how the world is changing, he is how the world is changing.

So Jesus offers us a way to share that advantage, and maybe the only thing that will really resolve the pain of our disappointed expectations.

 

“If anyone would come after me,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and join with me.”

And to Peter, he says: “Go behind me!”

It’s forceful when he says it to Peter, more of an order than the invitation he offers to others, but it’s to exactly the same place: behind Jesus, after Jesus.

Following behind or after Jesus is the core of our relationship with God – to do as Jesus does, to go where he leads; to imitate and stand behind Jesus.

 

Jesus is specific about what it will mean to be behind him: take up your cross, lose your life for my sake.
We’ll follow behind him through a whole lot of potential unpleasantness: embarrassment, hard work, unmerited suffering, loss, even death itself.

But Jesus is also specific about the results of being behind him: that this is the only way to find your life, to save it. This is the way to the glory of God.

And it may also be the only real way through the painful world of disappointed expectations, frustration and futility that we experience when the world changes.

Because to follow Jesus, to take up the cross, to lose our lives for Jesus’ sake is to give up every expectation at all. To fix our attention exclusively on walking as close behind Jesus as possible in every way. To heal those in front of us, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger. To bless our persecutors, and keep turning and returning and returning to prayer. To love honestly and purely and generously, and stay focused on serving God’s will. Just as Jesus did. Does still.

 

To follow behind Jesus, to take up our cross, is to immerse ourselves in God’s plans instead of our plans. To face a world that’s changing completely without any of our own carefully prepared strategies and resources, but with all of God’s abundance instead.

 

Some of that sounds good, but nobody says it’s easy. Jesus describes it as essentially the hardest thing of all to do: losing our lives.

But giving up every expectation sets us incredibly free.

Giving up the need for the world to unfold the way we’re prepared for, to see our plans be the right ones, sets us free of the frustration and pain of broken expectations and unlivable plans.   It frees us from the futility of trying to solve unsolvable problems with our own resources, and taps us in to the unlimited resources and strength of God.

 

Everything has already changed.

God’s salvation is already happening.

None of it’s happening the way we would have thought or dreamed, and a lot of it looks pretty bad from here.

So Jesus meets our frustration with an imperative: get behind me! Jesus meets our uncertainty with an invitation: come after me!

 

Let go of all that isn’t the way you expected,

and all that striving to get it right on your own.

And line up behind the love and hope, patience and abundance of God.

A Big Question

 Matthew 16:13-20

That’s a big question Jesus is asking, today.

A big question which definitely has a right answer,

but a right answer that many of us are trained to get wrong, even if we know exactly what to say.

 

Many of us – not all, but many of us – have been trained by custom and culture to give the wrong answer to this question – or rather, to answer the wrong question when someone asks us this one.

 

When Jesus – or anyone else – asks us who Jesus is to us, many of us automatically answer with what other people say, rather than expose the personal hopes, truths, and uncertainties of our own hearts and souls.
I know it’s easier for me to tell the gospel stories than my own story.

And if you’ve ever said or thought “well, I just don’t know enough” when you’ve been asked to teach your own faith or help other people encounter Jesus,

then you, too, have been trained to respond to “who do people say that I am?” rather than “who do you say that I am?”

 

In fact even though, “the Messiah, the Son of God,” is the right answer to “who is Jesus” it’s the wrong response to Jesus’ question to us, unless it’s the response from deep in our own hearts.

Because when Jesus asks us “Who do you say that I am?” the answer is our own relationship with God. Not Peter’s, not someone else’s relationship with God. Yours.

 

The words we use to answer Jesus’ question define the type and connection of the relationship – the same way it works when we describe someone as a friend, colleague, spouse, acquaintance.

And our whole living relationship with God, tight or distant, better or worse, is the real answer to the question, no matter what words we say out loud.

 

It’s a big question.

A personal question.

And it’s the only question. All the other questions and answers about Jesus, God, or ourselves depend on this one:

Who do you say that I am?

 

Are the stakes high enough now to make you nervous?

It makes me nervous.

Probably made James and John, Andrew and Bartholomew, and all the other disciples who were talking to Jesus that day just as nervous.

 

So it’s a good thing there’s more to this story than just the question.

 

It’s important to know that that when Peter answers Jesus: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” he’s speaking for all the disciples.

He’s definitely telling his own living truth about his relationship to Jesus: that he (Peter) has recognized the undeniable presence of God in Jesus, that Jesus is the one Peter (and all Israel) has been waiting for.
But Peter’s words also speak for all the silent disciples around Jesus at that moment.
They’ve all already recognized and worshipped him as the Son of God – in that powerful pre-dawn moment when Jesus walked out to their boat amid the waves.

Only Peter speaks today, but when he names the truth of his own relationship with Jesus, his own experience of the living God, his words speak for the ones who can’t find their voices, too.

I’ve had conversations with several people recently about how hard it can be, sometimes, to speak about the things that mean the most, to describe and name the truth of our heart in words, out loud. 
I know that when I try to directly and honestly answer Jesus’ question “who do you say that I am?” I can feel the truth within me, but I stumble and mumble around the words. 
Sometimes, I have to borrow Peter’s words to describe my own heart: You are the Son of the Living God; God made real in my world and life.

 

When Jesus asks you, or me, the big question, we have to answer.

But we don’t always have to use words. If we don’t know what to say, we can answer with a silent, open heart. Or let Peter will say out loud what our souls can’t quite voice.

 

But Peter doesn’t get all the credit for that answer. Or very much of it, in fact.

As soon as he speaks, Jesus blesses him for not figuring it out himself.

The words Peter speaks, the truth in his heart, didn’t come from his own cleverness or effort, but purely as a gift of God.

That’s just as true for me and for you as it is for Peter.

We can’t study our way to who Jesus is. We don’t figure it out, can’t buy or make the answer; can’t earn our relationship with God.  The knowledge and experience that make God real and personal are entirely a gift of God.

 

A gift given to you, too, even if you’re pretty sure you don’t know who God is for you; even you feel uncertain and uncomfortable as soon as anyone mentions a “personal relationship with Jesus.” If you or I have even the tiniest relationship with God, feel a wee little longing for God, then the answer that God has given Peter has been given to us, too.

 

And those tiny little answers can grow.

We’ve been talking about that since we started exploring the spiritual journey together last year. The posters are still in the parish hall, and you’ll see them again.

 

Depending where we are in our spiritual growth, we might answer Jesus’ question differently:

Who do you say that I am?
Well, you’re… someone I wonder about, someone I want to know better, we might say.

or
You’re someone who loves me. You hear prayer, tell stories, feed me, heal me, link me to God’s presence.

or

You’re the one I trust above all. You’re the center of my life.

All of those answers are the same gift of God that Peter voices as “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

 

And we grow in that gift by learning new ways to see and feel the experience, truth and love we’ve been given. What we do in our spiritual journey is to open ourselves up more to the answer to Jesus’ question already planted within us.

 

Peter doesn’t get credit for the answer, and neither do you and I. What we get when we answer - when we name our faith, open our heart’s truth - are keys.

Keys to the kingdom of heaven – access to share and live in the vision of God, here and now and always.

And keys of responsibility to share it. That “binding and loosing” Jesus talks about isn’t about locking rules and decisions, it’s about the authority and responsibility to teach, to share an authentic experience of God, so that others can find God’s gift in themselves.  

It’s a big question Jesus asks today.

A question with one right answer,

but the only way to get it wrong is to lie or to refuse to answer.

 

Because the answer is our whole, living, true relationship with God, the vivid presence of God, made real in our hearts and world,

given to us as a gift, in any shape or size,

to grow and to share.

 

It’s a big question. The only question.

So Jesus will keep asking you and me until we know we know the answer from the bottom of our hearts.

Uncomfortable Trust

 Matthew 15:21-28

Does this story make you uncomfortable?

 

It probably should. It’s full of disruption and bursts with rudeness. It’s probably the most vivid display of insult and incivility in the gospels – and the gospels include a couple of public murders.

 

It starts with a woman shouting: “Help me! Sir! Help me!”

The woman uses the respectful and religious titles “Lord,” and “Son of David”, but it probably doesn’t sound very respectful at the top of her lungs. We get the feeling she’s chasing them down the street, or elbowing through a crowd for attention.

No wonder the disciples ask Jesus, “Can’t you make her go away?”

 

First Jesus ignores her, telling the disciples she’s not in his job description.

Then when that doesn’t stop her, he tells her it wouldn’t be right to help her; he calls her a dog.

 

Even if you can look past that, you have to notice that Jesus is actively refusing to help someone. Not just someone; a woman and her child in real, life-threatening, physical and spiritual need.

 

Does that make you uncomfortable?

It makes me squirm.

It bothers me every single time, no matter how often I read, hear, study or preach this story.

This is not the Jesus I think I know – generous to a fault, welcoming of the stranger, uplifter of the oppressed, healer of all in need.

What Jesus says and does in this story doesn’t sound very “Christian”, many would say.

Yet in this story it is a very Jesus thing to do.

 

So somehow, if we want to be Christian, you and I have to wrap ourselves around the fact that loving, generous, Jesus is – on the record and in full view of the disciples who will shape the church – rude and dismissive, rejecting a woman and child in need of life-saving healing.

And is still the God we are called to love and follow.

 

How do we do that?

Well, we could ignore the problem. Read past this story quickly, assume there must be some reason for it that we don’t understand. Protect our ideals with those scholars or teachers who tell us that Jesus is being affectionate in calling this woman a “puppy,” so we can persuade ourselves that it’s nice, even if it’s weird. 

 

Or we could take comfort in the idea that Jesus has priorities, and won’t bend them just because someone is loud and insistent. That’s good as long as we’re pretty sure Jesus shares our own priorities.

 

Or we could sit down face to face with our discomfort, and confront the things it stirs in us.

 

Because it’s not just this story.

The gospel as a whole is clear: Jesus isn’t us, doesn’t follow our norms, and really isn’t a tame or comfortable person to be around.

Jesus didn’t come to invite us to love a nice God, but to challenge us to love and trust a God whose love we won’t always understand – God whose power and priorities are beyond our imagination and not the same as mine.

 

I want Jesus to welcome everyone, to heal everyone, to be especially caring about the vulnerable and the outsiders.

Because if Jesus won’t take care of everybody, all the tragedy in the world may go unhealed, and that is too heavy a fear and grief to bear.

 

If Jesus really does deny someone who needs healing, can I still pray for everyone? for myself?

If Jesus excludes people, I might be excluded, too. You might. At least sometimes.

And now it’s hard – it’s a risk I can really feel – to love God who is not like me, and trust Jesus with my self and my life.

One of the most toxic things that can happen to our faith is when we stop trusting God with what matters most to us, or if we refuse to start trusting God at all.

 

When we believe that God is a generous, indiscriminate healer and giver who shares my priorities and opinions, trust feels easy; the risk is low.  But trust that takes no effort often doesn’t go more than skin-deep, and won’t sustain us in crisis or need.

 

When we wrestle with the God who draws lines and boundaries I don’t expect, God who might say “no”, then bringing my moments – or hours, or years – of weakness to God can be terrifying. Exposing my wounds, neglect and errors that need healing is a tremendous risk. I have to dig deep – very deep – into love and faith and hope to bring my whole self to God without knowing what will happen next.

 

And maybe that’s why Matthew tells us this story today.

Because the woman who confronts Jesus today does not let that stop her.

No reasonable Caananite woman would expect help from a leader of the people who drove her ancestors out of the promised land long ago.

 

In her time, like ours, it’s easy to put down, ignore, and insult a woman who makes a little noise, who demands attention, no matter how real the need.

The response she gets from the disciples, and from Jesus himself, makes it really easy to hear and see the lines drawn and walls built to shut her out.

And none of that stops her.

 

She trusts Jesus so aggressively, relies on God’s mercy so fiercely, that she looks straight into that wall dropped in front of her and says:
Yes, but the dogs still eat the crumbs.

It does not matter what your priorities are, it does not matter if I belong, if I deserve this good thing: there is still salvation here for me.

 

She trusts Jesus beyond logic and reason. She trusts Jesus more fiercely when Jesus tells her she doesn’t belong.

Her trust hears rejection and still speaks the absolute truth that it is not possible for God to run out of healing. It’s not possible to keep God’s grace from the people never chosen or invited to any table.

 

That kind of trust is what breaks the power of oppression and division, public or private, and breaks God’s grace through all the barriers put in front of us, and all the barriers we construct. That trust gives back even more spiritual strength than it takes.

 

“Great is your faith!” Jesus says to this fierce and unnamed woman whose trust and reliance on God cannot be limited or stopped.

 

Maybe Matthew tells this story so that some day, when you or I need faith that great, for ourselves or others;

when you or I are convinced that God isn’t listening, has no interest in us, and yet we need God so desperately that nothing else will do,

we too can look straight into the walls that separate us,

and declare that the crumbs are enough,

and God’s grace will be more than we need.

 

I think Matthew might tell us this story to invite you and me to risk that unreasonable, fierce and unquenchable trust that receives God’s healing and salvation before it is even given.

Trust that heals not only us,

but heals God’s own love for the world.

 

Involved in the Miracle

Matthew 14:13-21

You know how it feels – or you can probably imagine – when it’s twenty-five past five and the boss is still talking. Still generating new projects, solving problems, playing to an audience, and you just need the day to end.

I imagine that’s what it felt like when the disciples go to Jesus and say: “You’ve been healing all day. You know no one is going to leave until you tell them to.  Send folks home before the whole world shuts down for the night, or they’ll never get any dinner.”

 

I feel like Jesus’ response shouldn’t come as a surprise to the disciples, but I bet it does:
“No need to send people away! You give them something to eat!”

 

Does this ever happen to you?
You ask God for something – something perfectly reasonable like comfort for a friend, or a peaceful home. And the “you do it!” answer doesn’t come in words, but you just keep feeling more and more responsible for your friend, for the relationships among your family, the climate of your home. The ball just stays in your court.

Or you say to God: I’m exhausted by all this injustice. I’m so done with this protesting and tension and violence. Can’t we please have some cooperation and good news? And then all the next five emails or news stories or conversations that come into your life are about how you have to act now to bring justice and peace and safety for all.

 

Me?? Seriously? Do you know how big this problem is, Jesus? This is impossible!

We’ve got nothing here. There’s five, ten, fifteen thousand people involved and we’ve got about two dozen tuna fish sandwiches.

 

You can imagine how that feels.

Jesus isn’t going to quit, though: “Okay, bring me what you’ve got.”

He takes it, blesses it, hands it back to the disciples to distribute – and there’s so much more than enough that you’ve got to go back through and collect the leftovers.

 

I’m starting to realize now that Jesus was going to do this anyway.

If people are too enthralled by his healing work to take care of their own dinner, he’ll take care of it.

Jesus is just going to feed and heal and teach, whether we notice or not.

God is going to work through the salvation of the world whether or not we ever get involved.

 

I think it’s entirely possible that if the disciples hadn’t mentioned anything, had just left the problem alone, they’d never have noticed that all those thousands of people just ate dinner when they needed to, whatever, wilderness or no.

 

But Matthew tells this story – the whole Christian community tells this story over and over – because Jesus wants us to be involved.

Jesus lets – possibly encourages – the disciples to take him aside and talk about their concern so that they’ll notice the miracle. And get involved.

 

Jesus wants the disciples to ask – Jesus wants us to look at the needs and hopes, the challenges, irritations, and opportunities of the world, and bring them to Jesus – so that we’ll be able to see the divine work that feeds and heals and makes the world whole.  Not only see it, but be involved.

 

That’s why we pray intercessions. It’s why we talk to God together about those who are sick, injured, dying, oppressed, or hungry; why we draw God’s attention and our own to the needs of the nation, world, and church in our worship together. 

It’s why we pray personally for healing and comfort for family and friends; for the wounds of the world and our nation, or the fulfillment of hopes we treasure.

 

We pray for others – and for ourselves – because Jesus wants to involve us in the miracle. Wants us to see what God is up to, and to get our hands into the power of God.

 

Maybe you pray, and stay close to a friend who’s supposed to die. You take her to the doctor when it’s hopeless – and then you see just how miraculous the surgery that saves her is.  Or you invest some time in asking the powerful for action on injustice, and the miracles of slow change taking place in law and culture become visible to you.

 

You might have noticed that when the disciples bring their need to Jesus, and he tells them (us!) to take care of it, he also makes it possible.

He takes their few loaves and fish, prays the blessing they’ve known since childhood, and then shows them that in their hands, these two things – bread and blessing – are tools of God’s abundance.

 

Jesus doesn’t do this to wow the crowd. They don’t even know it’s a miracle. They just hear Jesus tell them to sit down, and then here come Jesus’ friends, offering them dinner. The crowds don’t seem to notice the wonder.

 

Only the disciples see the miracle. Because they asked Jesus to get involved, and then God invited them to help.

 

This is what happens when we pray, too.

Not exactly like this, every single time. But God is always listening and waiting for us to ask Jesus’ help with the needs around and in front of us. Within us, too.

And then Jesus invites us to get involved, and makes it possible.

 

I asked you to imagine how it felt when the disciples were asking Jesus to end the day. Can you imagine now how it felt to be handing around a couple of sandwiches – barely enough to feed yourself – and discover as it leaves your hands that you’re handing out a full meal for hundreds – maybe even a thousand people?

To discover that you – you ­– are passing around God’s power to change the world with your own hands.

 

God never turns our prayers back to us without making the miracles possible, without putting the tools and the wonder in our hands.

 

That’s what Jesus shows the disciples, shows us, when he blesses the food.

Jesus would have taken the bread and said, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” 

The traditional blessing over bread does not bless the bread itself. We bless God, who provides the miracle, who provides what we need, before we even knew to ask.

 

That prayer does not count the loaves in front of us, or the people who need to eat. Simply, we bless God, who creates and provides.  God, who heals and feeds and saves whether we notice or not, because that is simply who God is. 

Then, now, always, we bless God who provides the tools and the opportunity for you and me to take part in God’s miracles.

Just ask for God’s help, and you will, too.