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.
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