Christian teaching is full of paradox.
God is three, yet he is one. Jesus is human, yet divine. This is
bread and wine, but also Christ's body and blood. And you,
Christian, are sinner yet also saint, wicked and righteous, dead in
sin, yet alive in Christ.
Today Jesus says, “whoever would save
his life will lose it, and whoever would lose his life for my sake
will find it”. Friends these sorts of mysterious sayings can only
be rightly understood through the cross.
Last week, we hear Peter's great
confession, his bright shining moment. “You are the Christ!” he
declares. And Jesus blesses him for it. He's on top of the
mountain, spiritually speaking. It all comes together with this
wonderful insight, given by the Father. Everyone's been asking and
wondering who Jesus is, and Peter, just a regular guy, a fisherman,
is given the answer from heaven above. Wow. What a glorious moment.
And then it all comes crashing down.
Because with what seems like the very next breath Jesus is calling
Peter the devil. “Get behind me, Satan! For you do not have in
mind the things of God but the things of man!” Wha – what?
Friends, have you had this sort of
experience in life? You think everything is fine. You've got it all
figured out. Life is running on all cylinders. Your health is good,
the job pays well, your marriage is solid and your kids behave
themselves. You go to church, you pray, you give your offering.
Maybe it goes so well that you even take all this for granted. But
God blesses you, smiles on you, and life is good. And then,
ka-blammy. It all comes crashing down. Maybe it's you that messes
up. Maybe it's some senseless tragedy that strikes out of the blue.
Your wife leaves you. Your son gets a girl pregnant. You get laid
off. The doctor says, “cancer”. And now the God who you thought
was your friend, whose lifted up his countenance upon you – seems
to be giving anything but peace. Instead he seems like your enemy.
God must hate me. How do we make sense of this? Only through the
cross.
For Peter, it wasn't enough to know
that Jesus was the Christ. Well enough. They had all been
wondering. But with that great confession hanging in the air, Jesus
tells him just what kind of Christ he means to be. He “began to
show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many
things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed,
and on the third day be raised”. And that is NOT what Peter and
the disciples wanted to hear. That's not the kind of Christ they
were looking for. They wanted a Jesus without the cross.
They liked all the glorious miracles
and crowds following Jesus. They marveled that even the demons
submitted to them in Jesus' name. Surely they had plans for what lay
ahead – like James and John who wanted thrones on Jesus' left and
right in this Kingdom he was preaching about. Peter, too, probably
had his own plans laid out for the future – plans which must have
given him a cushy job and high honors. Jesus would come into his
glory, restore the kingdom to Israel, make everything hunky dory once
again on earth. Victory, triumph, glory, finally, was within their
grasp. With the Christ here on our side, nothing can go wrong. So
they must have thought.
But that all came crashing down. Peter
couldn't bask in the glory of his confession for long. Jesus was
talking crazy talk about suffering, betrayal and death! And when he
tried to quietly set Jesus straight, Jesus loudly and clearly calls
him out. “Get behind me Satan.”
You see, a Christ without the cross is
a satanic version of Christ. And it is a Christ that is all too
common, even among “Christians”.
A Christ of victory apart from defeat,
rather than he who defeats death by his death. A Christ of glory
apart from humiliation, and not the one whose power is made perfect
in weakness. A Jesus who smiles and laughs but never sheds bloody
tears, or drinks a cup of wrath, or cries out in forsakenness. A
Jesus who you'd never know suffered and died for sins, because, well,
let's not talk about sin it's too much of a downer.
If this is your kind of Jesus, I
challenge you today to repent, and see Jesus only through the cross.
If your Jesus is only smiles and sunshine, then you better get Satan
behind you and see Christ as he is – crucified for us sinners. For
this is the only Christ that matters, the only Christ he wants to be,
the only Christ who can save us from sin and death and the devil. A
Jesus who knocks us off our high-horse of self-righteousness and says
“I will be your righteousness, and I alone.”
And it is this Christ that we must see
in the crosses of our life. For anything a Christian takes up in
life, for the sake of Christ, is our cross. Sometimes heavy,
sometimes a bit lighter. But always following him who has gone
before us, submitting to his Father's will in all things. We don't
get to choose our own crosses. Nor do we even always know what they
are. But only Christ of the cross is comfort for us in all the
twists and turns, ups and downs, crosses large and small of this
life.
It is a paradox, isn't it, that when we
rest secure – Christ shakes us and cuts us down with his word of
rebuking law. And when we are stumbling, fallen, hurting – this
is when the Gospel brings hope. We need both. We make the good
confession, like Peter, for it is also given to us to say, “You are
the Christ”! But we also need that rebuke, that our sinful selves
would get behind the child of God, drown under the daily repentance
of baptismal renewal, and go the way of Satan – resigned to the
irrelevant past.
And this renewal gives us cause once
again to confess Christ, and rejoice in his victory. It gives us the
faith and strength to carry our daily crosses knowing that his cross
is ever before us. His suffering gives our suffering meaning. And
his resurrection gives us hope.
Whatever cross you bear this day, know
that Christ bore his before you. So take up that cross and follow
him – for his cross, his suffering, his death – have already won
the victory. So that even in your troubles and sorrows, your faith
would look to him – and lay down your life only to find it. That
in the Christ of the cross, your soul is not forfeit – but saved –
by the one who gave his life for the world. Even Jesus Christ. In
his holy name. Amen.
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