Sermon on Matthew 16:21-28

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Peter had this amazing breakthrough moment when he declared that Jesus was “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” right before our reading today.

Jesus was asking what people were saying about him, and the disciples told him all the wrong answers people were saying: “Elijah,” “John the Baptist,” Jeremiah.”

Then Jesus asked his own disciples who they said he was, and Peter had his glorious moment. It must have felt like he’d given the correct final answer on a game show, and he just won a million dollars with confetti raining down from the ceiling.

Ah, but poor Peter works in extremes. If he’s not walking on water, he’s drowning. If he’s not declaring that he will die with Jesus, he’s denying him.

And just a short time after it seems like he really gets Jesus, he metaphorically falls on his face again.

Jesus had started preparing his disciples for his eventual death and resurrection, and Peter wasn’t having it.

“The Messiah, the Son of the living God” couldn’t die! He needed to be around to fix everything that was broken about the world. He needed to be strong and powerful and win all the fights Peter wanted to pick.

And Peter told Jesus as much.

And Jesus wasn’t having that.

I wonder if Jesus was disappointed that someone he thought knew him so well had so completely misunderstood what he was about.

Because the disciples were hoping for an earthly emperor, a warrior-king who would kick out the Romans and replace the Roman Empire with his own empire.

It’s what God’s people have always wanted. We see in the Hebrew Bible that God gave the people Moses and then judges to bring justice and peace, but the people looked around at surrounding nations with kings, and they said, “we want that!” And God warned them over and over again that it wouldn’t bring them what they really desired. But they insisted, and God relented and gave them kings.

And the kings exacerbated war and wealth inequality and division. The patternthroughout the books of 1 and 2 Kings is that a new king came to power and he did wicked things and ignored God and then he died and there was a new king.

And here, Jesus’ disciples fell into the same trap. They looked around, saw the Roman Empire and said, “we want that!”

(And really, it’s easy to do the same today: placing our hope in a particular political party or glorifying our own country at the expense of the well-being of people in other countries)

But this time, God gave us someone different.

Instead of a warrior, God gave us a Lamb.

Instead of an emperor, God gave us Godself.

Jesus’ power is different from all other rulers. It’s not based on fear and domination. It’s based on self-emptying.

In the letter to the Philippians, Paul quotes what we think was an early hymn of the Jesus followers:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.”

Peter, and presumably the other disciples, wanted an emperor, not a slave. They wanted him to sit on a throne, not die on a cross.

Because as far as they could imagine, a cross would be the end.

But for Jesus, the cross was not the end.God triumphed over death.

First, though, the ultimate power of God was sacrificed in humiliation, pain, and death.

This battle was not won with strength; it was won with weakness.

That is the way things work in the upside-down Reign of God.

But Peter didn’t realize that. He was so upset to hear that Jesus was going to die because, even though Jesus had just told him that he would build his church on Peter “The Rock,” Peter himself didn’t know what he would be on his own. He didn’t believe Jesus’ vision for him or realize how much he was capable of with the help of the Spirit.

Peter had gotten stuck on his own vision of what power looked like. And that led him to a “good vibes only” attitude.

“Good vibes only” is a fairly widespread phrase that encourages people to surround themselves with positive people and not get caught up in negativity.

That sounds great, except that it can lead us todeny the ways life is hard. We can start minimizing people’s pain, which hurts the people around us.

“Good vibes only” has, in fact, become synonymous with another widespread phrase: “toxic positivity.” Psychology Today defines it as “the act of avoiding, suppressing, or rejecting negative emotions or experiences.”[1] Pretending we don’t feel the whole range of human emotions only hurts us and the people around us.

So, Peter being like, “Nah, Jesus. Good vibes only! Don’t talk about dying like that—that can’t happen to you!” not only didn’t help Jesus, itdenied the hard truth that Jesus knew.

Jesus knew life was hard, and he did feel the full range of human emotion. Following him doesn’t mean ignoring the pain of this world. Jesus was well-acquainted with it. Following Jesus means being all-in for the self-emptying power of God.

Following Jesus means self-sacrifice.

That idea has been misused to mean that people who are already without power should be meek, obedient, and put up with abuse. It’s been used to justify keeping oppressed people oppressed.

That is not what I’m saying when I say following Jesus means self-sacrifice.

What I am saying is that Jesus, who had the power of God and could have called down angels to save him, emptied himself of that power, which broke the power of death.

Jesus had power and chose to lay it aside.

Following Jesus means that those of us with power need to be willing to set it aside or use it for the sake of others, without benefit to ourselves.

And I would venture to say that most if not all the people in this room have a certain degree of power and privilege.

If you don’t wonder where your next meal is coming from, you have at least some economic privilege.

If you are a citizen of this country, that has privileges.

If you are straight or male or white or able-bodied, those are all identities that have an amount of privilege.

Having privilege doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard for what you have. It doesn’t mean that you have no problems or that life is easy for you.

It just means that in some areas of your life, you don’t generally have the barriers that others have.

It means that you have some power. Power that could be used over other people or in service of other people.

And in the famous words of Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, “with great power comes great responsibility.” We have a responsibility to use whatever power we have in service to others.

Sometimes it’s easy, though, to keep your action on behalf of others on a surface or performative level. It’s much easier to put up a rainbow flag than it is to open your home to an LGBTQ youth who has been kicked out of their parents’ home or spend your time advocating against anti-trans legislation.

Another example is that a few years ago, there was a short-lived trend of changing one’s profile picture on social media to a black squarein support of the Black Lives Matter movement. That was certainly a lot easier than marching in a protest or calling out racism in one’s daily life.

Performative action is easy—it’s a watered-down version of activism. It gets you the brownie points without any sacrifice on your part.

But following our self-emptying Jesus requires sacrifice.

God becoming human in Jesus, taking on our pain, feeling all our feelings, and then dying our most humiliating and excruciating form of death was the ultimate act of solidarity.

Following Jesus means setting aside “good vibes only” and performative action and standing in solidarity with the most marginalized.

That is where we find Jesus.

That is where the upside-down Reign of God becomes real.

So, let’s lay aside “good vibes only” and embrace “real vibes only” as we acknowledge the power we have and use it in service to others.

[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/toxic-positivity

First Lutheran Church

August 27, 2023 + Pentecost 13A

Matthew 16:13-2013Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Sermon

“But Who Do You Say That I Am?” 

Pastor Greg Ronning

In today’s appointed Gospel, Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?”

Jesus is known for asking tough questions, but this one is actually pretty easy!  The disciples effortlessly begin spouting out the various names, opinions, and ideas - thatthey have heard on the streets. The scriptures tell us they begin listing all the different things that they’ve heard, “John the Baptist,” “Elijah,” “Jeremiah,” “a prophet.”  I can’t help but think the list continued as they took advantage of this simple question.  Everyone getting in on the answering.  I remember doing that in college.  I would be sure to raise my hand and speak out early in the lecture, and then quietly disappear later in the lecture when the questions got more difficult.  And I imagine some of the disciples even included some of their own theories about Jesus, safely testing them out under the guise of someone else’s ideas.  It was a great question, easy to participate.

And I suppose that’s what we do when people ask us about Jesus.  We fall back on what we’ve heard, the religious language that we have inherited, the traditions we learned from our families, the proclamations we’ve heard on Sunday morning, the facts we’ve read or heard on TV, and most likely the teachings we memorized in confirmation.

How many of you remember Luther’s Small Catechism? The Second Article of the Apostles Creed  … “What does this mean?” “I believe that Jesus Christ is true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary; and that He is my Lord, Who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and death; in order that I might be His own, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness; even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.” “This is most certainly true.”

“Who do people say that I am?”  That’s the easy question, but that is not the ultimate question that Jesus asks his disciples in today’s gospel, nor the ultimate question he asks each of us this morning.  Jesus listens patiently to the lists of things the disciples come up with, and then hits them with the harder question, Ok, “But who do you say that I am?”

This time he doesn’t want them to express the thoughts and ideas of others, he does not want them to “parrot” back what he has taught them, he does not want them to make a well thought out theological statement, he does not want them to recite a creed.Instead, he wants to know who they think he is, what they are experiencing with him, what the relationship means, what is happening, and where things might be going.  Jesus wants a dynamic answer, not a static one.

And now,Jesus presses us with the same question, “But who do you say that I am?”  It’s OK to begin with the “facts”we know about Jesus. It’s not a bad place to begin, with the history and the tradition, the various teachings that we’ve been taught, the things we have heard proclaimed in the faith community.But at some point, the question of Jesus must become personal, our response, our beliefs must flow from a deeper place –from the heart and from our own experience.Theologian Debie Thomas reminds us, “We cannot build our faith lives on hearsay alone.”

In today’s Gospel Peter boldly attempts to answer the question, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  While Jesus commends Peter’s answer, we also know that in just a few more verses,in Matthew 16:22, when Jesus tells him that the Messiah must suffer and die, Peter actually rebukes Jesus, “God forbid it Lord!”  Peter’s simple answer, “You are the Messiah,”seemingly does not hold up to the reality of what Jesus is about to face.  His confession does not come from a place deep enough to hold such a moment.  Accordingly, Jesus quickly rebukes Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 

So it is that Jesus presses us with the harder question, “But who do you say that I am?”  Because following Jesus, being a disciple, living out and experiencing the promises of Jesus, takes something more than just remembering your confirmation lessons, memorizing the scriptures, and unconsciously confessing the creeds.

This past week I had a wonderful conversation with a pastor friend of mine from Texas.  We were talking about the creeds of the church.  At one point he asked me, “Do you know what’s missing from ‘The Apostle’s Creed’ and ‘The Nicene Creed?’”  He paused while I reflected, and then said, “LOVE.”  “Wow!”  None of the creeds, none of those inspired and well developed theological attempts to name and proclaim the identity and nature of God, of Christ, and of the Spirit, - use the word LOVE!  How did we miss that?  That seems pretty important.How can we begin to describe our understanding of Jesus without using the word love?

In the fourth chapter of First John, we are reminded of this core identity and characteristic of God, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”… “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4)Once again,how can we begin to describe our understanding of Jesus without using the word love?

So it is that when we are asked, when we consider, when we need to know, - who is Jesus; Let us first remember the most important thing -“God is love.” - the love of God that we have experienced in Jesus.  For it is “this love” that not only informs us, but more importantly - has transformed us.  It is the story of this love, the relationship that was created out of this love, that creates faith, that reveals grace, that gives life hope and meaning.  The creeds, as valuable as they are in their context, can never replace the living witness of Christ’s love that we have experienced in our life.  It is from this love, in this love, because of this love - that we know and understand Jesus.

“But who do you say that I am?” Debie Thomas reflects on how Peter might have “better answered” Jesus’ question, perhaps later in his life, recounting the relationship and the experience of love that he shared with Jesus.  “Who do you say that I am?”  “You are the one who found me in a fishing boat and gave me a new vocation.  You’re the one who healed my mother-in-law.  You’re the one who said, “Yes, walk on water."  You’re the one who caught me before I drowned.  You’re the one who glowed on a mountaintop while I babbled nonsense.  You’re the one who washed my feet while I squirmed in shame.  … You’re the one I denied three times to save my skin.  … You’re the one who fed me breakfast on a beach and spoke love and fresh purpose into my humiliation.  You’re the one who gave me the courage to preach to three thousand people on Pentecost.  You’re the one who taught me that I must not call unclean what you have pronounced clean.  You are the one who stayed by my side through insults, beatings, and imprisonments.  You are the one I followed into martyrdom.  You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

“But who do you say that I am?”  Hear the good news this morning, you don’t need to be a theologian to answer this question, you don’t need to recall those things you memorized in confirmation, you don’t need to stand up and perfectly recite and understand the creeds, you don’t need to look to anyone else.  Instead,simply remember your experience, the presence of love in your life.  Simply remember this, “God is love.” 

Remember the times in which you were loved.  Remember the times you shared love with another. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4) 

Remember that here in this place you are loved; loved in the breaking of bread, loved in serving those in need, loved in the waters of baptism, and loved in the sharing of the bread and wine of holy community.“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”  (1 John 4) 

In this love you know God, in this love God knows you.  “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4) 

“But who do you say that I am?” May the question remind you of the presence of God’s love in your life, and may it inspire you to bear witness to that story of love with all those you encounter.   Amen.

Sermon on Matthew 15:10-28

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our Gospel reading today is tough, particularly the second half about Jesus’ encounter with a Canaanite woman.

Jesus doesn’t sound like himself. To my modern sensibilities, Jesus sounds inconsiderate, rude, and even prejudiced.

I miss the Jesus portrayed in the chapter before this: the generous Jesus in the feeding of the 5,000, the encouraging Jesus who invites Peter to walk on water, and the merciful Jesus who heals a bunch of people in Gennesaret.

But what we get in these two stories in chapter 15 is a Jesus who seems to be done with everyone’s nonsense. He lashes out at the grumbling Pharisees and then ignores the woman calling out to him on the road.

Scholars don’t agree on what to make of the story of the Canaanite woman. Plot twist: scholars agree on very little of pretty much anything.

But it’s worth unpacking some ideas, because they influence how we see Jesus here.

The Church early on came to the conclusion that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Both at the same time – not 50-50 or any other breakdown, but 100-100. The mathematicians in the room can take any complaints up with the early church fathers.

But we don’t necessarily agree on what fully human and fully divine looks like to us.

We can lean more heavily on the divine side. For the nerdy folks among us, that’s called having a “high Christology.”

Someone with a high Christology might read this story and imagine that Jesus knew what the woman was going to say. He knew her heart and knew that if he said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,”

she wouldmake the very witty comeback: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

And then Jesus would reward her cleverness and faithfulness by granting her request.

It also may be that Jesus was just responding the way a rabbi was expected to. He had his band of disciples and wouldn’t have been expected to talk to a woman, let alone a Canaanite—the age-old enemies of the Israelites.

But he did stop and talk with her. As much as his dialogue sounds demeaning to my ears, it’s not fair for me to impose my modern-day culture on the first century. Jesus could have let his disciples send her away, but he didn’t. He stopped and talked with her the way a rabbi would with a disciple. And she stepped into the role of a disciple and gave a wise response.

Maybe Jesus knew his disciples’ hearts and was using this as a teachable moment to show them some of their own prejudices before rewarding this marginalized mother. Perhaps he was illustrating his own lesson from the previous story that it’s what comes out of a person, like prejudice and lack of mercy, that defile and not eating with unwashed hands.

Whereas, someone who emphasizes Jesus’ humanity (called a “low Christology”), might look at what came before and see Jesus as burned-out.

Jesus at this point hadn’t had any time to grieve the death of John the Baptist. After hearing about John’s violent death, Jesus tried to go into the wilderness by himself, but a crowd of over 5,000 people followed him. After he fed them all, walked on water, healed a bunch of people, and got chewed out by the religious authorities because his disciples didn’t wash their hands, Jesus had had enough.

So, he left town with his disciples, and wouldn’t you know it? This random woman started shouting at him.

Jesus was exhausted, grieving, and didn’t have time or energy to deal with one more thing, however much it might have normally pulled on his heartstrings.

Someone who emphasizes Jesus’ humanity might read Jesus as coming to understand his mission in the world gradually versus someone who emphasizes Jesus’ divinity who might read Jesus as knowing that his mission was to bring about the Reign of God for all people and that he would die on a cross and rise again.

Someone who pictures a more human version of Jesus might read Jesus’ words to his disciples, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” as the way Jesus understood his mission at that point. He was focused on his priority, which was spreading the good news of the Reign of God to God’s chosen people. This woman may have helped him understand that his mission was actually to the whole world.

These are both valid readings of this story, and I’m not going to tell you that one is right and the other is wrong. And if you understand it differently from either of these, you are probably in good company among the scholars who don’t agree on how to read this story. It’s a difficult story, and there are pros and cons to every understanding.

But whether it was Jesus or the disciples or the readers of the Gospel of Matthew who understood Jesus’ mission differently by the end of this story, this is a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. In the Gospel of Matthew (and also the Gospel of Mark, because it has an almost identical version of this story), Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman marks for the reader the point where Jesus’ mission became far greater than it looked like up until this point. Jesus’ ministry was not just for his hometown and surrounding villages, it was for the whole world.However you picture Jesus, at least the reader now understands Jesus’ global mission.

And it will be Jesus’ followers who will carry that mission to the rest of the world. The Gospel of Matthew closes with Jesus’ Great Commission, where Jesus commands his followers to continue his mission in his physical (though certainly not spiritual) absence: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

And then, the book of Acts describes Jesus’ followers bringing the good news into the world around them.

And that mission isn’t over yet.

Jesus entrusted his followers with the continuation of his mission, and that task has been passed down over two millennia and has gotten to us.

But it’s hard not to fall into the burned-out, compassion fatigue that we can read into Jesus’ behavior in these stories.

It’s easy to get snippy when someone grumbles behind your back, the way the religious authorities did to Jesus.

It’s easy to focus hard on one’s own priorities and ignore someone else’s request for help.

It’s easy to let bias and prejudice affect the way we treat others, no matter how well-intentioned we are.

It’s easy to slip into “us versus them” thinking instead of remembering our common humanity.

It’s easy to focus on our sense of propriety about things like handwashing and inadvertently let out uglier behaviors like racism, homophobia, or classism.

But our Gospel reading reminds us that Jesus’ mission, and therefore our mission, is to show God’s love to the whole world.

And our reading from Isaiah reminds us that that has always been God’s mission: “for my house shall be called a house of prayerfor all peoples.”

And that requires a lot more than simply tolerance or blanket statements of “all are welcome.”

It requires solidarity.

It requires people with privilege to stand aside and follow the lead of people with less privilege.

It requires people with resources to share them with people who have fewer.

It requires people to advocate for people with different experiences than they have.

It requires sacrifice. It requires getting your heart broken over stuff you could choose to ignore. It requires changing your mind and your lifestyle and your heart.

Because God’s vision for us is far bigger than we can imagine.

Because no one deserves just the leftover crumbs.

Because every person is a child of God.