Hard Truth, True Promise

[Below, you'll find the message shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church yesterday, September 3. You can also view live stream video of both of the services in which the message was shared.]

Matthew 16:21-28

The first of the 2024 presidential campaign debates happened recently. I hate presidential debates. One reason I hate them is that candidates usually spend their allotted times trying to tell us things that they and their “handlers” think we want to hear: things that will vindicate us in our desires and ambitions, maybe in our fears and prejudices. Political campaigns are rarely times when we’re told either hard truths or true promises.

Today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 16:21-28,  shows us that Jesus never took the advice of “handlers.” Otherwise, He wouldn’t have given the hard truth nor true promise He delivers to us today.

Let’s set the scene. The Gospel lesson continues a conversation we began to consider last Sunday. In it, Simon, the son of John, confesses that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Because it’s on this confession of Jesus as both God’s anointed King, in the world to make all things right, AND God the Son, that Jesus will build His Church and His Kingdom, Jesus gives Simon a new nickname, Peter, meaning Rock. All who can confess Jesus as their King and God have new and everlasting lives with God. Their lives are built on the strong rock of God’s grace that gives forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who live with repentant trust in Jesus.

In today’s lesson, Jesus explains to us what it means to have Him as our God and King.

It starts: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Matthew 16:21)

This isn’t what Simon, the Rock of faith, or the other disciples had in mind at all. They wanted to hear something altogether different.

In fact, nobody wants a Savor King, a Christ, Who suffers and dies, even if His death is followed by a promised resurrection.

We want Messiahs who are going to make our lives smooth and easy, who will save us without telling us to give up our sins: selfishness, greed, envy, gossip, adultery, idolatry, and prejudices.

We want a King Who saves us in our sin rather than a Savior Who saves us from our sin. We want glory without a cross, forgiveness without contrition, resurrection without crucifixion, new life without the death of our old sinful selves.

But, Jesus is telling us today that’s not how the Kingdom of God comes into our lives.

If even the sinless Lamb of God must die in order to fulfill His mission in life, how much more must we, who are sinners, die to sin in order to share in Jesus’ eternal kingdom?

Peter's reaction to Jesus’ words is immediate and forceful. “‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’” (Matthew 16:22)

It’s here that Jesus gives Simon a new nickname. Thundering with anger, Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16:23)

In the blink of an eye, the foundation rock, Peter, has become a stumbling stone, an impediment trying to prevent Jesus--just like Satan tried to be to Jesus in the wilderness--from fulfilling His mission.

That mission is simple: To offer His sinless life on a cross, paying the price for our sin, so that all who follow Jesus rather than the call of sinful human concerns, will be raised from the dead with Jesus.

Our call is to daily get out of Jesus’ way with our sinful desire for the worldly successes and victories of this dead world and, instead, get behind Jesus and follow Him through cross and resurrection.

Jesus clarifies His call to us in this way, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

What exactly does Jesus mean?

Years ago, a group of Methodist pastors approached a colleague, who served a small inner-city church, about becoming bishop for their church body. The pastors had been impressed by his faith, his teaching and preaching, his servant heart, and the way the love of Christ was seen in him.

After they’d made their pitch, the inner-city pastor said that he couldn’t be a bishop. He explained that his wife suffered from a debilitating condition and his adult son had developmental issues. Both needed his care.

But surely, his colleagues insisted, he could get help. The pastor felt in that moment as though he was being accosted by Satan, being given an easy path away from his call as husband and father so that he could chase the glories of the world. He didn’t cave.

He could, he told the group of pastors, get more help for his wife and son and he might need to do so sometime. But for the foreseeable future, he believed, God was calling him to be with his wife and son. He could not delegate the life to which God had called him to anyone else.

Keep in mind that this pastor’s cross wasn’t his wife or son. People today misuse Jesus’ words from today’s lesson when they describe the adversities of life as their crosses.

No, this pastor’s cross was the satanic allure of forsaking his call to follow Jesus in order to gain the rewards of the world, the temptation we all face and, I suspect, the sin all of must confess, of wanting this world more than we want theiscrucified and risen Jesus.

The cross we saints who remain simultaneously sinners until we, like our Lord, die and rise trusting in Him, bear is the call to follow Jesus for life with God despite our inborn desire to pursue our desire rather than God’s will.

That pastor was ultimately able to refuse what the world would regard as a promotion because following Jesus goes by way of the cross, the way of crucifying the old self “with all sins and evil desires,” as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, so “that the new person [can] come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

With what easy pathway is the devil, the world, or your sinful self tempting you this morning?

You married folk, is there someone else in your life who’s new and different, someone with whom you’ve never had an argument over bills or purchases, kids or childcare?

Young people, is there an easy way for you to cheat on your tests and get the good grades you think will unlock a great future for you?

People in business, are there daily practices that cause you to want to or to actually cut corners ethically?

Older people, do you find yourself looking down on younger people because they sin differently than you do?

The world is filled with Satan’s siren call to the easy way. But the easy way is a stumbling block to following Jesus and the life He gives to all who trust in Him.

There’s only one way to life with God. It’s the way that Jesus speaks of today: the way of daily repentance, that is, daily turning away from sin and death and daily turning to Jesus for the forgiveness of sin that brings new life from God.

Jesus says that one day He will return and reward each for what they have done. What does this mean? Is this “works righteousness”? No!

Those who refuse His kingship and salvation will go to eternal condemnation and separation from God.

But those who, in response to and empowered by the Word of God to repent and believe in Jesus, will receive eternal life with God.

And this good news isn’t just for us after we die. Over the years, I’ve constantly been struck by a contrast between the dying and the vulnerable who trust in Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and those who may be physically vital but whose lives are harried and chaotic because they think they can trust in themselves, or their efforts, or the cosmos rather than Christ. The reality is, whether we realize it or not, we all live each day in the valley of the shadow of death. But those who live in that shadow with Christ and His Word giving them strength and life, have a “peace that passes all understanding.”

Elsewhere in the Bible, Jesus describes Himself in this way: “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved…” (John 10:9) Today and every day, enter the Kingdom of God through the open Gate of Jesus, our God and King. Amen

The Way of the Cross, the Way of Life (TEXT)

[This is the message for worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, last Sunday, August 30, 2020.]

 Matthew 16:21-28

America’s two major political parties have now held their conventions for 2020, meaning that for the next sixty-five days, we’ll be hearing both nominees tell us things that they and their “handlers” think we want to hear: things that will vindicate us in our desires and ambitions, maybe in our fears and prejudices. Political campaigns are rarely times when we’re told either hard truths or true promises.

Today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew 16:21-28,  shows us that Jesus never took the advice of political “handlers.” Otherwise, He wouldn’t have given the hard truth or true promise He delivers to us today.

Let’s set the scene. The Gospel lesson continues a conversation we began to consider last Sunday. In it, Simon, the son of John, confesses that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).

Because it’s on this confession of Jesus as both God’s anointed King, in the world to make all things right, AND God the Son, that Jesus will build His Church and His Kingdom, Jesus gives Simon a new nickname, Peter, Petros, meaning Rock. All who can confess Jesus as their King and God have new and everlasting lives with God. Their lives are built on the strong rock of God’s grace that gives forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who trust in Jesus.

In today’s lesson, Jesus explains to us what it means to have Him as our Messiah (or Christ) and King. “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Matthew 16:21)

But this isn’t what Simon, the Rock of faith, or the other disciples had in mind at all. And it isn’t the sort of thing that Trump’s or Biden’s handlers would advise their candidates to say.

Nobody wants a Savor King, a Christ, Who suffers and dies, even if death is followed by a promised resurrection.

We want Messiah Saviors who are going to make our lives smooth and easy, who will save us without telling us to give up our sins, selfishness, greed, envy, gossip, adultery, idolatry, and prejudices.

We want glory without a cross, forgiveness without contrition, resurrection without crucifixion, new life without the death of our old sinful selves.

But, Jesus is saying that’s not how the Kingdom of God comes into our lives. If even the sinless Lamb of God must die in order to fulfill His mission in life, how much more must we, who are sinners, die to sin in order to share in Jesus’ eternal kingdom?

Peter's reaction to Jesus’ words is immediate and forceful. “‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’” (Matthew 16:22)

It’s here that Jesus gives Simon a new nickname. Thundering with anger, Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16:23)

In the blink of an eye, the foundation rock, Peter, has become a stumbling stone, an impediment trying to prevent Jesus--just like Satan had in the wilderness--from fulfilling His mission.

That mission is simple: To offer His sinless life on a cross, paying the price for our sin, so that all who follow Jesus rather than the call of sinful human concerns, will be raised from the dead with Jesus.

We’re to stop getting in Jesus’ way with our sinful desire for the worldly successes and victories of this dead world and, instead, get behind Jesus and follow Him through cross and resurrection.

Jesus clarifies His call in this way, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

What exactly does Jesus mean here?

Years ago, a group of pastors approached a colleague, who served a small inner-city church, about becoming bishop for their church body. The pastors had long been impressed by his faith, his teaching and preaching, his servant heart, and the way the love of Christ was seen in him. After they’d made their pitch, the inner-city pastor said that he couldn’t be a bishop. He explained that his wife suffered from a debilitating condition and his adult son had developmental issues. Both needed his care. Surely, his colleagues insisted, he could enlist help.

The pastor felt in that moment as though he was being accosted by Satan, being given an easy path away from his call as husband and father so that he could chase the glories of the world. He didn’t cave.

He could, he told the group of pastors, get more help for his wife and son and he might need to do so sometime. But for the foreseeable future, he believed, God was calling him to be with his wife and son. He couldn’t delegate the life to which God had called him to anyone else.

Keep in mind that this pastor’s cross wasn’t his wife or son. People today misuse Jesus’ words from today’s lesson when they describe the adversities of life as their crosses. No, this pastor’s cross was the satanic allure of forsaking his call to follow Jesus in order to gain the rewards of the world, the sin all of must confess, of wanting this world more than we want the crucified and risen Jesus.

That pastor was ultimately able to refuse what the world would regard as a promotion because following Jesus goes by way of the cross, the way of crucifying the old self “with all sins and evil desires,” as Martin Luther puts it in The Small Catechism, so “that the new person [can] come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

With what easy pathway is Satan tempting you today?

You married folk, is there someone else in your life who’s new and exciting, someone with whom you’ve never had an argument over bills or purchases, kids or childcare?

Young people, is there an easy way for you to cheat on your tests and get the good grades you think will unlock a great future for you?

Citizens, are there candidates offering easy solutions to hard problems, candidates telling you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear?

The world is filled with Satan’s siren call to the easy way. But the easy way is a stumbling block to following Jesus and the life He gives to all who trust in Him.

There’s only one way to life with God. It’s the way that Jesus speaks of today: the way of daily repentance, that is, daily turning away from sin and daily turning to Jesus for the forgiveness of sin that brings new life from God.

This is the way of daily burying our sinful selves so that our new selves can face each new day free from sin, guilt, and the shifting standards of an unforgiving world.

This is the way of taking up our crosses and following Jesus, “the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)

May Jesus be the Way we follow today and always. Amen

The Way of the Cross, the Way of Life (VIDEO)

Here's today's online worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Have a good week. God bless you!

Who's the Greatest?

[This message was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 18:1-20
One of the stories we often tell in our family revolves around an incident that happened when our kids were about ten and seven. We’d visited family in Columbus and stopped at Lane Avenue Shopping Center there before heading back to Cincinnati, where we lived at the time. We climbed into the car and were pulling out, when we heard a kind of whimpering yell. It was Philip, the oldest, who wasn’t yet in the car. We stopped and Phil jumped in.

Now, why exactly did we stop to get him?

I mean, we’d successfully collected 50% of our kids and, with Phil being ten years old, he was costing us a lot of money.

He wasn’t generating any income; so, he was a net drag on the family finances.

And besides, it was a hassle taking him to this event and that activity.

Phil hadn’t attained any great achievements, led any governments or armies, hadn’t made his first billion-dollars. He was nobody, really.

So, why did we bother bringing him back into the car?

We stopped because every member of a family, from the child awaiting birth in its mother’s womb to the infirm parent no longer able to take care of themselves, matters.

No matter how seemingly unimportant a family member may be in the eyes of the world, every one of them is important.

Many New Testament scholars believe that the gospel of Matthew is built around five major collections of sayings by Jesus. Some see these five sections corresponding to the first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch, also called the torah, a word roughly meaning, instruction on the way of life, the way of life with God.

That characterization, the way of life with God, certainly applies to the fourth section of Matthew’s gospel, which begins with the verses that make up today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 18:1-20.

In this section, Jesus talks about how the people in His family, His kingdom, His Church, are to behave toward one another.

The key to understanding this entire passage is to be found in the first five verses. Understand these five verses and the subsequent fifteen fall into place. So, today, we’re only going to address those five verses.

It all begins with the disciples asking Jesus a question: “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” (Matthew 18:1)

These kinds of questions are important to us in the world, mostly because we’d prefer being the ones calling the shots, preferably without any accountability, thank you very much. We like the idea of being the top dog.

At the first church I served as pastor, we had a five-week long summer school for kids in the third through eighth grades focusing on the Bible and Catechism. We had 85 students. For recess during the last week one year, I set up a kickball tournament. When I announced that we would play the tournament March Madness-style, only with the losing teams advancing, one boy, who would later play college football, asked, “How will we know which is the best team?” When I told him that we wouldn’t know, he offered a quietly disappointed, “Oh.”

So, these questions of who’s most important, who’s the best, who has the most, who’s on top, seem to be important to us from a young age.

When Jesus was asked who was most important in His kingdom, He could have said God or the patriarchs or Moses.

But Jesus wants His disciples, including you and me, to see where true greatness resides in His eternal kingdom. So, Jesus offers a tangible illustration. Verse 2: “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’”

We mustn’t miss Jesus’ point here. Jesus is not saying that children are innocent, sweet, or trusting and that we should imitate them. As one scholar says, Jesus is not talking about children’s character traits. Like King David, writing in Psalm 51, we know that every child conceived by human parents is born in sin.

What Jesus is pointing to in this child is their status.

In that society, male children were held to be worthy only when they had matured to manhood, but not before; female children were never regarded as worthy.

Children occupied the lowest rung of society. In many ways, it can be argued, they still do.

Jesus is saying that if we who claim to be His disciples want to be the greatest in His kingdom, we must be willing to accept the lowest place, to sit at the kids’ table, to be the servant of all His other servants.

And Jesus also says that true greatness in His kingdom is further exhibited by those who welcome the people nobody else will welcome, to offer them the love of God that others shy away from sharing with them.

Jesus’ kingdom isn’t like the kingdoms of the world.

In Jesus’ kingdom, the greatest are those who lift others up, not themselves.

In Jesus’ kingdom, the greatest are those who see that when they serve those regarded as lowly and unimportant by the world, they really serve Him.

And, this includes the lowly people sitting next to you in worship this morning!

In commending this way of life to us, Jesus isn’t asking us to live any differently than He Himself lived (and died and rose) when He was on the earth. A touchstone passage of Scripture for disciples is Philippians 2:5-11, where Paul echoes the words of Jesus we consider today. This passage, like Jesus’ words in today’s lesson, are meant for disciples of Jesus and take up the question of how you and I are supposed to treat each other as disciples. The passage is worthy of reading in its entirety together. So, read it aloud with me, please:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Listen: As Jesus’ disciples, we can risk being one another’s servants, humbling ourselves before one another in order to build each other up, because we know that all who turn from sin and believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, are citizens of the kingdom of heaven for all eternity.

Every person who believes in Jesus already has an exalted place in the kingdom of heaven, so we don’t need to push ourselves forward.

This is why Jesus tells us elsewhere: “...those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12).

If we persevere in following Jesus, even when it may be damaging to our reputations or livelihoods in this world, we live and die in the certainty that we are going to reign with Jesus over His new creation for all eternity.

2 Timothy 2:11-12 tells Christian disciples: “If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us…”

We need to keep following Jesus in humility. And that means being humble not just toward Jesus, but also in our dealings with our fellow disciples!

Maybe the next time we run into each other before or after worship, or during our small groups or while helping at Upward, Tuesday tutoring, on a mission trip, or at Saint Vincent’s Gateway Men's Shelter, our first words to each other shouldn’t be, “How are you doing?” And it surely shouldn’t be, “Why do you keep messing up?” (Not the question of a disciple.) Maybe we should be asking each other, “What can I do for you today?”

The greatest in God’s kingdom are those who take the path of servanthood, walking right behind God in the flesh, Jesus, Who took the path of the cross and, for His faithful service to God and to the human race, was lifted up by His Father.

All who, as Jesus told us in last week’s gospel lesson, take up our crosses, owning our sins, and follow Him, trusting Him as our God and Savior, will also be lifted up to live with Him now and forever.

When you know you’re God’s child, you don’t have to play at being a big shot. In the eyes of God, you already are a big shot, especially when you humble yourself to serve others in Jesus’ name. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

"Take up your cross and follow Me"

Matthew 16:21-28
[This message was shared during the worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, on September 3, 2017.]

Our gospel lesson for today, Matthew 16:21-28, begins in this way: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

We Christians have read and heard those words (or words like them) so many times in our lives that we may hardly notice them. Or give them a second thought. But when Jesus spoke them to His original hearers, the twelve apostles, their effect must have been not just jarring, but volcanic!

A few moments before, we read in Matthew, Peter had confessed his faith in Jesus as God’s anointed King, the Messiah or the Christ, as well as God in the flesh, which is what the phrase "the Son of the Living God" means. Peter was saying that Jesus was the Son of God, the very reflection and embodiment of God Himself!

Jesus had commended Peter’s confession, which He said, had come to Peter not from human beings, but from God Himself, the way our faith always does (1 Corinthians 12:3).

And Jesus said that it was on this strong confession made by Peter that “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [or hell] will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).

Peter’s confession of Jesus and Jesus’ affirmation of it must have been an incredible moment for the twelve. For centuries, their people, the people of God, had been waiting for the Messiah promised by God. And here was Jesus confirming what Peter (and probably many of the other disciples) had come to believe. The wait was over. The Messiah, Who would make all things right, had arrived.

The problem was that in the four-hundred-some years since God had given the last book of the Old Testament to His people and the moment of Peter’s confession, an enormous gap between what God means by making all things right for us and what God’s people meant by making all things right had developed.

This gap was caused by the failure to understand on the part of God’s peoplewhat their real problem was.

God’s people had come to see their problem as the Romans. And before that, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Each had been foreign conquerors. The problem, as God’s people had come to see it then, was these foreigners who had come and taken over their country.

God said that His people’s basic problem wasn’t the people who had conquered them through the centuries. It was that they had forgotten Who their God was.

They worshiped idols.

They worshiped the things of this world.

And because they did, they perpetrated grave injustices against each other and the strangers that were among them, violations of God’s holiness that God had adamantly and repeatedly forbade many times in His Word. It was because of all of this sin that God had allowed His people to be conquered.

To God’s people, including the disciples, the biggest problem they had was all of those other people who made their lives miserable. But God knew that the real problem wasn’t with all those other people.

And the only way that God could make all things right for His people and the whole world was not to give them a strongman king, the people’s version of a Messiah, the Messiah they wanted, who would boot out the foreign conquerors. Why? Because even if the strongman king was successful in routing the Romans and filling the people’s fevered desire for fat pocketbooks, the success of such a king would still only leave God’s people dead in their sin.

The only way that God could make all things right for His people and the world was to send a Messiah Who would deal with the sin into which every one of us--Jew and Gentile--is born.

Our greatest enemy in the world isn’t someone else: It’s not our spouse, our family, our boss, our government, or any of those “other people.” It’s not even the devil, although he hates us and wants us eternally separated from God.

Our greatest enemy is us. It’s us--you and me--who need to be dealt with. We and our sin must be conquered before they kill us off for all eternity.

But this isn’t something we like to hear or wrestle with. Who wants to be forced into saying, “It’s my fault”? Most of the time, those words stick in our throats.

Peter was just like us in that way. Verse 22 tells us that Peter is horrified at the idea of the One he had just confessed as Messiah going to Jerusalem, to be rejected and crucified. Matthew says that Peter rebuked Jesus. “That will never happen to You, Lord,” Peter says to Jesus, telling Jesus, the One he had just confessed to be God that Jesus was wrong. Peter was telling Jesus how to be the Messiah. He was giving Jesus "God lessons"!

In fact, as my son Philip pointed out to me last night, the word used to describe Peter's words to Jesus--rebuked--was in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament with which Jesus would have been familiar only used of superiors upbraiding or chastising people beneath them in class or authority. Peter is treating the One he has confessed as God and Messiah like an underling!

Look what happens next, starting at Matthew 16:23. “Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’”

Jesus calls Peter, Satan! The very name means enemy or adversary. At this moment, Jesus is calling Peter an enemy of God! This is a serious matter.

To try to stand in the way of God and the will and purpose of God makes a person an enemy of God. So, when Jesus uttered this condemnation of Peter, you can imagine how mystified Peter must have felt.

Do we stand in the way of God and His will for our lives?

Are there times when we try to turn Jesus into the king of our dreams, the king who will even go along with us when we’re being selfish or hurtful?

Are there times when we expect Jesus to overlook our sins while we stand in judgment over others for theirs?

Are there times when we insist that the problems in our marriages, our families, or our lives are exclusively the fault of others and not us?

Absent repentance and trust in Christ, if our answer to any of those questions is yes, then Jesus’ words of rebuke and their intrinsic call to repentance and renewed trust in Him, first leveled at Peter apply to you and me too. I know that Jesus' call applies to me many times, too.

But there is good news! King Jesus has come to set us free and make us right. 

Look at what He says, starting at verse 24: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.’”

Jesus could have been the king that Peter, the other disciples, and God’s people in Judea wanted. He had the power to do it.

When Jesus was later arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, He said that He had at His disposal “twelve legions of angels,” 60,000 angelic soldiers ready at the direction of Jesus. He could have been a warrior king.

When Satan met Jesus in the wilderness, it was to be precisely this kind of king that he tried tempting Jesus into being. Satan knew that if Jesus relied on raw power, coercive force, to make Himself king, Jesus would have been as guilty of sin as Adam and Eve had been when, in their desire to “be like God,” they ate the fruit God told them not to eat.

And had Jesus been this kind of king, He wouldn’t have been trustingly relying on His Father and His plan, but on violent force.

Our lives could never have been made eternally right had Jesus gone that route.

We could never have been set eternally free from sin and death. Jesus had to go to the cross to take our punishment for sin so that, in rising, He could set free all who turn from sin, that is repent, and surrender trustingly in Him, that is believe in Him.

In the way Jesus chose, He could be King, not of a worldly nation, all of which eventually fail and fall from the weight of their arrogance, sin, and injustice, but the King of a new creation.

Jesus didn’t enter the world to conquer all the armies of the world while leaving everyone in this world dead and separated from God. Jesus came to conquer us with His love and so, give us life that never ends.

The only way for us to appropriate the victory won for us by Jesus on the cross and from the empty tomb is to first, take up our cross--meaning, to acknowledge, in Pogo’s famous words, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.” We need to own the fact that we need a Savior, Someone Who will save us from our sins and ourselves and to save us to be all that God intended for us to be. 

And we need secondly, to follow Jesus. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when it’s the last thing we want to do. Even when it’s less than popular. Even when it costs us money, time, or our lives.

Taking up our crosses and following Jesus. We Lutherans have always called this a lifestyle of “daily repentance and renewal.” This is the content of the faith in Jesus that Peter, just a few verses before our gospel lesson, confessed: a faith that believes in Jesus as the King that makes all things right, the God Who opens up infinitely more than “we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20) to all who dare to surrender to Him.

And how can we know this is true?

That’s the question from the disciples that Jesus seems to anticipate in the last verse of our lesson.

“Truly I tell you,” He says. “some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Is that true?

Did the disciples see the coming of Jesus’ kingdom?

I mean, didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “Thy kingdom come”?

The first disciples did see the kingdom of God come when Jesus rose from the dead, “the firstborn of the dead” as the New Testament calls Jesus (Colossians 1:18; Revelation 1:5) and the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” as He’s called in Hebrews 12:2. The disciples saw the kingdom of God when they saw the King after He had died and risen.

And we see--we experience--this kingdom when we too, take up our cross and follow Jesus.

May that be how we live.

How we die.

And, by the grace God bears for all who trust in Christ, may it also be how we will all rise again.

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Upside Down World

[This was shared during worship with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio earlier today.]

Matthew 16:21-28
In his book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt tells about several people from underground house churches in Asian countries where it’s illegal to worship or witness for Jesus Christ.

He mentions Jian, a “doctor who has left his successful health clinic and now risks his life and the lives of his wife and two kids in order to provide impoverished villages with medical care while secretly training [a] network of house-church leaders.”

There’s Lin, a woman who teaches at a university where it’s illegal to talk about Jesus. She secretly meets with students interested in knowing more about Him though, risking the loss of her job in the process.

People like these, who embrace living with the risk of suffering or death in order to glorify God and who share Christ with others, live in an upside-down world.

It’s a world in which living for Jesus, and not for comfort or status or material success, is the highest priority.

Death, sacrifice, and risk looms over their lives.

Yet the people I've met who live like this are more alive and more joyful than most of the people you and I know or know about.

Jesus talks about the strange alternative universe—the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God—in which people like Jian and Lin live, in today’s Gospel lesson. It’s the world in which He calls us all to live, too.

If that scares you, it should. I know that it scares me. Yet there is no other place where true life can be found than in Jesus’ kingdom.

Let’s learn more about it. Please turn to the lesson, Matthew 16:21-28 (page 687 in the sanctuary Bibles).

The lesson actually continues the incident that we looked at in last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, in which Peter confessed that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” The first verse of today’s lesson follows: “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Now, Jesus had a typical way of “explaining” things He wanted them to know. Turn please, to Luke 24:27, as the risen Jesus spoke with two disciples on the way to Emmaus: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets [the phrase, Moses and the Prophets, like the Law and the Prophets, referred to what we call the Old Testament], he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Jesus always pointed to the God of the Old Testament to explain Who He was and what He was about. Jesus taught that everything that Christians confess about Him—from His virgin birth to His sacrificial death for our sin, from His kingship to His resurrection—was foretold in the Old Testament.

Peter though, wasn’t interested in what Jesus or the Old Testament had to say about the Messiah suffering, dying and rising. Peter wanted Jesus to be an earthly king who could produce results, like freeing him and his countrymen from Roman rule and their oppressive taxes. Peter wanted Jesus to make his life easy. That’s why, in verse 22, we read: “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ‘Never, Lord!’ he said. ‘This shall never happen to you!’”

Peter wanted a king who would do things the way he thought that they should be done.

He wanted a God who would be complicit in his favorite sins, things like pride and the disdain of foreigners he presumed God didn’t care about.

Sometimes, I confess, I can be like Peter. I go to God in prayer and say, "Now, Lord, what you need to do is thus and so. That will cause such and such a person to do what you and I both know they need to do. Then, I can step in and do this."

I’ve got everything figured out for God. All He needs to do is sign off on my plan.

Do you know what God's reaction to a "prayer" like that is?

After He stops laughing, He treats my calling out to Him in Jesus’ Name as an invitation for Him to do what He thinks is best.

Peter thought he was going to tell Jesus how to be God and King. He soon found out how off-base he was. Look at verse 23: “Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’”

The man Jesus had just called “the rock” is now “a stumbling block.”

The man who was commended for listening to God in order to know Who Jesus was, now is being condemned for listening to Satan!

Jesus uses the same word for Peter, the word Satan, which means accuser, that He used for the devil when the devil tempted Him in the wilderness.

Back then, Satan tried to tempt Jesus to avoid the cross and take the easy way to becoming a king. No suffering. No cross. All Jesus had to do was worship Satan and Jesus could have the world He had come to reclaim for God.

Jesus refused to take the easy way.

Like the devil, Peter wanted Jesus to take the easy way. The easy way, the way of going along with the world to get along with the world, the way of cutting corners on ethics and our characters in order to get what we want, is exactly what Jesus warned anyone who wanted to follow Him to avoid when He said, “The gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life.”

What path are you and I following in life: the Jesus way or the easy way? This is a question worthy of asking ourselves each day.

My mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to tell us about counseling parents whose high school or college-age children were addicted to drugs. He told these parents that if they loved their children, they wouldn’t give the kids the money they knew the kids would just use to buy more dope. “But we can’t stand the thought of our kids hating us and thinking they can’t turn to us for help. We can’t see them in such agony either,” they would say. “It’s too painful.” “How painful will it be,” he would ask them, “if you give them what they want and you lose them forever?”

Peter, like Satan before him, confronted Jesus with the same sort of choice that confronted those parents. It would have been far easier for Jesus to give people what they wanted, to be a king who led a revolution and tossed out the Romans.

But if He had done that, His mission would have remained unfulfilled. You and I would be left hopelessly imprisoned to sin and death.

Jesus willingly endured the hatred of the whole human race and the punishment for sin we deserve so that He wouldn’t lose us forever.

He endured suffering and death on the cross so that on Easter Sunday, when the Father raised Jesus from the dead, He could give new life to all who repent for sin and believe in Him.

It was by the hard way of the cross that Jesus won life for all who trust in Him. God’s saving grace in Christ is free, but we must give up life as it’s usually lived in order to be free to grab hold of it!

In verse 24, Jesus amplifies this point, when He says in part, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” To take up our cross has nothing to do with enduring the pains or inconveniences of life, no matter how severe they may be.

Rather, to take up our cross is to acknowledge that our sins put Jesus on the cross.

I love what Martin Luther says when, in The Small Catechism, he explains the meaning of Holy Baptism for our daily lives: “[Baptism] signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil desires, should be drowned by daily sorrow for sin and repentance and be put to death, and that the new person should come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Just as Christ’s crucifixion led to His resurrection, daily taking up our crosses, confessing our sins, and submitting to the death of our sinful selves brings us fresh new life every moment we walk with Jesus.

When we live in daily repentance and renewal, we can confess with Jeremiah, writing in the Old Testament book of Lamentations 3:22-23: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”

But what does it mean to deny ourselves? It means to ask God to help us to dare to trust God’s revealed word and will and not in our own reasoning or experiences.

Psalm 118:8 tells us: “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans.” That includes the humans you and I know best, ourselves.

Denying ourselves means admitting that we need God not as we want Him to be, but God as He is, the God Who can only save us from sin and death when we give Him our daily surrender and daily--moment by moment--sign over control over our lives to Jesus Christ.

In Philippians 1:21, the apostle Paul writes, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” I pray each day to live with more of that risky, “upside down” attitude of faith, of trust in Christ.

Peter rebuked Jesus because he was concerned about living and organizing life as he wanted life to be. He wanted God to bend to his plans rather than submitting to whatever God had in mind for him. It seemed to risky for Jesus to submit to death on a cross (Jesus might stay dead), too risky to give up on His preferences and give God control of his life (that seemed to frighteningly uncertain). I confess, that following Jesus, even on this side of His cross and resurrection, seems awfully risky me today. And it is risky.

True living though, whether in this life or in eternity, doesn’t belong to those who play it safe, who take a pass on the risk of faith. It belongs to people who give control of their lives to Jesus—to people who deny themselves, who take up their crosses, and who follow Jesus.

After all, truly, this life, no matter how many years we live here, is simply a warm-up lap for the one to come.

Let Jesus take control of your life now.

Start living in Jesus’ alternative universe—the kingdom of heaven—today.

Let Jesus call the shots.

Let Jesus set your priorities.

Do everything you can to tell the world about the new life that only those with faith in Jesus have.

You may not win any popularity contests for living in Jesus’ kingdom. You may not gain power or wealth or ease. But you will live in the power of the only one who can give you life, the only One Who will be left standing when sin and death have done their worst to us.

And as you live with Jesus each day, you will, as Jesus promises at the end of our Gospel lesson, “not taste death before [you] see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” You will see the imprint of Jesus on every moment that you breathe. And you will be alive!