Texts: Jeremiah 15:15-21; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28
For the last two or three weeks now we have been at the turning-point – the midway point - of Jesus' ministry as we have it narrated for us in St Matthew's gospel. First we had the Lebanese woman, apparently persuading Jesus to broaden his view of his mission: he was not sent only for the House of Israel, but for the Gentiles as well. His mission is to the world. Then we had Peter suddenly proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. And it seems today that Jesus has taken those two events as signs that it is time to start his journey to the Cross.
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, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
And this comes as a major dislocation in the whole story. Up until this point all had been wonderful. In fact, it had been miraculous. Wherever he had gone, Jesus was treated like a modern day celebrity – the Barak Obama of his day. Huge crowds flocked to see and hear him; they were astonished at his wisdom and his oratory: they wondered how the son of a carpenter could have become such a skilled orator. And they were blown away by his miracles. So were his own hand-picked disciples, of course; even when he was scaring them witless by walking on the water or calming the storm.
And if we only had this first part of the story what a different picture we would have had of God! What a different faith we would have had from true Christianity! How different our prayer-life would have been! We would have had the sort of God, and the sort of faith, and the sort of prayer-life that some people in the Church try to persuade us we do have. A god on tap, ready to leap in and do our bidding anywhere and at any time. No job too big, too small, or too difficult. A god very much of our own making, or at least our own fantasising.
Which gets me to a fascinating book I'm reading, which had the rare distinction a year or two ago of becoming something of a bestseller, even though it's about theology. It's by a woman called Karen Armstrong, and the title is A History of God. It's not suitable for a quick read on the bus or plane – it's fairly heavy going in places, but I'm finding it worth the effort. It's really about the history of human understandings of God, primarily in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, although it refers frequently to Buddhism and Hinduism by way of contrast.
One of the key points that emerges from this study is that there are two basic approaches to the question, who is God? The traditional view is that God is the eternal creator and originator of all things, a Being separate from everything else, who has chosen to reveal himself to humankind and to call us into a relationship with him. The modern view is that humankind has created this god to meet our various deep-seated needs for love and security. The weakness in the traditional view, it is said, is that there is no conclusive proof that such a God exists. The weakness in the second view is that if we were going to create a god for ourselves to meet these deep-seated needs for love and security, we would not have created one even remotely like the One we find in the Bible.
Which gets us back to this turning-point in St Matthew's gospel. Up until this point in his story we seem to have in Jesus just the sort of God we would construct for ourselves, at least if we watched what he did and ignored what he said. Are we worried about ill-health? Well, here is Jesus going all over the region healing every form of illness you can think of. Are we worried about the forces of evil? Here is Jesus healing the demon-possessed. Are we worried about world hunger? Jesus can feed thousands with virtually no material resources. Are we worried about the forces of Nature? Jesus can quell the storms and walk on the sea. All sorts of people only have to ask and their needs are met.
And all without any obligation, it seems. Jesus doesn't say to any of them, "Now that I have healed you the least you can do is to join our envelope scheme, or go on the cleaning roster." When the screaming demoniac was healed, he volunteered to join Jesus' team, but Jesus sent him home. By and large, Jesus ministered to people according to their need and required nothing in return. That's the sort of god we would create for ourselves.
But that, according to St Matthew, is only half the story, and the rest of his gospel is about the other half. Of course, if we had been listening to Jesus' teaching from the beginning, instead of being bamboozled by his miracles, we would already know that the God we see revealed in him is very far from being the god of our own fantasies. If we had really listened to his Sermon on the Mount, or to some of his parables, we would not be so shocked at St Paul's teaching this morning. And we would already know that any simplistic picture of God as some sort of superhero ever ready to rescue us in our hour of need is not the picture of God that the Bible paints.
That picture has a large black cross at the centre of it – the symbol of pain, suffering and death, AND THE SYMBOL of the love of the living God, the real God, the true eternal God. Who among us would have created a God of the Cross?
Jeremiah sets the tone for us this morning. Many of us over the period of the Games would have experienced times of empathy and fellow-feeling with our athletes. We felt the agony of Mahe Driesdale, the tension and elation of the twins; the tears of joy as Valerie watched our flag going up the pole and heard our anthem played in salute to her. Times like that take us out of ourselves and we truly become one with others. Similar things happen in times of tragedy. We feel for those who are suffering, even though they are not personally known to us.
Jeremiah was like that. He felt the agony of his people as they suffered national humiliation and deportation. He begged them to change their ways, and when that failed he turned to the real living God for mercy. To no avail, or so it seemed. They were carted off into exile, where they remained for 70 years. And yet...was it not for the best? It was in exile that their Scriptures came to be written and edited in the form we have them today. It was in exile that the synagogue was first developed; it was in exile that they learned how to survive as a people even while scatted all over the place, without a homeland of their own. When the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were taken off into exile in Assyria they were assimilated and disappeared from history as a separate people. But the people of Judah survived, and some of their descendants are living in their homeland today. The question is, how are they living there, in a way that is pleasing to God or in a way of their own choosing? Their history tells them that they better get it right this time.
And St Paul tells us the same thing. And in case we are still tempted to swallow the line about St Paul taking the simple, loving teaching of Jesus and turning it into another legal code, here's the homework for this week. Find anything in today's passage from St Paul that doesn't coincide with Jesus' own teaching. But don't waste too much time trying, because you won't succeed.
Last week Jesus lauded Peter and told him that he was speaking the truth by revelation from God; Paul would have said he was speaking through the Spirit. This week Jesus castigates Peter and tells him that he is speaking the words of Satan. Peter, says Jesus, does not have in mind the concerns of God, but human concerns. Peter is appalled at the thought of Jesus suffering and dying, so appalled that he doesn't seem to hear the words "and on the third day be raised again".
It's not surprising really. Who would have imagined a god who could do such a thing as that? In the second half of his story St Matthew shows us that we don't need to imagine one. We already have One.
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