Get Behind Me, Satan

By The Very Rev. Sherry Crompton
August 31, 2008

Read: Matthew 16:21-28

Here’s Peter again. Last week we recall that Peter had the right answer. He said that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of the Living God. And Jesus pronounced Peter blessed, the rock upon which the church would be built.

But today. Well, today Jesus rebukes Peter…calling him a stumbling block, likening his actions to Satan. Jesus says to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but human things.”

And then Jesus goes on to tell us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him. These are not easy, comfortable words today.

Can you relate to Peter? I think most of us can. Peter loved Jesus and here was this man, this man who he knew as the Son of God, telling him that he would undergo great suffering and be killed. Wouldn’t we all want to stop that? Why walk into a trap when you can turn and walk away? Why take a risk if you don’t have to?

Have you ever known someone who was headed that way? The newspaper occasionally runs stories about them: the man who rushes into the burning building to see if anyone has been left inside; the woman who dives into the hole in the frozen lake to rescue a child who has fallen through. Those are the dramatic stories, but there are quiet ones too: the doctor who spends several nights a week in a rundown part of town, giving free medical care to homeless men; the student who spends Saturday afternoons rocking babies with AIDS; the teacher who quits her job and spends all her savings to go teach Nicaraguan peasants how to read.

It is only human to admire people like this, but there is an equally human part of us that is taken aback by them and afraid for them. We listen to the dangerous things they do or are planning to do and part of us, like Peter, wants to protest. “God, forbid!” comes a voice from deep down inside us somewhere. “Isn’t there an easier way for you to do what you want to do? Do you have to take such risks? What if you get hurt? What if you get killed? God forbid that something like that should happen to you!

That is what Peter is saying. And Jesus explodes, “Get behind me Satan”…you are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God but of me.” What a shock that must have been to hear..both for Peter and for the disciples. What did he do wrong? All he did was protest that Jesus would suffer and die. All he did was say out loud that there had to be another way.

But as far as Jesus was concerned, it was Satan talking. Satan, the ancient tempter, from the beginning of time has offered humankind alternatives to the will of God—easier alternatives, safer alternatives, flashier alternatives—all of them temptations for us to do and be something other than what God has called us to do and be.

But Jesus is saying we need to take up our cross and follow him. Does that mean that life needs to be full of suffering? I don’t think so. I think the deep meaning of Jesus’ harsh words to us in this passage is that our fear of suffering and death robs us of life, because fear of death always turns into fear of life, into a stingy, cautious way of living that is not really living at all. God is concerned with the quality of our life. The deep secret of Jesus’ hard words is that the way to have abundant life is not to save it, but to spend it, to give it away, because life cannot be shut up and saved any more than a bird can be put into a shoebox and stored on a closet shelf.

Better yet, life cannot be shut up and saved any more than fresh spring water can be put in a mason jar and kept in a kitchen cupboard. It will remain water, and if you ever open it up you can probably still drink it, but it will have lost its essence, its life, which is to be poured out, to be moving, living water, rushing downstream to share its wealth without ever looking back.

Peter wanted to prevent Jesus from doing that. He did not want Jesus’ life to be spilled, to be wasted. He wanted to save it, to preserve it, to find a safer, more comfortable way for Jesus to be Lord. What he forgot, apparently, was that Jesus’ supply of life was never-ending, that what poured out of him poured out of an underground source so fine, so strong, that the more of himself he gave, the more he had—a veritable geyser of living water sent to drench a dry, dry world.

Peter missed that part of what Jesus said. Listen again to what Matthew says: “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priest and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And on the third day be raised. Peter missed that part and usually, so do we. We get stuck on the suffering and death part. We get that far and say, God forbid it Lord!. This shall never happen to you!” without finishing the sentence, without noticing that after the suffering and death part there is life again, abundant life, life for Jesus and for all of us that can never be cut off.

We just never get that far if we let suffering and death throw us off track. If we let our fear of those things keep us from sticking our neck out, from taking the risks that make life worth living. You can try to save your own life. You can try to stockpile it, being very, very careful about you say yes to; being very, very cautious about whom you let in your life; frisking everyone at the door and letting only the most harmless people inside and being very, very wary about going outside yourself, venturing forth only under very heavy guard and ready to retreat at the first sign of trouble.

We can live that way, but don’t expect to enjoy it very much, or to accomplish very much. This is not about being a daredevil or doing dangerous things for the thrill of it. It’s about living a life that matters—a life for Christ’s sake—and about refusing to put our own comfort and safety ahead of living a life like that, a life that pours itself out of others as a matter of course, a life that spends without counting the cost, knowing that there is always more life where our own life comes from, and that even when our own lives run out God will have more life in store for us, because our God is a God who never runs out of life.

To be where God is—to follow Jesus—means going beyond the limits of our own comfort and safety. It means receiving our lives as gifts instead of guarding them as our own possessions. It means sharing the life we have been given instead of bottling it up for our own consumption. It means giving up the notion that we can build dams to contain the bright streams of our lives and letting them go instead, letting them swell their banks and spill their wealth until they carry us down to where they run, full and growing fuller, into the wide and glittering sea.

Amen.

(Sermon based heavily on one by Barbara Brown Taylor from The Seeds of Heaven)

Peter Is the Rock

By The Very Rev. Sherry Crompton
(Delivered at The Church of the Good Samaritan, Paoli, PA)
August 24, 2008

Read: Matthew 16:13-20

“Who do you say that I am?” is still the question that Jesus asks us today. “Who do you say that I am?”

Can you see, can you imagine with me, the looks on the disciples faces when Jesus asks this question of them. I can imagine faces looking down or away or anywhere but at Jesus’ face, feet shuffling, kicking a pile of dirt. What is the right answer?

What is your answer today? Often, we want Jesus to be just like us, to fit the mold that we have decided is good and correct for Jesus, for God. Most of us have a problem with who Christ really is, with the way Christ chooses to do things. Tom Long recalls a prayer by 6-year old Norma: Dear God, did you mean for giraffes to look that way, or was that an accident? Long observes that this prayer already expresses a rudimentary quarrel with God: Norma would not have made giraffes the way God made them--and neither would we. God's thoughts are not our thoughts, and God's ways are not our ways. If it was up to us, Christ would be exactly the way we wanted him to be.

In her commentary on Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, Linda Bamber reminds us that, for good or for bad, we tend to look for ourselves in a story as a way of understanding the story, as a way of empathizing with the characters. She opens her comments this way:

When adults show children how to read a map, they say, “Here is your street (or state or nation),” and the habit of finding ourselves on the map persists when we are grown up. When travelers return with pictures of Cairo or Barcelona, they say, “That’s the hotel we stayed in, there,” as if it explained the picture. If a work of fiction is a map of its own world, the first question we ask of it is, “Where am I in here?” or “Who is like me?” This question is unsophisticated but important, because it shapes our most basic responses. Only when we have answered it do we know who to love and hate and what to hope for[1].

As I read her words, I realize that we respond in the same way with scripture. We try to “locate ourselves” in the story, including our text for today.

- Am I one of the Disciples who are put on the spot by Jesus?
- Am I one of the people the Disciples know or know about, whose answer they bring to Jesus?
- Am I a bystander who overhears this conversation, but is unaffected by it?

There are many people who seem to want to be the bystander. They want to be a part of what is called the “water cooler” conversations. Too many people want to join in the gossip about the Disciples – and maybe even about Jesus – rather than be directly affected by the story.

Those of us who claim a relationship with Jesus Christ, however, those of us who want to be included in the church Jesus builds, have no choice but to locate ourselves squarely in the place where the Disciples find themselves. We cannot read this in any other way. We read this story as if Jesus is asking the questions of us.

So what are our neighbors saying about Jesus and what do we think? (If we don’t have an answer to the first question, we need to spend more time with our neighbors and if we don’t have an answer to the second question, we need to spend more time with Jesus.)

Peter breaks the uncomfortable silence with the statement, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus pronounces Peter blessed, the rock upon which the church will be built and the inheritor of the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

But, you know, Peter’s answer isn’t really Peter’s answer. Jesus says that ‘flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven’. And I wonder about the living God part of his statement. Peter doesn’t just say that Jesus is the Son of God, he says he is the son of the living God. A vital, active, moving, LIVING presence. Living implies a relationship…it is on Peter’s relationship with Jesus that the church is built, not on any virtue of Peter’s—or yours, or mine.

My friend Barbara states: “Peter may not exhibit the flawless character, the intellectual profundity, the spiritual depth I would prefer in the founder of my church, but I will tell you this: I am really glad to hear that he is the one in charge of heaven’s gates. Someone like him may understand someone like me—someone who finds answers hard to come by, who finds it easier and safer to repeat other people’s answers—because I have not thought about my own, or because my own do not sound good enough, or because I do not trust God to help me with them. Peter may understand someone who goes ahead and says things and then regrets them, or makes brave promises, like, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you” (Matt 26:35) and then loses heart, saying not once but three times, “I do not know the man” (Matt 26:74).

If Peter is the rock upon which the church is built, then there is hope for all of us, because he is one of us, because he remains God’s chosen rock whether he his acting like a cornerstone or a stumbling block, and because he shows us that blessedness is less about perfectness than about willingness—that what counts is to risk our own answers, to go ahead and try, to get up one more time than we fall.

What joins us together as one is our proclamation that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God. It is our relationship with Jesus that we hold in common. It is this relationship that is the foundation for Trinity, Coatesville’s relationship with Good Samaritan. We may speak of different understandings of what Jesus looks like, but we know deep in our hearts that my Jesus, our Jesus and your Jesus is the Son of the Living God. The Living God. A God of relationship, of fluidity, of movement, of creativity, of being beyond our comprehension. The God of our salvation. As Paul says to us in Romans, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Another friend, Barbara Crafton shares: “The brain is flesh and blood. A brain on its own is soft and seemingly formless: it needs the cranium to hold its shape. But it's a lot tougher than it looks: although there was a time, not that long ago, when everybody thought that the patient would surely die if the brain were even touched, today doctors do all sorts of drastic things to brains, right up to and including cutting them in half, and usually the brains come out of it just fine.

The human brain is so unprepossessing in its appearance that it was a long time until doctors understood that it had anything to do with thinking. For centuries, that faculty was located elsewhere -- the stomach, the heart. Even the liver for a while. But now, we can image the process of thinking -- we can actually see the brain do it.

And so we see that thinking is a very physical thing. Physical, and electrical, too: thought is energy. Thought happens in the world of history. We do thought, just like we do other things: we walk, we eat, we scratch an itch, and we think. And yet, and yet -- we know and sense that thought isn't just like these other activities. Thought authors things. Thought creates a possibility, and sometimes that possibility comes to be. So thought authors history, as well as living in it.

Peter blurts out his confession: his friend Jesus is really the Messiah! Other ideas about Jesus have surfaced already -- maybe he is Elijah, or John the Baptist, or maybe Jeremiah. These opinions are based on evidence, at least as far as their authors are concerned: to them, at least, they make some sense. But these ideas do not come to be. This is the one that works its way from spirit through the flesh and blood an unlikely miracle of thought into a spoken word that lands dead center on the truth.

The things we know are more numerous than they used to be. They're growing in number all the time; we get smarter and smarter. For each of us, though, thought authors something that needs our flesh and blood in order to come to be. It must somehow be applied. Someone must watch and receive the gift that thought authors, whatever it might be.

May we all, as children of the living God, receive the gift of God’s abundant mercy and grace to live, to truly find life and proclaim with all of our being that Jesus is the Son of the Living God. Amen.

Jesus Breaks Down Boundaries

By The Very Rev. Sherry Crompton
August 17, 2008

Read: Matthew 15:10-28

Today, I want to talk about boundaries. That’s where Jesus found himself that day, on the boundary.

Jesus was weary. He had been involved in a flurry of activity in recent days. He just wanted to rest, and people kept coming to him. A crowd came, seeking healing, when he was alone in the wilderness. Jesus healed them, and he fed them miraculously. His disciples were threatened in a late night storm at sea, and he had to come to their rescue. Each time, he had only wanted to be alone to pray. Jesus was weary.

And then, the Pharisees get in the act. When they hear a rumor that Jesus and his disciples didn’t follow their interpretation of God’s law—about washing their hands before eating bread—they started a debate with Jesus. He made his point that God is more concerned about compassion than about being ritually clean. He is more concerned about how we are in relationship with others, than he is concerned about the letter of the law. He made his point, but he made some enemies, too.

And Jesus was weary. So, seeking renewal, Jesus goes off into a remote area, to be alone, to pray and reflect on his mission.

Jesus goes toward the boundary. He heads off to the edge of Palestine, to the area of Tyre and Sidon, in the north, along the Mediterranean Sea. And there, at the boundary, an outsider—a Canaanite woman—confronts him. She has a problem: she has a daughter possessed by a demon, and she’s heard about the compassion and healing power of Jesus, and she shouts at him, pleading for help, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Now, in Jesus’ eyes, this woman has another problem. He knows about the wideness of God’s mercy. He knows that the compassion of God has no boundaries. He has embodied that compassion already, when he healed a Roman soldier’s servant. Jesus knows about the compassion of God and the wideness of God’s mercy, but he also knows his own mission. And that mission is to gather “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.

The woman doesn’t fit the bill. She’s a Canaanite—one of the ancient enemies of Israel. And she’s a woman. And she has a daughter with a frightening illness. Time is short, his work is urgent, and Jesus just doesn’t have time for this outsider. He brushes her off, but she persists.

Here is an outsider, someone on the boundary, who sees Jesus for who he really is, the Son of God. The chosen ones of Israel can’t seem to figure out that Jesus is the Son of God, but here, on the boundary, a woman knows this. Someone on the outside.

And, finally, because of her great faith, Jesus grants her request. At the boundary, Jesus gives a hint that the mission to the lost ones of Israel will be expanded to the ends of the earth.

Jesus is moved by the woman’s great faith.

Last week, we read a story about the disciples, threatened at sea, storm-tossed in their little boat. Jesus came walking on water to rescue them. Peter tried walking on the water, too, started to sink, and had to be rescued by Jesus. Do you remember what Jesus accused Peter of after he had rescued him? “Little faith.” Peter had “little faith”.

Now that’s interesting, isn’t it! One of Jesus’ closest followers—and insider—often waffled and wavered in his faith. And, in contrast, at the boundary, Jesus encounters a Gentile woman—an outsider—with great faith.

What makes her faith great?

The woman is persistent. When she knows who she’s dealing with, and knows the power and compassion of Jesus, she doesn’t let up until she receives mercy for her daughter. She is willing to risk humiliation because she knows Jesus can help her.

And, though she is an outsider, the woman is willing to acknowledge the power of Jesus. “Lord,” she calls him, and “Son of David”. She knows he is powerful in Israel, and she knows his power over all people and all things. She knows that Jesus can do what she asks, even though she’s on the outside looking in.

It’s a difficult place to be—at the boundary. But it’s a good place to be, too. Why? Because there are some people of great faith there.
And—oh, yes!—Jesus is there, too!

In our Book of Common Prayer there is a prayer called the prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

So we see, those on the inside as well as those on the outside, are all loved unconditionally by God. It’s often in the boundaries, in those blurred edges, or parts of our life, that Jesus’ presence becomes most clear. Step over the lines you have drawn for yourself? Where are your boundaries? What separates us?

One theologian once wrote that every church should have a picture or statue of the Canaanite woman to remind the disciples of Jesus that God reaches out beyond our limitations of love and acceptance, that those we would reject are those God accepts too.

When Jesus paid attention to the Canaanite woman, he broke down all the boundaries that separate us from one another and from the love of God.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Peter Walks On Water

By The Very Rev. Sherry Crompton
August 10, 2008

Read: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 and Matthew 14:22-23

The attention grabber in our gospel story today is Jesus saying yes to Peter’s bid to walk on the water with him. You have to love Peter. Then Peter steps out of the boat and onto the water. Now, remember, there's a storm going on. The wind is still whipping. The lightning is still flashing. The sea is still churning. And here's Peter stepping out of the boat. The rest of the disciples must have thought that he had completely lost his mind. But in that moment, Peter becomes a model for courage.

The rest of the disciples are still back in the boat, filled with fear. They certainly don't like where they are. It isn't a very safe place to be. But they prefer it to heading out onto the water. They are not willing to trade in the certainty of the danger that they are used to for the uncertainty of something else that may prove to be even more dangerous. But Peter steps out into the unknown because Jesus calls him to.

There is a lesson in this for us. We, also, would like to stay huddled down in our places of relative safety. We, also, are fearful of what might happen to us if we go beyond what we know, if we step out of the relatively safe little zones that we have created around ourselves. We may not exactly like where we are, but it still seems better than the alternative.

And, we call this "common sense." And, absolutely…no doubt, this story is not about taking stupid chances merely for the sake of adventure. But the story illustrates that there are times when Christ comes to us in the midst of tempests and tribulations. And there are times that Christ calls us to take what we see as risks; to step out of the boat as Peter did; to act decisively on the faith we claim to have. And when that happens, we must be ready to recognize God's presence in the storm. We must be ready to respond to the call of Christ, regardless of the risk. We must be ready to put aside our fear and live by faith.

That is what Peter does, at least for one brief shining moment. But then the fear returns. Peter looks out at wind raging around him. He looks down at the waves swelling under his feet. He probably realizes exactly what he has done and, very understandably, he became frightened. That fear then leaves him vulnerable once again to the storm. It draws him down into the water. What had seemed like the right thing to do a moment earlier suddenly seems instead like a colossally stupid thing to do. And he begins to sink.

Peter is fine until he notices the wind; then he is afraid and sinks. It is not the chaotic power of wind and wave (principalities and powers) that present the danger, but only the fear of them. Jesus' compassionate action is to catch Peter but not to eliminate the danger by stilling the wind. It seem that we cannot wait for circumstances to be ideal before we step out; it is sufficient to know that Jesus is present and in control of the chaos even if the chaos is allowed, for a time, to rage. Only after the danger is over and everyone is in the boat does the storm stop. The wind grows still. The water turns calm. The danger has passed.

In a sense, Peter has failed. He has taken the first few courageous steps, but then all of the old fears have overtaken him. What begins as an act of courage and bravery ends in terror and embarrassment. But still Jesus acts to save him.

I think a lot of us are like Peter. There are times that we muster up the courage to step out of our usual surroundings and confront our fears. We take a few steps and then panic when things don't seem to be going quite like we had hoped or planned. But the good news is that God is there to rescue us when we fail. If we have been faithful to God's call, God will see to it that we are taken care of.

That doesn't mean that we will necessarily be successful in all that we do. Peter himself couldn't complete the walk on water that he began. If we are taking risks, even if they are risks that God has called us to take, it is almost inevitable that we will fail from time to time. We are, after all, still human. But God is with us in our failures. God may be disappointed with us, just as we often disappoint ourselves. But God will still love and care for us regardless of whether we sink or swim in our efforts. As long as we learn from our mistakes, and as long as we are faithful to God's call in taking risks, then there is nothing shameful about failure.

Sometimes failure isn’t really failure after all. Remember that Peter had his eyes, his focus, on Jesus when he stepped out of the boat onto the water. He was fine until he noticed the wind. When he noticed the wind he thought about all those things that could go wrong, instead of focusing on the amazing, new, creative, different experience he was having.

There is an internet story about a farmer and his old mule. The mule has apparently outlived his usefulness, but it was too expensive to have him put down. So the farmer digs a big hole in the ground, throws the donkey in and proceeds to bury the donkey alive. From the donkey’s perspective, however, the story changes. His master digs a big hole and throws him in. He isn’t sure why, but there is no way out of this pit he’s in. Then some dirt falls on him. He shakes off the dirt and steps on up. More dirt comes down. He shakes it off and steps up.

More dirt. More shaking. More stepping. After enough dirt has been thrown into the pit to bury the donkey, the donkey is close enough to the top of the hole to step right on out of the pit.

Yes, we live with many fears. We are afraid of being victims of crime or terrorism. We are afraid of what might happen to us in the future. We are afraid of death. We are afraid of rejection. We are afraid of really being ourselves because if people really knew what we were like then they wouldn't like us.

But God knows us. God loves us. And God comes to us in the midst of our fears whatever they may be. Our responsibility is to meet God halfway—to step out of the fearful existence in which we so often live and to take risks of faith in response to God's call. And if and when we fail, we need to learn to graciously accept the loving grace and forgiveness that God offers. He returns us to the boat, where our companions grab us by the scruff of the neck and haul us aboard, where we fall grateful and exhausted onto the slippery deck. All at once the wind ceases, and the waves hush, and in the awesome silence of that night becoming day, all of us who are in this boat together worship him, saying, “Truly, you are the Son of God”. Amen.