Sermon 16th October 2011
Today, Ben Hughes preaches based on the reading from Matthew 16 verses 13-28.
I could begin this sermon with a joke about Peter and the Pearly Gates … so not to disappoint here goes:
After a long illness, a woman died and arrived at the Gates of Heaven. While she was waiting for Saint Peter to greet her, she peeked through the Gates.
What she saw was a beautiful banquet table. Sitting around were her parents and all the other people she had loved and who had died before her.
They saw her looking and began calling greetings to her, “Hello! How are you! We've been waiting for you! It’s great to see you!”
Then Saint Peter came back and the woman said to him, “This is such a wonderful place! How do I get in?”
“You have to spell a word”, Saint Peter told her.
“Which word?” the woman asked.
“Love.”
The woman correctly spelled LOVE and Saint Peter welcomed her into Heaven.
About three years later, Saint Peter came to the woman and asked her to watch the Gates of Heaven for him that day. While the woman was guarding the Gates of Heaven, her husband arrived.
“I'm surprised to see you,” the woman said. “How have you been?”
“Oh, I've been doing pretty well since you died,” her husband told her. “I married the beautiful young nurse who took care of you while you were ill. And then I won the lottery. I sold the little house you and I lived in and bought a big mansion. And my wife and I travelled all around the world. We were on vacation and I went water skiing today. I fell, the ski hit my head, and here I am. How do I get in?”
“You have to spell a word”, the woman told him.
“Which word?” her husband asked.
“Czechoslovakia.”
We all have a bit of a laugh about St Peter. He appears to be the fool of the twelve disciples, the one who is hearty and fun but always walking into things and a bit of a clown. However if I was to ask who are the most influential people in history St Peter would probably be in the top three.
Aside from all the legends, it is very probable that Peter along with Stephen began the very first Church of Christians. You can read about it all in the book of Acts. St Peter’s account of his time with Jesus is probably Mark’s gospel. And depending on your view point - the first gospel written. Scholars say that Mark was a scribe
taking down Peter’s account during the siege of Jerusalem in AD60.
You see St Peter; the original fool for Christ…you could say is the founder of the Western Christian Church and in that Western Christian thought. The existence of this Church that we are all sitting in this morning and the Church on the Herne Hill is partly because of St Peter.
But that is a basic background to the man. We can think a little more about this passage and what it might mean for us today. Well in good learning style we can take three points from this passage:
· When we think we are ‘it’ and have made it with God, we probably haven’t and are in danger of mortal error. In other words, to be conceited and proud makes us vulnerable to evil.
· That we will be called to account for our stewardship in this world.
· That it is through Christ and Christ alone that we find salvation. By faith not by works.
This passage is also frightening and demanding as Jesus lays it down as it is: if anyone is to be a follower of mine he must leave self behind …It makes me very afraid for my eternal soul. So my first and most logical reaction to reading is fear. Because I am afraid that I won’t make it!!
But is fear so bad? On its own yes…but as a believer no…
I was recently watching the Importance of being Ernest. In the famous Lady Bracknell speech to the unfortunate Mr Worthing she asks: “Worthing! Do you know everything or do you know nothing?”
Worthing replies: “I know nothing”.
She says, “Good, I am glad you answered that correctly”.
Well what am I going to do about the fear for my mortal soul?
Well firstly, like Worthing… it is good to admit that we know very little…and I don’t mean being ignorant, unquestioning or blind to the facts. But I mean being realistic about who we are in front of God.
God decrees that the wisdom begins with the fear of God. That means not quaking or shaking in our shoes but understanding that it is in and through and by and because of God that we exist and that our providence fortune and ultimately eternal life is entirely down to Him and Him alone.
Nothing we do is worthy of God…As the Prophet Isaiah reminds us in Chapter 64 v6…Even our most amazing deeds are like filthy rags in front of God.
In this passage it is the same, Jesus takes the vulnerable and mistake-prone St Peter, acknowledges that it is from God that Peter’s wise response comes and then ordains him with one of the most responsible jobs in the Universe: the gatekeeper of heaven and the rock of the church.
You see friends…In the upside down values of the Kingdom of heaven we can be certain that it is in our weaknesses that we are made perfect in Him. Not in any perfection, nor in our own strength. That was the error of the Pharisees.
When we are conceited and full of ourselves then we become vulnerable and open to temptation and evil. Perhaps then the Lord’s Prayer might read….and lead us not into conceit so to deliver us from evil. When we think we are really great then better watch out because you know what’s coming.
Poor Peter, then. Right up there amongst the stars, Jesus’ chosen doorkeeper, then in minutes completely trashed. Jesus effectively says: Satan is working through you, you are a stumbling block to me… Verse 23
Yes it might appear that Jesus is being changeable and tyrannical. Like keeping people on the hop… But it is not that, because there is a spiritual dimension to this story….that is the proclamation of contested truths. Peter is part of that story.
These words that Jesus draws from Peter are words that shake the foundations of creation…words that will stand forever in time. It is very significant for us too as the human race. Peter is the voice of us all when he answers Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God…” Peter responds… Jesus says “Thank you very much; let’s now get on with it”.
If the Messiah was forced upon us by God then he wouldn’t be a messiah… the Messiah should be recognised and invited by a man first in order to be viable. “Who do you say I am?” Jesus asks… “You are the Messiah the Son of the Living God”…Peter replies…. and at that point a new level of activity begins. It is like Job in his innocent suffering, pleading with God for an advocate in the court of heaven. God says, “Alright then, righteous Job, I will send my Son” …It s like “Alright then Peter…yes I am the Messiah…took you long enough didn’t it?
The reaction from the spirits of the air….fury. Poor Peter again…straight in there they go…
And Peter shifts from the being God-centred to becoming ego-centred. Mistakenly thinking that it is something in him that has bought this favour and at that point he opens the door to temptation from Satan. “You think as men not as God thinks”…Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan”. Poor Peter, getting it wrong again…how does God treat his friends indeed?
Very hard…difficult stuff.
But it is alright because of the promise - He that is in us is greater than he that it is the world.
As my old Vicar used to say, “The devil prowls around like a roaring lion but his teeth have been drawn by the cross of Christ”.
We will be tempted and will sometimes fall but as Christians God gives us the resources to underpin us. We are on the winning side. The error is that we make ‘me’ the centre and not God the centre.
May I paraphrase a useful maxim from St Augustine?
“The maxim of the world is ‘Love self first, love others as a form or self and believe in God as an insurance against disaster’. The maxim of true faith is ‘Love God with all your heart, from that love the love for neighbour outpours …then you will find self’”.
So what can we learn from that? Well always temper success with humility and grace. Honour and be thankful to God with all we do and say as the Ten Commandments tell us. Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, be alert to evil, temptation and most importantly remember….despite Jesus’ extremely harsh words to Peter, He did not reject Peter in the end. Peter was still and is his friend.
Unlike, of course, the world view that usually punishes, rejects and condemns. Thus Jesus constantly restores Peter. Jesus is committed to Peter throughout Peter’s earthly life and beyond. Jesus makes friends for eternal life. That is quite a commitment.
We call this eternal hope and it is ours to claim today and forever. And the covenant of that promise of hope is what we are about to share together…the body and blood of Christ. This is my body broken for you…this is my blood shed for you. That is His body not ours…his blood not ours. Nonsense to the unbeliever but life to those who share the love of Christ as his followers.
So do not be too proud about yourselves and achievements. Forgive and allow to be forgiven. Be wise and smart. Alert to temptation and evil, remember that it is God that delivers us from the forces of evil. Remember we know very little if not nothing of the battles over our lives. And live in hope and the love of Jesus Christ.
I want to finish on the last remaining verses of this challenging and difficult passage by talking about heaven and hell (a sermon in itself perhaps). Jesus talks about heaven and those things that we need to do to get into heaven!
My rather cynical lecturer at Goldsmiths College used to write Christianity off as a form of behaviourism. If you’re good you go to Heaven and bad, Hell. It is a simple controlling and manipulating people’s behaviour. You can train a dog by reward and punishment. If you are bad no walkies…if you’re good here is a biscuit or whatever. School can be like that as well, reward and punishment. I’m a teacher and I know that it works to a point…it can get results…but does it make real friends in the end.
But to understand Heaven and Hell in those terms is to misunderstand God’s judgement. Accountability is what Jesus is saying in this passage. And it is positive accountability. Jesus says that God, in the company of his angels, like a jury perhaps… will give to each person due reward for what they have done. It is Jesus echoing the promise of God of Psalm 62… God’s steadfast and committed love towards those that are righteous.
That means all those unseen things that have pleased God that you have done in your life will not go unnoticed in the end.
Another way of putting it….unlike the world of sensationalist journalism where we tend only to read and hear bad news and never the more boring news of all those good deeds going on in our communities …the young teenager who does the shopping for his elderly neighbour, the schoolgirl who gets up, gets ready and takes all her younger siblings to school because her single mum is sick …the garage mechanic who wavers the fee of the father who has just been made redundant…the shopkeeper who gives free bread to the homeless living on his doorstep (these are example things have gone on in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction this week).
But those deeds of sacrifice and love that might go unnoticed by the world do not go unnoticed by God. And that is a good thing and we need to tell people that God never misses a trick.
That promise runs throughout the Bible. There is a lovely image in Revelation describing Christ adorned like a bride in the robe of righteousness. Like fancy lace and tiny small stitches of embroidery of all of the smallest and greatest things ever done. It also says in Revelation that every tear will be wiped from the eye, all suffering made sense of….and so on…the details really matter to God.
Yes we have learnt from the passage although Jesus can be frightening and harsh…and we could use that as a stick to bash people with…wicked sinner you are going to burn in Hell and so on….but what is the point in that… fear is pointless unless it is balanced by the love of God…anyway who are we to judge, we are explicitly told not to judge others by Jesus himself
And yes there are people out there in the world who chose to do evil …they chose to do very wicked things… but they will have to answer to God for those things that they have done. And I trust that God will deal with them fairly and righteously.
Using this St Peter at the Pearly Gates joke, I have been asking my friends what word you should have to spell to get into heaven. Some have said love…tolerance…forgiveness…one said, “Nothing, because I don’t believe in heaven”.
I was talking about with another friend of mine who is a minister and he said “I know it’s kind of cheesy and a bit kind of smug…but there is one word that we need to spell that gets us into eternal life as promised by God and that is ‘J.E.S.U.S’.”
It is a claim that Jesus makes about himself so profoundly in John’s Gospel…. “I am the way the truth and the life, nobody goes to the Father except through me”…. “I have come so that you might have eternal life”, the Alpha the Omega, the beginning and end one with the Father…That was the claim that put Jesus on the cross for. Saying what he really is. That is what we are signing up to when we chose to follow him…
And that is the real paradox of heaven…in the end it is not about what you do or who you are (but those things do matter of course)…… it is who you know in the end and does He know you….And if your name’s not on the list you’re not coming in. The Lamb’s Book of Life….and if he doesn’t know you, who’s going to represent you in front of God and all his angels?
It’s Pascal’s divine wager…if you’re wrong about the claims of Jesus then you’re wrong for eternity… if it is all bunkum then you’re right for a life…can anyone afford to take that risk?
And if it is just about what we do - then the thief crucified next to Jesus Christ would not have found salvation between the ‘saddle and ground’ ….the truth is that it is through and by faith that we respond to the call of Christ and in that call, we are drawn to repentance and we say that we are sorry out of an newly awoken love for God and it is in that we inherit eternal life through Jesus and Jesus alone as a default promise of him dying for our sins on the cross.
When we receive and commune later in the service….think sincerely about what you are participating in…what you are doing as you take the bread and wine on your lips is that you are mouthing the words…I am sorry, forgive me help me be better…or more simply put: Lord I am not worthy to receive you but say the word and I shall be healed.
So friends…be a peace with God, with one another and share the love of Christ and just in case check your spelling of Czechoslovakia.
posted by Sharren Taylor at 5:42 pm
0 comments
