The Man Who Would Not Be King

Text:, Matthew 16:21-28
Other texts: Exodus 3:1-5

Last week we heard Peter name Jesus as the Messiah. “Bless you,” Jesus said to Peter after Peter proclaimed this. Jesus told him that his insight was God-sent. Jesus names him Rocky (from Simon) and tells him that the church of Christ will be built on his stoney shoulders.

What a difference a week makes. Or in the timeline of the story, what a difference a moment makes. For when Jesus gets down to details of what being the Messiah might mean, Peter rebukes him. Jesus talks about the days ahead filled with suffering and fear-driven violence. But Peter cannot stand it. “God forbid it,” he says to Jesus, meaning “I, Peter, wish I could forbid it.” This is not what Peter hoped for for his friend and not what anyone hoped for in a Messiah.

Jesus is tempted lots throughout his short life. First, in the desert, where in some versions of the Gospel the devil offers him food, safety, and power. And at the end of his life, on the cross, where he is tempted to do something—flee, perform a miracle, who knows—to save himself, to escape his coming execution. And here with Peter, to abandon his mission, which anyone can see will lead to a bad end for him. In all these cases, the underlying temptation is the same: to live an ordinary life, in peace, with good friends and daily bread.

But that is not his job. He has come to heal the world, and no matter what you think that means, it entails struggle and grief.

But there is a second temptation for Jesus. And that is the temptation to be the warrior that many of his followers hope for. The Messiah not in the way Jesus describes it here, but the king that the crowds wish him to be. Someone who will conquer the land for Israel and defeat the oppressors and occupiers. A king like great King David, who once ruled Israel. Someone who knows how to fight and to win. Not go quietly to the cross.

In Exodus, God comes to the world to be a savior. God calls to Moses because God sees that the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are enslaved and oppressed. I have observed the misery of my people, God says. I know their suffering, and I have come to free them from slavery in Egypt. This is a story of promise, since God promises not only to free the people but to bring them to a fertile and good land, a land of milk and honey. The story for Israel promises a happy ending.

But there is a story on the other side, which is the story of the people who lived in the land before the Israelites invaded it. Given to Israel, it is taken from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Other people. It is hard to know in real life whether the story really turns out well in the end, for much of the rest of the Bible is the story of battles won and lost, people exiled and returned, cities destroyed and rebuilt. It is still today a violent and open-ended story.

The temptation to turn salvation (which means healing) and redemption into warring, and to turn God, including in the form of Jesus, into a warrior, finds its source not in the divine being but in our own hearts. We want a victory over enemies, freedom from oppressors, bountiful lands. We want to think that God is on our side and no other side. We want our salvation at whatever cost, not wondering whether God works that way at all. We wish to enlist God in our battles.

For some, this is the point of God. The emperor Constantine, who in the fourth century allowed Christians to worship freely and to gather publicly, had a change of heart—or so the story goes—when he won a battle led by banners showing the cross of Christ. For some, the light of Israel to the gentiles was not the example of a compassionate and obedient community, but the rise of a nation in an otherwise occupied land.

At the end of this story in Exodus, Moses asks for God’s name. And God gives Moses two different names. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” But then there is another name, given in an identical protocol: God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’”b This is my name forever, says God. But which name?

This second name is the name of a God of a particular people, the people of the tribe of Abraham and his descendants. But the other name, the first name, is the God of creation, creator of the universe and all that is in it.

In Christ, the savior refuses to be king, becoming instead a victim, true to his teaching, and showing us thereby a different way for the world to be. No wonder Peter says, “God forbid it.” But God backs this plan of Jesus. Jesus rejects our temptations. “Get behind me,” he says to Satan. The longing for a warrior king God is human thing, not a divine thing. We are wise not to be tempted to ask our God of creation to be a destroyer of enemies. And not to think that the destruction of enemies is the work of our own healing God.

The Way of Blessing

Text: Psalm 67

We have been reading Genesis after coffee hour. This is the fifth or sixth book of the Bible that we are reading straight through, guided only by our curiosity and the Holy Spirit. We started with Job, and have since read a mix of Old and New Testament books.

But we have come to Genesis to start at the beginning of things, thinking that not only would we get the foundation stories of our faith, we would get some of the fundamental theology, too. And so it has turned out to be.

Genesis starts with two different stories about the beginning of the world. You are probably familiar with both. The first is the creation of the world in seven days including one day of rest. Let there be light. After each day, God sees that what was there was good. And at the end, God sees that everything God had made was very good. Things are good, very good. The word means perfect, or just right, just as things should be. And that’s how the story ends. God sees all creation as very good.

The second story is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. This is a very different story from the first. It is less cosmic, more local, for one thing. And the events are different and in different order, for another. And in this story, things are not so good. The story is full of procedures and rules. And full of judgment. The first couple are disobedient. And as a result, they lose their garden, and are exiled from it. And that’s how that story ends. Not very good.

These two stories represent two ways to think about the nature of humanity and about God’s relationship with us. These two ways are in tension throughout the Bible, and in our own thoughts and conversations about how things are, how they got that way, and what the future holds.

In one way, people are intrinsically not so good. They do bad things, and the way to make the world work is to keep them in check. I’m going to call this the way of troubles. There is a lot of this in both the Old and New Testaments.

In the other way, people are intrinsically good. They do bad things because they are fearful or cowardly—things get in the way of being good. The way to make the world better is to help them overcome their fears. I’m going to call this the way of blessing. And there is a lot of this in both Testaments, too.

How you think about people affects how you think about God. Is God mostly someone who keeps us all on the straight and narrow through rules and punishments? Or is God mostly someone who helps us to do the right thing by freeing us from our timidity? I do want to point out that in both views, God acts out of love for us and does not abandon us. Someone once called these two ways of God’s acting as God’s saving activity and God’s blessing activity.

The psalm today, Psalm 67, is all about God’s blessing activity. It does not equivocate. It is about God’s blessings, God’s goodness. It starts out first asking for God’s blessing. Then in the middle it gives thanks for God’s blessings so far. And finally at the end it asks that God’s blessing please continue on in the future.

The psalm is strikingly satisfactory. It feels good to read and hear this psalm. It has an atmosphere of rest and confidence. Something that reformer John Calvin called repose. There is a sense here of being so completely blessed by God that we are as we are meant to be, complete in ourselves and married to God our creator.

It seems that there are no enemies here. That is not quite true, but the enemies are off stage, so to speak. In the wings. It is not that the psalm is naive about the ways of the world. It does not deny sorrow and oppression and violence. They have and no doubt will again have their time, but that time is not now.

This psalm is a little treatise on blessing. It tells us four things about the way of blessing.

First, we agree that there are some good things in the world. Perhaps you think this should go without saying, but no one sees good things all the time and some people never do. In times of deep despair and loss, it is hard to see any good. “The earth yields its increase,” says the psalm, but sometimes it feels, or it is, that earth is barren and there is no harvest. To see blessings is to first see good.

Second, we acknowledge that God is the source of all good things. “God, our God, has blessed us,” says the psalm. A blessing is not just something good, it is a gift from God. If you think that the person responsible for the good in your life is you, then good for you, but it is not a blessing. Blessings reveal God, or perhaps blessings are a way for God to reveal God’s self. Blessings are pure grace, unearned, undeserved and often unexpected.

Third, that God blesses us makes a difference to other people. Our mission as a worshipping community is to be a light to others so that they also might see and know God as we do. Others see the blessings we have received, the psalm says, and are glad and sing for joy. “May God bless us,” it says, “so that your way may be known upon earth.” Blessings reveal the nature of a gracious God.

And fourth, blessings move us to be grateful. “Let the people praise you” is the psalm’s refrain. Gratitude for our blessings is not a requirement but a response. It is a benefit. Gratitude itself is a blessing. It is better to wake up feeling grateful rather than sour. Better to go to bed feeling grateful rather than disappointed. God’s blessing gives us a target for our gratitude. As in the psalm, in the same breath we ask for and are thankful for God’s blessings.

We’ve been talking about blessings as if they were things. But they are not things. They are embodied in things: a good harvest, as in the psalm; good friends, music, prosperity, lively energy, contentment. But to see those things as gifts from God, to see them as blessings, to be thankful for them, is more like a lens through which we see the world. Or a framework that organizes our thoughts about the world and what happens to us in it. To see things as blessings is to see in a particular way. When we hear the psalm, it appeals to us because we can admire the writer of it for the clarity and enthusiasm through which he or she views the world.

At one point, in our long-distant past, when the people of God were trying to decide whether to be people of God after all, Moses stood before them and asked them to choose between two ways of being: I put before you blessings and curses, Moses said. The psalm describes a way of living that is available to us, has been offered to us. A way of seeing. A way of blessing.

May God bless us. Our God has blessed us. May God continue to bless us.

Little Steps for Little Feet

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

There are three versions of this story in the Bible, the other two are in John and Mark. But what makes this one special is that most of the action is centered around Peter, who does not even appear in the others. Peter, a man who in all the Gospels is a stand-in for us as we try to figure out how to live a life of faith.

Many people see this passage as a story of a man who starts out in faith but ends up in doubt. They see the faith that Jesus commends Peter for enabling him to step out of the boat into the troubled sea. The implication is that with just a little faith in Jesus we can, with his help, do miraculous things. That may be so, but that is not how this particular story goes.

The disciples are alone on a troubled sea at night. Water, even though the source of livelihood for the people in the area, can be deadly. Just as it is for modern day fishers and other workers on the sea. The waves are tormenting the boat. Surely the disciples must be tired, and it is likely they are frightened, too. That’s even before they see an apparition—not a ghost like a long-dead soul, but a shadowy and ominous presence. And it is walking on the sea, which is pretty weird. But hooray! It is Jesus. “It’s me” he says. Don’t be afraid. It is hard to tell whether that worked for most of the disciples, who we imagine to be cowering in the back of the boat.

But Peter is being Peter, a man who is without fear, because he is so clueless. Not much fazes Peter. Does he first look back on his huddled colleagues? But then he turns to the ghost who claims to be Jesus and says, “if you are Jesus, ask me, Peter, to walk over to you on the water.” What a strange request. Any other test would have been safer. Some authentication password or security questions. “Tell me your mother’s birthday.” Or “Who is Martha’s sister?” Or just ask him to come a little closer. But Peter asks Jesus to ask Peter to step onto the sea. So Jesus does. “Come,” says Jesus. Come Peter, here to me. Come walk to me as I am walking to you.

Peter is in a pickle. He has painted himself into a corner. Do the other disciples tease him now? Nice going, Peter. You are in deep trouble now. Good luck with that walking on water thing.

There is a moment of faith in this story. But this is not quite that moment. Peter steps from the boat. This moment is perhaps a moment of regret at his foolishness. His big mouth getting him into trouble as usual. Or a moment of bravado. He steps from the boat. Thinking, I’m convinced, that he is about to take a cold bath.

But he does not. Imagine Peter, looking down at his feet, standing on top of the swirling waves below him. It is a shocker. This is the moment of faith. When Peter does not sink. When he realizes that he will not sink, when he knows that Jesus is in control of the dreaded sea, that this person ahead of him is Jesus.

Peter walks up to Jesus—how many steps did it take? how long did it take? Long enough for the moment to fade, as faith sometimes does. Fear overcomes Peter, the enormity of what he has done, the violence of the world around him, even with Jesus by his side. He begins to sink, cries out to Jesus, and takes his saving hand.

Ah, Peter, says Jesus. You of little faith, our Bible puts it. But there is no condemnation here. The word Jesus uses could mean that Peter has a little quantity of faith. Or it could mean that he had a short moment of faith, which seems to me to be more true to the circumstances. Jesus is not berating Peter for having too little of some magic substance. It is just as likely that he is praising Peter for having enough faith, even if it only lasted for a minute or two. Good for you, Peter, I hear Jesus saying. Even though you were scared, you did it. Here now, take my hand and we’ll go back to the boat together.

Faith is not so much something you have. But something that happens to you, or that is a part of you, or that colors the way the world looks to you. It is not a thing as much as a way of understanding things. Not a substance, but an action on the part of God.

Faith sometimes comes to us—that is, happens to us—in a powerful blasting moment. An instant transformation that makes our lives different forever. In this moment we lose an old way of being and come upon a new way. So such moments are scary and exhilarating, for they mean a loss of the familiar and the discovery of the unforeseen.

And sometimes faith happens to us in secret. Hidden from us. And one day, we find, like Peter, that we have been acting in faith, trusting in God, and listening to hear God’s voice as we plan our futures and understand our present.

But more often, faith grows in us, like affection or love for another. It is like trust, which as you know is another meaning of the same word. It takes a long time to develop, and the path is often a rocky one, as it is in any ongoing relationship. There are good times and tough times. It develops, rather than progresses. It is less like a wedding and more like a marriage.

When Jesus calls Peter, he does not call Peter to be faithful. He does not ask Peter to feel some way, or even to believe some thing. This is not a call to conviction or devotion, but a call to obedience. He asks that Peter obey him. To do something. It does not matter whether Peter believes Jesus or not, only that he does what Jesus asks him to do.

God calls us, even when we do not know that it is God calling, and we respond even when we do not know to what we are responding. For some reason, we take that step off the boat. The water supports us as it never did before. We are surprised. Maybe later, like Peter, we become confused (Jesus says to Peter: why did you become of two minds). Life becomes more ordinary. We sail on, as the disciples, Peter, and Jesus did.

This is not the end of the story for Peter, but one episode in an ongoing saga, with high and low points yet to come.

A life of faith is full of small steps. Actions—occasionally big, usually little—that sometimes lead to unexpected results. Doing what Peter does—that is: Listening to what Jesus says. Taking him seriously. Trying to respond. Seeing what happens when we do.