The Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields is an Episcopal parish in the Diocese of Pennsylvania that is centered on the worship of God, the ministry of all baptized persons, and the call to be agents of Christ’s love in the world.

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The Rev. W. Jarrett Kerbel

The Scandal of the Cross, Sermon August 28, 2011

Matthew 16:21-28
PROPER 17, Year A, August 28, 2011
The Rev. Dr. Phillip C. Bennett, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Philadelphia

In last week’s gospel and today’s Matthew presents a striking word play: a kind of spiritual pun.
In last week’s reading Jesus asked the disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” It is Peter, as outspoken and enthusiastic as always who exclaims: “You are the Christ.” Jesus says: “You are Peter, the rock and on you I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Jesus is making a pun on the word “Petra” which meant both a man’s name and the word for “rock”. This week, Matthew immediately follows the naming Peter as a rock with naming him another kind of rock—a stumbling stone. Jesus tells the disciples he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die and then be raised. Peter, again the outspoken and impetuous one blurts out: “This is shall never happen to you!.”  Jesus replies ,”Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things!”

Peter is the rock, the foundation, but now he becomes the stumbling block. The Greek used here for “stumbling block” is skandalon from which we get our word “scandal.” Peter cannot understand or accept the scandal of the cross: that Jesus would voluntarily choose to accept false accusation and death.  Peter cannot understand why Jesus would choose the cross, for that is exactly what he did. Jesus could have avoided the cross by not challenging the authorities, by not speaking out so outrageously, by not mingling with those considered impure, by not violating ritual laws of purity, by not claiming to be the Son of God, the Messiah.

Jesus calls Peter “Satan” These are harsh words and they must have shocked and hurt Peter who was so devoted and sincere. But Jesus recognizes the temptation to avoid the way of the cross—a temptation he has struggled with since the devil first drove him into the wilderness after his baptism Surely he had times when he wished he could avoid the cross and take the easy way out. Even at the Garden of Gethsemane he cries out “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me, but nevertheless, your will not mine be done.

The word “cross” is often misused. How often have we heard someone say—-maybe we have said it ourselves—-this situation or this person is “my cross” to bear. It may be a great irritation,  a great suffering, or a tremendous tragedy, but it is not the same as the cross to which Jesus goes. He voluntarily embraces the cross and so shows a love which refuses to bow to the forces of evil. Certain strains of Christian tradition have misunderstood the cross not as Jesus free choice but as a suffering inflicted on him by external forces. To be exact, that external force is God. God inflicts his wrath for human sin on Jesus so that we will not bear the full impact of God’s devastating anger and retribution. God substitute his son as a stand-in for us which is why this theology of the cross is called “Substitutional Atonement.” God has killed his own child, we owe God our complete gratitude and obedience. If we still do not repent, God no longer uses his Son as a target, for his wrath. We are now sentenced by God’s wrath to eternal punishment. This is a very horrible God, an abusive and violent father who kills his own child; a God I do not believe is worthy of being called God.

But God does not inflict the cross on Jesus. Jesus chooses the cross. He refuses to take the easy way out, he refuses to stop speaking the truth. He refuses to stop walking in the way of love and forgiveness instead of the way of self-centeredness and hatred. We see this in Martin, Luther King, Jr. whose monument was recently dedicated in Washington. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that King is shown hewn out of a massive block of stone: a firm foundation for freedom but also a stumbling block , a scandal to many.

The passage from Matthew ends with Jesus exhorting us to join him on the way of the cross, to voluntarily take the way of vulnerability of non-violent witness to truth. Not to grasp at false power, false safety, false identity. To lose ourselves does not mean that we are to have no self, or to think poorly of ourselves. As someone said, :”You can’t give God hot goods! You first have to have a self before you can give it a way!”

Maybe our lives are always inevitably spent in this tension between being a rock on which God builds God’s kingdom as well as a stumbling block to that kingdom. Maybe that is natural, inevitable and nothing to be ashamed of. If Jesus sometimes sought to flee the cross why wouldn’t we? But there is another part of Jesus message, one that was easy more mysterious—one that Peter could not have possibly comprehended. He knew what suffering and death was. He knew what grave danger Jesus was putting himself in by going to Jerusalem where he enemies awaiting him, ready to falsely accuse and sentence him. But the last part of the promise, “and on the third day be raised again” was a part of the cross Peter could never understand until Easter and even then he could barely take it in. Maybe that was an even greater scandal, a stumbling block. That God somehow drained evil, absorbed the worst we could inflict into the mystery of God’s love and forgiveness.  How firm a foundation that is! That is the rock of God’s love, the rock of the cross and no matter how much we may stumble and slip, we will ultimately fall into the arms of God’s unremitting love.