Sermon Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Aug 28th

Sermon

Text: Matthew 16:21-28

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who saves us and takes away our stumbling blocks.

I feel bad for Peter. I think he has a good case of big head itus. Last week, in the 4 verses of last weeks text which leads directly into this text he answers Jesus' question of “Who do you say that I am?” with a wonderfully profound answer of, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus praises him for it, calls him the Rock upon with he will build his church.

I had once in Seminary where I answered a question in such a way that I managed to get two professors to be stunned by silence. You get this feeling of ahhh... I am the best ever! No one is better than me.

And what's the next thing you do when you get that feeling? You get so wrapped up in what you said or did that you get lost in yourself.

Here Peter's stretching, full of himself, and while he's doing that Jesus moves on from calling Peter the rock. Jesus shifts. A big shift. He begins to show them that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and be killed and on the third day be raised. And Peter, thinking he knows all, confronts Jesus. And Jesus puts him down, puts him behind. Peter, the rock, becomes a stumbling block.

This world is full of stumbling blocks. Paul mentions a few in his letter to the Romans. “Bless those that persecute you, do not curse them. Never avenge yourselves. Overcome evil with good.” Those are some hard things to do. They seem to be stumbling blocks.

Jeremiah wails about the fact that God's words are so wonderful, but they lead to pain, and they weigh upon him. Stumbling blocks.

What are our stumbling blocks?

A friend of mine on Facebook answered by saying, “We get so concerned about ourselves that we forget to look out and take care of others - Our lives could be so much more enriched if we let ourselves focus outwardly instead of always inwardly!”

Take a moment to think of your stumbling blocks.

One of mine is Anxiety. I get it from my Mom. Things can well upon me. Just item upon item, thing upon thing. It gets overwhelming.

In our text Jesus continues. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

It almost seems as if Jesus is just putting thing upon thing. Jesus, You're going to die, and now I have to lose my life? I like my life. I really don't want to lose it. How do we lose it anyways?

And that's the difficulty. A huge stumbling block is the question of how.

We can't lose it by ourselves. Theologian Paul Tillich in a sermon talks about the concept of being accepted, being taken by God.

“You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”

We lose our lives by giving them over to God. The only way to overcome our stumbling blocks is to realize that we cannot overcome them, and give them over to God. Through that we are freed of them. Christ is the one who frees us from our inhibitions, our anxieties, our fears and trepidations. Christ is the one who did not save himself upon the cross, and so saved us all.

Only when we realize we cannot save ourselves, that Christ has saved us. Only then can we focus outwardly.

A friend of mine told me this story. “There was a wealthy woman in Ireland during the potato famine who wound up giving up everything she owned because she vowed at the beginning of the famine not to allow any of her servants to die from hunger. When the famine ended she did not have anything of monetary wealth left but not a single one of the people under her had died due to starvation which is a true miracle given how many people died in other places around the country due to starvation. She is remembered as a great woman because of that- so in essence she lost the life of comfort to do what was right and saved many lives in the process. Her story wound up catching the attention of a wealthy man after the famine was over and they fell in love and she wound up marrying that man and living happily ever after- at least that is how the tour guide told it so in a way she gained a new life too.

This last Tuesday Bishop David Zellmer came down to visit with us. I want to thank everyone who came. We talked about many important things. But, we ended on what I thought was the most important. He talked of the Horn of Africa. The point of the continent that sticks out towards India, south of the Arabian peninsula. The region there has been through civil war for a great part of the last decade and over the last number of years has undergone massive drought and now famine. Most of the men have left, following their cattle who have migrated away from the area, and left are women and children, who now with no food are migrating themselves south towards Kenya. When they finally reach Kenya they are placed in refugee camps. Thousands reach the camps each day, and some of the first people to meet them are from ELCA World Hunger. Because of what we give, they are fed for the first time in a long while, and are given water they so desperately need.

Through giving of ourselves, as little as giving up one meal out a month, we can help these in greatest need.

Some times the works of Christ wear upon us, the anxieties of all that must be done overwhelm, and we weep for those who die. But, the lives we change shine greatly. The crosses we bear into weary places lift other crosses. Our giving of ourselves leads to others new lives. The giving of Christ's life leads to new life for all.

Let us pray,

Lord, we turn over to you our stumbling blocks. We turn over to you our lives. Lead us to your paths, and bring us to those in need. Help us to bear your cross to the places that need it.

Amen.