Sermon for Trinity 12 by Canon Malcolm Grant
Mt.16:21 : From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering ...
Did those words strike you, as I began the Gospel-reading this morning? Probably not - because we don’t listen very attentively these days, I’m afraid. But they are really telling us something important. It may not have struck you, but in the Gospel-readings on these “long green Sundays after Trinity” we are actually listening to a serial, just like the ones on the TV or the radio. The Gospels are the story of Jesus’s life and ministry as it happened on this earth almost two thousand years ago, a story with drama and intrigue, a story with sudden twists and turns. And we don’t get the full significance of what is happening, if we don’t watch out for the clues the writer, the Evangelist, is giving us.
Think back over the Sunday mornings of this month at what we have heard. First we had the story of Jesus teaching on the shore of Lake Galilee, ending up with Him feeding the vast crowd that had gathered, more than five thousand people (Matt 14:13-21). Then we moved on to that strange story of Jesus walking on the lake, and Peter trying to follow His example and suddenly beginning to sink (Matt 14:22-33). Then Jesus withdrew into the far north of the Holy Land, into foreign, Gentile, territory, far away from Jerusalem, where the Jewish leaders are plotting to do away with Him. There He is accosted by a Canaanite woman begging Him to do something to help her desperately ill daughter (Matt 15:21-28). Then, last Sunday, we heard of Jesus coming back into Jewish territory, but only just, and asking the disciples what people were saying about Him, the time when Peter blurted out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:13-20). And do you remember where we left the story last Sunday? “Then Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah”. And the first thing we are told in today’s Gospel-reading is,
From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He
must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering ...
What on earth is going on?
The Feeding of the Five Thousand was the highpoint of Jesus’s popular success. The crowds had been flocking to hear Him, and to see the miracles He performed; the disciples thought they were on to a winner. Contrast that with what we heard this morning:
‘Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem
and undergo great suffering’.
The disciples were utterly confused, and probably disappointed. Jesus seemed to be throwing everything away. But just before the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Matthew records the story of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist (Matt 14;1-12), and tells us that in consequence Jesus “withdrew to a deserted place by Himself” (Matt 14:13). John had been a crowd-puller - and look what had happened to him. Then the crowds found out where Jesus was, and He taught them and healed their sick - and fed them from the meagre resources He had available, five loaves and two fish. Then - do you remember? - Jesus sent the disciples away (Matt 14:22,23) - and rejoined them in the middle of the night (14:25), walking across the lake to where their boat was in difficulty. In his version of the parallel incidents S. John gives us a clue that makes sense of what is happening (John 6:15):
When Jesus realized that they (the crowd) were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again...by Himself.
There’s the reason for this sudden change in strategy. The ordinary people wanted a Messiah who would lead an army to throw the hated Romans out of the Holy Land - they wanted a revolution - and Jesus knew instinctively that this was not God’s plan. Such a course could only lead to a bloodbath, and the frustration of His true mission; hence why He withdrew into Gentile territory, away from the Jewish leaders, away from King Herod, and away from the excitable crowds. He needed time to think, to reconsider His mission, to plan a new approach. And that’s what is being presented to us in today’s Gospel-reading. Now it is clear to Jesus that the way of popular acclaim will lead inexorably to disaster for His true mission, and the alternative path will lead, almost certainly, to His own death.
So the whole atmosphere of the Gospel-story changes. This becomes clear if you read one of the first three Gospels in just the same way as you would read an ordinary book, rather than just in isolated incidents. That’s how to catch the real drama of the full story as it unfolds. This is the moment when Jesus’s Messiahship becomes overt - but only as a secret among the select band of His disciples. S. Luke actually portrays the rest of the public ministry as Jesus’s journey with the disciples to Jerusalem and to the Cross (Luke 9:51-18:35). But if Jesus is going to His death, His overriding task is to try to get His disciples to understand the significance of what will happen, to recognize it as the fulfilment of God’s loving purpose, rather than the unmitigated disaster it seems superficially to be.
That’s where we are this morning. And Peter’s reaction makes it clear what an uphill struggle Jesus is facing. We know nothing about His own personal struggle to come to terms with this realization of the destiny that awaited Him, but no human being could face the prospect of being crucified without immense dread. But this time out of the public eye must have been a Gethsemane-like process of accepting the aweful truth of what lay ahead - and now He must try to share it with His closest followers - everything is going to depend on them. God’s whole plan for the salvation of humankind hung on the twin threads of His own fortitude and faithfulness in treading the road to Jerusalem, and on the teaching of the disciples on whom the task would fall after His inevitable death.
Think about that - not just in the coming week, but often and deeply - for only as we enter into the true reality of Jesus’s call and the challenge to His twelve disciples and those closest to them, that we discover the amazing truth of who Jesus is and what He has done for us, the wonder of God’s redeeming love for all of us, for each one of us; only then can we go on to explore what this can tell us about our own discipleship, about the call, the challenge of Jesus, ‘take up your cross and follow me’.
From this point on, the Gospel-story is the prelude to the account of Jesus’s passion and death. He has to lay aside all personal hopes and goals, to focus completely on His new-won vision of what God is calling Him to do. Jesus has to deny Himself, just as He calls His followers to do (Matt 16:24). Self-interest would lead Him to renounce the challenge, to look for an easier option - and God’s plan of salvation would lie shattered on the dusty roadside. He cannot cling to His own life: He has to lay it down. That is the only way He can be true to His calling.
We can’t escape the importance of Jesus’s periods of withdrawal, of isolation, of prayer and communion with His Father, that mark these critical moments in the Gospel-story, for that is the source of the strength that enabled Him to go through with this terrible vocation: the heart of Jesus’s life was His relationship with the One He knew as His Father, and taught us to recognize as our Father also. The life of Christian discipleship is essentially a personal relationship with God through Jesus. When Jesus went to the cross, the disciples still didn’t really understand what He had been telling them. But what they had was their sense of His friendship and love, that relationship with Him who somehow made their lives seem better, that love which seemed to make things new, which brought them a sense of strength and healing in all sorts of strange circumstances. Never forget that the heart of Christianity is a personal relationship, a friendship between Jesus and ourselves. That is the crux of what He began to teach the disciples on the dusty road to Jerusalem. To become a Christian, one of His disciples, we don’t sign up to a set of ideas, nor to a body of moral teaching: we are attracted by a Person, by who He is and His vision for our future, and we sense the love He has for us as unique people. That’s what provides the motivation, the nurture, and the strength for us to face whatever difficulties and sufferings may lie ahead for us, which is what discipleship is all about. That personal relationship with Jesus holds within it all that we need to stay with Him and to stand up for Him, and so help to build the Kingdom He inaugurated when He denied Himself and took up His cross for us and for the whole human family.
Mt.16:21 : From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering ...
Did those words strike you, as I began the Gospel-reading this morning? Probably not - because we don’t listen very attentively these days, I’m afraid. But they are really telling us something important. It may not have struck you, but in the Gospel-readings on these “long green Sundays after Trinity” we are actually listening to a serial, just like the ones on the TV or the radio. The Gospels are the story of Jesus’s life and ministry as it happened on this earth almost two thousand years ago, a story with drama and intrigue, a story with sudden twists and turns. And we don’t get the full significance of what is happening, if we don’t watch out for the clues the writer, the Evangelist, is giving us.
Think back over the Sunday mornings of this month at what we have heard. First we had the story of Jesus teaching on the shore of Lake Galilee, ending up with Him feeding the vast crowd that had gathered, more than five thousand people (Matt 14:13-21). Then we moved on to that strange story of Jesus walking on the lake, and Peter trying to follow His example and suddenly beginning to sink (Matt 14:22-33). Then Jesus withdrew into the far north of the Holy Land, into foreign, Gentile, territory, far away from Jerusalem, where the Jewish leaders are plotting to do away with Him. There He is accosted by a Canaanite woman begging Him to do something to help her desperately ill daughter (Matt 15:21-28). Then, last Sunday, we heard of Jesus coming back into Jewish territory, but only just, and asking the disciples what people were saying about Him, the time when Peter blurted out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:13-20). And do you remember where we left the story last Sunday? “Then Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah”. And the first thing we are told in today’s Gospel-reading is,
From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He
must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering ...
What on earth is going on?
The Feeding of the Five Thousand was the highpoint of Jesus’s popular success. The crowds had been flocking to hear Him, and to see the miracles He performed; the disciples thought they were on to a winner. Contrast that with what we heard this morning:
‘Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem
and undergo great suffering’.
The disciples were utterly confused, and probably disappointed. Jesus seemed to be throwing everything away. But just before the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Matthew records the story of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist (Matt 14;1-12), and tells us that in consequence Jesus “withdrew to a deserted place by Himself” (Matt 14:13). John had been a crowd-puller - and look what had happened to him. Then the crowds found out where Jesus was, and He taught them and healed their sick - and fed them from the meagre resources He had available, five loaves and two fish. Then - do you remember? - Jesus sent the disciples away (Matt 14:22,23) - and rejoined them in the middle of the night (14:25), walking across the lake to where their boat was in difficulty. In his version of the parallel incidents S. John gives us a clue that makes sense of what is happening (John 6:15):
When Jesus realized that they (the crowd) were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again...by Himself.
There’s the reason for this sudden change in strategy. The ordinary people wanted a Messiah who would lead an army to throw the hated Romans out of the Holy Land - they wanted a revolution - and Jesus knew instinctively that this was not God’s plan. Such a course could only lead to a bloodbath, and the frustration of His true mission; hence why He withdrew into Gentile territory, away from the Jewish leaders, away from King Herod, and away from the excitable crowds. He needed time to think, to reconsider His mission, to plan a new approach. And that’s what is being presented to us in today’s Gospel-reading. Now it is clear to Jesus that the way of popular acclaim will lead inexorably to disaster for His true mission, and the alternative path will lead, almost certainly, to His own death.
So the whole atmosphere of the Gospel-story changes. This becomes clear if you read one of the first three Gospels in just the same way as you would read an ordinary book, rather than just in isolated incidents. That’s how to catch the real drama of the full story as it unfolds. This is the moment when Jesus’s Messiahship becomes overt - but only as a secret among the select band of His disciples. S. Luke actually portrays the rest of the public ministry as Jesus’s journey with the disciples to Jerusalem and to the Cross (Luke 9:51-18:35). But if Jesus is going to His death, His overriding task is to try to get His disciples to understand the significance of what will happen, to recognize it as the fulfilment of God’s loving purpose, rather than the unmitigated disaster it seems superficially to be.
That’s where we are this morning. And Peter’s reaction makes it clear what an uphill struggle Jesus is facing. We know nothing about His own personal struggle to come to terms with this realization of the destiny that awaited Him, but no human being could face the prospect of being crucified without immense dread. But this time out of the public eye must have been a Gethsemane-like process of accepting the aweful truth of what lay ahead - and now He must try to share it with His closest followers - everything is going to depend on them. God’s whole plan for the salvation of humankind hung on the twin threads of His own fortitude and faithfulness in treading the road to Jerusalem, and on the teaching of the disciples on whom the task would fall after His inevitable death.
Think about that - not just in the coming week, but often and deeply - for only as we enter into the true reality of Jesus’s call and the challenge to His twelve disciples and those closest to them, that we discover the amazing truth of who Jesus is and what He has done for us, the wonder of God’s redeeming love for all of us, for each one of us; only then can we go on to explore what this can tell us about our own discipleship, about the call, the challenge of Jesus, ‘take up your cross and follow me’.
From this point on, the Gospel-story is the prelude to the account of Jesus’s passion and death. He has to lay aside all personal hopes and goals, to focus completely on His new-won vision of what God is calling Him to do. Jesus has to deny Himself, just as He calls His followers to do (Matt 16:24). Self-interest would lead Him to renounce the challenge, to look for an easier option - and God’s plan of salvation would lie shattered on the dusty roadside. He cannot cling to His own life: He has to lay it down. That is the only way He can be true to His calling.
We can’t escape the importance of Jesus’s periods of withdrawal, of isolation, of prayer and communion with His Father, that mark these critical moments in the Gospel-story, for that is the source of the strength that enabled Him to go through with this terrible vocation: the heart of Jesus’s life was His relationship with the One He knew as His Father, and taught us to recognize as our Father also. The life of Christian discipleship is essentially a personal relationship with God through Jesus. When Jesus went to the cross, the disciples still didn’t really understand what He had been telling them. But what they had was their sense of His friendship and love, that relationship with Him who somehow made their lives seem better, that love which seemed to make things new, which brought them a sense of strength and healing in all sorts of strange circumstances. Never forget that the heart of Christianity is a personal relationship, a friendship between Jesus and ourselves. That is the crux of what He began to teach the disciples on the dusty road to Jerusalem. To become a Christian, one of His disciples, we don’t sign up to a set of ideas, nor to a body of moral teaching: we are attracted by a Person, by who He is and His vision for our future, and we sense the love He has for us as unique people. That’s what provides the motivation, the nurture, and the strength for us to face whatever difficulties and sufferings may lie ahead for us, which is what discipleship is all about. That personal relationship with Jesus holds within it all that we need to stay with Him and to stand up for Him, and so help to build the Kingdom He inaugurated when He denied Himself and took up His cross for us and for the whole human family.