Matthew 16:21-28
August 30, 2020
Failure of imagination.
It
was the early days of NASA’s space program. The mission was Apollo 1, and
astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were in the test module
working through simulations. The air inside the module was pure oxygen and
there was a spark. I understand little about science, but I understand enough
to know that one small spark in an atmosphere of oxygen can result in fire. It
did. Until the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle, one of the most devastating
tragedies of the space program was the horrific fire that claimed the lives of
Grissom, White, and Chaffee.
Failure
of imagination.
When
astronaut Frank Borman testified in front of congress after this deadly fire,
he told the congressmen who were questioning him that no one working for NASA
had considered something so awful happening while the astronauts were on the
ground. They had considered plenty of disasters that could happen in
space. They had spent countless hours planning and preparing for any number
of calamitous events in space. They had looked to the heavens and tried
to imagine everything that might possibly go wrong up there. But on the
ground? They had not considered that something this awful, this disastrous
would happen while the astronauts were on the ground. It was a failure of
imagination, Borman said. And that it was.
The phrase “failure of imagination”
has been used after other catastrophic events. It was spoken after the
terrorist attacks of September 11th. It was expressed after the
bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was voiced after the sinking of the Titanic. It
would seem that the aftermath of a tragic event makes it clear how imaginations
failed. It is hindsight employed after a catastrophe that reveals the multitude
of forewarnings and red flags that were present to suggest that the catastrophe
could very well occur. But before the catastrophe? There was a failure of
imagination.
Perhaps it is a failure of
imagination on Peter’s part that makes him so upset with Jesus’ words about
suffering, dying and resurrection that he pulls his rabbi, his teacher aside,
and rebukes him for saying any of it.
From building rock to stumbling
block, Peter traverses at lightning speed the distance between being praised
for his confession of Jesus’ true identity as Messiah to being rebuked by Jesus
as the embodiment of Satan when he failed to get what Jesus was telling him
about the true meaning of Messiah.
Jesus is not just hinting at what
may happen, possibly, if he continues on his current trajectory. Jesus is not
speaking in riddles. Jesus is not giving the disciples clues to a word puzzle
they must decipher. No, Jesus tells them plainly, from that time on that he
must go to Jerusalem. Once in Jerusalem, he must undergo great suffering at the
hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and that suffering will lead
to him being killed, and on the third day after he is killed, he will be raised.
Say what?!
Peter cannot believe what he is
hearing! He has just told Jesus that he is the Messiah, the Son of the Living
God, and Jesus told him that he was correct. Jesus told him that God worked
through Peter to reveal that truth. Jesus told him that he will be the rock on
which his church will be built. But now Jesus is saying terrible things about
going to Jerusalem and suffering and dying and something about rising again,
which makes no sense, because dead is dead.
It does not take a great deal of
imagination to picture what Peter was thinking as Jesus said these words. I
suspect that he heard a roaring sound in his ears, and waves of denial, then
anger rushed over him. What Jesus is telling us cannot be true. What Jesus is
telling us will not be true!
No! No, Jesus! No, no, no, no, no!
Stop saying these things. Stop
saying these words. You are the Messiah. I just said it. I just confessed it.
You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Did I say living God? Living
not dying, not dead. The Messiah is not supposed to suffer. The Messiah is
supposed to make our enemies suffer. The Messiah is not supposed to die. The
Messiah is supposed to put our enemies, the ones who have oppressed us for so
long to the sword. No, Jesus, no!
“God forbid it, Lord! This must
never happen to you.”
But Jesus is not messing around, He
is not playing games. He is not trying to make them guess what will happen
next. He is trying to make them understand, to see, to imagine the full truth
of what it means to really be the Messiah.
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a
stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but
on human things.”
From building rock to stumbling
block. The Greek word for stumbling block is skandalon. It is a deadly
snare, a moral trap. Can you hear the word in English that we get from this?
Scandal. What Peter said was scandalous. Jesus rebukes Peter just as Peter
rebuked him, and he calls him a skandalon. In his failure of imagination, Peter
is not only something that will trip up others, he will serve as a deadly snare
that will misdirect others to his wrong way of thinking. Peter can only see the
human things. He cannot see the divine things. And in this instance, the divine
things are what we as humans most dread: suffering and death.
But this was not the end of Jesus’
rebuke. Listen, he told the disciples,
“If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who
want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake
will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but
forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”
This is finally where the rubber
hits the road. This is finally where the disciples must come to grips with the
fact that if they truly want to follow Jesus, if they truly want to learn from
him and walk in his steps and witness to his message of the kingdom of God,
then their fates are inextricably bound with his own. He will go to the cross
and sacrifice his life for the children of God, and they are going to have to
deny themselves and pick up their own crosses and do the same. You want to save
your life, Jesus tells them, then you’ll end up losing it. But if you are
willing to lose your life, you will end up having more life than you could have
ever dreamed of. You could turn away from me now and gain the whole world, but
in the end you will forfeit your everything. Can you imagine it? Can you
imagine that these are the divine things I am speaking of?
Peter,
the building rock, was focusing only on human things. He could not grasp that
the Messiah had finally come, only to be told that the Messiah would ultimately
die. He could not imagine that life would come from death, that resurrection
would come from a cross. He could not imagine that in denying himself and
picking up his cross, he would gain everything. In that moment, I suspect
Peter, and the other disciples as well, experienced a failure of imagination.
Jesus
was telling the disciples what the divine things were, what they looked like,
what they meant, but the disciples could not imagine it. My question is, can
we?
I
admit that I get Peter this morning. I don’t want to hear words about death or
denial or suffering. I don’t want to be reminded that in order to truly follow
Jesus, I have to pick up my own cross and bear its weight. I just don’t. I want
to hear about happy things and words that are filled with sweetness and light.
But in wanting all of this, I also know that I am experiencing a failure of
imagination.
This
dramatic scene between Jesus and Peter and the other disciples is not the first
time that Jesus has shown his true self. Jesus has been showing them his true
nature all along. They have seen it in his healing of so many people, in his
teaching and preaching, in his willingness to sit at table with people no
respectable rabbi would ever dine with. They have seen it in his willingness to
speak truth to power, and to buck the letter of the Law so that the spirit of
the Law could be fulfilled. They have seen Jesus walk on water and still
storms. These were not parlor tricks. These were not done just to get their
attention. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And because Jesus
is the Messiah, that means that everything he has said and everything he has
done, and everything he will say and do, is about revealing what the divine
things truly are. He has been stretching the disciples’ imagination all along.
The kingdom is already here, in your midst, he’s told them. Can you imagine it?
The
kingdom of God is not based on human values of success, it is based on love,
God’s love. Love that is a verb not a noun. Love that does the hard work of
truly loving others, even the ones who are the most other of all others
possible. God’s kingdom is based on compassion and mindfulness and making sure
that everyone is fed, and everyone has enough. God’s kingdom is where the meek
and the poor and the mourning are blessed and loved and comforted.
Can
you imagine it?
The
kingdom of God is where both justice and mercy reign. It is where
righteousness, not self-righteousness lives. The kingdom of God is not where
the oppressors finally make room at the table for the oppressed, but where a
whole new table is created for everyone. The kingdom of God is where the
abundance of God and God’s love and grace and mercy is finally understood and
realized.
Can
you imagine it? Can we imagine it?
Jesus’
words are good news. Because they call us to imagine what the world might
actually look like if we did what he said we must do: deny ourselves and pick
up our crosses. Jesus calls us to imagine beyond the suffering and death,
beyond our belief that the kingdom is only found on another plane of existence,
and to see it right here and right now. Can we finally imagine these divine
things? Can we imagine?
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.” Amen.
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