Jeremiah 15.15–21;
Psalm 26.1–8; Romans 12.9–end; Matthew 16.21–end
That’ll put some people off, whereas others may feel somewhat
consoled by it.
To turn to the Scriptures when we are suffering can often be
a comfort. There’s a sense, even if it’s a vague sense, that we are in good
company because those who have gone before us in the faith have also struggled
and experienced their fair share of pain. In fact many of them experienced
rather more than their fair share of pain.
Take the prophet Jeremiah in our first reading as an example.
He is being persecuted by his fellow countrymen because he won’t stop
delivering the Word of God to them. They are in a very compromised and corrupt
moral state, worshipping idols and committing all sorts of injustices, and Jeremiah won’t stop pointing
it out. They want him to tell them that everything’s going to be OK. They’re
asking for ‘sweet little lies’ (remember the song?) and he won’t lie to them.
Jeremiah is clearly struggling. He says to God, Why is my
pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? And he goes on
to reproach God suggesting that God has in some way deceived him: Truly, you
are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.
I love his honesty, and his courage to speak his mind and
enter into a real dialogue with God. God is never intimidated by our doubts,
our anger and our honest objections. He sees our hearts: our pain and our fear
and our confusion, and he never holds those against us.
What’s more we can often harbour a mistaken impression that
living faithfully as a Christian is the guarantee of a problem-free, happy
life. In some quarters thinking like that is called the ‘Prosperity Gospel’,
and that’s a very transactional, self-centred take on what it is to be a
Christian.
The problem with that kind of Christianity is that as soon as
difficulties come our way (and they will) we can, like Jeremiah, feel that God
has deceived us. When suffering comes our way (and it will) our reflex response
is to assume that it shouldn’t be happening and we might, if we are honest, say
something like: “This wasn’t part of the deal God! I have believed in you and
followed you; I have said my prayers and attended Church; I’ve been good and
I’ve given to charity. This is not what I signed up for!”
That kind of thinking cannot be blamed on a person. I think
we have all been there at some point or other. Life can be really difficult and
very painful, and we are pretty frail, frightened creatures at times, so it’s
perfectly natural to think that way when we are in distress.
Our Gospel reading is really interesting on this. The
disciples have been with Jesus for a while and they’ve been having the ride of
their lives. It must have been so exciting to accompany a man who worked
miracles at will and made fools of the religious leaders they despised.
Hanging in the air was a dream that this was the promised
King of Israel who would overthrow the Roman oppressors and inaugurate a
glorious new Kingdom out of Jerusalem, so those disciples must have harboured
fantasies about what that would be like: “If Jesus is crowned King and I have
been by his side all along what sort of position will I have in the new
Kingdom? I wonder what sort of palace I’ll live in and how many servants I’ll
have? I wonder if people will look up to me and bow down to me?”
At some level there are times we’ve all fantasised about
scenarios like that haven’t we? Especially when we feel small and
insignificant, so we shouldn’t judge those disciples for indulging in their
fantasies of success and glory, when we are probably guilty of the same
longings.
It took a lot of educating for Jesus to disabuse them of
their fantasies of greatness. In one episode recorded in 3 of the Gospels the
disciples are arguing among themselves about which one of them is the greatest!
How embarrassed they must have been when Jesus confronts them and sets them
straight: Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant (Matthew
20:26).
On another occasion the disciples James and John came to
Jesus and said: Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left
in your glory (Mark 10:37). There’s that lust for greatness in all its
splendour!
Well Jesus’ response to James and John is telling because he
asks them whether they are able to drink the cup he drinks and whether they are
able to be baptised with the baptism he will undergo, and by both those images
he is referring to his suffering.
Those disciples had a major thing to learn. In fact it’s
probably better to say that they had a major thing to unlearn: leadership is
not in the service of our egos. To be a leader is not to indulge in
self-aggrandisement.
To be a leader is to be a servant of sorts and to be a leader
is to be prepared to suffer for one’s vocation and for those we love: Greater
love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends
(John 15:13).
Peter learns it the hard way today. This is the turning point
in Jesus’ ministry because he is beginning to focus on the suffering he knows
will be coming to him, and he is beginning to speak to his disciples about it: From
that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem
and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised (Matthew 16:21).
Peter doesn’t like that idea does he? He’s got big plans for
Jesus’ glory, and his own, and suffering isn’t a part of his plan because a verse
later it says, Peter took him aside
and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen
to you.’
And Jesus is brutal in his response: ‘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.’
There’s a profound insight here for all of us. I don’t think
that Jesus was saying that Peter was literally the devil but I do think he was
saying that the lust for power and glory is satanic.
In the famous poem Paradise Lost by John Milton Satan says
this: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n. Well Jesus might
answer something like this to that line: ‘To serve is to reign in the Kingdom
of Heaven’.
There’s an irony in all this of course because Peter and
James and John have ended up being among the most famous and celebrated people
who ever lived.
They got their glory, and it’s precisely because of their
service and their suffering that they have become celebrities (2 of the 3 were
martyred and John died in exile on Patmos).
One final point. Today’s lesson from our readings is, at its
heart, a lesson on maturity.
You can tell a mature Christian from an immature one when you
see their attitude to suffering. St Paul calls the immature Christian a
‘milk-drinker’. That’s someone who always needs comforting; always needs
reassurance; always needs things to be going his or her way to believe that God
actually loves them. This is God as a sugar-daddy of sorts. The God who will
spoil and indulge us.
The mature Christian he calls a ‘meat-eater’. This is someone
who understands that God’s love for us doesn’t mean that we will always be
comforted, fed and spoiled. It’s someone who knows that suffering doesn’t imply
that God doesn’t love us; someone who has grown up a bit and understands that we
will be called to put ourselves on the back-burner and serve, and sometimes
even suffer for what we love and believe in.
Our attitude to service and suffering is the great proving
ground. It’s the litmus test, if you like, that shows up what kind of Christian
we are.
Now I don’t think this should surprise anyone. Most of us
know that genuine love involves a willingness to suffer for those we love. We
also know that genuine love means sticking it out no matter the circumstances.
Our marriage vows declare that we will take each other for
better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and
to cherish, till death us do part.
Isn’t that saying exactly the same thing with one significant
change? We could rephrase it: ‘I will commit to my faith and to my relationship
with Jesus from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do unite’.
Let us pray.
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