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S. Pentecost 14.26 Matt. 16:21-28

‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up the cross and follow me.’

Jesus says to this to his disciples right after asking them, ‘who do you say that I am?’ and Simon says: ‘you are the Christ, the Son of the living God’. And Jesus immediately hangs another nickname on Simon, πετρος ‘Rocky’ (literally what the Greek says!) a nickname that pairs well with the one he’d gotten a bit earlier after walking on the water, faltering and sinking like Jonah beneath the waves, Kephas, ‘Stone’ as in ‘sinks like a…’ 😉

Cool nicknames, especially because they are both a bit sardonic and deprecating. They’re totally cool if you don’t know the context in which they’re given. ‘Rocky’ sounds like a Philadelphia boxer, undersized, but undeterred from chasing the title. ‘Stone’ sounds like the bass player in Pearl Jam—nicknames we’d all love to have, right?

Today, Simon gets another nickname. Jesus commanded them at the end of our Gospel last week to ‘tell no one that he is the Christ’. And today we see why. Because they don’t yet really get what it means for Jesus to be the Christ. And they don’t yet get that the Son of the Living God, is not any less GOD than the Father is God, but is one with the Father and by himself is LORD, Yahweh, God as the Father and the Spirit by themselves are fully LORD—yet not three LORDS but One LORD as the Athanasian Creed confesses…

Because; immediately after Peter’s confession, Jesus teaches them in the opening lines of today’s Gospel that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day, be raised…

Peter, newly emboldened (as if he needed any bolstering of his great but sometimes excessive self-confidence—glad I don’t know anyone like that! 😉 takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him saying: “far be it from you, LORD. No, not shall this happen to you!” (as the Greek literally says, sounding cooler and more Yoda-like than the standard translations—a Greek ‘no, not’ is emphatically saying “THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG! 😉

And Jesus interrupts “Peter”, cuts him off in the middle of what was going to be a lengthy speech saying, “Get behind me, SATAN! You are a scandal to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men!”

So, Simon Bar-Jonah gets his 3rd nickname in like a couple weeks: Satan. And there is nothing ambiguous or cool-sounding about that one! Well; Luther did name his dog (that he loved very much) Teufel, “Devil” in German. For a German Shepherd guard dog, I guess you want a mean-sounding, ‘devil-may-care’ name so no one messes with him or you? But no one names their dog Satan or likes that as a nickname. Satan is totally uncool. Literally in Hebrew (it’s a Hebrew word) it means Adversary—a foe to everyone, a traitor to his Master. And no one wants to be traitor to their Master… 🙁

Though with Simon Bar-Jonah, aka Rocky, aka Stone, ‘Satan’, as in Adversary, traitor to his Master, turns out to be prophetic doesn’t it?—with that sad business in Caiaphas’ courtyard with the (apparently very intimidating? 😉 servant girl, thrice denying Jesus as his Master? A new high in lows, right there…!

Jesus’ next words, spoken not just to Simon Bar-Jonah but to all the disciples: “if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me…” has a certain cool, tough-sounding, ‘devil-may-care’ kinda vibe. Are you ‘rough enough, tough enough, in love enough to never be anyone’s beast of burden?’, but to emulate Jesus as a Master? Are you hard enough and rough enough to take up the cross and throw yourself head-first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name—to die horribly on a cross if that’s the initiation rite required to get into the God Club? To prove yourself a son of God, too?

It can sound that way taken out of context. It can sound like Jesus is a daredevil adventurer himself, looking for the few, the proud, the Masters of the Universe who would happily die rather than be a ‘beggar after all’ ? I confess it sounded like that to me in my high school and early college days, and was the chief appeal of Christianity for me then, until wiser teachers knocked that shtuff out of my head (mostly 😉

Jesus goes on to spell it out plainly: “whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he will reward each according to his way…” (the Greek πραξις BTW is not ‘works’, but literally a WAY as the early Christians called the Faith…

Sin is unbelief. It’s thinking our efforts can achieve salvation—that we can makes ourselves gods by our smarts, self-sacrifice and daring-do. Simon shows this sin when he bosses Jesus around and tells him dying on a cross is senseless and impossible for him!

FAITH (not virtue or good works!) is the opposite of sin—IT’s a life or death matter! Becoming faith-full means we stop ‘running the verbs’, stop being Masters emulating Jesus’ works, but become beggars taking the scraps that fall from his Table, like good dogs—like the Canineite-woman from a few episodes ago!

Such unbelief—the confidence that our daring-do and devil-may-care stunts will make us gods like Jesus absolutely no-doubt must DIE! before we can truly live forever the life of the Triune God as sons and daughters of the King!

This is why Simon Peter is a template of the Faith. He had the worst case of unbelief—Satan himself! And it’s only by dying with Jesus on the cross, by being Baptized into the Name, fed with his broken body and blood, becoming one body with the crucified God, that Simon rises (like a Stone 😉 to be the beggar who receives the crown from the King, adopted as a son!

Self-confidence, ‘running the verbs’ yourself will kill you! Only Christ-confidence, dying with Jesus by his word going in your ears, his baptism drowning the devil out of you, becoming one body with Jesus by his body and blood going in your mouth, only this kills the sin in us, and makes the life of Jesus rise within us by faith alone…

This is the Way; the only way to follow Jesus.

IT’s contrary to all human ideas of greatness and power! But the love that made God die for us on the cross is stronger than death, the Greatest Power in the universe. And, paradoxically, only by becoming beggars, lost lambs in the Shepherd’s fold, do we become god-like ikons of Jesus, conquerors of sin, death, and hell, as Peace, surpassing understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.