The Rev. Richard W. Budd, Ph.D., Rector

The Church of the Good Shepherd, Richmond, VA

15th Sunday of Pentecost, 8-28-05, Proper 17, Year A 

 

Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26 or 26:1-8; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:21-27 

 

The Prophet’s Profit 

 

So why does our Gospel have to be so serious—why can’t it be fun, and light and uplifting? Isn’t this supposed to be the Good News? Wouldn’t you much rather be in a church where they can pick the good stuff and leave all this tough stuff behind? 

 

In fact, I just read a feature story in yesterday’s paper extolling the virtues of a new mega church. Began ten years ago with fewer than 100 members, this church now boasts in excess of 5,000 attendees. After conducting a public opinion poll in the community asking what people didn’t like about church, about their tastes in popular music, and their favorite discussion topics, the pastor compiled his data. Based on that information, the spiritual sell is a soft one, says the pastor. There are no crosses, no images of Jesus or any other form of religious iconography. Bibles are optional. Sunday worship features a rock band offering “relevant, contemporary, popular music.”  

 

The pastor preaches vested in t-shirt, blues jeans and sneakers, and his messages, the article continues, “are light on liturgy and heavy on what the pastor calls ‘successful principles for living’: How to discipline your children, how to reach your professional goals, how to invest your money, how to reduce your debts, and so forth. 

 

And here is the clincher. Forget about homemade brownies and lemon squares in the parish hall. The foyer of this church includes five 50-inch plasma screen TV’s, a bookstore, a café and a Starbuck’s where a trained staff makes your espresso drinks and serves Krispy Kremes at every service. (The Church’s annual budget for Krispy Kreme is $16,000.)  

 

It is not, however, a place where this morning’s Gospel will be heard or discussed. 

 

For what does it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

I know many clergy in churches that continue to be Christ-centered, but who look enviously at the apparent ability of such places to draw in large numbers and breed success. In clergy gatherings there is often discussion about “seeker services,” that are more entertaining and therefore more likely to draw in folks tired of “traditional church.”

Indeed, to get an inkling of just how seriously we "do not get it," there is an entire cottage industry dedicated to Church Growth and Success in the worldliest of terms. It would appear that a large segments of the church has accepted, hook, line, and sinker, the cultural expectation that bigger is better and comfortable affluence the unquestioned sign of divine favor.

My question in such discussions is always—draw them in for what purposes? To discuss things they can hear at professional seminars or on TV specials? If we eradicate Jesus from the setting, then what is our purpose? How are we following Christ and carrying out his mandate to us?

The concern and drift of the new seeker churches is, I believe, much akin to what Peter’s response in this morning’s Gospel—to reject what on the surface seems unpleasant, counter to popular belief and with a less than desired here-and-now outcome.

This morning’s letter from Paul and Matthew’s Gospel, both seek to open to us the mysteries of a life lived with God. Herein lies the heart of the good news. As is often the case, however, it is good news that sounds like bad news before we find a way to internalize it, live it, and experience it as truly good news. These are not simply theories, suggestions or discussion questions that are placed before us. In fact, it would be difficult to find two passages more central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ than the two before us this fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

Yet, it is hard to imagine a passage subject to more misunderstanding than Matthew 16: 21-27. And it is equally hard to imagine a passage more ardently ignored than the twelfth chapter of Romans.

Look at what happens to Peter. One moment he seems to grasp who this Jesus really is and what he is up to. But as soon as Jesus makes clear that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed, Peter just cannot accept it. And as often as we read and re-read it, one suspects that we are all feeling a lot more like Peter than we ever will admit to publicly or in the church.

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?

In a country where corporate greed and corruption has reached new and unparalleled proportions, where instant affluence is regularly gained by winning a lottery or answering game-show questions, or where wealth is gained by frivolous law suits -- undisturbed by ethical norms -- has become a daily story on page one of our newspapers, how does talk about forfeiting one's life really stack up as being more profitable than all the other available options?

Are we even capable of hearing that Jesus is talking about profitability?

And lest we think his question about what really profits life is simply rhetorical or aimed at a few rich and famous "bad players out there," how about those of us who are caught up with nearly blinding fascination with "what it would be like" to live in any of life's fast lanes without counting the cost? And cost is the operative word here.

What Jesus is saying in no uncertain terms is that there is no profit in simply acknowledging that God exists or that Jesus is Lord. There is a kind of "doing" associated with following Jesus. As Jesus must go to Jerusalem and all that going there entails for him, so there are certain things we all must do.

And must is a crucial word here, and Peter does not grasp that. In the blink of an eye, Peter goes from being a rock, the rock, and the foundation of the new community of the good news, to becoming a stumbling block, a skandalon or a scandal as the Greek text declares! Peter would like Jesus to go to Jerusalem and crush those in political, economic, and religious power. That, after all, would be the appropriate "doing" of God's anointed would it not?

But as we all know, Jesus refuses to play that game. That is, Jesus musters no army, he wields no weapons of mass or even limited destruction. He has no temporal power that derives from a limitless treasury. To the contrary, He has no place to call home. He has no place to rest his head at the end of the day. Jesus relies on God and God's people. He relies on a community of giving and sharing. He relies on others, God and others, not himself. He is not self-sufficient. And whatever he has, he is depicted as gladly giving away for the sake of others and for the sake of the good news.

"What is ours is yours," he is frequently pictured as saying. And just in case Peter and the other disciples do not get the picture, Jesus promises to return to "repay everyone for what has been done. "That is—there will be an accounting; and that accounting will not be influenced by a best-practices-style book-keeping and creative audit procedures.

So what will it be, inquires Jesus? Will you pick up your cross and follow me? Or, does the thought of gaining the whole world or at least some substantial part of it still appeal? Either you're on the bus or you're off of the bus, but the bus is leaving the station right now.

Now this sounds like pretty harsh news indeed. It makes the cost of discipleship seem even more harsh than we ordinarily think of it. This is when we can thank St. Paul in this morning’s Epistle for giving us the basis for a truly Anglican understanding of this. For it is St. Paul who sets out in the clearest prose, that by the mercy of God we have each been equipped to become cross-carrying rocks of discipleship rather than stumbling blocks for ourselves and for others.

And further, Paul says, we are not to think too highly of ourselves, or reach too far, but rather to accept and rejoice in the "measure of faith that God has assigned" to us all.

In the Catechism on page 855 of our Book of Common Prayer we acknowledge that "according to the gifts we have been given" we are to carry on Christ's work of reconciliation in the world, here and now, where we are and while we are here—to take our place in the life, worship and governance of the church.

And it is Paul who allows that we will not all do this the same way. We do not have to all march in lockstep together, but rather we are to exercise the unique gifts we have each been given in our own unique ways. Not everyone has the same gifts. Not everyone has to follow Jesus in just the same way as the next person. The best news of all being, of course, that no one is expected to do anything that God has not already equipped him or her to do.

But Jesus makes it abundantly clear that we are—each of us—expected TO DO NO LESS than what God has equipped us to do. We can assume that carrying our crosses and becoming rocks instead of stumbling blocks is entirely wrapped up in being aware of what gifts we have been given and to exercise them faithfully in a Christ-filled life of sacrifice and love. That is, our confession of Jesus as Christ as Lord must be joined with our deeds of love, justice, and loving-kindness extended to all.