Rector, Casey Shobe Sermon by: The Rev. R. Casey Shobe
Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration | Dallas, Texas
February 25, 2018
Second Sunday in Lent

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Texts:

Sweet, earnest, clueless Peter. John the Baptizer is my favorite New Testament figure, but I think I’m most like Peter. He wants to walk on water with Jesus but can’t help being afraid. He is in awe at divine glory of Jesus at the Transfiguration, and yet he can’t help but interrupt the scene with blabber about making tents. He swears his loyalty to the peaceful, enemy-loving Jesus, but then grabs a sword and tries to fight off apparent enemies at the first sign of danger. Yes, I love Peter, and I can definitely see myself in him.

In today’s gospel reading we hear, perhaps, the most cringe-worthy story about Peter. Jesus is telling the disciples about what is to come: how he will suffer, be rejected and killed, and then rise again. To which Peter responds with shock and disbelief. “Jesus, you can’t talk this way. Don’t you know that you’re depressing the disciples! Cut it out with all this suffering and dying nonsense!”

Which results, of course, with Peter getting rebuked himself. “Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus says to a man he had renamed “the rock,” a man he said would be the foundation of his Church. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Peter. Because not only do I have to die, but following me means taking up your own cross, too. It means denying yourself, as I will be denied. And it means losing your life, just like I will lose mine.”

I have a lot of sympathy for Peter, because, well, he’s just saying what everyone is else thinking, myself included. I’m with Peter when he’s doubtful about a Messiah who has to suffer and die; I’m with Peter when he can’t imagine a God who seems to prefer death over life; I’m with Peter when he can’t understand what crosses have to do with salvation; and I’m certainly with Peter in preferring a Messiah who is enthusiastic about my happiness, comfort, and safety, and whose job it is to protect me from danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble.

But the hard, challenging, and beautiful truth is that, if we choose to follow Jesus, we are choosing to leave behind that sort of God. Because the Father of Jesus does not prioritize my safety and comfort. God does not care whether I’m happy with my circumstances or not. What Peter had to learn, and what I’m still learning – frankly, what I believe most of us are still learning – is that what God truly cares about with all the power of God’s holy being, is the quality of your life. Not just the fact of your existence. Not just your lungs’ ability to process air, or your heart’s ability to pump blood, or whether your brain is sending and receiving signals. No, what God cares about is the quality of your life – the depth of your life, the scope of your life, the heft and zest of your life.

When Jesus rebuked Peter that fateful day, he actually offered us all an equation. It’s an equation that describes the foundational reality of the world, an equation that is every bit as true, but in a different sort of way, as E=MC2. The equation goes like this: “Those who want to save their life will lose it. And those who lose their life will save it.” In other words, the more we try to bottle up and preserve our life, the more we conserve it and hold on to it and protect it, the less of life we will actually experience and enjoy; and the more of our life that we share, the more we give away, the more we let it flow out through our fingertips, the more of life we will actually experience and enjoy.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way:

“The deep secret of Jesus’ hard words to us in this passage is that our fear of suffering and death robs us of life, because fear of death always turns into fear of life, into a stingy, cautious way of living that is not really living at all. The deep secret of Jesus’ hard words is that the way to have abundant life is not to save it but to spend it, to give it away, because life cannot be shut up and saved any more than a bird can be put in a shoebox and stored on a closet shelf.”

The reason Jesus calls Peter Satan isn’t because Peter is possessed or evil. The word Satan means tempter, and from ancient times he’s been offering humankind alternatives to what God truly wants. Peter wants to keep Jesus safe, to keep his life from being wasted. He wants to save it, to preserve it, and to figure out a safer, more reasonable way for Jesus to be Lord. But what he didn’t understand is that Jesus’ life doesn’t have limits, that the more of it that poured out, the more he actually had to share. What Peter didn’t understand, and what we too often fail to understand, is that life is not meant to be bottled or saved or preserved. It is always meant to be poured out, whether it’s Jesus’ life, or ours.