A good friend looks out for you.
A good friend will tell you if you’re about to make a mistake, even if it might upset you.
A good friend will try to stop you from getting hurt.
Right?
On the whole if we were to tell a friend of ours to look after themselves, that they probably shouldn’t put themselves in harm’s way, and they responded by calling us Satan, we might be a little taken aback.
Peter probably did feel a little confused. He’s *literally just* recognised Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. And he’s *literally just* been told by Jesus that he is going to be the rock, the foundation, for the community of Christians that will be called the Church. He probably feels a little like our psalmist this morning…
Then Jesus starts talking about how he’s going to have to die, and Peter thinks that no, surely, the Son of God doesn’t *have* to die, he doesn’t *have* to do *anything* he doesn’t want to do. He tries to talk him out of it, to protect him.
And Jesus calls him *Satan*.
Now it sounds harsh, but Jesus is actually calling us back to that encounter with Satan in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry. In those forty days of lonely fasting Satan tempted Jesus, three times, inviting him to embrace his divine nature and eliminate his suffering. Three times, Jesus refused to comply.
Peter’s motivations on this occasion are presumably very different, but it’s fascinating that in seeing who Jesus is, in recognising him as the Son of God, both Peter and Satan immediately jump to saying basically the same thing.
If Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, why not just … make the bad things go away?
But even though Peter’s coming from a place of friendship, and hope in what Jesus as he Messiah is going to achieve, and probably also a great degree of affection for Jesus — despite all that, Jesus says that he is nevertheless a stumbling block. Because Peter is tempting Jesus to act out of *self-preservation*, to save his own life and not have to suffer death.
Elsewhere in the Gospels we get these hints that Jesus is, actually, tempted to escape the suffering he knows he’s going to have to face. In the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, but also right at the end, in Jerusalem, when he’s praying alone in the garden of Gethsemane. But in both cases Jesus ultimately knows that he *can’t* act out of fear and self-preservation.
Not because he’s not *able* to. Of *course* he could have prevented himself from being arrested, put on trial, crucified. But despite the temptation, he didn’t. He voluntarily went to his death.
Because he knew he had to. That it was necessary.
We’ll get onto what that might mean in a second. But what’s crucial to notice is that on this occasion, Jesus makes it clear that there’s something about his sacrifice that his followers are not just supposed to *allow* — they’re also supposed to *emulate* it. To take up their own crosses. Because “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for ((Jesus’s)) sake will find it.”
If you try to save your life, you won’t be able to — you will lose it. But if you let go, let go of that instinct to put yourself first and protect yourself, then you may well save your life after all.
What Jesus says here — to Peter but also to us, listening in — it goes against all our instincts. Our nature is to look after ourselves, and keep our loved ones out of harm’s way. We probably feel like these are good instincts, so Jesus’s words to us are pretty shocking if we’re actually paying attention. Because he says that if we live to the fullest degree that our instincts tell us to – if we live in fear, focusing first and foremost on protect ourselves and not looking out for others – if we live like that, Jesus says we won’t end up saving our lives. In fact we’ll *lose* them.
Lose them to fearful self-preservation.
Now Jesus knew that if he went to Jerusalem to preach God’s message of unconditional love and reconciliation, the religious leaders and the political authorities *would* kill him. His death wasn’t some arbitrary method cooked up to appease a wrathful father in heaven. No — his death was necessary at least in part because it was inevitable. But Jesus also trusted that through this death, God would save his life — and not just *his* life, but the whole world. He trusted that although it would look like he had lost his life, God would save it, would raise him from the dead, establishing his victory over death forever.
We’re talking about things that theologians and prayerful people have argued over for millennia — the question of why Jesus had to die, and what exactly his death achieved, and how it all came to pass. There aren’t any easy explanations that will clear it all up for us — if there were, I’m sure Jesus would have told Peter himself, instead of offering him a riddle.
I won’t go into all of that now — if you’re sticking around after the service we can have a chat about it over ice cream…
But the central thing to hold onto from his words today, I think, is this. Because Jesus was willing to act not out of fear, but to act out of love — not out of self-preservation, but self-offering — *because* of that, he gained *everything*.
That’s one of the paradoxes at the heart of the Christian faith, and it’s the paradox we’re called to put at the heart of the Christian life. To truly live, Jesus says, we have to deny ourselves – take up our own cross, be willing to make sacrifices, and follow Jesus in the way of love.
Jesus was talking about his own literal cross, his own literal death. For us today, the broader invitation we have from Jesus here is to live — but to live in a different way. In fact, it’s the way that Paul described in our reading from Romans this morning. If you want to know what it would look like to take up your cross and follow Jesus every day then take your bulletin home and work through that Romans reading again slowly.
Paul says:
Be kind to the people who make your life difficult.
Don’t just focus on how *you’re* feeling, but have empathy for other people.
Don’t think you’re better than anyone – spend time with people who maybe won’t make you look good.
Above all, forgive the people who wrong you. Give up your claim to being in the right.
Live in peace with all.
All of these things Paul talks about – they’re about relinquishing the need for self-preservation, the need for control, to be respected, to be safe. They’re what happens when we live out of love instead of fear.
Now whoever or whatever you think Satan is, it seems to me that there is an evil force in this world that don’t want us to live this way. More and more we’re encouraged to hate the people who hate us, to ignore the cries of people who suffer because they probably deserve it, to fear the outsiders who take our security and our jobs, to reject the people who betray weakness, to cut the people who disagree with us out of our lives. Living out of fear means building ourselves up at the expense of others, cutting ourselves off *from* others, and there are so many voices in our world that are calling us to live this way.
If we want to take up Jesus’s call to follow him, we can’t be swept along by it. By the fear and the need to protect ourselves. But we also don’t need to be afraid. Because by Jesus’s cross, by his journey from death to life, he’s shown us that what the world sees as weakness, God will turn to strength. That it’s in losing our lives that we’ll discover we’ve found them.
If we follow Jesus, if we follow in his Way, what he offers us is abundant life. Life without the exhausting pursuit of self-preservation. When we live out of love instead of fear, we won’t need to protect ourselves. Because in the cross of Jesus, God is with us, wherever our path takes us. In this life and in the next.