²¹ From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²²And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you." ²³But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." ²⁴Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ²⁶For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? ²⁷ For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. ²⁸Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

GOD'S KINGDOM COMES EXPENSIVELY

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week's Gospel may have seemed challenging when Jesus pinned us down and forced us to say what we thought about Him. Compared to this week's Gospel lesson, last week was a walk in the park. Now you probably know that the great sin of this age is to be called intolerant. They have commercials about that all the time. They have HR seminars in the workplace on intolerance. You will darn near get beaten up and left for dead by an angry mob of people if they think you are intolerant, and that's what people will call you if you insist that Jesus is God's Son and the only way to salvation. So that was the most challenging part about last week's Gospel lesson.

Since last week's Gospel lesson immediately precedes this week's, let's remember what we heard. Last week we heard Simon, son of Jonah, declare that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. We heard Jesus declare that Simon didn't figure this out on his own. He was inspired by the Spirit of God to make this good confession at Caesarea Philippi. The Lord Jesus went on to rename him "Peter" (which could be translated "Rocky") for his bold profession of faith in Jesus. We heard Jesus promise to build His Church on this rock - Peter and the other eleven apostles - who would be empowered to forgive and retain sins in Jesus' name. Furthermore, we heard Jesus say that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. It was a victorious moment. It was a glorious scene. For, after all, who doesn't like success? Who doesn't like winning? Nobody says: "I'm so excited. I'm going to go home and watch my team get beat like a drum. It's going to be a great weekend to lose!"

This week's Gospel lesson is tougher to hear, because it clarifies and reinterprets what seemed so obvious last week. Today Jesus makes explicit what it means for Him to be God's anointed King. God has sent His Son into the world to live the perfectly obedient life no one else can live and to suffer and die the innocent death that no one else can die. And Peter's response shows what he thinks of God's plan: "No way! No how! It can't happen to you, Jesus."

Like all of us, Peter liked to be on a winning team. He believed success was proof of having favor with God. Why, then, would someone that could feed 5,000 people one time and 4,000 another out of almost nothing do something so stupid as to give up the potential perks of power? Peter knew that if Jesus didn't blow it, He was going to be a big winner, a big success in the worldly sense of things. That's why Peter responded so forcefully: "God forbid! No way...no how...Jesus!"

How utterly surrealistic it must have seemed to Peter when Jesus actually called him "Satan". What happened to Jesus calling him Rocky? What happened to Peter being the guy? What happened to all of Peter's dreams of power?

OUR OWN DEMONIC OBSESSIONS

It's not at all a rare thing to hear someone say, "Pastor, I'm just so unhappy." After all, we like winning. We like success. The problem, as Ecclesiastes 3 puts it so well, is that there is a season for everything. Even superstar athletes get hurt and have to go on the disabled list. Even great salesmen can go broke. Even someone who was once on the front cover of magazines can die in obscurity. There is a time to win and a time to lose. There is a time to succeed and a time to fail. There is a time to be born and a time to die. None of us gets to march from victory unto victory in perpetuity!

When my wife and I often repeat our traditional wedding vows, we like for better, for richer, and in health...but for worse, for poorer, and in sickness? Not so much! Sometimes an unhappy spouse will say, "Pastor, he's just so boring" or "Pastor, she's just so flaky." But when you asked what once attracted the unhappy person to the spouse, you will hear: "He was so stable" or "She was so much fun." The spouse's basic behavior hasn't changed. The basic personality hasn't changed. The perspective changed when the unhappy spouse got unhappy, and most of the unhappiness was the result of childish thinking on that spouse's part.

Now I'm not saying that there aren't deal-breakers for marriages. Violence, destructive and life-threatening addictive behaviors, serial infidelity, regularly abusing one's spouse or children, these are a few legitimate reasons for separating. One's home ought to be a safe place for everyone. But those aren't the usual reasons for unhappiness in a marriage. Oftentimes it's that one or both of the spouses just gave up on the marriage because they were unhappy. What is sadly so unrealistic about this is that there is a season for everything. People are going to be unhappy again. And only a childish person thinks otherwise. Sadly, it's often the children who suffer for having a childish parent!

So what does that have to do with today's Gospel lesson? Just about everything! The Lord Jesus says to His disciples, including you and me: ""If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?"

If a person leaves a spouse to chase after somebody who is more fun, what's going to happen when that person stops being fun? Alcoholics and addicts are some of the most fun people in the world in the early years of their addiction, but then they get further along in their illness and everybody stops laughing. Addicts remain addicts their entire lives even if they stop using or stop drinking. They are always just one wrong step away from the abyss. Of what if a person leaves a spouse to chase more money or to devote more time to a career, what's going to happen when the job gives out or when the money has isolated them from anyone who really cares?

C.S. Lewis' vision of hell in his book The Great Divorce was this perpetually expanding gray city where no one could ever get along with anyone. People were in hell because they just could not give up their favorite sin, their substitute for God. It's a disturbing book precisely because you find yourself and people you know so well as you're reading along in the story. In other words, hell is populated by people who never deny themselves, who never want to really follow Jesus to the cross, and who keep selling their souls for whatever they think will make them happy.

The unhappiness is all inside. I once knew someone very well who kept thinking the next purchase or the next change in appearance or the next job or even the next lover was going to fill the empty place in the soul. But, of course, nothing ever worked, because what that person did not have was peace with God. As Augustine wrote, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. Our demonic obsessions are always about looking for something other than the Crucified God, Jesus Christ, to save us. But "...there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).

Now think this through. Suppose you follow through on a demonic obsession. Suppose you keep chasing after the next thing that is supposed to make you happy. Suppose you get it. How long is that going to last before you need something else to make you happy? And for just how much will you sell your soul for happiness that won't last? Remember Jesus' words on Ash Wednesday: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where rust and moth destroy and thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither rust nor moth destroys and thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:20-21).

FOLLOWING CHRIST MEANS IMITATING HIM

Martin Luther stands out among countless Christian theologians as a theologian of the cross. Luther emphasized that the only reliable place to find God is in the Crucified Son of God who gave His life as a ransom for many. Because everyone likes winners and success, Christians are tempted to embrace what Luther called a theology of glory. Winning and success are both very seductive, and pastors and congregations can get seduced into abandoning the God of the cross for a god who is a projection of their greatest desires and dreams.

How is it that even pastors and Bible-reading lay people can abandon the Crucified God for a god of their own making? How is it that some churches refuse even to display the cross of the Crucified God? The problem always lies in the sinful human will that looks for a message other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Who doesn't want to be told that poverty and failure and disease and disappointment and betrayal and death can be avoided? Well, yes, for a season, but there is always another season other than good times and fair-sailing. None of us gets out of here alive. Everyone will suffer.

Peter wanted Jesus to be the kind of King that made everything always go well for Peter. If Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, could suffer and die, so could Peter. That's why Peter said: "God forbid!" And that's why Jesus said: "Get behind me Satan, for you are not on God's side but on the side of sinful humans."

Jewish psychiatrist and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl wrote that suffering that is forced upon us and that cannot be avoided can be meaningful (Man's Search for Meaning). In some ways, Frankl was paraphrasing Jesus who talked about taking up one's cross and following Him. It's narcissistic to talk about suffering that we brought upon ourselves as our cross to bear. So many of the dumb choices and foolish mistakes that bring pain into our lives were not caused by someone holding a gun to our heads. We shouldn't think of such things as crosses or ourselves as noble victims when we did that stuff to ourselves. Real suffering is the stuff that comes with living and dying.

Taking up one's cross is the stuff of daily dying to our selfish selves in the waters of Holy Baptism. Instead of wondering why God isn't magically waving His wand and making our days a series of happy adventures and endless victories, we can cling to the cross of the Crucified God knowing that our sufferings are joined to His and that no one can snatch us out of His hand. On the other side of death is the blessed assurance of the resurrection for those buried and raised with Christ in the washing of Holy Baptism.

At the end of the Gospel lesson is a verse that sometimes troubles Christians because it seems to imply that the Lord promised no one would ever die before His return in glory. In fact, He is telling Peter, James, and John that they will see Him in glory on the mount of Transfiguration...a vision of the God Man in glory and a foretaste of His being raised from the dead.

We won't stop being drawn to winning and to success. It is, after all, only human to want to escape anything that forces us to grow in awareness of our mortality and our profound need for God. Following Jesus means imitating Him by abandoning ourselves to the good and gracious will of our heavenly Father and trusting in His mercy for Jesus' sake...especially when we are most tempted to grandiosity or to despair!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.