God’s Metaphor

Rev Dr Mark Porizky

8/31/08

Matthew 16:21-28

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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?

 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’

Football season is starting and I’m going to tell you a secret.  I don’t really like football.  Me?  I’m a baseball guy.  After the World Series I’ll go into a sports funk until pitchers and catchers show up in late February for Spring Training.

Why don’t I like football?  Because football is selfish!  That’s right, selfish.  There is only one sport as far as I know where the term “sacrifice” is actually used, and it isn’t football.  It’s baseball.  I can almost hear the great Los Angeles Dodger announcer Vin Scully announcing over the radio, "And there it goes, a long fly ball to left; easy out, but the man on third tags up and trots home. Sacrifice fly."

            Sacrifice fly!  I love it--you're out, but you helped someone else score a run. Baseball is one of the few sports where you lose but the team still gains. Do you remember the way the comedian the late George Carlin spells it out in his routine about the contrast between the hardness of football and the softness of baseball? He says:

In football you Tackle! In baseball, you "catch flies."  In football you Punt! In baseball you "bunt."  Football is played on a Gridiron! Baseball is played on a "field."  In football you Score! In baseball you "go home."  In football you Kill! In baseball you "sacrifice."

Now let me ask you a strange question.  Is your world view more football or baseball?  Which world view describes you more?  Because the way we see or don't see life shapes our life.  Some people have said that life is like a carousel: sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down, and sometimes you just go 'round and 'round and 'round.

I've heard other people say that life is a mystery, and you spend your whole life trying to figure it out.

Samuel Eliot Morrison, the great historian of Harvard University in the 1940s and 50s, once said that life is like a card game; you have to play the hand you're dealt.

If I asked you this morning how you see life, what image comes to mind? That image is your life metaphor, and it will determine your expectations, your values, your goals, and your priorities.

If you see life as a party, your primary value will be to have fun.  If you see life as a race, you will have speed and efficiency.  If you see life as a marathon, you'll value endurance.  If you see life as a game, you'll value winning.

The great Christian writer G. K. Chesterton was once asked what the most significant books he ever read were, apart from the Bible. He replied, "Homer's Iliad, because life is a battle, and Homer's Odyssey, because life is a journey."

So, what is your view of life?

One of the main reasons that God gave us the Scriptures is to teach us how God views life and to encourage us to learn to see it in the same way. In Matthew 16:21–28, we're given a story of how Jesus saw both his life and the lives of those who claimed to be his disciples.  Llook at verse 21. 

"From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he MUST go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.."

God's view on life is this: Jesus must go to Jerusalem to suffer, die, and then be resurrected.

In verse 21, Jesus begins to describe for them the passion of the Christ.  The disciples don't know this at that moment, but Christ's suffering is for their sins and the sins of the whole world. Matthew uses the word "must" to describe the reality of Jesus' suffering: he must go to Jerusalem and he must suffer many things and he must be killed.

The fact that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, would die for men and women and children is rooted in the reality that God sees all of us with eyes of love.  When love gives up its life, a world view is the reason.

On January 25, 1993 , Carla Ardenghi died. She didn't have to—she was just 28. A few months before her death Carla had discovered she was pregnant. When she went to the doctor for a routine checkup, they discovered that she had a rare form of cancer. The doctors told her that if a special surgery was performed and she received chemotherapy right away, they could save her life—but first she'd have to have an abortion. Carla refused the abortion, the surgery, and the chemotherapy, and six months later she slipped into a coma.

After she did so, the doctors took the baby by Caesarean section even though he was three months premature and weighed just 23 ounces. Carla died eight hours later.

Friends, this is not a commentary about abortion, but about sacrifice and love.  As the now 14 year old Stefano Ardenghi grows up, do you think he'll understand the sacrifice that his mother made? Do you think he'll realize that she died so that he could live? Do you think he'll see that she gave her life out of love?

What we see in life determines what we believe and how we act.  Jesus saw life as a means to service and sacrifice so that all could be saved.

But, at least at that moment, Peter didn't have that view. In verse 22 it says, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’

Why did Peter say this to Jesus?  Because Peter's view on life is this: Jesus cannot suffer, because life is about us.

Disciples simply did not rebuke their rabbis in Jewish society, but Peter does so because he doesn't want to see Jesus suffer. He believes that the Messiah is a Messiah to conquer, rule, and reign out of power and prestige. He's been brought up to believe that the Messiah would come in glory. When Jesus talks of himself as the Messiah who is a suffering servant, Peter can't see or even imagine that as a possibility.

He's saying something along these lines: Jesus, don't be talking about suffering and torture and crosses and death. That's bad for morale. After all, you're the Son of God. God's good, so he blesses you and gives you joy and his plan for you is to live a long life of peace and prosperity. Surely he would never let you suffer.  Instead, Jesus, how about, “Always be positive; always be upbeat. God is good and you're his child. He blesses you and gives you great joy and his plan is for you to live a long life of peace and prosperity. God never wants you to struggle or suffer.

Does that sound familiar at all?  I can name churches, especially ones that are on TV, which will offer you that message.  But I can never square that message with what Jesus says when he puts Peter in his place, “Those who want to be my followers must first deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow me."

 Taking up your cross is about sacrifice and sacrifice is not a word we use much these days, is it?  But what's interesting is that most of us would never dream of raising or parenting our own children that way, a way that doesn’t include sacrifice.

Imagine how you would feel, or imagine what you would do, if someone came to your kids and said: You know, your parents love you very much. So you can be sure that your mom and dad will never ever spank you or cause you pain. They'll never make you go to the dentist or eat peas or pull weeds in the back yard or make your bed or clean your room or say you're sorry to your brother or sister or do your homework. And whatever you want at the store, you just name it and claim it because all they have is yours and they love you.   

You'd probably get pretty steamed. Those are lies that would show your kids that you don't really love them, because those ideas would destroy them.

You can see why Peter's comments cause Jesus so much frustration and anger, because Christ without the passion is not Christ, but the anti-Christ—the false Messiah or an idol of our own minds and culture.  It’s a Christianity without a cross.  And, friends, the church cannot leave the cross out.

From a Christian perspective, life is a means to serving others and sacrificing for others in order to do God's will. In the process, true, genuine life is found—both now and for all eternity.

In our American culture, we're pretty much told the complete opposite of this. We're told to "grab for the gusto" and think of ourselves first and consume all we can, as often as we can. 

And yet sometimes I wonder how much happiness has been found for people in our society who live that way?

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about a month ago, entitled, "Rich, Healthy, and Miserable." It was based on a survey that some sociologists did to determine if making more money really made people happy. They discovered that when people got a raise, it did make them feel better for about a month, and then almost everyone began to spend up to the level of their new income. It wasn't long before they felt as strapped and uptight and as unhappy as they did before they got the raise.

The article was fascinating, because at the end, the author made three suggestions for finding happiness. Two of them were to give more money away and to invest your time serving other people.

I think that if God has a metaphor for Christians it is not carousel or marathon, or even baseball.  God’s metaphor is “living sacrifice.” 

Living sacrifice is direct from scripture.  In the book of Romans, chapter 12, the Apostle Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,^* by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual^* worship. ²Do not be conformed to this world,^* but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Now, being a living sacrifice isn’t about being miserable for God, it’s about wanting to do something wonderful for the pure joy of the doing it.

There is, I think it is true to say, something a little bit depressing about Labor Day weekend. For Labor Day weekend signals the psychological end, at least, to summer with its periods of refreshment, and the start again, for many of us, of the more hectic rhythm of life and work at school, in college, at office or, in home. So let me ask you: How is your work? Are you giving of your self at work? Is work a place where you sacrifice for a cause?

I find it helpful to remember the story of the little girl who, in the process of growing up, discovered that more than anything else she wanted to be able to mow the lawn. But each season she was told that she was too young. The great day came, however, when her parents decided that, at last, she was old enough to do the task.

 She did it with surprising skill and great delight, and having finished admiring her work, she began to cast long, envious glances across the fence at the neighbor's lawn, which also needed cutting.

The neighbor, seeing her interest, said, "Sally, would you like to cut my lawn?" And the little girl enthusiastically said 'yes.'

"Well, let's see...how about $3.00?" said the neighbor.

The little girl's face fell, and she turned away, shaking her head.

"What's the matter?" asked the neighbor.

Sally said, "I only have $2.00."

^*How we see life determines what we believe and how we'll live, and that's why Jesus tells you and me to lose our lives for His sake, because then we'll find it.

 How do you view life?  Is it a carousel, a race, a battle, a journey, a mystery, or a dance?  Or do you see life as an opportunity to serve God and love others and make an impact with the Gospel, to be a living sacrifice?  I believe that God’s metaphor is that we be living sacrifices.

My prayer for each and every one of us is that in the coming weeks and months and years, people will look at our church and say, "Hey, those folks really love God and care about other people."

And if that's true, then someday, when Jesus returns, he'll come to each of us and say: Well done, good and faithful servant. You saw life as I did and you did life as I did. Enter into the joy of your master.

Will you pray with me now?

St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton , CT

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