Matthew 16:21-28 (Pentecost 14)
St. John, Galveston 8/30/26
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

    The message this morning is based on the Gospel reading from Matthew 16. At this point in His ministry, Jesus began to talk to His disciples about His coming suffering, death and resurrection. For his part, Simon Peter wasn’t having any of it, especially the part about Jesus’ suffering and death. “Far be it from You, Lord (he said)! This shall never happen to You.” Peter’s bold statement was quite deterministic, even though there was really nothing he could do to protect Jesus from His coming suffering and death. Responding to Peter’s insistence that He not suffer and die, Jesus said, “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.”

    Of Jesus disciples, Simon Peter is probably our favorite punching bag, so to speak. What I mean is that, other than Judas Iscariot, Peter is the disciple who seems to have had the most character flaws. You may recall that, on the night Jesus was arrested, it was Peter who denied Him three times. He did so, even though at an earlier time he confessed his commitment to stay with Jesus. “All of these others may leave You (he said), but I will never leave You.” Still, later, in the book of Galatians, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul had to admonish Peter for his hypocrisy regarding the Gentiles. Peter would associate with the Gentiles, he would even dine with them, that is, until his Jewish friends showed up, at which time he would act as if he didn’t know the Gentiles.  

    When we talk about Simon Peter, we are inclined to use words like impetuous, hasty, or even cowardly to describe him, which is unfortunate. Mind you, it’s not that those descriptors of Peter are necessarily wrong, it’s more that character flaws, sins of the flesh, as the Scriptures call them, are not unique to Peter. For the rest of us, we might use words like impatient, unsympathetic or compassionless, or perhaps prideful, self-centered, self-righteous, or greedy, or covetous. The point is, there are any number of sins for which we must repeatedly repent and ask God’s forgiveness and grace.

    Shortly before this section of Matthew’s Gospel, Peter had one of his stronger moments, as he made his now famous confession of “Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”And so, with all of his flaws, Peter most definitely knew who Jesus was, evidenced by the fact that the New Testament word Christ, corresponds with the Old Testament word Messiah. In other words, Peter knew that Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed of God, the One promised by God from days of old. Even so, the question remained, no doubt for Peter and for many others, what exactly did that mean?

    For many people in the 1st century, the Kingdom of God was thought to be an earthly Kingdom, a Kingdom that would restore to the Israelites all that God promised them. Israelites of that period, regarded homeland, religious law, and self-governance to be covenantal rights for the chosen people of God. Consequently, many believed that, under the reign of the Messiah, God would set His people free from any sort of oppression, or governance from a foreign power.

    If Jesus came into the world for that purpose though, that is, to set up an earthly reign over the people of Israel, then Peter was right, He couldn’t suffer and die. That would defeat the purpose of His Messianic reign. So, while Peter boldly confessed that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” he also tried to prevent Him from fulfilling the purpose for which He actually came into the world, namely, to suffer and die for the sins of the world and to be resurrected from the dead on the third day, thus defeating death and the grave.

    “Get behind Me, Satan (Jesus said). For you don’t have in mind the things of God, but the things of man.” It’s a harsh rebuke, isn’t it? None of us would want Jesus to speak to us in such a way. But, in all fairness, we’re not really different from Simon Peter in that, we are often guilty of putting the things of men, before the things of God. When we do so, it’s often because of our seemingly insatiable desire for control, both in the world, as well as in our own lives.

    Jesus though calls us “to deny ourselves and to take up our cross and follow Him.” Denial of self is part and parcel of the Christian life, to deny what we want and to conform our life and our will to what God wants. I suppose such a call on our lives could only be understood as burdensome, if it weren’t for the fact that God has revealed Himself to us in such a marvelous way, so full of grace and forgiveness.

     Peter stepped aside after Jesus rebuked him, evidenced by the fact that, just six days later, he and James and John accompanied Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Remember, it was there that Peter was so enamored with Jesus glory, that he wanted to set up tents for them to stay on the mountaintop.

    Toward the end of this discourse with Peter, Jesus brought Peter to the central purpose of His kingdom by asking him a question. “What will it profit a man (Jesus asked) if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Peter’s desire to protect Jesus from suffering and death was misguided, because the reign of Jesus, of the Christ, of the Messiah, is not OF this world. Now, please understand, there is a distinction to be made here. God’s Kingdom is IN this world, but it is not OF this world. In fact, when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus if He was the King of the Jews, He said, “My kingdom is not OF this world. If my kingdom were OF this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

    God’s Kingdom IN the world is repeatedly identified with the presence of Jesus. In fact, at one point, in Matthew’s Gospel, people were accusing Jesus of working miracles by the power of the devil. To refute their argument, He said, “if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” That’s really another way of Jesus saying, “where I am, where the Christ, the Messiah is, there is the Kingdom of God.”

    The Kingdom of God is most certainly IN the world. “Take and eat (Jesus says) this IS My body. Take and drink, this cup IS the New Testament in MY blood which is given for YOU for the forgiveness of YOUR sins.” Where Jesus IS, there is the Kingdom of God.

    In what Jesus said to Peter in the latter part of today’s reading, clearly His Kingdom is ultimately not OF this world, but OF the world to come. “What will it profit a man (He said), if he gains the whole world and yet forfeits his soul?” What Jesus said isn’t some sort of gnostic separation of the soul from the body, as if all that matters of our being is our soul. Rather, He emphasizes that the faith we hold in Jesus, the faith that has been given to us by God Himself, resides in our soul, the deepest part of our inner being.

    Your greatest profit in life, if you will, is that God, in Christ, has visited you, as such, He has redeemed your life from sin and from the power of the grave to hold you. When Jesus began to talk to His disciples about His coming suffering and death, He also told them about His resurrection from the dead on the third day. The Kingdom of God is about God redeeming the totality of who you are, both body and soul. And so, on the last day, when the trumpet sounds and the angels shout, Jesus will return and the dead in Christ will rise first. “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.”

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

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +