The Rev. Carl Saxton- Who You Are, in Christ

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Please be seated.

I don't know if you realize this.

The lectionary is on a three-year cycle.

So we hear the same readings every third year, but the collects are on a one-year cycle.

We hear the same collects again and again and again, year by year every year.

And maybe it just stands out to me because I have to say them all the time.

But this one always smacks me right in the face.

It's this line in the middle of the collect.

Increase in us true religion.

What?

Increase in us true religion.

So all we can go by here is the readings that are assigned along with the collect to try and get some idea of what the founders of the prayer book might have meant by true religion.

So the reading this week from the gospel is immediately after the reading last week.

Last week, Jesus, passing through the area of Caesarea Philippi, looked to his disciples and said, Who do people say that I am?

And they came up with a lot of answers, Elijah, one of the prophets, blah, blah, blah.

And then Jesus said, But who do you say that I am?

And Peter said, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus was so happy.

He said, Peter, said Saul, the other name.

Peter, you didn't get this.

This came to you from my heavenly father.

So happy.

Then they walk down the road a little bit, and having just declared him as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, he starts to explain to them what that means.

That he must go to Jerusalem and be betrayed and killed.

And Peter, the hero of five sentences ago, drags Jesus.

Picture this in your head, if you will.

Twelve disciples and their rabbi walking down the road.

The rabbi says something, and one of the disciples grabs him by the arm and drags him off to the side of the road.

To what?

What does the gospel say Peter does to Jesus?

He rebukes him.

He says, God forbid, this will never happen to you.

And Jesus says, It's a famous line, get thee behind me, Satan.

You are a stumbling block to me.

Now, I think you have to read these two pericopes, which means section of scripture that you read at one time in a service, together.

I don't think you can really understand either one of them separately.

Because what is it that Jesus is trying to explain to his disciples?

He's trying to explain what is about to happen, which he seems to do again and again, and they never quite get it.

But after Peter's rebuke, what Jesus is trying to explain to them is what the meaning of being a disciple is.

Because once Peter has tried to say, I can be in control of this, Jesus has to say, no, stop, hold on a minute.

You just said you know who I am.

Now I need you to understand who you are.

Because Peter says, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God, yay, Peter.

Which is to say, yes.

And then he says, This will never happen to you, which is but I don't know about you, but in his sandals, I would probably react a lot like Peter.

Because what Peter is actually saying, I think, is not Lord, this will never happen to you.

He's saying, Lord, this will never happen to me.

Because if I'm following you and this happens to you, that means this could possibly happen to me, and I don't want that.

I want nothing to do with that.

I want all the good stuff.

I want everlasting life, I want angels, I want joy, I want to be filled with the spirit.

I want all of the good stuff that being your disciple means, but I don't want any of the bad stuff that might come with it.

Yes, but.

Because this line in Jesus' response is all about, and this theme comes up again and again, which is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a wonderful book about it, the cost of discipleship.

Because yes, we do get all of the good things that come with being a disciple, a follower of Jesus, from learning from Jesus' life and teachings and death and resurrection and ascension, but we have to accept the fact that the world doesn't like any of that.

Even in Jesus' day, I know we like to look at the past, especially the time of Jesus and the disciples, with some kind of rose-colored glasses.

That everybody was better than we are, they were all holier than we are, they were all smarter than we are, or dumber, depending on your point of view.

But the truth is their world was exactly the same as ours.

Less technology, still very human.

And the entirety of their self-identity is based on what?

Their ego.

Everything in their world needs to conform to what they want and what they need.

And that's the kind of self-denial that Jesus is talking about here.

When Jesus says, if anyone wants to be my follower, my disciple, let him, them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

In the Gospel of Luke, they add a couple of words.

Let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

To try and get us to understand a little better.

Now, we 21st century human beings, Christians and all, hear the word self-denial and what we immediately think.

No thanks, don't want any of that.

I'll pass.

Because when we hear self-denial, what we hear is a lack of self-fulfillment.

We hear an inability to be the person that we want to be.

We hear depravity, because that's what deprived says to us.

We hear sadness, misery.

Because the world has told us that our happiness, our wholeness, is linked entirely to what we get out of the world.

Stuff and money and fame and reputation and all of those things are what defines who we are.

But Jesus says no.

What defines who you are as disciple of mine is to let all of that go.

None of that tells you who you are.

What tells you who you are is your relationship to God through Christ.

I'll tell you a little secret here.

In our NRSV version of the reading, it says, What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his life?

Or what can he give in exchange for his life?

The Greek word here that is translated life in our NRSV translation is suke, which sometimes, in a lot of other places, is translated soul.

But if you take soul and you take life and you put them together, what Jesus is really talking about is the essence of who you are.

What does it profit you if you get everything you can imagine in the whole world and lose who you are?

What would you pay for who you are?

Who you are in Christ.

So I want us to be able to hear Jesus clearly.

Jesus is not saying that by denying yourself and taking up your cross, your willingness to give it all away, to hang it all up on that cross for God does not mean that you cannot be fulfilled.

It does not mean that you cannot be happy.

It does not mean that you cannot be filled with joy.

It does not mean that your life cannot be meaningful.

In fact, it means all the opposite of that.

Because the only way to really have meaning, be filled with joy and to be fulfilled is to be the person God has called you to be.