Pentecost 12 A: Peter’s Heartbreak

Dear Partner in Preaching,

Have you ever heard the sound of a heart breaking? Do you remember what it sounds like? Maybe it was your son or daughter’s heart breaking when they graduated from high school or college only to find the job market had disappeared. Or maybe it was your sister’s heart breaking when the doctor called to say the cancer was back. Or maybe it was your friend’s heart breaking when he called to say that his marriage was over.

Have you ever heard the sound of a heart breaking? Do you remember what it sounds like? I think we hear that sound again in today’s gospel reading. It might be hard to detect at first, but if you listen closely can you actually hear a human heart first tremble under the stress of an uncertain future and then fracture in despair.

It happens just outside of Caesarea Philippi, a village 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, as we read last week, is walking with his disciples when he asks them what the people are saying about him. After hearing several positive responses, Jesus gets to what seems like his real question, asking the disciples directly, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter responds by declaring Jesus the Messiah, Son of the Living God.

We’ll never know whether that confession had been brewing in Peter for some time and only needed Jesus’ question to bring it forth or whether it came to him in the flash of divinely-guided insight. But it’s not hard to imagine that making that confession was the shining moment of his career as a disciple, and perhaps his whole life. For there’s something indescribably wonderful about recognizing and participating in a truth bigger than yourself, about naming truth in a way that somehow makes it more true in your own experience. It’s like saying, “I love you” for the first time to a beloved and in saying it realizing just how true it is, even truer than it was just a moment before. That’s what happens with Peter just outside of Caesarea Philippi, as with that confession his heart, brimming over with insight and faith, begins to sing.

…And then, only moments later, to break.

Now, it’s easy to assume that Peter’s heart breaks when Jesus rebukes him, “Get behind me, Satan!” Who, after all, could endure such words from the Lord? But I suspect it actually happened just moments earlier. Listen carefully to Matthew’s story once again: He sternly ordered them not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. From that time on, Jesus began to show them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

There. Did you hear that? It’s the sound of the human heart breaking. First comes the distress that causes Peter’s heart to tremble, as soon after his confession Jesus orders the disciples not to tell anyone what they must consider the greatest news ever, that he is the Messiah. But then come events that splinter into Peter’s heart like cracks in a windshield. Then he showed them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering – crack – and be rejected by the elders – crack – and chief priests – crack – and the scribes – crack. And then comes the final chink, and be killed! And there it goes, Peter’s heart, fracturing into a thousand shards of disappointment and despair so loudly that he can’t even hear Jesus’ final promise, and be raised on the third day.

No wonder Peter rebukes him. This sounds like blasphemy. The savior of the word suffer? God’s messiah die? Are you mad? Peter, like so many Israelites of his day, is looking for someone to deliver the Israelites from Roman oppression as Moses delivered them from Egypt. He expects the Messiah to be a descendant of mighty king David and come and overthrow Roman rule and restore the kingdom.

And here’s the thing, Dear Partner: are we really all that different?

Oh, I know, we’re not looking for Moses or David, but don’t we still want a strong God, one who will vanquish our foes – whether faithless colleagues, a failed job market, or unrelenting illness? Don’t we also want a powerful God, one who will establish or restore our fortunes, granting us our hearts desire or at least protecting us from tragedy? Don’t we also want a potent God, one who will lead us and our congregations into a better and brighter future?

Of course we do. But what we get is not the Messiah that Peter longs for or we desire, but rather Jesus, the son born to illiterate parents in a backwater of the Roman Empire; Jesus, the itinerate preacher who proclaims a kingdom where losers are blessed, the poor are honored, and those considered least in the eyes of the world are accorded greatest honor; Jesus, the one who some hailed as Messiah but others rejected and then crushed like a fly.

This passage is difficult, Dear Partner, not because it talks about taking up crosses but because it demands a complete reversal of almost everything we think honor and power and blessing are. Jesus doesn’t just rebuke Peter, you see, he rebukes the heart and soul of a world that believes might makes right and those with the most power and wealth win. Jesus, that is, proclaims a kingdom that is the inverse of the kingdom of the world and invites us into it.

It’s not, of course, a very tempting invitation to the independent self-made man or woman the culture has told us we must be. But to those of us whose lives bear little resemblance to the commercials and billboards we are spoon fed each day…
to those of us who do not have our lives in order no matter how many Facebook posts or pictures we make insisting they are…
to those of us whose families look nothing like those we see on television and feel wretched about that…
to those of us, ultimately, who bear the scars of disappointment, set back, and failure…this invitation deserves a second hearing. Because Jesus’ life and ministry invites us to imagine that the God who beckons us into this kingdom understands our fears, knows our pains, and has borne our frustrations, failures, and disappointments…and loves us just as we are.

Jesus comes to invite us to imagine, in short, that our self worth does not come from our accomplishments but rather as a gift from God. Jesus invites us to find a sense of worth and dignity not from our possessions but from our identity as God’s beloved children. And Jesus invites us to imagine that life is more than a competition for scarce resources but rather finds its meaning and purpose in sharing the abundance of our lives and world with those around us, seeing in them our sisters and brothers in God.

Peter’s heart breaks because it is sin-sick with the warped values of the world. And it must break in order that a new heart – one raised to life with Christ in grace and mercy – may beat with the pulse of a God whose love is stronger than sin, fear, and death.

We also, Dear Partner – both preachers and people alike – live with corrupted hearts that have been forced to mimic the relentless beat of the world’s march toward death. So when Jesus calls us to self-denial and the cross, he isn’t advocating acceptance of injustice, needless suffering, or cruel self-abnegation. He is rather warning us that our world-weary hearts must and will break time and again as we despair of the world’s promises and take hold of God’s pledge to conquer hate with love, to replace fear with courage, and to defeat death with resurrection life.

Can we preach a sermon this week that will break our hearts in order to have them beat anew to the pulse of God’s grace? Can we offer a space where people can look at the promises they’ve accepted or goals they’ve set and admit they’ve settled for less than God offers? Can we announce to them that even though our hearts may break when we discover we’re not getting the God we want, we will come alive again as we realize we’re getting the God we need? For the God we confess is the One who came in Jesus to be like us, love us, and redeem us, even at times from ourselves, that we might share God’s love with all the world.

Can we preach a sermon like that? It’s a tall order, I know, but I am confident that you can, for your life has been shaped by the cross Jesus bears and shares, the cross made when God’s love intersects with and conquers the world through vulnerability, mercy, and grace. Thank you, Dear Partner, for trying to preach that kind of sermon. God, I trust, will do marvelous things with your words.

Yours in Christ,
David