sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 04/06/2014
video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard
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Tom Guenther seemed like a god to me. As a 7th grader, playing on my first real basketball team, like the kind you have to try out for, with practices and a coach and uniforms and referees and everything, I’d never seen anyone who could play like Tom Guenther. He was a 9th grader, 2 years older than I was. He was taller than anyone I knew, faster, more graceful, able to drive and score at will, or hit the long range shot too. I don’t actually remember or know if he could dunk, but I feel like he could. Easily, in crowd, with people hanging off of him.
Anyway, I really have only one super clear, Technicolor vivid memory of Tom. It’s a moment where I knew that not only was he the best basketball player I’d ever been on the court with, he was good. Like good good, not just good at basketball good. I was in the game towards the end, near the other team’s basket, in the paint. Probably we were ahead by a lot, but in my memory it was a tie game with just a few seconds left on the clock. Tom Guenther (he’s always “Tom Guenther” when I think of him; both names together, like one name, like James Bond or Mother Theresa) got the ball outside the three point line. He jabbed a foot to the right, got his defender leaning, and burst to his left with an explosion of speed and power that left him all alone on his way to the hoop. Everything moved into slow motion as Tom Guenther ate up the distance to the basket in two thunderous, lightning quick strides. He took off on his left foot, elevating, free for a dunk to win the game. No one in his way. He caught my eye, in midair, as my defender left me to make a half-hearted showing of trying to stop him. And he didn’t dunk it. He gently dropped the ball in my hands with his right hand as he faked a layup with his empty left hand. I made the easy basket from right below the rim, no one near me. Tom Guenther passed me the ball. The game was his to win, but Tom Guenther let me have it. A 7th grader with braces and a bowl cut and striped socks up to my calves. Tom Guenther, the greatest player in basketball history used his power on my behalf, to make me look good, to give me that glory and joy.
I lost track of Tom after he graduated, and I have no idea of the rest of his story. But that act of generosity, that laying down of his power to lift me up, showed me something about his heart. About his goodness.
When we are deciding who or what to trust in our lives, who or what to take a leap of faith on, questions of power are right at the center of that decision. Goodness & power are linked. Because we are inclined to trust that which is good, and goodness is profoundly manifest in how the powerful treat the less powerful.
(This tension around power is at the center of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” isn’t it? In the end, Scrooge uses his money - an expression of his power - to help Tiny Tim and we see in that action that there is goodness in his heart.)
The reason it’s so inspiring and surprising, even, to see someone with power use it to help the less powerful, the reason we recognize goodness at the heart of that, is that we see example after example of the opposite of that. Even in things that are supposed to be good. Like representatives of Jesus who find themselves in places of power. Henri Nouwen makes this troubling observation:
“One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power – political power, military power, economic power, or moral and spiritual power – even though they continued to speak in the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his power but emptied himself and became as we are. We keep hearing from others, as well as saying to ourselves, that having power – provided it is used in the service of God – is a good thing. With this rationalization, crusades took place, inquisitions were organized, Indians were enslaved, positions of great influence were desired, episcopal palaces, splendid cathedrals, and opulent seminaries were built, and much moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in.”
-Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership
On a slightly lighter note, watch this video from a Norwegian soccer talk show…
We’ve been talking about the idea of God’s goodness, about how he reveals himself in Jesus as someone who wants to bless us, to give us life, if only we’ll depend on him, trust him, take a leap of faith in his goodness. At the end of the day, some of the questions we have are about what kind of power God has, and what he’s going to use that power for. Can he actually make a difference in my life, in my world? And will he, if I look to him for help?
Unfortunately, our vision of God is more often like those Norwegian guys with the shock buzzers. We imagine God watching us play the game of life and taking joy in punishing us when we do anything that displeases him, or maybe even on some kind of divine whim.
Today I want to challenge that vision, and invite us to look at Jesus in light of his power and the goodness it reveals. To see how really good Jesus is. To see how God is exactly not like that ugly vision of him we sometimes have.
The passage we are going to look at is in Mathew 16v13-25. I should warn you before we read it – this story is packed full of meaning, but some of that meaning is a bit obscured by history, culture, and geography that many of us are likely to be unfamiliar with. Which is to say, don’t worry if the first time you hear its connections to this topic of power and goodness aren’t entirely obvious. We’ll work on it together.
13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
21From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
24Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
By the time of this story, Jesus had already demonstrated a certain kind of power, and a certain kind of goodness. He’d walked on water. He’d raised the dead to life. He’d multiplied a happy meal to feed a crowd of thousands of the hungry poor. He’d exercised authority over personified evil by releasing people from demonization. He’d healed the lame, crippled, blind, mute – the powerless amongst his own people. He even used his power to heal a sick child, the daughter of a Canaanite, historic enemies of Israel, and the slave of a Roman centurion, the current oppressors of Israel. Jesus was using his power, in other words, to do good to the least powerful in his world, and even to do good to his enemies.
But it’s not until this moment, this set of interactions with his disciples, that we begin to get a fuller picture of his true power and the goodness it reveals.
13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi,
Let’s start where the story starts, Caesarea Philippi. This is no small detail; it has huge significance.
// founded by Herod the great’s son, Philip, around the time Jesus was born. Named after Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor, for whom Herod the Great had built a temple prior to the foundation of the city.
// Strategic –
· high ground that oversees the plains of Syria, providing a military advantage
· source of fresh water; in time of Jesus called Caesarea Paneas, after the spring there that provided water to the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan river, on down to the Dead Sea.
// shrine dedicated to Greek god Pan built at the entrance to the large cave that led into a huge, seemingly bottomless hole filled with water from this spring (we know now it was over 800 feet deep).
· called the gates of Hades or gates of death (the place of the dead, the underworld, sometimes translated Hell), an epicenter of worship.
· city built above it
· Pan, male God who was a fawn (half man, half goat). God of shepherds and hunting, thought to have incredible sexual power, the god of lust
· Pan was temperamental and emotionally volatile (where we get our word “panic”)
· worshippers would sacrifice animals (and some sources indicate children) to Pan, and then throw them into the spring so as to appease him and stay in his good graces.
All that to say, this is no ordinary place that Jesus brings his disciples and starts a loaded conversation.
13When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
Son of Man isn’t originally a title attached to Jesus. It’s an ancient prophetic term for someone God was going to establish to rescue his people from powerful empires who had oppressed them. It comes from Daniel (you know, Daniel in the lions’ den Daniel) 7:
13“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
Daniel 7
Notice how this “Son of Man” figure is all about power. He’s given authority, glory and sovereign power, worshiped by everyone in the world. He has a kingdom that lasts forever and is invincible to every other power in the world, including time and death. That’s serious power. And over time, the Jewish people had come to connect other prophecies about a promised Messiah – the god-anointed person who would deliver Israel and be established as King in Jerusalem – with this prophecy about the Son of Man. They would be one and the same person.
Jesus is starting this discussion by polling his disciples about what they’ve heard. Clearly, talking about the Son of Man was something of a pastime in Israel, especially since all kinds of people were claiming to be the Messiah at that time. Maybe like the way people today talk about the end of the world. Do the Mayans have it right? Is it going to be a nuclear war? Global warming? Aliens? Did it already happen and we’re just the left behind ones?
Who do people think the “Son of Man” is? Do they think Elijah was the Son of Man? John the Baptist? Jeremiah? Someone else?
15“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Peter, in other words, recognizes that all the power he’s seen in Jesus isn’t just the power of a miracle worker. He recognizes that Jesus is this “Son of Man,” the Messiah, the long prophesied figure who would be given, by the creator God himself, the supreme power on planet earth, to rule from an undisputable and everlasting throne.
This is extraordinary power. What’s the first thing Jesus does with it?
17Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it. 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
The first thing Jesus does is blesses Peter with it, and promises that he will share his power with him by giving him authority – the keys to the kingdom and binding and loosing privileges (which was a phrase in common use by the rabbis meaning prohibiting and allowing, the role the rabbis of the day played in relationship to interpreting the Torah)
Peter, a fisherman. Sharing in the power of the Son of Man. Peter, who didn’t make the cut to become a rabbi, given rabbinical authority in the Messiah’s kingdom. Tom Guenther just passed him the ball and said, pretty soon you’ll be dunking this in the championship game.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg to Jesus’ goodness when it comes to power. Hardly worth mentioning compared to what comes next.
Remember, this revelation about Jesus’ royal identity and power comes in Caesarea Philippi.
A city that represents all the corrupt power in human systems. The military might of Rome – Caesarea Philippi. The capital of the corrupt Jewish Tetrarch, Philip, built with ill-gotten wealth stolen from the impoverished Jewish people. The home of a temperamental, violently sexual god, Pan, who demanded human child sacrifices to appease him. A nexus of military, political, economic, religious, and sexual power used to oppress, exploit, enslave, and terrorize. Power used to feed power and starve the powerless.
Jesus goes to this highly charged place and says that he is the one anointed by God to bring justice to these powers, and that their power will not prevail against him or his kingdom.
What are his disciples to think? They think, of course, what anyone would think. It’s time to take up arms against these powers, these pagans, these oppressors. Jesus has finally admitted that he’s the Messiah. It’s time to mobilize, to bring the power he’s been accumulating to bear in violent struggle against the enemies of Israel. God will join us in this fight. We only have to demonstrate our faith by entering the battle with courage.
This is why Jesus warns them not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. Jesus knows it’s going to be hard enough keeping his disciples from war talk, let alone the restless masses.
And then what does he do?
21From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Say what!? He must go to Jerusalem and suffer? Be killed?
This isn’t what power does, is it? Not in our world.
Understandably, Peter is crazy confused.
22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
23Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
The concerns of God and human concerns are sometimes at odds with each other in unexpected ways. We see power being abused and we think, ah, this is because the bad people are in power. If instead, we, the good people, could get enough power – if God would give us his power, even – well, then, we would use that power to defeat the bad people, and then do good with it.
But no. It’s not that bad people are abusing power. It’s that power abuses anyone who grasps for it, and then uses them to abuse everyone else.
Jesus is really, really good. There has never been good like him before in human flesh.
Philippians, in the form of a hymn, says it this way about Jesus:
6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
8Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
9For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
10so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Do you see? Jesus, to decisively defeat the powers represented at Caesarea Philippi, the powers that have brought so much suffering to so many – even to all of us in this space, gathered today – isn’t going to go up against them, power against power. Instead, he’s going to become the ultimate victim of the powers, taking the place of every one of us who is a victim. Jesus, good Jesus, the divine in human flesh, God himself, showing us who God himself is, empties himself of all power in order to let evil spend its ugly self on him in violence. Only then will he be exalted. Only then will he receive the name that is above every name.
Peter cannot even imagine this. Thankfully, neither can Satan, the name given to evil and earthly power in personal form, the prince of this world.
Only the mind of God, uncorrupted and unblinded by power could imagine such a thing. And oh what a thing it would be!
But that is for later. For Holy Week. And for Easter.
For now is for us to see the goodness of Jesus, the goodness of God, so foreign in our experience. A goodness that doesn’t grasp power, but spends it on behalf of the powerless.
Jesus will be good to us. A goodness we can taste as we depend on him, trust him, take up our crosses and follow him.
We can trust him. Him we can approach with a leap of faith. In him we have nothing to fear.
Practical Suggestions:
1. Sign up to get baptized. If you really want to experience Jesus’ goodness and power in the way that Peter does, and be part of what Jesus is doing to realize his victory over the powers in your life and in the world, that’s where it starts. At a distance learning isn’t an option in Jesus’ school, because it’s not an academic exercise. Power and goodness never are. You’ve got to get on the court with him.
2. Scour Mark for Power Encounters. (Thanks to Emily Swan from the Ann Arbor Vineyard for this suggestion, and many of the insights from this passage, by the way!) Read Mark (it’s the shortest gospel, and the one we’ve been studying for Lent) and note how Jesus uses power. You can use these questions
· Who has the power in this particular scene?
· What gives the person power?
(Ethnicity? Religious “expertise”? Gender? Resources?)
· What does that power look like?
· How is that power being used?
· When Jesus exercises power, on whose behalf is that power being exercised?
· What’s the result?
3. Pray & Observe. Pray this prayer each morning this week, repeating it 3 times as you breathe. “Jesus, you are the Messiah. Show me how power and goodness are truly connected.” Then observe your own personal experiences with power (your own or that you encounter) and any power in books, movies, or shows that you watch. Journal any thoughts you have at the end of the day.
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