Matthew 16:21-28

Losing Self, Finding Life 

It is hard to believe that summer is already coming to an end and that fall will be here soon.
The most obvious signal of this transition is the return to school.
 
Consider what’s happening at colleges and universities right now. This week incoming freshmen throughout the country will settle on campus, unpack in dorms, meet new roommates, and step into the rituals of college life.
 
And at a moment when college presidents often welcome them with promises of affirmation and self-discovery, Carlos Carvalho, president of the University of Austin, offered his new students a very different message:
 
“The world will keep telling you to find yourself. But college should teach you to forget yourself and discover the lasting joy of being absorbed in something greater than yourself”.
 
He challenged the students to redirect their focus, to look outward rather than inward, and to measure life’s satisfaction not by how one feels, but by how deeply one engages with what is true.
 
Carvalho’s point is well worth taking. But it applies not only to education; it applies to the spiritual life. To be more precise, it applies our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.
 
Let us not be mistaken. Jesus does not call his disciples to “find themselves.” He does not offer a self-help program, a path to financial prosperity, or a sure-fire formula for success in life.
 
Instead, he offers something very different. Let us hear him again: “If any of you wish to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his 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” (Matt. 16:24-25).
 
The life that Jesus promises to give—it does begin with the self. It begins with renouncing the self.
 
To be sure, this has never been a popular message. It isn’t now, and it wasn’t then. But has it really been understood?
 
Consider Peter in our Gospel lesson for today. Earlier in the chapter, Peter stood out among the disciples.
 
When Jesus asked them: “Who do you say I am?” Peter confidently stepped forward to give the answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).
 
Peter got it right, which Jesus joyfully acknowledged.
 
He then gave him a new name. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18).
 
Today Jesus confides to Peter and the rest of his disciples what lies ahead of him. 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” (Matt. 16:21).
 
This must happen. Jesus uses a word here that carries the sense of divine necessity.
The word signals that the will of God is making something happen (Chelsea Harmon). The “must” is inherent in God’s promise, in God’s plan of redemption. The Scriptures must be fulfilled (D. Bonhoeffer).
 
But this is unacceptable to Peter. He says: “God forbid. May this never happen to you.”
 
Note the audacity of this man.
 
In giving to Peter the name rock, Jesus at the same time elevated him. On him he conferred the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
 
Has this now gone to his head? Apparently, Peter felt it appropriate at this critical moment in Jesus’ ministry to exercise the new authority invested in him to lodge a protest vote.
 
“If I may speak on behalf of the executive team, we do not think that what you are proposing here is in the best interest of our organization.”
 
Winston Churchill, resisting India’s independence, is reported to have said: “I did not become Prime Minister in order to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire."
 
Peter’s declaration is in the same spirit: “Listen, Jesus. I was not appointed the head of the apostles to preside over the dissolution of our movement.”
 
Let’s be clear: Peter, the subordinate, took his superior aside — hardly what one would expect.
He then began to rebuke him. “Rebuke” is an old church word that can be better translated as “prohibited.” Peter began to prohibit Jesus. He attempted to stop him, to forbid him from doing what Jesus had just said he must do.
 
Wait. Who is the Lord here, and who is the disciple?
 
Peter is acting as though the roles have been reversed. The one who confessed Jesus as the Christ now presumes to correct him. The one who received the keys of the kingdom now tries to exercise authority over the very Lord who entrusted them to him.
 
It is a moment of profound confusion — a disciple attempting to direct the Master, a creature attempting to control the Creator, a mere man trying to veto the will of God.
 
Peter cannot bear the thought that harm should come to Jesus. Granted, Jesus does mention that he will be raised on the third day, but what does that mean to Peter and the rest of the disciples here? Even after the resurrection, they were not able to connect the dots.
 
Jesus’ response to Peter is sharp, even shocking. “Get behind me, Satan.” But objecting to Jesus’ announcement about the great suffering that awaits him in Jerusalem does make Peter sound like Satan. He is certainly acting the part of Satan.
 
Consider the second temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Satan took him to the pinnacle of the temple and said: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” He will command his angels concerning you. On their hands, they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone” (Matt. 4:6).
 
The message of Satan and Peter is unanimous: God will prevent you from all harm.
 
Peter is in the wrong camp. He finds himself as a Satan, a word which means “adversary.”
At this moment, Peter is Jesus’ adversary—one who stands opposed to him, not as one who stands behind him.
 
That is why he is a stumbling block to Jesus. He stands in his way. The contrast between Peter the rock and Peter the stone of stumbling should not escape us.
 
“You are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things” (Matt. 16:23).
 
But did not the Father reveal to Peter the true identity of Jesus last time? How quickly does the mind turns from divine things to human things!
 
Revelation does not prevent confusion. A disciple who confesses rightly can still think wrongly. And Peter, who had seen clearly, now sees only through the lens of fear — preserving the movement, securing the future, and avoiding the cross.
 
The Peter who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the living God, was Christ-centered. But here he must learn that to be Christ-centered is to be cross-centered. Jesus is the Messiah, but he is the Messiah who is crucified and raised on third day.
 
These are the terms. Jesus after all has the authority to define them, not least because they are about him.
 
Conversely, those who wish to follow him do not have the authority to redefine them. For, as Jesus declared elsewhere, “The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matt. 10:24).
 
The announcement about what awaits Jesus in Jerusalem serves as the occasion to invite the disciples, including Peter, and anyone else who is willing, into the privilege of discipleship.
 
Surprisingly, when Jesus begins to reveal to them the cost of discipleship, he once more sets them free to choose or reject him. “If any want to become my followers.”
 
For it is not a matter of course, not even among the disciples. Nobody can be forced, nobody can even be expected to come.
 
He says rather, “if anyone wants,” referring to those prepared to reject all other offers which come their way in order to follow him.
 
It is a common misconception that to be a disciple of Jesus is to exert moral effort — and that to be a good disciple is to redouble those efforts.
 
We may hear the call to deny the self as a prod to be less selfish. We say, “I have to work on thinking of others more than I do of myself. I am too me-focused.”
 
But however noble such an aspiration might be, it still belongs to a project of self-improvement. It keeps the self at the center. It treats discipleship as technique.
 
To deny the self is something different. It is not to improve the self, but to surrender it for the sake of something greater, more, and better.
 
That does not mean that the self is despised. Far from it. It means that the self is released from the burden of its self-concern, its self-preoccupation, so that we can cease clinging to life as a possession, and receive it again from the One who gave it.
 
The call to discipleship always works on the level of desire: “if anyone wants.”
 
Have we found in Jesus and the kingdom a treasure buried in a field, for which we are willing to sell everything we own so that we can buy that field? Have we found in Jesus and the kingdom the pearl of great price, for which we are willing to sell everything we have in order to buy it?
 
If we are asking these questions, then we are at the place where we can grasp the meaning of denying the self, taking up our cross, and going after Jesus.
 
We are at the place, as Carvalho said in his convocation address, where we can forget the self and allow ourselves to be absorbed in the truth that engages us.
 
For in Jesus is not only the truth, but also the good and the beautiful—all that the soul truly desires.
 
Are we awake to what our soul truly desires?
 
C.S. Lewis once observed that our desires are not too strong but too weak. We are like children making mudpies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea. We prefer the lesser thing because the greater thing seems too intimidating, too incredible, too unreachable.
 
Accepting the call to deny self, take up our cross, and go after Jesus is the great dare that risks all on the claim that Jesus is the meaning and goal of life and that therefore losing our lives for him is the best, and in the end, really the only thing we can do. In following him, in absorbing ourselves in him and in his kingdom, we find our deepest life satisfaction.
 
To be sure, following Jesus in self-forgetful abandon is hardly the image of the successful life presented to us by the world. The successful are those who have mastered the game of life and have all the world’s goods to prove it.
 
But Jesus counts these among those who want to save their life, only to lose it in the end.
“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his own life?”
 
Better to hear this warning now, in this life, before one stands before God on the Day of judgment and realizes too late that there is nothing to give to God in exchange for one’s life.
 
If we want to see how such a life is fleshed out, we can do no better than to turn to our epistle lesson (Rom. 12:9–21). There we find a long list of practices that characterize a cross-centered life: genuine love for others, goodness in the face of evil, patience in suffering, generosity shown even to enemies, refusal of opportunities for revenge.
 
Note what these practices have in common. In each case, the self has ceased to occupy the center. Attention has turned outward—to the brother or sister, to the stranger, even to the enemy. This is what self-denial looks like when it takes concrete form in the ordinary life of a disciple.
 
And these practices, if carried out, make disciples look very much like the one they acknowledge as Lord.
 
That should not surprise us. John Calvin tells us that this is the very point of the cross that Jesus calls us to take up: it conforms us to his image.
 
We mentioned at the beginning that what we have heard today has never been a popular message. It wasn’t then, and it is certainly not today.
 
But I ask again: “Have we really understood it?”
 
A friend once bought a starter house. It needed a lot of work. When he began the renovation, his wife was not pleased.
 
She was skeptical of the choices that he made. She began to complain about a room on the main floor where he was working diligently. She didn't like how spare it was, devoid of the things that make a room warm and inviting.
 
When she asked him about it, he told her to be patient, to wait and see until the end. His secrecy frustrated her even more.
 
One day, a truck came, and movers unloaded carefully a large object from the back. My friend supervised them as they removed a large window in order to place the object in the room where he had been working. It was a baby grand piano.
 
The room was transformed. No longer was it sparse, devoid of things that make a room warm and inviting. It was the site of an exquisitely beautiful instrument.
 
The analogy is by no means perfect. No analogy ever is. But it does cast light on the dynamic in our Gospel lesson.
 
The life Jesus calls us to can look sparse, devoid of things that make a life worthwhile. We are skeptical, maybe even protest, like Peter. But he knows what he intends to place there.
 
And the life he gives is worth more than the whole world and all its wealth. Amen.
 

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