Four Annoying Things About God: Why is Life so Hard?ⁱ
Matthew 16.21-23

Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Guide us, O God, by your Word and Spirit, that in your light we may see light. Send out your light and your truth, O God, and let them lead us. Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the gospel of Matthew. Listen. Matthew 16.21-23.

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that 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. ²²And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” ²³But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

(Rev. Matt sings here – listen to the audio)

That song, from my grammar school age VBS days, has been annoying me for a little while. Not that I don’t love those old VBS songs, in fact I wish we still taught kids the VBS songs that we all learned as kids. But that particular one is bothering me, because it isn’t true. Every day with Jesus is definitely not sweeter than the day before, because some days stink. Let me ask you in the front row, tomorrow is the first day of school, which is kind of scary, kind of exciting, and not so bad. I mean, you can’t have any homework due tomorrow, right? But when the alarm clock goes off on Tuesday morning, will it be sweeter than the day before? How about you parents: today is what, the 432^nd day of this summer’s vacation, right? The kids home all day, every day – has every day been sweeter than the one before? “I’m bored.” “So find something to do.” And then an hour later, “What are you doing in that hot garage?” “Just painting the car.”

(Rev. Matt sings here – listen to the audio)

I’d love to give you an irreverently toned sermon, full of a sense of being annoyed that life isn’t always pretty, isn’t always as sweet as a gospel chorus, but that won’t do. Sometimes it is more than annoyance, and irreverence is out of place, because it just hurts too much, and the pain goes well past to the point of pretty serious hurt. Every week, preachers give sermons to at least three people in the room who are facing death, or facing the loss of something so dear to them that they don’t see how life can go on. Sermons need to be more than clever or entertaining; they need to be worth the time that the hearers give to it. There may be only three people in the room who know that God’s grace is a matter of life and death, who are experiencing grace as more than merely something to make next week a little nicer. Only three people who are listening that way, but they are enough.

I want to be the kind of preacher who could make it all go away. I want to be the Christopher Columbus of preachers, who discovers the answer, and then leads everyone to new lands. The preacher who offers the explanation like that, the one that makes it all go away, is very kind and sincere and is a lot like every parent in the room whose Band-Aid and hug can heal every owie. Unfortunately, like Columbus who needed Americus Vespusius to go behind him and show that this indeed was not India, the preacher who offers that answer doesn’t know very much, doesn’t know people or the human condition on a profound lever, and may be too afraid of life to venture into the deep waters of reality.

You want a clear, helpful answer to your questions. You want to wake up day in and day out and know exactly what to do. You want to put your hand under the pillow and find the answer there like a quarter from the tooth fairy. But morning after morning, all you feel is the sheet. You, and I, want a God who will fix it.

So that’s the God we believe in. We go through two years, or ten, or twenty years of our lives believing in a universe that rewards good and punishes evil, until one day life slams on the brakes and we learn the truth: you can do everything right and still get hurt. Goodness and faith and right living are not protection from real pain. Jesus was as good as it gets, and still he suffered.

Don’t you want to join with Peter, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Because if it happens to Jesus, it can happen to any of us, and no one is safe. “Good God, come down and protect Jesus, because if You do not protect your beloved Son, how can I believe Jesus will protect, preserve and defend me?”

With a harshness in his voice, Jesus tells Peter to put a lid on it. “Get outta my face!” he snaps. Passing up a golden teachable moment with Peter, Jesus doesn’t offer an explanation. There is no, “I have to suffer for your sake, that you may be spared,” or “I’m paying for your sin, idiot!” Jesus does not offer a God who provides answers or explanations, and he does not offer a God who protects us from pain, who makes life easy. He offers a new way, he lives a new way, and invites us to follow this new way. The way of God.

Did God fail to come when I rubbed the lantern? Maybe God is not a genie. Who then is God? Did God fail to punish my enemies? Perhaps God is not a cop. Who then is God? Did God fail to make everything run smoothly? Possibly God is not a programmer. Who then is God?

In a scene from The Last Temptation of Christ, John the Baptist asks Jesus why he doesn’t get on with solving the problems of the world. “If I were a fire, I would burn,” says Jesus. “If I were a woodcutter, I would strike. But I am a heart, and I love.”

Anyone who has suffered through even one night of deep hurt knows what it is to beg for relief. Sometimes the prayer is answered and sometimes it is not, but those who have been there will often say that the strange, strong presence of Christ in their suffering meant more to them than any happy ending. More than anything, we need a savior who knows about pain. More than anything, we need love. Jesus does not give an answer; Jesus does not give a promise that it will go away. Jesus proclaims that God is present in our pain, and he lives a life that shows God’s presence in suffering.

Then Jesus takes his disciples in a surprising, new direction. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their 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.” (v. 24) If they were not afraid to lose their lives, he says, they might be hard pressed to find them and surprised when they don’t. The image he used was a cross, which had no religious meaning at the time, because Jesus had not yet died on one. The cross was the most cruel and painful form of execution, and was feared the way being kidnapped and beheaded is feared.

Don’t run away, he says. Don’t be so afraid of your pain, of your cross, that you spend your life trying to avoid it and hide from it. There are worse things than pain and death in the world, and living in fear is near the top of the list. If they were going to let fear run their lives, then fear would become their god. The main standard for their behavior would be how much something scared them, and their constant pursuit would be the search for safety. Instead of surrendering themselves to fear, they could surrender themselves to God. God has never promised safety. God has always promised life. Surrendering to God has never offered freedom from pain; it has only offered freedom from fear.

Now, let’s be clear. Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples to go find crosses. There will be plenty of time for the crosses to find them. He just encourages them to go ahead and pick the ugly things up – to stop covering them up and tripping over them and pretending they are not there. There is more to life than being afraid of death. There is more to life than being afraid of life. We will always be afraid to some extent. There will always remain some element of fear. And that remaining element of fear will serve us well, because it keeps our faith from degenerating into arrogant certainty. How we have all known fundamentalist people, both fundamentalist conservatives as well as fundamentalist liberals, who live in arrogant certainty, with no fear, nor any openness to the real spirit of God who breaths life, with all its pain and joy, inseparable.

So, live with the fear, don’t run from it. Take up your cross, don’t insist that God protect you from it, or that your faith in God will make it all disappear and everything will be okay. Allow God to show you the greatest mystery of them all: that right there in the dark fist of your worst fear is the door to abundant life. All you’re asked to do is believe in God more than you believe in your fear.