Sermon 3rd September 2023
Text: Matthew 16: 21-28 – Sliding Doors
There was an interesting movie from 1998 called Sliding Doors. It had 2
scenarios facing a woman on her way home from work. Both scenarios have her
rushing to catch a train home after being fired from her job. In scenario A she
makes the train. In scenario B she just misses the train by a few seconds as
the doors close as she arrives. So the entire movie switches between how her
life would have turned out in both scenarios. In scenario A she arrives home
earlier than expected to find her boyfriend with another woman. In scenario B
she arrives home later and is unaware of her boyfriend’s infidelity. The rest
of the movie switches between both stories of her life and how different her
life was because of that split second difference.
In our Gospel reading we have a sort of Sliding Doors moment with Peter
and Jesus and how different our lives could have been if Jesus had listened to
Peter. Jesus has just announced to 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. Peter objects to this
plan of Jesus. God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you. What we are
called to reflect on is how our lives would have turned out if Jesus took
Peter’s advice. And, let us remember, Jesus was tempted to follow Peter’s
advice. In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night of his arrest, he prays to
his Heavenly Father: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me;
yet not as I will, but as You will.” 2
scenarios. Jesus’ will – let this cup pass from me. God’s will – this must
happen for the salvation of all humankind.
And then on the cross, the temptation returns – the fourth and final
temptation of Satan. “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in
three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of
God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders
– the ones Jesus mentioned to his disciples - mocked him. “He saved others,”
they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we
will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him,
for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” In the same way the rebels who were
crucified with him also heaped insults on him”.
What would have happened if this scenario played out? We would be lost
in our sin and destined for eternal separation from God in Heaven. So we have
those 2 scenarios before us: What if Jesus had listened to Peter.
Eternal separation from God because of our sin. But, thanks be to God
that Jesus listened to his Father’s will and we have eternal salvation with God
in Heaven. But this sliding doors situation happens to us in our daily lives
because we are often like Peter in our faith. Let’s remember that just prior to
this rebuke of Peter by Jesus, Peter was praise by Jesus. “Blessed are you,
Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by
my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
How did it go from “Blessed are you Peter” to “get behind me Satan”. What a sliding
doors moment. It’s because, like Peter going from walking on the water to Peter
sinking in the water – he will go from “even if everyone else abandons you I
never will, to denying Jesus 3 times. Peter panicked. And like most of us, Peter
reacts to suffering with fear and denial. The sliding door moment: “You are
setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” And Jesus reacts
with the consequences of those 2 scenarios when faced with the reality of
suffering: Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose
their life for my sake will find it.
The sliding doors 2 scenarios refer to eternal life or eternal
separation. A great and glorious future
awaits those who put their faith in Jesus but eternal separation for those who
reject Jesus Christ. Jesus instructs
Peter to focus on divine things – to get back behind him.
To focus on the promise that his Lord will be raised on the third day
and on the last day, we shall all be raised.
Because if Jesus is not raised from the dead then neither shall we. As
Paul puts this in 1 Corinthians 15:
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in
your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this
life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all humanity.
If Jesus had gone through door A – and listened to Peter and those at
the cross – then we are lost.
But Jesus didn’t. He went through door B – he continued on his Father’s
will for him and now, as Paul writes in Romans 6: Just as Christ was raised
from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
And Jesus himself attests to this: I am the resurrection and the life.
The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives
by believing in me will never die.
Paul was no stranger to suffering realizing that suffering produced
perseverance, perseverance produced character and character produced hope So,
today, he urges us to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in
prayer. But we’re going to have those sliding door moments because, as Jesus
once warned his sleepy disciples: Watch and pray so that you will not fall into
temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. But the comforting
truth for us is that it doesn’t matter how we feel but what God has promised
and assured us. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
And we see that love in today’s Old Testament reading and that God is
aware of our suffering. But his answer to suffering is not to remove suffering
from our lives but to remove our lives from suffering as he leads us out of
this life and into eternal life where there is no more suffering or death. As
Moses approaches the burning bush he hears the suffering of God as he observes
the suffering of his people: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in
Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know
their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and
to bring them up out of that land to a good land flowing with milk and honey.
And just as God came down to deliver them, he has sent his Son down to
us to deliver us and to lead us to our Promised Land. So as Christians we are
to live between these 2 sliding doors. To live in the world but not of the
world. To live the life where our true glory is now hidden as Paul says in
Colossians 3 where he speaks of the 2 scenarios lived at the same time: Since,
then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where
Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not
on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in
God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him
in glory.
So they are the 2 realities – the 2 scenarios – the 2 sliding doors that
we live as Christians as we wait for the revealing of our true life in heaven
where the old order of things will pass away and we will hear the Great I AM
speak to us from the throne in heaven saying: “I am making everything new!” “Write this down, for these words are
trustworthy and true.”
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