Sermon

The One Necessity

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Six years ago to the day I was glued to the Weather Channel, watching in horror as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans. My interest went beyond my usual fascination with all things meteorological. At the time, my brother Tom lived in New Orleans and was smack in the middle of harm’s way.

Some time later, my brother safe and now living in Kansas City, I came upon an article that explored the role that hurricanes play in global weather patterns. Given the tilt of the earth’s axis and the sun’s capacity to heat the equatorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists theorize that hurricanes actually serve to redistribute thermal energy. They are, in a way, necessary in order to restore stasis – shalom – to this fragile earth of ours.

Now admittedly, the notion that something as destructive as a hurricane being necessary is troubling. As troubling, perhaps, as Jesus in today’s Gospel showing his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Matthew actually highlights that urgency in his use of the Greek word, dei, which is best translated as necessary. The suffering and death which await Jesus is somehow necessary.

Peter certainly is troubled by that necessity. You will recall in last week’s Gospel that he correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah. And you’ll also recall that Jesus responded by telling Peter that he will be the rock upon which the Church will be built. No doubt seizing that authority, Peter tries to set Jesus straight. After all, the Messiah was historically understood by the Jewish people as military leader. The other title given to Jesus, Son of God, was historically understood by the Gentiles as the title given to the emperor. So given both the Jewish and Gentile context, the Messiah, the Son of God, is the one called upon to wreak vengeance upon the enemies of God’s people, not to undergo suffering. The Messiah, the Son of God, is the one called to be the powerful victor, not the one who dies. And those who follow such a messiah are supposed to be swept along in that marvelous national victory, not the ones who deny themselves and take up their cross.

Peter’s vantage point is that of redemptive violence. Redemptive violence speaks to our human tendency to respond to threats large and small with aggression. Violence is seen as necessary. In this way, violence redeems violence.  Our expression, “fighting fire with fire,” is an example. So in this vantage point, the key is to be on the right side of the more powerful, to be – as it were – on the right side of history. So from Peter’s perspective, here at last was the person whom God had raised up to right the centuries of wrong perpetrated against God’s chosen. Retributive justice awaited. Peter no doubt could almost envision the crown of laurel leaves placed upon his head when victory was achieved.

We recognize Peter’s confusion. We, too, cling to the Myth of redemptive violence, despite centuries of evidence which suggest that this tendency hasn’t worked out too well for the human race. But things really get ugly when we attribute this Myth to God, because then we’re really moving from the realm of anthropology into a very dangerous theology. When we attribute a thirst for redemptive violence to God, we are actually creating an idol out of the worst of our own human tendencies. Every holy war that has ever been fought has proceeded from this deadly theology. Little wonder that Jesus responds to Peter the way he does, even going so far as to call him Satan. It is well for us to remember that Satan was understood in Jewish thinking not as the embodiment of evil so much as the accuser, the one who points the finger, the one whose actions set off violence which, in turn, always prompt more violence. Jesus has no interest in being the kind of messiah Peter and the others envision because any messiah who takes his cue from the adversary is only going to promulgate a culture of death and destruction. As far as Jesus is concerned, there’s one way forward and one way alone. It is necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, undergo great suffering, die, and on the third day be raised from the dead.

The disciples couldn’t possibly have understood this at that time. Only through the lens of the resurrection can we see that the only way to break the insane cycle of human violence was for Christ himself to subvert it. There on a cross, outside the walls of the sacred city of Jerusalem, he used our terrible tendency toward redemptive violence – our sin – to save us from that sin. Call it glorious, divine subversiveness. He refused to be like us, longing for us instead to be like him.

And for us to be like him, it is necessary for us to take up our cross. And what that might look like for us is for us as a human race to recognize our vicious cycles of violence for what they are; to repent of the culture of death and destruction into which our love affair with violence has mired us; to ratchet back the rhetoric which points the finger of blame at whatever scapegoat we find handy, and to call out our elected leaders and our candidates for office when they lead us down those tempting, deadly paths.

Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem. There he will stretch out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross, giving us an example of how we are to respond to one another.  May we humbly, wholeheartedly grasp that one necessity and do it now. The storm approaches. Shalom awaits.

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral