Standing Under the Scriptures
September 7, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Romans 13.8-14: Paul speaks both of loving one’s neighbor as oneself as encapsulating the law and of the imminence of the day of salvation.

Matthew 18.15-20: Jesus prescribes how to deal with offenders in the church and of the power conferred when two are three are gathered together.

Our Romans passage for last Sunday (12.9-21) had a familiar ring for me: on the recommendation of a teacher I memorized it in my teens. In fact it is the only biblical passage I memorized while growing up. (My Sunday School career was checkered, to put it mildly. When I was ten I was nearly expelled as a behavior problem.)

But, as we saw, the Romans passage was and is an important one. It consists of Paul’s commendation to the Roman Christians of a list of behaviors, regarding how they are to conduct themselves as individuals, with each other, and with outsiders. For the most part these would win the approval of non-Christians as well: avoiding haughtiness, loving genuinely, living in harmony with one another, living peaceably with all. The possible exception is the treatment to be accorded enemies. Bless those who persecute you, repay evil with good.

So the question arose of what was distinctively Christian here. We reminded ourselves of verse 2 of the chapter: “Do not be conformed to this age [or the spirit thereof] but be transformed by the renewal of your minds [through the gospel that Paul proclaims], so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” This, along with the image of the body in verse 1, is controlling for the rest of the chapter. The behaviors that Paul commends are what the transformation of our minds enables us to discern: the good, acceptable, and perfect in God’s sight. The performance of them is not just an individual matter but also and more a corporate one; the body in verse 1 is the controlling image here. And knowing through Christ that they are God’s will gives their performance a special aura, not to be encountered outside the community of faith. Indeed, rather than a means of earning salvation they are what those who are truly in Christ are spontaneously motivated to do.

This last would apply particularly to the treatment of enemies, Paul’s prescription for which accords closely with that of Jesus: “… I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5.44). There is reason to think that outsiders, Jews and well as pagans, would have found this hard to understand. It is the risen Christ who enables those who participate in him joyfully to act this way. To be sure, Paul’s specific injunction,

“if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, given him drink. For by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.”

is a quotation of Proverbs 25.21-22. But there it is more a prudential counsel whereas here it arises from the essence of Christianity.

Our Gospel reading was Matthew 16.21-28. We had discussed this the Sunday before, in connection with Peter’s Confession in the immediately preceding section. We thought, though, that there were further insights to which the Spirit might lead us. And this seemed to be the case.

In particular we looked at Peter’ precipitous fall from grace. In the preceding section he by inspiration had seen Jesus’ true identity: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” And Jesus’ response was to designate him, or his faith, the foundation of his church and to give him the keys of the kingdom (with all the implications that were to be drawn for the papacy through the Middle Ages and beyond). But here Jesus sets forth what will be involved in being Messiah: going to Jerusalem, suffering many things from the elders and chief priest and scribes, and being killed, but also being raised. And this is too much for Peter, who protests: “God forbid, Lord, this shall never happen to you.” Whereupon Jesus rebukes him most stingingly: “Get behind me Satan [sic]. For you are not on the side of God but of men.” And we concluded that it was necessary for Jesus to say this, in that Peter was in effect telling the Messiah how to be the Messiah, God how to be God, which was to cut the ground out from under his own being, dependent as it was on God.

But the question was what led Peter to speak as he did in this second instance. That it showed him to be of unstable character is one possibility, but there are others as well. We had already supposed that he was going by the traditional concept of the Messiah as a Davidic king coming to liberate Israel from the Romans, whereas Jesus’ concept was in line with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. A further thought was that Peter considered his future as the Messiah’s disciple to be bound up with that of the Messiah. And he did not want to be part of the outcome that Jesus foresaw for himself. More basically than that, there has been the human tendency ever since the Fall to decide for oneself what God ought to do, how he ought to treat us, and to protest when he does not follow our inclinations. We may suppose that Peter was not yet wholly redeemed from this. But we should be wary of supposing that we are either.

The supposition that Peter’s concept of a disciple accorded with that of a Davidic Messiah is implied by Jesus’ contradiction of that concept of his too: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” And Jesus continues with the necessity to lose one’s life for his sake in order to find it and with the futility of trying to save it in worldly terms. This is to confirm the relationship of the two concepts to each other. Both may strike us as pretty grim, as to be endured rather than rejoiced in. But if so, we miss something, which apparently Peter did too. This is that Jesus speaks of in the end being raised on the third day. This of course refers to his resurrection, the glory of which, not just for himself but for the whole world, vastly outweighs even the suffering that he underwent. And although less directly indicated, the sufferings of the disciple are to be vastly outweighed too. For Jesus concludes the section by saying, “For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of the Father, and then he will repay everyone for what he has done.” To be sure, the reprobation of the wicked may be an aspect of this. But no less so, indeed much more so, will be the rewarding of the disciple. We may think of the Second Coming as still far off. But according to Jesus, “There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” The seeing here may be taken as referring not to physical but to spiritual sight such as St. Stephen experienced in his martyrdom, before he yielded up his spirit. And on this basis the promise is available to us, at least by anticipation, in our present lives.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted