13 Pentecost

 

August 30, 2026

 Matthew 16:21-28

 + I’m going to start out today doing something kind of unpleasant.

 But, I’ll bring it back around.

 Eventually.

 I promise.

 Ok, so let’s just take a moment today and think about something.

 For this moment, let’s just look over our own personal history so far and think about a time when we thought we failed.

 Truly failed.

 Truly failed ourselves.

 Truly failed someone we loved.

 Truly failed professionally.

 Truly failed.

 Live with this memory for a moment.

 Let is sit there with you.

 Accept it for what it is.

 I’m not going to ask you give it up right yet.

 We’re gonna keep it here for a bit more.

 Let’s turn our attention to our Gospel reading today.

 In it, we hear those very familiar words,

 “Get behind me, Satan!”

 Jesus isn’t saying this to the religious leaders, or the government officials, or Herod, or Caesar

 He isn’t even saying it Satan himself.

 He is saying it to, of all people, Peter.

 Poor, poor Peter.

 Only moments earlier, Peter had just confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

 And Jesus had just called him blessed.

 He had named him—or rather his confession—the rock upon which the Church would be built.

 And now Jesus calls him what??

 Satan??

 Poor, perpetually well-intended Peter>

 Oh, what happened?

 Well, Peter listened.

 And sometimes listening gets us in trouble.

 This past week, classes started.

 And with my writing students, I tell them one of the rules of a good and effective writer is listening.

 Hearing what’s going on around you.

 Hearing the dialog at the next table.

 Hearing the world with the ear of a poet.

 But doing so can be dangerous.

 It can be unpleasant.

 Sometimes listening closely means hearing things we don’t want to hear.

 And Peter had just heard Jesus speaking about suffering, rejection, and death.

 And Peter could not accept it.

 Now, let’s be fair to Peter.

 He wasn’t the only one of his time who would have had a fairly clear expectation of who and what the Messiah was.

 And Peter sure knew that what Jesus was saying about himself was definitely not what a Messiah was supposed to do.

 After all, the Messiah was supposed to win.

 The Messiah was supposed to overthrow enemies.

 The Messiah was supposed to seize power.

 The Messiah was supposed to restore Israel’s glory.

 And Peter does what we, with those expectations, would’ve done as well.

 He responds to this by saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

 He’s so well-intended in this.

 He’s trying so hard to be the faithful follower.

 However, poor Peter’s idea of salvation is still shaped by power.

 He, and a lot of other people, wants a Messiah who conquers through force.

 A winner!

 A Mesiah who reveals a God who conquers through power and might.

 And what does Jesus come representing?

 Jesus reveals a God who conquers through love.

 And love, Jesus tells us, is not free.

 It will cost something.

 “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

 And no one—no one!—not even now, wants to hear that!

 Now, to be fair, Jesus isn’t telling us to actually seek out suffering.

 He’s not telling abused people to remain with their abusers.

 He’s not saying that illness, injustice, or oppression is somehow God’s will.

 He’s not wanting us to be self-wallowing martyrs to our own sad depressions.

 The cross is not a passive acceptance of whatever misery comes our way.

 (I think a lot of Christians miss that point)

 The cross, rather, is what happens when we love as Jesus loves in a world that is often hostile to love.

 The cross is what happens when we tell the truth in a world comfortable with lies.

 It is what happens when we live in a world in which we strive hard to recreate things in a way that suit us at the expense of others.

 It is what happens when we welcome those whom respectable society has rejected.

 It is what happens when we refuse to answer cruelty with cruelty, hatred with hatred, or violence with violence.

 It is what happens when people are being passive aggressive, or unduly subversive.

 Taking up the cross means choosing the way of Jesus even when another way would just be so much easier, and safer, or more profitable.

 Peter wanted Jesus to save his life.

 He really did.

 But he wanted him to do it by abandoning that way of love.

 But Jesus knew that a life preserved at the cost of love is no life at all.

 “For those who want to save their life will lose it,” Jesus says, “and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

 We spend so much energy trying to save our lives.

 We protect our reputations.

 We guard our possessions.

 We cling to control.

 We build walls around our hearts because we’re afraid of being wounded and hurt.

 And slowly, almost without noticing it, the life we have tried so desperately to protect becomes smaller and smaller.

 Jesus offers us another way.

 Give your life away, he says.

 Spend it on mercy.

 Pour it out in compassion.

 Risk it on love.

 Stand beside the lonely.

 Defend the vulnerable.

 Welcome the stranger.

 Forgive when you can.

 Begin again when you fail.

 This is how a life is lost.

 And this is how a life is found.

 Peter will eventually get it.

 He’ll eventually discover that being the rock of the Church does not mean possessing power.

 It means following Jesus.

 It means failing.

 And failing hard.

 It means being forgiven.

 It means continuing along the way.

 OK.

 So, let’s go back to that failure that we’ve been siting with during this sermon.

 Is it still there with you?

 If so, just remember as you sit here with it beside you—Jesus understood failure too.

 He was a failure.

 A failure int eh eyes of Peter.

 A failure in the eyes of the world.

 But our failures—that thing sitting beside you—don’t define us.

 We fail sometimes.

 Let it go.

 Give to God.

 Release it.

 And be done with it

 And forgive yourself for it.

 And remember, there are probably more failures ahead.

 We’re gonna fail in this life.

 There will be moments when we choose safety over love, when we choose comfort over truth, when we choose self-preservation over mercy.

 But Jesus will continue to call us.

 Take up your cross, he says to us.

 Follow me, he says to us.

 Lose the small and frightened life you have been guarding so carefully.

 Let it go.

 And discover a larger life.

 Discover a more abundant life.

 A life that can be found only when we give ourselves away in love.

 Amen.

 

12 Pentecost

 

August 16, 2026

 Isaiah 56.6-8; Matthew 15. 10--28

 Let’s just jump right into it.

 There’s something uncomfortable about today’s Gospel reading.

 And I think we need to let it be uncomfortable.

 First we have this talk about cleanliness and uncleanliness and -washed tombs.

 And then, we find this Canaanite woman coming to Jesus desperate for help.

 Her daughter is suffering terribly.

 In desperation, she cries out after him:

 “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.”

 And what does Jesus do?

 He says nothing.

 The disciples are annoyed by her.

 They want Jesus to send her away.

 And then, when Jesus finally does speak to her, his words seem almost shockingly harsh.

 “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

 There are all kinds of ways we can try to soften those words.

 We can explain the culture.

 We can talk about the Greek word for “dogs.”

 (Kunarios is the word—it means a puppy, or a house dog)

 We can say that Jesus is testing her faith.

 Maybe.

 But the story itself doesn’t soften any of it very much.

 And neither does the woman.

 She is determined.

 She simply refuses to go away.

 “Yes, Lord,” she says, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

 What an amazing answer!

 She doesn’t argue theology with Jesus.

 She doesn’t demand her rights.

 She simply trusts that there is enough mercy in God.

 Even in the crumbs.

 And somehow, in that moment, the whole story opens up.

 Jesus says,

 “Woman, great is your faith!”

 And then what happens?

Her daughter is healed.

 There’s something wonderfully subversive to this story.

 Because the person who understands the wideness of God’s mercy is not the insider, the disciple, the close follower of Jesus, bur rather. . . the outsider.

 The Canaanite.

 The Canaanite woman.

 This woman who doesn’t belong.

 This woman whom the disciples want to send away.

 And she understands something about God that religious people sometimes forget,

 There is always enough.

 There is enough grace.

 There is enough mercy.

 There is enough love.

 There is enough room at the table.

 Isaiah understands this too.

 “The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,” Isaiah says, will be welcomed.

 God says, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

 Not some people.

 Not the right people.

 Not respectable people.

 Not the people who already know how everything works.

 All people!

 And then comes this great little line in Isaiah:

 “The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, ‘I will gather yet others to them.’”

 I love that!

 Because just when we think God has finished gathering people in, God says:

 There are always more.

 There are always more.

 We human beings are very good at drawing circles.

 Inside.

 Outside.

 Us.

 And them.

 Clean.

 And unclean.

 Worthy.

 And unworthy.

 And how does Jesus feel about the circles we make for ourselves?

 “It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles,” he tells the crowd.

 What defiles us comes from the heart.

 And what comes from the heart?

 Our hatred.

 Our cruelty.

 Our contempt.

 Our little (and sometimes not so little) bigotries.

 Our willingness to dismiss other human beings.

 Our certainty that somebody else does not belong.

 And then Jesus walks straight into a story about a woman everyone assumes does not belong.

 And she becomes the example of faith.

 That should tell every one of us something.

 The Gospel keeps pushing the boundaries outward.

 Again and again.

 Whenever we think we have it all figured out, when we think we know who belongs at God’s table and who doesn’t, someone else always appears at the edge of the story.

 Someone inconvenient.

 Someone unexpected.

 Someone we might not have invited.

 And God says,

 I’ll gather them too.

 That’s good news for every single one of us.

 Because ultimately every one of us comes to this table like that

Canaanite woman.

 Empty-handed.

 Hungry.

 Needing mercy.

 None of us earns our place here.

 None of us deserves the Bread that is placed into our hands.

 We simply come.

 And God feeds us.

 And the great surprise of the Gospel is that what looks like crumbs turns out to be a feast.

 There’s enough.

 Enough mercy for the Canaanite woman.

 Enough mercy for the disciples who wanted to send her away.

 Enough mercy for you.

 Enough mercy for me.

 And still God says,

 “I will gather yet others.”

 So our task as the Church is actually very simple.

 Keep making room.

 Keep widening the table.

 Keep bringing chairs to the table.

 Keep looking toward the edges for the people everyone else has overlooked.

 And whenever we are tempted to decide that someone doesn’t belong, remember the woman who would not go away.

 Remember Isaiah.

 Remember the God who gathers the outcasts.

 Because God’s table is always larger than we can ever imagine.

 God’s mercy is always wider than we ever expect.

 And there are always—always—others to gather into that amazing mercy!  

 Amen.