"What's On the Agenda?"
Matthew 16-21-26
March 15, 2009
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John Andrew Fleming
My calendar is smarter than I am. This calendar of mine is not a run of the mill paper calendar. I can still master one of those. The calendar of which I speak lives somewhere in the cyber world, on the internet. I still have to put my appointments, the things I am supposed to do and places I am supposed to go on it, but once those things are keyed in, my calendar synchronizes, it coordinates, it orchestrates and harmonizes with the computer that lives back there in my office and the one that lives on my cell phone.
I can access it anywhere, this calendar of mine. I can pull it up on any computer whether I am home in Arkansas or on vacation in Gulf Shores (though I admit that a calendar is the last thing on my mind when I'm at the beach!) Like I said, my calendar is smarter than I am and just to make sure that I am on the ball, not forgetting anything, every morning at 5:18 a.m., my calendar sends me an email letting me know what my schedule is for the day. The subject line on the email is simply this, Your Daily Agenda.
Agenda. There is a word that can send you a number of different places when you hear it. Some people, when they hear it, immediately put the word hidden in front of it.
In the paper this past week, there was an article that told that David Pryor had been appointed to the Board at the University of Arkansas. The headline let me know that Senator Pryor has no agenda for the Board.
Other folks when they hear the word agenda or read it, it sends them somewhere else. That place is a business meeting and its order. When the meeting is a church meeting, the things on the agenda include things like prayer, the approval of minutes, and reports. There is new business to consider and old business to finish up. Hopefully there are no hidden agendas in church meetings, though I've been to a few where there were. For some, when they hear the word agenda, those are the thoughts that flood ahead.
What is an agenda anyway? For some the idea of an agenda simply means a plan. If that is how you define it, then I hope that you know that God devised a plan for us. It was a daring plan, a plan to get the attention of his children who had turned away from Him so many times and in so many ways. These children of God had ignored his pleadings from the sidelines. They also had ignored things like plagues and floods and famines and messengers and manna. God had gotten inside people's dreams and sometimes woke them up in the middle of the night. No matter what God tried, God came up against the barrier of flesh and blood.
As one preacher put it, "God called out to them, but all they could hear was thunder." So God came up with a plan, a daring plan, to get their attention. On that starry night, so long ago, while shepherds tended to their sheep in the far off distance you could hear the sound of a baby's cry.
As it turns out, that wasn't the end of God's plan, it was just the beginning. Some wonder what Jesus did during what we've come to call the lost years, between the time he was twelve and thirty.
I think I know. I think Jesus and God were going over the plan, perfecting the plan. The first time the plan was tested is right after Jesus came up from his baptismal waters. The gospel writers tell us that the Spirit led him to the wilderness; he was there forty days and was tempted by the devil.
We usually talk about the temptations of Jesus on the first Sunday in Lent. We did not do that this year, but since we preach from them every year, you know the temptations. The first one was to turn stones into bread, a real temptation because Jesus had not eaten for forty days. The second temptation is the one that is the bridge to our gospel lesson for this morning. In an instant the devil takes Jesus up and shows him all the kingdoms of the world. The devil says to Jesus, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I will give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will be yours." Jesus resists that temptation and when the temptations were over, the devil left him until a more opportune time. This, friends, is a more opportune time. It is not the only more opportune time, but it is one of them.
Let's look a little closer at our second gospel lesson for today, taken from the sixteenth chapter of Matthew's gospel. This is the first of the passion predictions in Matthew's gospel. Matthew gives us four passion predictions.
Just before Jesus talks of his suffering, he turned back to the disciples and asked them first what others were saying about who he was and then secondly about what they really believed. It was Peter, you remember, who said that Jesus was God's Messiah. It is here and now that Peter and the other disciples get the rest of the story. The rest of the story is that the way includes a cross.
Look back for a moment, if you will, at the call of these disciples. Without exception, Jesus called all of them to follow him, literally to walk behind him. They were to do that because they did not know the way. Jesus says that the way leads to his suffering and death. And Peter, who just moments before had been given the distinction of being the Rock suddenly crumbles into a lesser kind of stone, a stumbling block.
Peter goes to Jesus privately; he took him aside and began to rebuke him. Perhaps Peter thought he had more clout because of his new name. I think he is trying to talk some sense into Jesus' heart, but Jesus saw his words as an attempt to pull him off course. You see this is a contest of minds and wills. It is Peter's mind verses Jesus' mind and it is the human will against a divine one.
The temptation is the same, friends, as it was in the wilderness, glory and honor without the cost and pain. On the heels of the rebuke, Jesus says something that we sometimes say when people don't agree with us. The King James Version is best here, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" What Jesus says is more powerful than our joking about the phrase. What Jesus is really saying here is not that Peter is evil. "Get thee behind me Satan" is a reminder that he is to follow Jesus and that he doesn't know the way. This is a call we must still follow today. Jesus says to us, get behind me, and follow me as far and as long as you can. Just be sure of this, the way leads to a cross.
Well, as you know, we are in the middle of a sermon series this Lenten season. This is our third week of noticing the mistakes the disciples made in hopes of not making them ourselves. Two sermons ago the mistake made was that the disciples assumed that they did not have enough resources to feed a crowd or to make a difference. The mistake they made last week was assuming that there was a pecking order to discipleship and that the place to be was on the right and left hand of Jesus.
What is this week's mistake? It's simple, really. It is believing that we know what is best for Jesus and that we know the way. What these disciples are doing is not altogether bad. They are trying their best to protect him and to keep him safe. Jesus, though, knew better than they did the plan and the way and the agenda.
Jesus had spent time in the wilderness sorting out his calling. Jesus had gotten away regularly. He had found quiet places and there he had prayed. Jesus talked openly and honestly with his followers about the call of God on his life. We would do well to do these sorts of things.
I think the mistake we often make is that we believe we know what is best for someone else than they do for themselves. I am going to take great care with my daughters and do my very best to keep them from harm's way. I am going to teach them the lessons that I have learned. I am going to warn them not to make the mistakes I have made. They will probably listen and then do what they want to do. I know that.
There comes a time when I will have to listen to their impassioned voices tell me why they want to do what they want to do. Some day they are going to convince me that the one they are marrying is the man of their dreams. And I imagine that there will be a time when either them or someone else I love is going down a path I don't think they should travel or make a decision I don't think they should make. In that moment, I am going to have to listen and not judge. I will counsel them, but before I open my mouth, I am going to ask God for wisdom.
And now friends, I am also on the other side of that. I am trying my very best to know the difference between what I want for me and what I believe God wants for me. I think that we go to God with options and ask for a blessing. We pray, "God should I move to Mobile or Minnesota? Should I retire now or wait two more years? God, what college should I send the girls to, Yale or Princeton or the University?" Our tendency is to help God make up God's mind. God doesn't need that!
What we need is to go to this Lord of ours with empty hands, no hidden agendas, no crossed fingers, nothing behind our backs, and with an open mind. We should go to the Lord we love and who knows us better than anyone else and ask what direction we should go. Jesus says to us that His way is to the cross and our way is to follow him, because that is where life really is. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. Let us pray.
(Special thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor for the ideas surrounding God's Daring Plan. Special thanks to Thomas Long's thoughts on this passage. I found his words in a wonderful commentary. And thanks to Max Lucado for the idea about going to God with options).