A new perspective

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (September 3, 2023) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of the entire worship service is available here.

What are we talking about? View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 17, Year A

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Jesus began to show 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. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Matthew 16:21-23

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

So it's great to see all of you, especially on Labor Day weekend. So nice to be back. I had the chance to go on vacation the last couple of weeks, so it's especially nice to see all your faces again.

And I'll tell you about our vacation. Christopher and Max and I have been going to a state park on Lake Ontario, on the eastern shore. We started going there right after Max's first birthday. That was our first trip. It has these cabins built by our former senior warden, FDR, one of his programs for getting folks back to work. So it has these beautiful old cabins that you can rent right on the shore and you can stay and relax.

The first year we went, one of the things that I discovered that I loved most was that there was no cell phone service in the park. And so all of a sudden I had this whole week with no emails, no calls, no news. If you wanted to get emails or calls or news, you had to really think about it and get in your car and drive somewhere else and go to where you could pick up reception. And so we've been coming back ever since.

And in recent years they've been building more cell towers. So this year when we got there, I go to put my dead phone in the drawer and I look and it's still working! It's surprising what a difference that makes to the character of our annual vacation. How thoughtful and careful I had to be to get the same effect that I had been able to take for granted for the last five years. I had to really be careful about putting the phone in a drawer or turning it off. And even with all that effort, I still spent more time connected than I ever had on past vacations. And I can see I'm not the only one who might not have the self-control that they wish they had.

It has made me think, I once heard that the French philosopher Pascal said, "Al humanity's problems stem from our inability to be alone in a room."

I think that quote has been dug out of whatever context it was in—and maybe been tossed around more frequently in the days of iPhones and Androids and constant connection—the truth is that he wrote that in the 1600s. So this is not a new issue for people. It's hard to take a moment, even a moment, to just be quiet. It's hard to take even a moment to just sit with God and listen.

Now, when Pascal talks about all our problems coming from this inability to sit in a room alone, there's a tension that comes up for you. On the one hand, I see the need and the hunger for quiet; I see how things improve when I have that time for quiet. But on the other hand, don't I have a responsibility to be connected? How am I going to solve the problems if I'm sitting alone quietly in a room? We all feel that tension. There are problems. Now Pascal is saying, the problems come because we're not quiet enough. But that seems contradictory because to solve a problem, don't you have to do a lot of stuff?

So this is where we come to the Gospel today. Look at Peter. We know Peter is not the person whose first response to a problem is to go off quietly by himself and pray about what he should do. So Peter, for instance, is the disciple who at the arrest of Jesus gets his sword out. He's ready to go. He knows how to solve this problem. He's the one who exuberantly jumps into the water to follow Jesus.

And today, Peter has this big problem. There is a big problem for Peter. If you were here last week, you'll remember that Jesus asked his disciples, who do people say that I am? And they give a bunch of answers... this is what people are saying about you. And then he says, but who do you say that I am? And Peter says, You are the Messiah, the one who is coming into the world to rescue God's people from all our problems.

And then Jesus goes on to tell his disciples what it means to be the Messiah. And that to be the Messiah means that Jesus and his disciples will be going to Jerusalem where Jesus will be crucified. Do you see how this is a big problem for Peter?

So right away Peter says, God forbid it! You're the Messiah. You're supposed to save us from the problems! You're not subject to the problem!

And Peter's first instinct is to leap in there and start to problem-solve this whole crucifixion thing with Jesus. And of course, we understand his heart, right? He believed that Jesus was going to change things. And now Jesus seems to be just as vulnerable as all of us to death and oppression and injustice. This can't be, God forbid it.

And then Peter has a bigger problem because Jesus—we noticed this in our Bible study this week—Jesus, he's not too patient with Peter. Jesus had said to Peter after Peter's confession (after Peter says, you are the Messiah), Jesus had said to Peter, I'm giving you a new name. You are the rock. You are the foundation. I'm going to build this new way of life on you, through you. But now Jesus says to Peter, You are a rock in the way! You gotta get out of my way before I trip over you! So the rock becomes a rock that needs to be moved aside so that Jesus can answer the call, so Jesus can fulfill his ministry.

And Jesus says to Peter, the problem is that you're setting your mind on human things, not on divine things.

I heard a commentary this week that was really helpful. "You're setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things." This seems like a really harsh criticism, but the commentary says, of course, that Jesus is just stating the facts. Peter is a human, so of course he's looking at this from a human perspective. He's seeing the problem from a human perspective.

Jesus is saying somehow that there's another perspective. There's another perspective from which we, Peter, the disciples, and Jesus could see the problem. And that maybe if we could see it from this other perspective, our reaction, our response would be different.

So the question for me becomes, how do I get that perspective?

And here's where I want to offer something for all of us to consider: part of how we get that perspective is by spending time in quiet and silence. Spending even just a little bit of time, even in the face of what seems to us to be dire emergencies, huge injustices, catastrophes in our personal lives... When something brings up big emotions in us, we often, like Peter, our instinct is to run right in there and start doing something about the problem. And we encounter that tension. How the heck am I supposed to sit quietly and pray when there's a big problem? But that's just it.

The invitation here from Jesus is: how can we set our minds not on human things only. How can we find a different perspective where we might know a call from God that might surprise us?

I have a friend who's a longtime practitioner of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. She's a wise person. And she once told me years ago, and I never forgot, she said: sometimes when I don't know how to respond to a problem, and I don't even know what to pray for... Or when I feel like I'm about to rush in, but I know that my rushing in might actually complicate the situation (because when you've rushed into enough problems, you start to realize that sometimes that is what happens).

She said, I know that I can always pray for God to create just a little bit of space between me and the problem.

The prayer is to ask God to make a little bit of space between me and the problem. That's perspective. It's a shift in perspective. And she said, that's the space where the Holy Spirit can begin to move. So that's what I want to offer you today.

How do we set our minds not only on the human things, but from the divine perspective? Especially when it comes to learning and discerning with God: how we are called to deal with this problem, that crisis, that injustice?

Perhaps we'll try that prayer to have just a little bit of space where the Holy Spirit can move. And time to sit quietly, to take a deep breath and to trust that God is in the situation.

God is in the situation.

And that I think is probably the key to the divine perspective. God's there.

Amen.