August 31, 2014 A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew.

21From that time on, 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. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." 23But 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." 24Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." We are at the 16th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, and for those of you not here last week here are a few words to give you a quick glossary and you can also check out the podcast. It is a turning point in Matthew's gospel where Jesus is getting into trouble with the religious leaders basically. Before this, the church that was following Jesus along with his disciples had seen him curing the sick and performing miracles and teaching the Sermon on the Mount. He asks people to follow him, and in chapter 16, Peter makes his profession of faith: “You are the Messiah, the Son of God”. And last week we talked about how important it was for Peter the make a profession of faith at a time when the church was starting to come under siege. We also talked about the importance of knowing who Jesus is when the church is seen as countercultural. The culture is beginning to question, “What are these people about, and as the church gets countercultural, Jesus asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” and then we realize how important it is to know who Jesus. We are at the turning point in Matthew's Gospel. We move the narrative from healing and teaching and preaching. Until now, Jesus is pretty easy to follow; his people want to hear what he has to say. And now they hear him talking about the cross! This is the dénouement (for those of you ever studied literature). The dénouement is the turning point when the plot thickens in the play. The dénouement this is the moment when the men in the conning towers at Pearl Harbor look at and see that all those planes that are coming have a red sun on their sides; it is the moment when the man who designed the Titanic turns to Capt. Smith says, “This ship is going down in 25 minutes.” It is the moment when Dorothy looks down at Toto and says, “Tota, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more!” Peter has a hard time handling the reality of the cross, and Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan; you are stumbling block!” It's an odd translation. I read this gospel for many years in French. The French translates the Greek a bit more accurately, when Jesus says, “You are a SCANDAL to me!”

This talk of the cross is a major turning point in the ministry of Jesus, and it is very important for who we are today and what the church should be about. I had the pleasure of having lunch with Bishop Hazelwood on Wednesday, and we talked about the church and we talked about St. Ansgar and how things going for him and for me in parish life, and how things are in the in the real world of pastoral ministry in this day and age. It was a wonderful philosophical conversation that could have gone on all day. Bishops Hazelwood has just read a book, and I want to steal a bit from what he shared. It is a book by Rodney Stark called “The Triumph of Christianity.” Rodney Stark is a sociologist and a I think a theology professor. “Triumph of Christianity” is probably not a great name for this book - not sure why he called it that - because he really doesn't talk about the church in triumphant terms. In the book he says that in the 2000-some-odd year history of the church as we know it today, the church has gone back and forth between extremes. The church is sometimes the church of power and sometimes it's the church of piety. The piety is defined as the church that really sticks to its beliefs and is spiritual and thoughtful and Scripture-based. One of the things he says for example is that the church of power is one of the many reasons why no one in Europe goes to church. No one. In 1973 I was in Paris and I decided to go to the 11 o'clock high mass at Notre Dame Cathedral. And it were not for the tourists (all the people with the cameras), no one would've been in church. NO ONE goes to church in Europe and the reason for that is for too long the church of Europe was the church of power. Now when you're the church of power there are some advantages like you can take armies to the holy land to fight the infidels and you can have yourself a few inquisitions against those heretics. You can be a powerful church. But it’s really lousy church. And in times of a shakedown of the church and after some period of time in the church of piety, we see churches that emerge sometimes when they're not in power. One of the best examples is what happened after the fall of communist Eastern Europe after the church had been oppressed. For example, in Romania, Ceausescu brutally oppressed the church. Even if it was thought you were an active priest you were off to prison for life if not executed. When Ceausescu fell, the churches were full of people who had kept the faith alive when they were not the church power. All that time, they were indeed the church. It shocked everybody - even shocked the pope that so many people in Romania and held onto the faith. I just had this conversation this past week with a couple of folks at St. Ansgar. The conversation we had is that it is complicated to be church today because the society in which we live doesn’t always mesh with our church life. When I was a kid, Sunday was church and family day. There was never a ball practice on Sunday; there was never a game on Sunday. It was a day of rest and stores were not open on Sunday, and now Sundays is just about every other day. Really. You can do everything but by a car on Sunday. Sunday is just like a regular day, I would agree that it makes it very difficult easy for the church to be church because we rely so much on Sunday morning being our day. We used to rule the day, and we have lost a lot of power in our society. Now that is kind of bad because we experience the pinch of that lost power in our society, but what I'm going to say may sound a little strange and annoying, but maybe it's not the worst thing that could be happening to us right now that we've lost some power in our society. The church has a new opportunity to become a little countercultural and maybe we have to think a little harder and try a little harder about what it's going to mean for us to be church in our modern time. We

can sit and fret and wring our hands and say “O my gosh the society is change around us; if we were on top again everything to be fine. Churches would be full with everyone singing in unison and then skipping over the hills and everybody in the church will be happy!” That’s not going to happen, so the other alternative is to try to figure out how to be the church of piety. We need to really renew our faith, and what better place to see that in the cross! I think that Peter speaks for everybody who's been following Jesus around. They wanted Jesus to be the Jesus of power to take their country back from the Romans. And it doesn’t work that way. Jesus says, “Guys, I got some good news and some bad news. The good news is you can be with me forever in the kingdom, and the bad news is that we're headed to Jerusalem, and what happens there is my death, and some of you may die if you want to follow me. You're going to have to pick up that same cross and follow me. They want the Jesus of power and Jesus gives them the Jesus of the cross. And so it is for us. The logical question to might be, “Well all right then so we’re not the church power, and you know that all sounds well and good, so why bother at all to be the church today?” And “The Triumph of Christianity” addresses this as well because the rhetorical question is that the church is shrinking and that's kind of a natural outcropping of losing some of our power. So now what is the church and why the church? And Rodney Stark reminds us in his book and in history that the church undergoes these periods of power and loss of power. And the church comes back and is designed to come back if it follows the Gospel, and it emerges a better church, a more faithful church. A more faith-filled church really has to think about what it's doing, so it is important for people to be part of the church today. It is absolutely important for us to welcome new members to our church, because all we need to be that someone on the other side of the cross. The inviting and teaching is our role, so even if we are a small church it is very important for us to be a healthy church, because we keep the message. We have this opportunity in history to reform ourselves and to reshape ourselves in a way that helps us daily to carry our cross on the way to Jerusalem with Jesus. And the immediate reaction is fear like Peter’s, but we hear the words of Jesus and we believe that ultimately it is about the reign of God, and we are invited that reign of God in Jesus Christ.