Quinquagesima Sunday

St. Matthew 16:21-23

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from 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, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Last week in our text, Jesus was saying some things to people that we would never want to hear Him say to us. They would die in their sins, where He was going they could not come, they were of this corrupted, dying world rather than His kingdom. He was saying those things to people who weren’t believing in Him. He was saying it in judgment of their unbelief.

Today, it’s the case again, that Jesus is saying something to someone, that none of us would ever want to hear Him say to us. He says it this time, to His own follower, Peter. He says, “Get behind me, Satan!” To this believer, though, He says it, not in judgment, but for His good. He says it in order to make him understand something very important for him to understand. He goes on: You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

We’re talking about faith this morning. On the bulletin cover you see the Latin phrase, Sola Fide, which means faith alone. The last couple of weeks we had, Sola Gratia—Grace Alone, and Sola Scriptura—Scripture Alone, and now, Sola Fide—Faith Alone. These are phrases that Martin Luther used to talk about how we are justified or made righteous before God. They stand against any idea of us being righteous through things we have done or accomplished. We are righteous before God because He has been gracious to us (loving us even though we don’t deserve it—Grace alone), because we are able to draw near to Him through the Spirit’s work in the Holy Scripture (Scripture alone). That work of the Spirit, is that He puts faith in our hearts that clings to the One in Whom God has placed His grace for us—in Jesus, the Christ. Sola Fide—Faith Alone. We’re saved only because we have this faith in Jesus. Our sins are forgiven in Him.

Peter is setting his heart on the things of man, Jesus says. And again, He’s referring to Peter’s insistence that Jesus won’t die as He has said. That’s for Peter to have his heart set on the things of man. Really, he’s subscribing to the popular point of view of the time, that the Messiah would be someone who would only live. Were He to die, according to that thinking, all would be lost.

How could the Messiah (how could Jesus) die like that? How could He be overtaken by His enemies? How could He fail to win a very clear—even military-like victory in this world? Even in the late moments, on the occasion of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden, Peter was still trying to defend Him with a sword, to prevent what Jesus is predicting in our text, that He will go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed (also rise, of course).

Other things Jesus had been doing had been making sense with Peter’s Messianic expectations. He was compassionate and powerful. He was able to do things like heal the sick, even raise the dead. He’d fed giant crowds of people with just a small amount of food, and done other amazing things. That’d all checked out.

But how could it last if that person was going die? How could He be everything they’d been thinking He’d be?

In our Gospel lesson, similarly Jesus is predicting His death. And it says of the disciples that, they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. The fact of the matter is, on the occasion of our Gospel lesson and in our text, they just simply weren’t really paying to attention to the prophets’ words in Holy Scripture. That’s what it means when it says His saying was hidden from them, that they weren’t grasping what He was saying.

Now, had they thought about Isaiah’s words in the 53rd chapter, for instance, then Jesus wouldn’t have been saying anything so mysterious to them.

Isaiah 53:4-5

Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.

53:12b he bore the sin of many,
    and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah’s words anticipate perfectly Jesus’ prediction in our text, that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed.

The thing is: that’s also Who the Messiah would be. He’d be preaching the good news and doing powerful miracles (like Peter had expected), but also dying for the peoples’ sins.

If the disciples had been paying attention to the Psalm writer’s words, they’d have seen it too.

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by mankind and despised by the people.

16 For dogs encompass me;
    a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—

I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me; 

they divide my garments among them,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.

Again, these words from Psalm 22 certainly anticipate (hundreds of years before), Jesus’ prediction in our text, of Him suffering and being killed. They describe the scene that took place at the cross, with the peoples’ scorning and despising, the piercing of His hands and feet, the soldiers’ dividing of His garments, even the very words that express His atoning for peoples’ sins: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Again, we’re talking about faith this morning. Jesus is harsh with Peter because He wants him to grow to understand what faith really is. Faith isn’t that we figure out in our minds how we think everything best turns out, and then we say to ourselves, “it better turn out that way.” That isn’t what faith is.

St. Paul writes in our epistle lesson: now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. Paul wasn’t talking about the mirror you have in your bathroom. You wouldn’t see dimly in that mirror; you’d see a perfect reflection of yourself. He is talking about a first century mirror of polished brass, that allowed a person to see a dim reflection of himself. Were you, now, to have that sort of mirror in your bathroom, you would long for the clearer image.

His point is pretty clear: we don’t know, or fully understand everything, though we wish we did. Peter had thought that a clear image of the Messiah was that He would live in this world, providing for His people, protecting them. Instead, the truly clear image of the Messiah was what Jesus had been telling them on a number of occasions. It was what the prophets had said. He would be a suffering servant, dying in a rather horrifying way (and then rising, of course).

But it’s interesting; look in our Old Testament lesson, how the prophet describes the situation of Christ’s saving of us: “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” Whether we think or not, that those are the kind of words that should describe what’s happening at the cross (because that’s what they’re describing, God coming with vengeance to save us), it is how God chooses to put it through the prophet’s words. His being crushed is the winning of a victory for us in the only way it could be won.

It couldn’t have been won in the way Peter had imagined it. It couldn’t have been won with the Messiah living comfortably in this world, winning victories over Israel’s enemies, and whatever else they’d all imagined. No sins would have been paid for then. His death had to happen (as foreshadowed in the death of the Passover Lamb in Moses’ time—that lamb without blemish or defect whose blood saved the people from the judgment that had come upon those who were opposing God).

That’s what Jesus wanted Peter and the others to understand. God has everything firmly in hand. And the fact is, it isn’t how we would have imagined it. Right? Faith puts aside our own thinking about how everything seems like it should turn out, and holds instead to what God has said in His Word. Peter and his fellow disciples had a lesson to learn in that.

You have a lesson in it too. So do I. You, at times, have wanted faith to be God bending His will to whatever you thought should be the case. Sometimes, you might even have decided that whatever it says in His Word can’t really be the way things are. You have been Peter telling Jesus there’s no way things are going to be the way He’s said they’re going to be. Instead, they’re going to be your way.

That doubt of God’s Word is one of your sins (and mine) for which the Messiah had to suffer and die. It couldn’t have been any other way, even if we might wish it could have been. Rather than, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you”—Better for Peter and for us, to say, “Your will be done, LORD.” According that perfect will of God, the one without any doubt (or any other sin) has been put in the place of, and died for all sinners. There aren’t any more sins for you to be accused of in the judgment; because Jesus was accused of all of them, and made to pay for them at the cross.

And beyond those words so troubling to Peter, about Christ’s suffering and death are the ones that can bring true joy to your heart this morning. After the suffering and the killing that Jesus mentions, are the ones about Him rising from death. Take those words as a great comfort this morning because, having been forgiven of your sins in Christ’s sacrifice, you too will rise to be with Him. There isn’t any other way it could work out that would be better. God has it all worked out. It is worked out in the best possible way for you. God be praised. Amen.

Other Lessons This Week:

Isaiah 35:3-7

Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

St. Luke 18:31-43

Taking the twelve, [Jesus] said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.