Biblical Text

You can read Matthew 16.21-28 here.

Sermon Video

You can watch the sermon video here.

Sermon Transcript

[Note: The actual sermon will differ somewhat from what I had typed.]

The historian, Mark Noll wrote, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” He claimed that evangelicals do not like to think critically about scripture, preferring a literalistic hermeneutic. Today’s message is going to be heavy. I will be drawing from many parts of scripture and alluding to some extra-biblical sources because today’s passage requires that. But my plea to you is this. Let us prove Noll wrong. So let’s get started.

It had been a few months, maybe a year, since he had started his work. His message resonated with many people who reeled under the yoke of various oppressive leaders, each vying with the others to establish supremacy. Through his deeds he demonstrated that he was willing and able to not just talk, but also to walk the walk. Factions began forming around him, some praising him and some vilifying him. And he knew that being a celebrity meant that people would not speak plainly to him.

And so he withdrew to a remote place with some of his closest confidantes for a reality check. “What’s the word on the street about me?” he asked them. They began rattling off the names of some larger than life heroes from the past, people whose writings and the wisdom they contained had survived the ravages of history into their own day. Likening anyone to these heroes was an extreme sign of respect because these had been uniquely talented and wise individuals.

These heroes had been able to penetrate through the fog of propaganda prevalent in their times to speak truth to power. And while the then leaders had rejected their wisdom, history had borne out that they had spoken the truth despite all odds. Indeed, it was a sign of great respect and honor to be likened to one of them. But he knew the bill did not fit. Perhaps the word on the street was not as accurate as it should have been. But who would know better than the common folk?

So he turned to his confidantes and put them on the spot. “And what about you?” he asked. “What is your perception of me?” One of his more outspoken confidantes spoke up and declared, “You are the one appointed for a unique task, the one destined to rule us.” And he knew that one obstacle had been cleared with those closest to him. But the greater obstacle lay ahead, for now he had the enormous task of redefining words that held immense importance for them.

Probably the most vibrant scientists of the twentieth century was Richard Feynman, who, in 1965, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics. Feynman memorably stated, “I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” With the first obstacle cleared, Jesus knew that his disciples now had the right name for him. As Peter had declared, he was the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

His disciples knew the right words to use for him. Now they had to be taught what he meant by those words. It was going to be an uphill battle and, if he didn’t know this earlier, it was brought home to him right away. Today’s passage begins with, “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

The need to have properly defined words first came home to me in 1992 when I was at the University of Texas, Austin. Most of my fellow graduate students and colleagues in the Department of Mechanical Engineering were American citizens and, as we drew closer to July, one of them asked me, “Do you have the fourth of July in India?” For a moment I thought, “Are you doing your Masters degree in Engineering and think that we skip from third July to fifth July?”

But then I realized that, for him, the fourth of July meant ‘independence day’. He wasn’t asking about the calendar, but about the meaning behind the date. And so I informed him that, in India, we celebrate independence day on the fifteenth of August. You see, words are equivocal. One word of phrase, the fourth of July, for instance, could have different meanings for different people. And two phrases, the fourth of July and the fifteenth of August could carry the same meaning.

In 1999, Alice and I worshipped at the Glendale Presbyterian Church. I was doing a worship internship with the then Senior Pastor, Darrell Johnson. Since we were at the cusp of the new millennium, Darrell was preaching through the Revelation of Jesus Christ and he gave me the opportunity of preaching on one Sunday. Since I was doing a worship internship, I chose, as my text, chapter 5, the second half of the central worship scene in the book and the part that is uniquely Christian.

And while I studied that passage for my sermon, I came across something that blew my mind away. Perhaps it’s best I read that text so you too can see it. Let me set the stage first. In Revelation 4, John is taken up in a vision to heaven and he sees a glorious scene of worship. When chapter 5 begins, the narrative focuses on God, who has a scroll in his hands. We later discover that the scroll contains God’s plans for the world. But no one was found worthy enough to open the scroll. 

This would mean that God’s plans would remain unfulfilled and injustice would triumph. John begins to weep. Then John continues his narrative: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders.”

Did you see it? You can search all you want for a biblical reference to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and you will not find that title anywhere else. In Genesis 49, while blessing his sons, Jacob tells Judah, “You are a lion’s cub, Judah.” Apart from this there is no biblical reference linking Judah and lions. However, based on the blessing in Genesis, the Israelites developed a hope in a deliverer who was called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. But in the bible the title appears only in Revelation.

The elder draws John’s attention to the great lion, whom the Jews expected to be the ultimate deliverer. Can you imagine what John felt? Centuries of exile and expectations had stirred up the hope of the Jewish people to an unbelievable extent. They knew that their seventy weeks of exile were ending at or around the time Jesus began his ministry. And now the elder was telling John he would get to see the deliverer. This would have been beyond John’s wildest imagination.

Before we get to what John saw, let us take a slight detour. In the remarkable 4^th servant song in Isaiah 52 and 53, the prophet asks, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” To me it seems that, while the Christian Church has readily insisted that the song refers to Jesus, we have gone out of our way to answer the prophet’s questions with, “Certainly not us!” Some, if not all of you may think I am either mistaken or exaggerating. I am not.

The Nicene creed includes these words about Jesus. “His kingdom will never end.” When you hear these words or recite them, I can guarantee that almost all Christians would be thinking of the second coming of Jesus, when he will supposedly establish a kingdom on earth that will never end. To believe this is to call Jesus a liar. Have I rudely woken up all of you? I hope so. Let me repeat in case someone is still asleep. To think that Jesus’ kingdom will come in the future is to call him a liar.

At the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” It is because of this Great Commission that we are vilified by some of our fellow citizens. But why should we accept this vilification? Why should we obey Jesus’ command? And what gives him the right to send us to the whole world? That is why he prefaces those words by declaring, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

If all authority has been given to him already, then he is king already. And while his kingdom is not fully realized, it does exist. Otherwise, he would be a liar to claim what he did. But surely no Christian is willing to accept a lying Jesus!? No! But if Jesus spoke the truth, then all authority has been given to him and we obey him because of this. So when we say, “His kingdom will never end” we must mean it is present right now. So let’s go back to John, whom we left mid-turn.

The elder has told John he is going to see the larger than life Lion of the Tribe of Judah. He turns, his expectation rising rapidly, his heart pounding in his chest, his skin breaking into goosebumps as fear mingled with euphoria. And he sees what I, in 1999, called the Scandal of Judah’s Lion. For what John sees is a lamb standing with its neck slit. The supreme Scandal of Judah’s Lion is that he is a lamb. There is no lion with a luxuriant mane and a terrifying roar. 

Sorry, CS Lewis. I love all your writings but you got this wrong. There is no lion. There is only a lamb standing with its neck slit. There is no lion. There is no lion. There is always and has always been only a lamb. You see, the blessing of Genesis 49 is not a blessing from God and it expresses Jacob’s hopes for Judah. The Jews and Christians have unfortunately made that expression of hope into a doctrine of divine violence and the world has suffered the gory consequences ever since.

The scandal of Judah’s Lion first shows up in our passage even though the lion is not mentioned. Jesus knew that the prevalent view of the Messiah was that of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, a military conqueror who was expected to rout the Romans in battle and oust the Gentiles finally from the Promised Land, thereby bringing to an end the shameful and distressing times of Gentile domination of the Promised Land prophesied by Daniel. 

Since this was not what he meant by the word ‘Messiah’ a severe correction was needed. And so we read, “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” I wish to draw your attention once again to a damaging practice we have gotten used to.

Take a look at your bibles. Almost without exception, your bible will have section divisions. Some older translations, like the King James Version, do not have section divisions. But most modern translations do. And what these section divisions do is deceive us into thinking that the biblical narrative can be broken down into neat little chunks that can be read in isolation from each other. More damaging are the titles themselves, which seem to function at a ridiculously superficial level. 

Most translations have something like Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection as the heading, as though this part of the narrative had no link with what came before. If they linked it to what came before, they would be led in a completely different direction. If we ignored the sections, we would read, “Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah” followed by “From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples.”

In other words, he was explaining a different understanding of what the word ‘Messiah’ meant. You see, Jesus knew that there was and is no lion. There is always and has always been only the lamb. He knew that the doctrines developed around Jacob’s blessing in Genesis 49 were not blessings from God but the hopes of a father for the only son, apart from Joseph, who showed any courage. Jesus knew, therefore, that the hope for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah was a misplaced hope.

And so he began to explain to his disciples that God’s anointed one was never intended to be a military conqueror. Please note carefully what I am saying. Jesus explained to his disciples that the Messiah was never supposed to be a military conqueror. I think I may still not be taking you along with my intended meaning. So let me state it differently. Jesus explained to his disciples that he was a conqueror, but that the methods he would use would be quite different from those expected of him.

He would go to Jerusalem and suffer and die at the hands of the Jewish leaders and the Roman officials. And it would appear to be a decisive defeat. But God would raise Jesus up, thereby vindicating Jesus as God’s true messiah and installing him as the rightful heir of David to whom was given all authority in heaven and on earth. You see, without the section headings, we understand that today’s passage is not about the superficial idea that Jesus was predicting his death and resurrection.

Rather, Jesus was wholeheartedly adopting and accepting the titles Peter used – Messiah and Son of the living God – and was telling his disciples how he would secure those titles for himself. He would suffer and die and in so doing win the victory for his people, thereby delivering them from everything that held them captive – sin, Satan and death. And he would be raised as God’s declaration that he had been installed as the rightful king – the Son of the living God.

Peter would have nothing of this scandalous message. God’s Messiah would die? Gobbledegook! Utter rubbish! Let’s not laugh at Peter because I’m willing to wager that most Christians actually do not understand what Jesus is saying. For Peter, and for most Christians, death is a defeat. That’s why Peter rejected such a notion. And that is why most Christians struggle to understand the full significance of Jesus’ death, restricting it only to the forgiveness of individual sin.

Jesus was saying exactly the opposite. His death was not going to signal his defeat. His death was to be the means by which he gained the victory over sin, Satan and death. But Jesus was saying far more than this. From his letters we can see that Peter understood what Jesus was saying. However, for much of the history of the Church, we have rejected this message. And we have rejected it because what Jesus is saying goes strongly against what we have been led to believe.

So let’s try to summarize the conversation between Jesus and his disciples, with Peter being their spokesperson. Some months after he had begun his ministry, Jesus took his disciples to a remote location and took stock of the situation, asking them what the people’s perception of him was. He was trying to see if he had broken through to reach the bracket of uniqueness. But the people, it seems, were reluctant to grant this uniqueness.

So he asks the disciples what they thought about him and Peter uses the titles ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of the living God’, giving Jesus something to work with. Peter had acknowledged that Jesus’ role was to be the deliverer of the people of Israel and that he was going to be their ruler. So Jesus gave them a brief description of what this delivering king would look like. He would win through his death and his death would be his enthronement.

Peter rejects this portrayal of victory, clinging to the commonly accepted view that victory comes not from dying but from killing and that victorious kings are those who do not die. Jesus turns to Peter and tells him, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” What did Jesus mean by these sharp words? Was he only speaking about Peter in the moment?

Absolutely not! He was speaking about what Peter’s words represented. They represented a rejection of God’s vision for his Messiah and king, and an embracing of a Satanic vision. You see, Jesus was telling Peter that the unwillingness to see his death as a victory through which he would be enthroned as the king of the Jews, the one with authority over heaven and earth, is a Satanic deception. Peter was the first to give expression to it. Unfortunately, he was not the last by a long shot.

Through the past twenty centuries, the Church has, for the most part, displayed an unwillingness to accept that God won through Jesus’ death and began his rule on the earth on the first Good Friday. We have relegated the Cross of Jesus only to the forgiveness of our sins. We have absurdly thought of Easter as the victory. And we have postponed the kingdom of God to the future when Jesus will return. And in so doing, we have robbed the cross of its deepest meaning.

We have shown ourselves to be just like Peter, unable to recognize that God has always won through weakness. We still entertain hopes that Jesus will win a military victory when he returns even though he explicitly rejected military action when he was with his disciples. By this we reveal that we are still in the thralls of the satanic deception that only allows us to see victory being achieved through violence and refuses to allow us to see the true God always wins without violence.

That this is the case is evident from what Jesus says after this. He tells the disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Our victory as disciples becomes evident when we are willing to see the loss of our lives for Jesus not as a defeat, but as a victory. Our discipleship to Jesus is proven by the willingness to die.

But why would Jesus ask his disciples to be willing to die for him if death were a defeat? You see, it just does not make sense. Rather, because Jesus’ death was going to be his victory, he calls his disciples to also recognize that their deaths would not be defeats, but triumphs. It is because he defeated sin, Satan, and death when he died that he can call his disciples to lay down their lives for him. Otherwise, he would just be a stark raving lunatic foisting his delusions on others.

The fact that the first disciples were willing to follow his call to lay down their lives for him indicates that they did not think he was a lunatic. And that could only have come with the conviction that his death was indeed a victory, not a defeat. And Jesus gives his disciples an indication of this in the way he concludes the passage. Jesus ends the passage with two statements that have unfortunately been conflated even though they speak of two different things.

Jesus first says, “The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.” And he ends with the words, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Christians, for the most part, have relegated both these statements to the second coming. But do we not recognize that by doing this we make Jesus a liar?

Jesus is very clear. Some who were with him would be alive when Jesus received his kingdom. At that time it was only the twelve disciples with him. So before the last of them died, Jesus had to have received his kingdom. And since all of them have died, either Jesus lied or he has already received his kingdom. In Acts 7, toward the end of his remarkable sermon, Stephen tells the Jewish leaders, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 

This was a clear allusion to Daniel 7 where we read, “There before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

In other words, by the time Stephen was giving his sermon, the vision of Daniel 7 had been fulfilled. Indeed, the words of Jesus in Matthew 28 clearly indicate that by the time he had met his disciples in Galilee following his resurrection, the vision of Daniel had been fulfilled. If we track a timeline, we will see that this must have happened after the crucifixion and before the resurrection. That is why the victorious figure that John sees in Revelation is the lamb who was slain.

This is the scandal of the cross. The cross of Jesus reveals that our perceptions of victory are impoverished at best and satanic at worst. The cross reveals that our greatest enemy is not death, but the fear of death, due to which we commit all sorts of atrocities and acquiesce to all sorts of injustices. The cross of Jesus reveals to us that people cannot be convinced about the truth by coercion and violence. Indeed, it reveals that, if we use coercion and violence, then we do not champion truth.

The scandal of the cross is that it finally reveals that there is no lion. There is no lion to come roaring and defeat his enemies by ripping them to shreds with his fangs and claws. Rather, there is always and will always be only the lamb who was slain, who is worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! Note that the text does not say, “Worthy is the lamb who was raised.” Rather it says, “Worthy is the lamb who was slain.” 

The lamb who was slain is worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise and he announced to his disciples in Galilee after his resurrection that this had been fulfilled. I pray that the Church of Jesus will wake up after twenty centuries and at least begin the task of recovering the scandal.