Pattern all your calculating to: Christ will come again - Day 4
Matthew 16:21-28
21 From 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. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23 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.”
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For 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?
27 “For 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. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Peter had a plan for what the Messiah was to be like, he was to come as a conqueror and sweep away the enemy. To set everything right. When Jesus started talking about dying that did not fit Peter’s model of the way things should be. Peter reacted strongly to this violation of his expectations, he scolded Jesus for being so wrong about the way things were going to happen. Jesus replied vehemently – “Get behind me Satan.” Those are strong words, but make clear what is at stake.
Whose plan is going to get implemented – Peter’s plan or God’s plan? Well, the answer is obvious. But what do we do when God’s plan goes against our expectations? When God takes our calculating and turns it on its head saying, “This is what I am going to do”, how do we respond? The kingdom arrives in unexpected ways, God in doing a new thing is going to bring about something that we could never plan or imagine.
Our ways, our plans, our ideas need to be given up so that we can take up God’s plan. God’s plan involves each of us being invited to take up our cross and follow Jesus. For each of us the cross will be different, each of us has different things that we need to give up in order to follow. As we take up the cross – our cross – we discover that the better way involves us giving up our plans, so that living into God’s plan we get to participate in something far more wonderful than anything we could ever plan or imagine.
PRAYER:
Lord God, like Peter we often try to make you fit our expectations, we try to shape your goals to fit our plans. Teach us to die to our plans that we might take up our cross and follow you, for that is the path to life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.