Scripture: Psalm 85:8-13; Matthew 14:22-33; John 12:25; Matthew 16:26; John 14:1-3 Series: Praise
A sermon on Psalm 85 and Matthew 14 asking what God truly requires of us. Using The Godfather’s quid-pro-quo favors as a foil, the preacher argues God is not a power-hungry extractor but the giver of new life. God asks for peace and justice to embrace in us (Psalm 85), and to step out of the boat in risky faith (Peter walking on water). Drawing on Bonhoeffer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the call is to die to old desires and the fear of death, trading the girdle of security for the belt of faith. What God asks is ourselves, lived out in works of mercy and piety, and the freedom this brings.
Illustrations: godfather-don-corleone-favors, schadenfreude, sea-of-galilee-storms, bonhoeffer-come-and-die, sir-gawain-green-knight
August 13
What does God Ask of Us?
I have probably watched The Godfather too many times, but I still enjoy it. The dramatic transformation of Michael Corleone from war hero to mob boss. It is a story of how good intentions can take you to the very place you don’t want to be. The Godfather begins in a strange way. Not in gunfire or clever witticisms, but a wedding. Don Corleone’s daughter is getting married. The ceremony itself is not important. What matters are the people. They have come to ask a favor of the Don on the day of his daughter’s wedding. He will give them this favor, but at some point in the future, the debt will come due. Now, I’ve never known any mob bosses in my life, just to be perfectly frank. I also don’t like asking favors of anyone in general, so I definitely wouldn’t ask a favor of mob boss. One important aspect of a favor is the return, the quid pro quo. You don’t know when the Don is going to ask a favor of you and you have to be ready for it.
God the Father is not a mob boss. This is important to be clear about. I think there are some perspectives of God, some theologies that make him out to be. Some theologies make God to be this all powerful, all knowing puppet master, only concerned with working the puppet strings of power, watching you, judging you, controlling you from the shadows. That is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is powerful but the nature of God is not power. That is not the nature of the God of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today, I want us to think about what God asks of us. The example of the mob boss can be enlightening in this way. The mob boss is the most worldly person imaginable. It’s just business. It’s just power. It’s just making a profit, no matter who dies to the death. Family in the mafia is an extension of profit-making. There is no limit to the profit motive in the mafia. Honor holds a certain level, but even that can be dismissed to make a profit. When we see who God is, what God has done, what God has offered for us in Jesus Christ, this new life that is given for us, this new life that is not just an opportunity to desire the same things we did before or to want the same things we did before, to do the same things we did before in much the same way. The Christian view of heaven, the biblical view of heaven is not just this life as it is…eternally. The Christian view holds that in the direct presence of God, there will be no more weeping or crying or gnashing of teeth. This is the renewal of all creation through Jesus Christ. The word made flesh. There is no bigger or greater gift. With that great gift, we may think that there is a catch. What does God ask of you? It is different from what Don Corleone asks of you. It is different from what your job asks of you. It is different from what your spouse or your children ask of you. What does God ask of you? We see a few examples today in these readings from Psalm 85 and from Matthew.
Psalm 85
The Psalmist says: the Lord God must speak peace to his people. This is something that God asks of us, not peace outside of his people, not peace on our borders, peace to his people. If you have violence in your heart, if you have sin in your heart, peace is going to be an abhorrent concept. If your joy is in another’s pain or another’s loss, the German term Schadenfreude. If you delight in schemes that extract resources from others and feel great about making others feel bad, peace will be scary. If you see yourself as the hands of justice in the world, peace is going to be an important concept. It will be a challenge. Peace can seem unfair unless we have faith in God’s peace and God’s Justice. We can only receive the peace of God when we see and believe and have faith in the justice of God: God will have justice. In verse 10 of psalm 85, steadfast love and faithfulness will meet, righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Righteousness and justice are the same word in both Hebrew and Greek. Not a similar word, but the same word. So another way to read this is: justice and peace will embrace. That is what God asks of us. A way of life where justice and peace embrace. It is a different way of life than the life of this world; this life of scarcity, of limitation. This world of Don Corleone asking a favor at some future moment. God never asks a favor. God never needs a favor. God created everything and offers us life.
Matthew
In Matthew, we get another perspective. The disciples are on the sea of Galilee and there is a storm. The Sea of Galilee is a large body of water where winds can change quickly. There are steep hills on the sides. And so a storm front can come in and just rest there for a long time. The disciples are used to this. Many of them growing up fishing on the sea of Galilee. They’re much more familiar with storms than they are with Jesus. I think that’s the case for a lot of us. We may have grown up in the church, but we are more familiar with storms than with Jesus. The storms of life, the storms of self-doubt, the storms of tragedy, maybe the storms of success, the storms that confuse us into thinking we are the rulers of this world. The disciples were more familiar with storms than with Jesus. And so when they saw Jesus walking on the water, they did not know what to do. Peter tried. I think he felt obligated to do something. Peter tried. Jesus asked them to do something strange. Jesus asked them to get out of the boats, their place of security, and to walk on the water, a place of risk. The boat is solid. The sea is not. The boat is sure. The sea is not. This is what Jesus asks of us. According to the world, it is absurd. The world tells us to stay in our boats. We should stay in our safety no matter what Jesus says, because the storms are going to pass and then we will be fine. We have more faith in the passing of the storm than in the word of God. Many of us do and we should humbly admit it. We have more faith in the passing of the storm than in the word of God. But Jesus offers us something beyond the storm. In Jesus, we find not just safety but transformation. We worship the Lord on Sunday as little Easters, remembering the resurrection as often as we can, the new life Christ gives us. But this new life is not just the old life with a new coat of paint. It is new life with new desires. And our desires need to be consistently changing if we are going to continue in this new life, if we’re not going to fall back on those old habits of self-destruction. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor/theologian who died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, said, “when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.“ That’s not an easy sales pitch. It doesn’t have to be. Jesus isn’t selling anything. It isn’t an easy sales picth, but it is true. When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die. Die to the desires of the world. Die to the desires of Don Corleone and the mob boss. Die to the desires of self-preservation at the expense of those around us. Die to the desires of self-preservation at the expense of the word of God.
My favorite illustration of this is found in an unlikely place.
The Green Knight
The great medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is about a strange game that takes place in a castle. There is a New Year’s feast at Camelot and a strange night comes forward. He holds an ax in one hand and a holly branch in the other. The Green Knight sees the people of Camelot weak but he offers them this game: someone may strike him once with his axe, on the condition that the Green Knight may return the blow in a year and a day. Sir Gawain, the youngest of the knights, eventually comes forward. He attempts a light blow but takes the knight’s head. Gawain thinks that the situation is under control, but this is no mortal knight. After the head is gone, the knight picks up his head and says, in a year’s time, I will do the same to you. Come to the Green Chapel. And so this fear of death takes hold over Gawain. What would you do if you knew you would die in a year? A few adventures ensue, including the temptation of a lady who gives him a magical belt to protect him. He is told if he wears this belt, he won’t die. Sir Gawain is given a belt to stay safe as he comes to the Green Chapel. He falters as he faces the Green knight. He falters. He clings to life. He is trapped to fear. Until, that is, he takes off the belt. He lets go of his clinched fist clinging to life, and when the axe of the Green Knight falls on his neck, the blade leaves only a scratch. He goes back to Camelot a free man.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a profoundly Christian poem. Jesus says in John 12, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” Or in Matthew, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
What does God ask of us? What does Jesus ask of us? It is different from what the world asks. In John 14, we see consolation in this. Do not let your heart’s be troubled. In my father’s house, there are many dwelling places. Were it not so, I would not go to prepare a place for you. For where I am there you will be also. What does God ask of us? God asks us for ourselves. It is at once the greatest request and the most freeing for when we offer ourselves, when we step outside of the boat, when we step outside of the expectation that God is Don Corleone or our boss or anyone else who just seeks to extract from us, we realize that God doesn’t want to extract from us. God doesn’t wanna take from us. But in the asking God gives us life. When we take off that girdle of security, we receive the belt of faith. And when we do that together, we are the body of Christ.
Let us step out of the boat together. Let us follow the example of Peter but not fall in the same way as Peter. Let us look to Jesus more than to our feet. God gives us a path that is clearer than Peter’s. It is the path of mercy: visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others. It is the path of piety: studying the scripture, praying, sharing communion, worshipping together.
What does God want from us? God wants our pride, our doubt, our pain. God wants those desires to die that we might live. God wants peace and Justice to embrace in us. May it be so.
Let us worship the God who gives himself to us so that we might be free. If you feel trapped in life now, God asks you to be free. Let go of what needs to die and step into Christ’s freedom. That is what God wants of you.
Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your mercy. We thank you for your peace, let it abide in us. Wash us clean by your blood so that we may be continually made new.
In the name of the Father, and