Scripture text: Matthew 16:21-28
“So, is President Obama the worst president ever or the greatest?”
This was question was posed as a joke by one of the people sitting with us at my cousin Phil’s wedding reception a few weeks ago. We all had a good laugh. You see, all of us at that table realized that we were exact same group of people who had sat together at my other cousin’s wedding a few months before, with one exception. The exception was an older man and his wife who started off the conversation that night with that very question about the President, only that time, it wasn’t a joke. He was dead serious and it led to a very awkward evening.
There’s a reason you don’t bring up politics and religion in mixed company. This is a long standing rule of social etiquette. Politics and religion are things about which we humans are passionate. We’re passionate about them, because these are things that are often regarded as the core of our identity. They’re deep down, an integral part of how we see ourselves, how we understand who we are as people. And that’s very dangerous territory to tread into. It’s a virtual minefield, because when we bring up those two things in conversation we are dangerously close to setting off one of those mines. And we do that by saying the two most offensive words in the whole English language. No profanity, no curse or cuss words, no insult of any kind is as offensive to us as this simple phrase in a political or religious conversation: “You’re wrong.”
Nothing, I am convinced, will make a person angrier than to hear those words, either spoken aloud or implied. Doubly so, if they’re true and the person is wrong. Nothing is as offensive. Nothing is as infuriating. Nothing is as enraging as being told we are wrong about the things that matter most to us.
Politics and religion are probably the two best examples of this dynamic at work, but it’s really anything that we regard as core and central to our identity. We gamers for example are a passionate lot. We love our hobby. We love our games. But that passion can turn just as ugly when it’s threatened.
Anita Sarkeesian is feminist blogger on the Internet who has done a series of video articles on sexism in video games. I’ve watched several of these and I have to admit she makes some really good points. But many of my fellow gamers have responded to her with vile behavior unbecoming of anyone in the civilized world. They have threatened to rape her. They have threatened to murder her. They have threatened to kill her parents, her siblings. They have posted her home address, her parent’s address, all because she dared to tell them that they were wrong about something. And they are. There is a problem with sexism in gaming and those internet trolls have just proven it.
So it’s not just religion, or politics, but anything that we regard as central to our core self, our very identity. And we are tempted to do most anything, even the most brutal violence, to silence any voice that tells us we’re wrong.
ISIS murders and pillages through Iraq and Syria because they cannot stand even the very existence of Muslims and other religious groups that do not ascribe to their narrow interpretation of their faith. Pat Robertson and Richard Dawkins, two sides of the same bigoted coin (one Christian, the other atheist), keep saying one inflammatory and offensive thing after another because they cannot stand the existence of anyone who does not ascribe to their narrow viewpoints.
They are threatened, all of them, down to their very core by others who say they’re wrong and those others just might be right about that.
And Peter can’t believe that Jesus is going to be murdered on a cross by those he’s offended. The same Jesus who has spent the last several years of his life walking around telling all sorts of powerful people, scribes, Pharisees, priests, and so forth, about how wrong they are when it comes to God, morality, people, and just about everything else. Practically every time Jesus opens his mouth in one of his debates with those groups, he is practically asking to be silenced permanently, asking to be killed. And at Calvary, they oblige him.
We Christians, of course, understand the cross theologically, recognizing it as part of God’s overall plan for the salvation of the world. But I think it sometimes helps to remember the practical and the pragmatic behind it as well. Jesus provoked people. He made them angry. He told them they were wrong, because they were. He did the most offensive thing possible in order that they would kill him and complete God’s plan. In many ways, he played us. He got us to do exactly what needed to be done and he did it in a way that revealed the true depravity of the human species.
Ain’t none of us look innocent at the foot of the cross. Not when we realize that deep down we have the same rage at those who threaten our identity as those who nailed Jesus up there. How often are we tempted to just knock the tar out of that Republican or Democrat or Muslim or atheist or fan-of-a-TV-show-we-don’t-like or whatever? Beat the crap out of them so they’ll just shut up! Or shout them down! Call them names and insults! Whatever it takes to get them to stop telling us we’re wrong, even if we’re not. Or worse, when we are and we’re too proud to admit it.
Pride. It’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? Roman Catholics name it the deadliest of the seven sins with good reason. From it stem all other sins. Pride is what drove Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit in the garden, seeking to supplant God. And it was pride that drove Jesus to the cross; our pride and our refusal to see that he was right about us. And it was pride that led Peter to rebuke Jesus when Jesus admitted there really was only one way this was going to end.
But Jesus doesn’t care about pride. It’s not on his radar, except as a tool for his own ends. No, what matters to him is truth and what he came to do. He came to save the world. He came to show that God is love and mercy and compassion. He did not silence his opponents with violence or with insults, but with truth they could not refute. Pride would have blinded him to his goals, would have kept him as far away from that cross as he could manage.
But love is what drove him and to the cross he went. For you, for me, and for all of us foolish wrong-headed humans. He let us kill him, because it’s really less about who’s right than it is about whose we are. And through the blood of the cross, God has claimed all of us as his own.. It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about (and it’s always been about) love and sacrifice for others. That is who Jesus is and it is who he calls us to be. Amen.
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