Sermon - August 30, 2020

19 min•0 plays•0 favorites

Religion

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Our three-year-old grandson, William, who lives in Grand Cayman, now knows how to initiate a Facetime call to us all by himself. When he calls, I read books to him, we sing songs, and we play games. One game he loves to play is a form of Follow the Leader, in which he makes crazy faces, then I make the same face. Or, I will make a funny face and he then follows. It is just so much fun! However, our game abruptly ends when the follower decides he no longer wants to copy the leader, when he decides he wants to do something else. Today, Jesus teaches the disciples and each one of us about what it means to Follow the Leader, Jesus style! He tells the disciples what it really means to follow him as their leader. He is alarmingly blunt about what it means to follow him, and Peter does not want to go there. Peter has just experienced a monumental come to Jesus moment where he responded to Jesus saying, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” Jesus had just called Peter a rock and said that he would build his “called out” beloved community, the church, on the rock of Peter’s testimony and confession of faith. Jesus has just made Peter a kind of deputy leader in the kingdom of God. And, now, Jesus seems to ruin the moment they had all just experienced when he tells Peter and the others, "Look, the road to Jerusalem is filled with nails. They'll pierce me and put an end to me, but after three days God will reclaim my life." Well, only a short time before this, Jesus had given Peter the “keys of the kingdom,” a major leadership position, with the power to bind and loose. And, as Peter now hears Jesus speak of what lies ahead, Peter has the audacity to seek to use his newfound sense of authority as he attempts to bind Jesus! Peter clearly had a certain vision in mind regarding what it means for Jesus to be the leader they had hoped for. And, the thing

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OscarStar

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