Proper 17A Get Back Satan

 "Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

I want you to repeat this with me. Put your hand up ("Stop in the name of love" style)

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

Together we are going to say this a few times during this sermon.

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

I'm sure we all totally understand Simon Peter in the Gospel passage for today. 

He loves Jesus, as his friend, mentor, teacher, and Messiah.

He deeply cares about Jesus.

He doesn't want anyone hurting or killing Jesus! 

We don't want anyone hurting or killing people we love. 

We get it. 

This is part of the reason dealing with suffering is so hard. 

We don't want people to feel pain, intentionally or accidentally,

those we love and those we don't know.

Yet, suffering is a mark of being a disciple of Christ. 

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back."

Jesus, though, knows what will come of his suffering.

Jesus knows what God is up to.

So he rebukes Peter, telling him that his mind is set on earthly things

and not on heavenly things.

If Peter had understood,

well, he wouldn't have suggested Jesus not follow God's way.

However, Peter was still living a culturally-centered life, not a God-centered life.

What we see here is huge difference between Jesus' new way of having a God-centered life,

and the old culturally-centered life.

In the culturally-centered way of life, suffering is punishment for things done wrong.

Either we did something wrong, or someone else did something wrong to us, or God is angry at us and inflicting us with this suffering. We view suffering as something that shouldn't happen.

Yet, our Savior was born into a people who were suffering. 

God decided to come to Earth as a person who was in the midst of suffering, as a minority as a Jew, in the majority of Romans.

And so much of our theology requires suffering, because it has been created as people who are suffering, at the hands of those in power.

Despite the requirement of suffering in much of our theology,

suffering is seen as a problem.

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

It happens. In some ways it has to happen. 

Suffering is a normal part of our world. 

We tend to see suffering as a problem.

We don't like suffering, and in a perfect world, there would be no suffering.

However, we don't live in a perfect world and we do suffer. 

Yet, suffering itself is not the problem.

In some ways, suffering has also been twisted by Christians. 

At times, the depth of your suffering were said to have shown your favoritism of God. 

The more you suffer, the more God loves you. This is totally incorrect. 

God loves each of us completely and shows no partiality. 

Our sufferings may be tests and lessons, teaching us the true ways of God, 

but they are not God's show of partiality.

Thankfully though, in many ways when we do look back on our lives, 

it is the times of suffering in which we have learned and grown the most.

Suffering is a catalyst, an agent of change in our lives.

Most of our understanding of suffering comes from feeling pain.

Pain is the body's way of telling you that something is not right.

These pain signals tell us something isn't right, so that we can put things to rights.

I think this is one of the things we always misunderstand about suffering,

suffering helps us puts things to into right relationship.

Suffering itself is not evil, and most of the time it is our impatience or indignation

or our bitterness in suffering which is the true evil. 

Through learning from and leaning into our suffering,

we can find ways to put things into right relationship.

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

Surely, this is what Jesus does with his suffering.

Through suffering humiliation, physical abuse, and ultimately crucifixion,

Jesus puts humanity into right relationship with God through love. 

Jesus predicted he was going to suffer. 

He knew humanity so well. 

We cannot stand to see the truth so open and love so unconditional. 

We must put boundaries around it. 

We see power and we must build and protect hierarchy. 

We create our own suffering through the separations and divisions we create. 

Instead, we need to find humility for ourselves in our suffering. 

We need to learn from it.

One of my favorite biblical passages is from Romans, 

though not from the passage we heard today.

"Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, 

and character produces hope and hope will never fail us." 

God does bring into our lives things we would not rather deal with, 

but many of those things are the means to the ends we have prayed for.

When we pray for patience, God gives us things to grow our patience...

which usually means we get more things in which we have to be patient. 

When we pray for love, we are given more things to work on loving. 

When we pray for peace, 

we notice more situations in life in which we need to rest in God's peace. 

But rest assured, when we pray, God has already given what we need and ask for. 

When I was younger and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, 

I prayed for a full life, one with plenty of joy and sorrow, friendship and love. 

I have certainly received it! 

Some of the joy I have found though, has come out of the sorrow I have endured.

When we numb ourselves to feeling, as many of us long to do when it comes to suffering and pain, we also numb ourselves to feeling joy. 

Its one of those annoying traits of brain processing, you can't chose which feelings to have. 

If you suppress pain, frustration, anger, sorrow, 

then you'll never be able to feel happiness, joy, love, or peace. 

When we block out emotions and feelings, they all get blocked out. 

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

Thankfully, through God's great love for us,

our suffering is a means of transformation.

God has already given us the grace and love to learn from our pain and suffering

and to find the right relationships we need.

In growing through our suffering, we grow in humility and hope,

finding God to truly be the center of our being.

So stand with me today,

put your hand up in the name of love, 

and say to all the temptations calling to you 

trying to numb you, give you easy outs, close your eyes to suffering,

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

"Get back Satan, way back.

Get back Satan, way back!"

Amen.