EpiscopalCenter at Duke University

If you love politics, then welcome to hog heaven. It’s convention season and there’s a feast of politicking going on.

And, if you love politics, then welcome to church. Specifically, welcome to Matthew chapter 16, verses 13-28 in which Jesus and Peter talk some serious politics.

The passage we heard today is actually part two of an account started last week when Peter confesses to Jesus, “You are the Messiah.” And when Peter first says “Messiah” he means something very different than we do now. Peter’s talking politics. For faithful Jews like him, ‘messiah’ was a political term. It meant a descendant of King David’s who would be sent by God to boot out the Romans and rule the tribes of Israel, ushering in a golden messianic age.

And in case we missed the politics of what’s going on, Matthew tells us all this happens in sight of Caesarea Philippi. That’s a city built by King Philip on top of an enormous natural rock formation, a city to which Philip gave his own name and that of the Roman Emperor, thereby currying favor with Caesar while building a giant monument to himself that could be seen for miles and miles around.

The folks charged with designing the stages at the Democratic and Republican conventions would do well to brush up on Matthew’s Gospel. As political backdrops go, this one’s hard to miss.

So there’s Peter, Caesarea Philippi in the background, looking at Jesus, certain that the old politics is on its way out and the new politics is about to begin.

And it is, but not the way Peter expects. Because the first thing Jesus does is switch the backdrop. He points away from kingly Caesarea Philippi to the temple city of Jerusalem which, as it happens, is on the other big rock in Israel. Here’s Peter ready for Jesus to kick King Philip and the Roman Empire out of Israel, and here’s Jesus talking instead about how he’s going to go to Jerusalem and be killed.

This creates some cognitive dissonance for Peter.

“God forbid it, Lord!” he rebukes Jesus. “This must never happen to you!”

But it can and it will because Jesus has a whole new way of doing politics, a way that has nothing to do with domination and everything to do with laying down our lives for our neighbors.

I was listening to some of the convention coverage this past week when I heard an interview with Representative John Lewis, a congressman from Georgia. John Lewis is the last survivor of the people who spoke alongside Dr. Martin Luther King exactly 45 years ago this past Thursday when he gave his “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Lewis was being interviewed on the eve of Barack Obama’s accepting the Democratic nomination to be President, and as he spoke, his voice cracked.

“It’s going to be incredible,” he said. “You know, people died. Some people didn’t make it to the March on Washington. They were beaten. They were tear-gassed. Some were shot and killed. And even after the March on Washington, where there had been so much hope, so much optimism, we had the terrible bombing on a church in Birmingham, where four little girls were killed. I thought I’d cried all my tears,” he said.

And I know about the civil rights movement-I grew up with it. I’ve read about it and studied it and talked to people who were passionately involved in it. I’ve listened to Martin Luther King’s sermons and his speeches and read his letters and if you stick around here long enough, I promise you you’ll hear me talk about Jonathan Myrick Daniels who was martyred in the movement.

But what struck me as I listened to John Lewis, what struck me in a way it never had before, was the presence of those who died, the presence of people who believed so deeply in the God-given dignity of every human life, they were willing to lay down their own lives on those human’s behalf.

“Those who lose their life for my sake will find it,” says Jesus. Those who live as I have lived-for others-even even to the point of dying as I have died-for others-those are my followers. That’s the politics of Jesus, the politics he begins to teach Peter and the other disciples, standing in the shadow of Caesarea Philippi looking toward Jerusalem and the Cross.

The Greek word for bearing witness is martureow from which we get the English word ‘martyr.’ It does not follow, however, that everyone who follows Jesus will be martyred, nor does it follow that only those people who are actually martyred are genuine followers of Jesus.

Losing our life for Jesus’ sake may mean learning to live loosely to privilege and entitlement, or letting go of our need to be right in order to allow someone else to be fully heard and understood, or learning to detach ourselves from worldly markers of success and listening for God’s call instead. Losing our life for Jesus’ sake may mean practicing kenosis, the self-emptying Paul talks about in his letter to the Philippians when he says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves . . . look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

And when I say ‘practicing’ these things, I mean practicing: the doing may precede the feeling by a lot.

But anyone who tells you that the life of Christian discipleship is simple or easy or comfortable isn’t being square with you. I came across a comment from someone who said about this passage from Matthew’s Gospel, “I think Jesus was teasing Peter, the way good friends do who know each other thoroughly. I am coming to believe that these things are probably said with a twinkle in Jesus’ eye, maybe even a smile and a wink.”

I disagree (she says with enormous understatement and self-restraint). Following Jesus takes everything we’ve got, every bit of ourselves, all of our love, and will, and intellect, and hope, and intention, and desire and it won’t always be comfortable, or easy, or even safe. But it will bring us great joy, greater joy than anything else we could ever do.

If you’ve ever seen Representative Lewis, then you’ve seen the scars on his face, scars from the beatings he got for bearing witness. And if you heard his interview, you heard what bearing witness has cost. But you also heard him say he was blessed.

I hope, I pray, that John Lewis lives in the joy that comes from following Jesus. And I hope, I pray, that by God’s grace, we’ll live in that joy, too. Amen.