13th Sunday after Pentecost-Rev Melanie Lemburg

 13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17A

August 30, 2020

        This week, our gospel reading invites us to sit for a moment with paradox. Just last week, Matthew tells us, Jesus and his disciples have traveled to the district of Caesarea Phillipi, a Mecca of Roman wealth and civilization built by King Herod on the Mediterranean Sea and nestled in the heart of Israel.  In this lavish, overly-Romanized area, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is and who they say he is.  It is Peter, impulsive, impetuous Peter, who wears his heart on his sleeve, who gets it unexpectedly right: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  And Jesus commends Peter saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...”

        Then there is this week, which follows immediately on the heels of last week’s gospel, when Jesus offers the first prediction of his death and how it will happen in Matthew’s gospel, and Peter just cannot hear it.  He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, but Jesus in turn rebukes Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  In a short span of time, Peter goes from being the rock upon which Jesus will build his church to a stumbling block for Jesus.  In this instance, both Peter’s strength and his weakness are coming from the same source and are on full display in this gospel pair.  It is Peter’s courage, his boldness, than allows him to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and it is that same boldness which causes him to speak injudiciously and threaten to become an impediment to Jesus’s mission.  And that’s a paradox—how something that is strong enough to serve as foundation can also be something that causes another to trip or stumble; that our very strengths are also, at times, the source of our greatest weaknesses.  

        I did a little research on the word paradox.  It’s from the Greek word paradoxos. “Para can mean both ‘next to’ and ‘in relation to.’”  And we know doxos, right?  We use the word Doxology weekly.  “Doxos…literally means ‘praise’ [or glory] but also ‘awe’ or ‘celebration.’  A near-literal translation of paradoxos would be ‘things that, placed in relationship to each other, inspire awe and praise.’”[i]

        What if, instead of thinking of our strengths and weaknesses as opposites, we see them as shadows of each other, qualities that, “placed in relationship to each other inspire awe and praise”?  What would that look like for ourselves and for others we come into contact with?  Last week, a colleague spoke about wrestling with herself to create space in her heart for the weaknesses of others, to know them in that weakness and to love them in that as opposed to being frustrated or angry with them?  What would that look like for us to do this for ourselves and for others, to recognize that strengths and weakness are from the same source and that they dwell side by side in each of us?

        So many folks that I talk to speak about the chaos of our lives and this current moment in time.  As I contemplated that, I found this blessing in the chaos, by artist and clergyperson Jan Richardson that is its own paradox.  May you find blessing in your strengths and weaknesses this week; may you find love in your heart for both the strengths and the weaknesses of others.  May you find the love of God and its blessing, even in the midst of chaos.

Blessing in the Chaos by Jan Richardson

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

 

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

 

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

 

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.[ii]

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