A sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday of Pentecost

Matthew 16:21-28

There are two verses in today’s Gospel text that we will focus on:

“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’”

That pair of verses, one way or another, is found in the Gospels sixteen times. In other words, this is not one isolated item in a list but is given again and again and again. Nor does it say: “Your intentions are what counts.” Nor does it say: “Try the best you can.” It doesn’t allow for us to say: “I’m not perfect, but I’m doing better than so-and-so over there.”

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Matthew 16:13-20

A Sermon for the Season of Pentecost

In the Gospel text for today from Matthew 16, Simon Bar-Jona confesses: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus says to him: “You are Peter.”

What do we make of this famous text? One New Testament professor has said this exchange between Peter and Jesus took place near Caesarea Phillipia where there is a big rock dedicated to the Greek god Pan. What happened is that Jesus was standing there and he said: “You’re Peter and on this rock, that is, on me, not that rock for the god Pan, that huge idol, I’ll build my church.”

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Romans 11:1-2, 29-36
A sermon for the Season of Pentecost
The first eight chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Romans set out in logical form how salvation works. Then in Romans 9-11 he gives an example of how salvation works, a case study. Why have the Jewish people not followed their Messiah? Paul is also on his way to Spain through Rome (Romans 15:24). In Rome there are both Jewish and Gentile Christians, and he is writing to introduce himself to them. (The Letter to the Romans could also be called Paul’s last will and testament.)

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Romans 9:1-5

A Sermon for the Season of Pentecost

Commentators on the Epistle to the Romans are divided in two ways, depending on how they deal with 1) Romans 9-11, and 2) Romans 10:4.

#1: Romans 9-11. Romans 9:1-5 points out that the Jewish people did not accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Savior. How is that possible? Paul was one of the Jews. The question then in the Epistle to the Romans is: Is this section 9-11 a case study, an example of how God works. (By far the majority of commentaries on Romans see 9-11 in this way, that is, as a case study.) For others the point of chapters 9-11 is to bring out how the Jews are included even though they did not accept Christ.

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A Sermon for the Season of Pentecost

If we could travel back in time to 1912 and imagine ourselves sitting around a table talking about current events and the future, we would find there was a lot then to look forward to. The future looked promising.

Of course, there had been a war in 1870 between Germany and France. Germany took over the Alsace-Lorraine territory from France. That was already forty years back. In 1905 the Japanese had destroyed the Russian Navy at Vladivostok. But that, too, was far away and didn’t seem to affect us. In 1910 there was a World Mission Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, where they said: “We’re going to bring the Gospel to all the people of the world in this generation.”

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