By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D. '13
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Sept. 3, 2023)
In the name of God, whose love makes us and sustains us and changes us, amen. Please be seated.
Welcome back. It's good to have this view of you, again, after a few months away. Those of you who are familiar with this church know that I often like to begin my sermons with a story about my kooky kids. I have one that is like a what I did with my summer story, and I think it's a good back to school story as well. I'm not sure how well it relates to the Gospel lesson, so you students who are taking my preaching class this fall, just ignore this. But I'm going to start with this story.
My family went to Japan this summer to see my brother who lives outside Tokyo, and to go to my mom's hometown of Osaka and see relatives there. And it was a wonderful trip in nearly every aspect except, and this is a very minor complaint. It was blistering hot, I mean, I can't believe how hot it was. All day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., it was high 90s, high humidity. And I wanted to do some sightseeing in that oppressive heat. Some members of my family preferred to stay in the air conditioning rather than go out into the heat, but there were some things I wanted to see. There was one place in Osaka, my mom's hometown, a temple of the Jōdoshū sect, the Pure Land sect, called Cheon Ji.
Towards the end of World War II, Osaka was firebombed and most of central Osaka burned down and tens of thousands people were killed, hundreds of thousands made homeless. And there was a temple in Central Osaka, where, for about a hundred years, they had been gathering the ashes of the dead and then mixing it with resin and making golden images of the Buddha, of Amida Buddha out of the ashes of the dead. And this temple was destroyed in World War II. And the first thing that the temple priests did after the war was gather up the fragments of these Buddhas and gather up new ashes and start making new Buddhas. And so I wanted to see this temple, I'd never been there before in all my trips to Osaka and we had a packed itinerary seeing family and doing all sorts of things. And so there was one morning when I wanted to go and it was so hot and nobody else wanted to go except Danny, my nine-year-old.
He said, "Daddy, I'll go on an adventure with you. Let's go." And so we went out and we had our adventure. We went out into the blazing heat And friends, I'll tell you, Japan is very navigable, but I got lost and we took some wrong turns and we were walking in full sun. Of course I forgot sunscreen. And the heat was beating down on us. And as I said, we had gone the wrong way. And I just, as we were walking, I was worried about Danny getting dehydrated or whatever, and I just said to Danny, "I'm sorry buddy, I made a mistake. We shouldn't have gone this way, I'm sorry." And Danny said, "It's okay, daddy. It's not an adventure unless you make some mistakes."
And so for those of you who are new to Harvard or those of you who are returning to Harvard, you commence or continue your adventure here at this great university. Remember, it's not an adventure unless you make some mistakes. There may be a way I can tie that in, we'll see. The verses we have from the Gospel of Matthew today are central, crucial. It's almost appropriate that we have them to begin this church year to begin our school year.
––
––
These words from Jesus, they self-evidently say, Jesus says, "This is what it means to be my disciple. This is what it means to follow me." And they come at this climactic turning point in the Gospel of Matthew, a turning point which also occurs in the Gospels of Mark and of Luke. Jesus turns to his disciples and says, "This is what it means to follow me." So it's incredibly important. It's also incredibly susceptible to misunderstanding and misuse because Jesus says, "If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross and follow me."
And in the history of our church that has been interpreted to mean that suffering itself was sacred, and power has appropriated this lesson to tell those who suffer your suffering's holy, good for you, isn't your suffering holy and to perpetuate injustice. And at the end of the lesson, Jesus says, "The son of man will come in glory, in the glory of the Father and repay all for what they have done." And this also perpetuates this idea that the reward for our suffering will be in some sweet hereafter, which means justice can be delayed. And those who fight for justice know that lessons like this do complicate, frustrate the work for justice in this moment, in this life, in this place.
And yet we who are Christians can't turn away from Jesus saying this quite explicitly. This is what it means to be my disciple. Now, there's something important about what's going on here because the moment of this announcement from Jesus comes just after something else that happens, which we don't have in our lesson today. But what's happened is Peter has just said to Jesus, "Jesus has said to his disciples, who do you think that I am?" And Peter has responded, "You are the Messiah." And Jesus says to Peter, "You're right." And then he says, "And I'm going to go to Jerusalem and die."
And that's why Peter gets all upset. He's saying, no, you can't do that. Because for him, his understanding of the Messiah was that the Messiah would be the one to restore power, political power to Israel, to lift the heel of the boot of oppression from Israel, to liberate Israel from Rome. And so it made no sense to Peter that Jesus was saying this would happen. And so when Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, you are focused on human things, not on divine things." Part of what he's saying is that the human thing that you are focused on is some form of martial glory or military triumph.
That is the human thing that you need to let go of. But what's less clearly defined in this lesson is what the divine thing is. Okay, this version of the Messiah one of military might and violent triumph over the Romans, that's human, but then what is the divine? What does it mean to focus on the divine? And Jesus is so upset by Peter's response that he turns to him, it says he turns to him, calls him Satan, which seems very harsh.
The word Satan at this time meant something more like opponent or adversary, it didn't mean the red horned demon. Nonetheless, Jesus reacts immediately and abruptly, he turns to him and says, "You're focused on human things, but what are the divine things?" I teach at the divinity school, I should know. Well, let me turn to the passage from Jeremiah for just a moment as a way to try to arrive at what I think those divine things might be. Jeremiah is a prophet who at the beginning of his prophecy, God tells him to isolate, to speak out and to isolate. And he tells him he's going to be persecuted and oppressed, and he is.
We're only in chapter 15 of Jeremiah and he has been persecuted and isolated and he's tired of it and it's going to get worse. Later on in Jeremiah they're going to try to execute him. And Jeremiah is crying out to God at the beginning of this passage and saying to God, "Please, I'm tired of this, please, exact retribution upon those who are persecuting me. They're not listening anyway." And God says, "No." God says, "Turn away from that. Turn to me. Turn to divine things. Turn to God. If you turn away from that and turn to me, in the end, they will turn to you."
And the reason he says this is because they are his people and he loves them. So turn away from violent retribution, turn away from that, turn towards something else, this divine, turn to the divine. There's this other thing which is developing for us, and Jeremiah gets us a little bit closer to it, but to get all the way to it, I think we need to turn back to this gospel. What does it mean to turn to God? What does it mean to turn to divine things? What are those divine things?
I think as in all things for us Christians, Jesus is the example. Because what does Jesus do in this passage? He tells Peter, "You are the one." Peter says the wrong thing, and then Jesus turns to Peter the gospel writer makes a point of saying, "Jesus turns to Peter." And I think we tend to see that as a moment of condemnation, but it's a moment of correction certainly. He's telling Peter he's got it wrong, but it's not repudiation.
When Jesus turns to Peter, he never turns away again and he has every reason to. Peter lets Jesus down again and again. Peter abandons him, when Jesus is arrested, Peter denies him at the trial. When Jesus is on the cross, Peter is not there. And yet Jesus turns again and again and again to Peter, like God turning to Israel, like God turning to Jeremiah, Jesus turns to Peter. So perhaps what we learn is that the divine thing is not suffering, it's not marshall victory or royal triumph. The divine thing is steadfast love, and we ought not be surprised because God is love.
And if we remember that God is love. If we read this passage to borrow a phrase from my predecessor, "Through a lens of love, we know that love does not seek suffering. Love tries to erase suffering, but love is brave enough to risk suffering." And even this final line from the passage where we hear about the son of man coming in the glory of the Father to repay everything that to be done suggesting this kind of eternal retribution. It says The son of man will come in the glory of the Father.
But we have learned that the glory of the Father is not glory in human terms, it's love. The glory of the Father is love. And so our sense of what is repaid and how it's repaid has to be re-calibrated and re-understood. What happens is that we arrive at this paradoxical conclusion that the most divine thing is a truly human, an utterly human thing, it's love. And each of us can vouch for this.
If I asked you now to think of the most sacred moment in your life, the holiest moment in your life, what would that look like? It looks like me on a walk with my nine-year-old and him taking care of me in the blazing heat with sweat pouring down, or it looks like the survivors of the firebombing of Osaka, gathering up ashes and recasting them, the statues of Amida Buddha. And it looks like things all of you know in your own life, spouses who care for each other in sickness and old age. Parents whose hearts are bursting with pride and sadness on the yard as they say goodbye to their first year students. Friends who show up with a cake or a bottle of wine when you've had a bad day.
These things are the holiest things in our life, and they are where God is. They are divine. Now, I don't want to sugarcoat anything. I think Jeremiah and Peter in their impatience and their urgency are absolutely sympathetic. Like them, those of us who see the injustice of the world, who demand better justice for the world, know frustration and know urgency. And I don't think Jesus is asking us to give up frustration and urgency because love feels frustration and love feels urgency. I think all that Jesus is asking is that we recognize when we feel that urgency, when we feel that frustration, when we see injustice that needs to be corrected. What Jesus is asking us is to recognize and remember where true holiness lies. And he's inviting us as his disciples, as he did, to respond to the world's brokenness with the power and all the holiness of love.