Year A

Matthew 16:21-28

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Walk in Integrity and Faithfulness

The Psalmist cries out today, “Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity…For your steadfast love is before my eyes, and I walk in faithfulness to you.” Many years ago, when I was in my early teens, I remember my mother saying to me, “You need to know what integrity means because you must live your life by it. What does it mean when the psalmist says to walk in integrity and faithfulness? All our lessons today speak to us about what it means. Throughout all of scripture from the very first story of relationship with God, when God walked in the Garden of Eden at the time of the evening breeze, “walking with God” has been the hallmark of our faithfulness. To walk with God in faithfulness is often much more than simply to go; it is to be in relationship, a covenant relationship with God.

God said to Abram in the book of Genesis, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house,” “go to the land that I will show you.” “Walk before me,” says God, and when Abram enters into that new relationship of trust with God, he becomes Abraham, the ancestor of a multitude. The children of Israel, we read in the book of Exodus, walk with God through the Red Sea on dry ground. When they leave the wilderness and enter the land of promise, they are called to walk in the way of God by keeping the commandments. In the words of the prophets, walking—in the way of God is a mended relationship, a right relationship with God.

In the Psalms in particular, walking in the way of God is a sign of blessing, of happiness. As in today’s psalm, happiness and blessing is a mark of the one who avoids the wicked and is known for their truthfulness and trustworthiness. They are privileged to “abide in Gods tent” and “dwell on God’s holy hill.” Those who walk in God’s ways are blessed in their homes, their families, and their city. Jesus and his followers knew what it meant to walk with God.  They lived in the tradition of their forbearers, the children of Israel, who since the beginning have sought to walk with God.

So when Jesus tells his friends today that anyone who wants to be his follower must deny the self, pick up the cross, and follow, we might imagine that he is saying to them, “Walk with me, as your forefathers and mothers have always walked with God.  Peter and the disciples have already claimed and affirmed faith in Jesus. We heard in last Sunday’s gospel text, Peter testify that Jesus was the Christ, “the Son of the loving God, the Messiah.”  Still we hear them resist Jesus’ teaching today that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo suffering at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” They resist especially Peter because the manner and mission of Christ is difficult to understand and follow.

It scares the disciples to hear Jesus make his future so painfully clear. Peter takes him aside to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord!” Do you hear what you are saying? “But he turned and said to Peter, “Get away from me, Satan! You’re standing in the way! You’re fighting against God! You’re not walking with me but blocking my path! Then Jesus poured out his heart. He gave them a sense of what was ahead for him and for them. And in those moments of conversation Jesus spoke to them about the meaning of life. He told them life is a journey of walking with God. Life is denying self and taking up his cross and following.

This means traditions alone cannot keep our faith strong. It means that life and society and the church will always be changing. It can be frightening to us. How often have I heard people say they wish we could turn back the clock, relive the past once again…the good old days. Then everything would be right and good and true and noble. But it cannot happen. Church Father and theologian Soren Kierkegaard put it straight when he wrote that if we are really honest, we experience fear when we read these words of Jesus. “Follow me!” he calls. But where? We say, and how? And in what way?

Why do we have to hit the road with him? We like things the way they are. Kierkegaard said that we should really collect up all our New Testaments and bring them out to an open place high on some mountaintop. There we should pile them high and kneel to pray, “God take this book back again! We can’t handle it! It frightens us! And Jesus, go to some other people! Leave us alone!” Still Jesus stands next to us, and says to us, “Time to go, folks.” Walk with me in integrity and faithfulness. And if that wasn’t enough there is more as well. Jesus tells us that the life of walking with God is a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage that is always personal, always something we have to do our self.

This is what Jesus is saying to his disciples. Just as he cannot avoid the journey to the cross, he has to make the pilgrimage himself, and so to, for those who are with him. Our faith is no spectator sport and this is why Paul today tells us that walking in the way of God means we are to live embodying virtues and practices that hate what is evil, holding fast to what is good. He says, “Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for God’s actions in the world.”   No tit-for-tat and this may be the most counter-intuitive, un-human ethical advice ever given.

The fact that it is counter-intuitive does not mean that we get to shrug and walk away from this ethic because it is definitely impossible. Paul slams shut our escape hatch. When he says, “Let love be genuine” this means not simply caring for each other but reaching out beyond the Christian community to extend hospitality to strangers, to those who are different from us, by blessing those who persecute us. We call this practice where we overcome evil with good, hospitality.  Certainly not the way the world works. It is simply the way that those who walk in the way of God show the divine love of God to the world. It is simply the way we live our lives as Christ’s body.

Walk with me, Jesus says so that a life of emptiness becomes filled with blessing. Walk with me, because in walking with me, you will walk right up to the place where God’s glory can now be found, on the cross. What does it mean to walk in integrity and faithfulness? For us, here and now, it means walking with Jesus on the way of the cross. It means participating in this way of Christ as Christ’s body in the world that we find ourselves being resurrected to new life.