Good to Know

August 30, 2020 Proper 17 Matthew 16:21-28 The Rev. John Reese

It’s estimated that at any given time 0.7% of the world’s population is drunk.

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.

Oh, and in the 1830’s ketchup was sold as medicine.

The world we live in is filled with seemingly strange, but potentially useful, facts and insights. You know, the kind of quirky truth that can catch you off guard when first heard, but is legitimate enough to warrant a bit of space in your brain. Like, for example, the fact that coconuts kill more people every year than sharks do.

We take such inane truths and store them away, digging them out of the recesses of our brains to rescue a struggling conversation at a dinner party or for that moment when we happen to be a contestant on Jeopardy! and the category is “19th century medicines now used as condiments.” Good to know.

Scripture, as well, is full of “good to know” truths — insights that we’re certain are somehow applicable even if we can’t immediately find an application for us. Take the book of Proverbs, for example. Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing (Proverbs 27:14). In other words, wait until your neighbor has showered and eaten a bagel before you shout blessings over the fence. Good to know.

Jesus’ words to his disciples in Matthew 16 are packed full of “good to know” insights. They come at us – no matter how many times we’ve studied them – with a tone that can feel harsh when read and seems to lack context for the stark picture it paints. After all, prior to this moment the picture Matthew paints has been largely positive for Jesus and his followers. Yes, John the Baptist has been murdered, but for Jesus it’s been miracles, healings, profound parables and victorious verbal battles with the religious elite. Plus, just a few verses earlier, Peter had the greatest “a-ha moment” of human history, clearly confessing that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Yet here comes Jesus with a list of stark, strange insights about following him that jar us out of our joy. Yet they’re so laden with truth that we can’t ignore them. We cannot help but sense they’ll come in handy sometime soon. Let’s examine a few.

First off, Jesus is not surprised by his suffering, death and resurrection. He saved us with eyes wide open. Good to know. Look at verse 21. It’s tempting to see Christ as a fortuitous Savior, thrust to the cross rather than one who embraced it and steadily pursued it on our behalf. Christ perceived the path of righteousness as one marked by suffering and he understood that his ultimate trial – as one of death to be vindicated through life – must shape how we see our own lives, following in his footsteps.

Second, Jesus doesn’t need us to protect him or defend him, but to follow him. We’re his disciples, not members of his entourage. In an entourage, there’s the star at the center, the one around whom all the others orbit and who live off of his or her awesomeness. Part of the job then is to protect the shine of the star, to help her or him perpetually look good and in doing so to protect the glow that you get to live in.

This is, in essence, what Peter’s attempting to do in his famous attempt at talking Jesus out of the cross in verse 22. He assumes there must be a better, shinier path for his man, Jesus (and therefore the rest of the entourage) to travel. But Jesus reminds Peter – and us – that our task is not to protect Jesus, but to follow him. Good to know.

Third, to “find” ourselves, we must be willing to “lose” ourselves. This is also very good to know. (See verses 24-25.) Discipleship, Jesus tells us, is counter-intuitive in this sense. In the same way that we don’t protect Jesus from his path, we must not protect ourselves from it either.

In this broken world, everything is backwards. We will only discover the greatness of God when we know and experience our very human limits. We fight against this truth in a thousand different ways – in our living, in our praying, and even so often in our preaching. And yet, we must always temper ourselves with the truth that God’s grace is located at the end of our rope, not the top of it.

And fourth, there will be a reward in the end when Christ returns. See verse 27. This is really good to know. Sure, we’re not told what the vindication will be for those who die to self through faith in Christ, but there will be vindication. Will it be some kind of parade around the pearly gates? Will it be a monetary prize? If so, what currency will be used in the new creation? Euros? Dollars? Bitcoin? The lack of detail would be bothersome if Jesus hadn’t proven himself so trustworthy through his resurrection.

So while we don’t know just what this “reward’ will look like, we can be absolutely certain that there will be one. Good to know, especially on the days that the road of discipleship is, as predicted by Jesus, decidedly dark.

The world we live in is filled with strange and painfully obvious information. For example, dumbwarnings.com is a website that compiles the world’s dumbest warning labels found on everyday products. For example, a Zippo lighter that warns users “Do not ignite in face” and the warning on a bottle of Bayer Aspirin that says, “Do not take if allergic to aspirin.”

And while these may be obvious to most sober individuals, the sad fact is that the only reason such warnings are placed on products in the first place is because someone, somewhere, wasn’t as wise as the rest of us. Someone did, in fact, ignite a lighter in his face and set his beard and hair on fire. So this information is useful to someone. Good to know.

And perhaps that’s how these insights from Jesus strike you: strange, true and obvious. And yet, for a good number of those who grace our churches or who walk the streets of our neighborhoods:

– the idea of a God who chooses suffering in order to save is strange;

– the idea of discipleship as discovering God at the end of me rather than the best of me is new;

– the idea that our ultimate reward is guaranteed now but not delivered until then is foreign.

It’s all “good to know” – essential to know – but many don’t yet know it. Or at the very least are in great need of being reminded of it.

Which of Jesus’ strange but essential, tough but true, “good to know” insights from Matthew 16 is needed most for you? Is your picture of Jesus a little too safe? Are you at a particularly low point, needing to be reminded that you are, now, closer than ever to the goodness of God? Are you near the end of your existence, fighting for breath and wondering if it’s all been worth it? If so, it’s good to know that a reward is secured and soon in sight.

A regulation golf ball has 336 dimples. John Lennon’s first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles. The plastic bag that you brought your groceries home in is not a toy. All these things are good to know. They may come in handy at some forthcoming trivia night or the next time you’re stuck in an insanely dull dinner conversation.

If such obscure facts can seem even remotely useful, how much more are the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel worthy of some space in our brains and hearts. We can park the truth that “Jesus doesn’t need us to protect him” right next to “Jimmy Carter was the first president born in a hospital.”

You never know when you’ll need to access such truths, but something inside us tells us we will. They’re both good to know; one just a little more than the other.