When Faith Hits a Wall

Matthew 16:21-23

If you only heard this part of the conversation, what would you think about Peter? He took Jesus aside and rebuked him. “Never. No. I won’t allow it.” It’s not anything like what Peter envisioned when Jesus asked who he believed Jesus to be. He had answered “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” He envisioned a warrior king, a transformational leader, a hero,…suffer?…be killed? At the hands of the authorities? On second he thought he fully understood. Jesus told him that he was to be called Peter, the Rock, from now on and that on that rock Jesus would build his church. Now Jesus was calling him a stumbling block. Jesus had said that the gates of hell would not prevail when the church was built and he was foundational. Now Jesus called him Satan, the tempter, “Get out of my way.”

It was like Peter’s faith hit a wall when Jesus told them what was going to happen when they got to Jerusalem. He had been following with earthly goals, with political hopes, with self-interested motives. All of a sudden, the wall required leaving all of that behind to get beyond it.

We all have those moments. I think that’s why the children’s book and song “Going on a Bear Hunt” is so popular. It speaks deep truth.
We’re going on a bear hunt. What a beautiful day. I’m not scared
Eww, look at all that mud
We can’t go over it; we can’t go under it
We’re just gonna have to go through it
Squirsh, squirsh, squirsh, squirsh
We’re going on a bear hunt. What a beautiful day. I’m not scared
Uh-oh, what’s that? A cave.
We can’t go over it; we can’t go under it
We’re just gonna have to go into it
Are you sure?
tip-toe; tip-toe; tip-toe
We’re going on a bear hunt. What a beautiful day. I’m not scared. OK, I’m a little scared
It sure is dark in here
What’s that?
I feel two big ears
I feel one wet nose
I feel two sharp teeth
I know what that is!
It’s a bear!
Let’s get outta here!

Only, the bear is what we have been hunting all along. Seems like sometimes we do the same thing with God. We set out saying “What a beautiful day. I’m not scared!” And then we have to go through mud and struggles and dark and unknown, and then when we are in God’s presence, we forget that is what we were hunting all along.

I shared a couple of weeks ago, about Dr. Terrence Lester, the founder and director of a ministry in Atlanta, Love Beyond Walls, that raises awareness of the needs of those living in poverty or homelessness and mobilizes people to respond. A neighbor came in to report that someone who appeared to be homeless was rummaging through the garbage bin. Dr. Lester went out and befriended the man, who received the assistance, is now housed, his relationships with this children are mended, and he serves regularly as a volunteer at Love Beyond Walls. Dr. Lester had not been afraid to approach the man. He simply went out and engaged him in conversation.

Some of that comfort-level comes from years of relationships with people experiencing homelessness. Some comes from understanding that the man would have come and made trouble if he had wanted to have trouble – he wasn’t hungry for trouble, he was hungry for food. And some of Dr. Lester’s courage came from his faith. But that faith hit a wall when he least expected it, much like Peter.

The evening had been a celebration of the work of Love Beyond Walls and Dr. Lester’s contribution to the city as he received the “Humanitarian of the Year” award from the National Urban League of Greater Atlanta. Around 11, he and his wife bid their friends goodnight with jovial good wishes, “See you soon! Stay safe!” and started home. 10 minutes later, they crashed. Moments later the ENTs arrived – hospital – and emergency surgery swiftly on their heels.

Dr. Lester says, “It was a whirlwind of events. I had gone to receive an award and I ended up in the hospital. Previously, I had found worth in my work and believed that God was with me. That belief came crashing down in a single, devastating moment that left me grappling with my faith.

The wall. At some point in our lives, we all face a wall. A moment that changes us, changes how we look at life, changes what we thought the future would hold. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We can’t go around it. We have to go through it. No one gets to skip it. The wall is actually important. It is a necessary part of our faith development.

Robert Guelich, a New Testament professor at Fuller Seminary, and Janet Hagberg, a spiritual director, wrote about the Wall in their book The Critical Journey.

Faith begins by recognizing that there is a God, and that we are not God; when we look at the world around us and are awed, and when we have a sense that there is a greater meaning in life than to live in the here and now. Then, we gain a sense of belonging to a group – a denomination or church or a Bible study – with a leader who can tell us what is right. In this second stage we tend to have an attitude of righteousness – we have it right, others have it wrong, our faith gives us our security, like a blanket we tote around everywhere with us.
And that leads us to stage 3, the productive life. When we have a sense of responsibility to our group, we begin to volunteer and help out. Then, we start to have doubts. Things that we were so sure of seem uncertain. And then, in every life, we hit a Wall.

Dr. Lester writes about the time after the accident, “As I reflect on my journey, I’m reminded of a pivotal moment for Peter. Peter has just declared that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God – a mountaintop experience of unwavering faith. Yet, he immediately faces a reality that challenges his understanding of Jesus and faith itself. Jesus reveals the difficult path ahead – suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection. It seems incongruent with Peter’s vision of a triumphant Messiah who would establish an earthly kingdom. Peter instinctively seeks to avoid the hardship, grief, and struggle. This leads to a rebuke from Jesus: Get behind me, Satan!” Its’s a sharp reminder that sometimes our well-intentioned desires to protect and preserve can become stumbling blocks to fulfilling our calling.”
Their faith didn’t shield Dr. Lester or Peter, and it doesn’t shield us, from hardship. What walls have you faced? Times when life shattered and made you question everything? A time when everything was going along well, or at least ok, and then all of a sudden, complete upheaval, disorientation, you were left wondering, “What even happened? What even is going on? What does this MEAN?”

The other side of the wall is abundant life. Faith as a human being instead of a human doing, deep acceptance that there is nothing you can do to make God love you any more, or any less, and a giving up of self. Jesus says to Peter, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” He isn’t talking about physically dying. Jesus is talking about death to “living to do our own will”. And finding life seeking to do God’s will.

Dr. Stanley Saunders writes, “The empires of this world offer the promise of salvation in many differing forms: security, pleasure, self-fulfillment, health, material possessions, constant distraction and isolation from the world around us.” But this salvation, that the empires of the world promise, is just an illusion. When we hold onto them for life, we end up, at best, just existing. “In our denial that the living God is the source of all life, we fall prey,” writes Dr. Saunders, “to alienation, exploitation, violence, and the destruction of community and creation.”

Suffering is not God’s intention for our world, all suffering -suffering that comes through unjust systems and structures, suffering caused by natural causes, suffering from the decisions of groups of people or from personal actions that miss the mark – all suffering falls short of what God wants. And yet, when we suffer, when we hit the wall, whether it is sickness or injury or grief or loss of another kind, we grapple with our faith. Life shatters, and we question everything. And as we go through the mud and into the cave we realize that we are not independent, that life is not all about “me,” and in dying to self, we truly begin to live. We do not live for ourselves.

The psalms can be helpful to us in those moments as they speak what every person goes through at some point in life as we “draw near to the gates of death…the same gates that Jesus referred to and said told Peter that he would be the rock for the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against. It is then that we cry out to the Lord in our trouble, who sends forth his word and in his unfailing love heals us and rescues us from the grave. The turning point is when we cry out to God. In that crying out, our faith grows as we accept our true identity. We are children of God. We live, not for ourselves, but for God.