Matthew 16:21-28
August 29, 1999
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
You have never met this creature before. That’s because it’s a microorganism. You can’t see it.
Also because the only place it lives is in environments where the temperature is at least 170 degree Fahrenheit with an optimum temperature of over 215 degrees. Water boils at 212.
Its name is “Pyrococcus Furiosis.” Let’s do this again. “Py-ro-coc-cus Fur-i-o-sus.” Good!
Pyro is only one of many microorganisms attracting the attention of scientists today. Biotechnologists are learning a lot from organisms living way out there, in dangerous places, on the edge. They call these microbes “extremophiles”—a name that means “extreme-lovers.”
Extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive in hot springs, polar ice caps, salty lakes, and acidic fields. Not the kinds of places you’d want to be vacationing this summer! They simply love to live in conditions that would kill humans and most of the plants and animals we have come to know.
But according to The Futurist magazine, “Extremophile microbes are also busy industrialists producing enzymes that are enormously useful in food, chemical, pharmaceutical, waste treatment, and other industries.
Take our little friend Pyro. Pyro lives in the scalding geothermal springs of Yellowstone National Park. As an alternative for chlorine used in the paper whitening process, Pyrococcus Furiosus can be used as a friendly enzyme to the environment. It’s amazing how these tiny little microbes found in extreme conditions can do for us.
Jesus—Greatest Extremophile of All Time
We have heard of extremophiles before. Perhaps we just didn’t realize it. Today’s Bible lesson identifies the Greatest Extremophile of All Time—Jesus Christ. Jesus reveals himself to be an extremophile, showing his disciples that
“he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the
elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day
be raised” (Matthew 16:21).
This was the most scandalous thing that Jesus ever said to his followers. Everything that the disciples were taught growing up in Israel was that one day, there will be a Messiah. This Messiah is to be a powerful figure, a king, a priest or a prophet, designated by God to perform heroic things. Not to suffer or be betrayed. The idea of a “Messiah” who would live as an “extremophile,” suffer and die, was an alien thought.
Peter couldn’t believe his ears. It’s something like having me standing behind this podium giving a sermon. And you didn’t like what I was saying. So, Roger our head Deacon comes up here and says, “Don, let’s step over here. I have something to say to you.”
Peter objected to Jesus’ extremely painful prediction. “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Jesus reels around and says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on the divine things but on human things.” Only five verses earlier recorded in Matthew 16, Jesus declared that Peter was the solid rock upon which the church will be built. Suddenly, Peter crumbles into a lesser kind of stone—a stumbling block.
Peter was unable to stand the thought that Jesus would suffer and die. Peter wanted to take the easy way out. He wanted to put a stumbling block in front of Jesus’ path so that Jesus wouldn’t have to suffer and die. But to pursue his destiny, Jesus must put all thoughts of safety and easy conclusions to his life behind him. Jesus sets his mind on his Father’s divine plan for him and not Peter’s human easy way out
The Cross and Self-Denial
He then calls his disciples to join him in being one who lives in extreme environments. “If any want to become my followers,” says Jesus, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25).
Following the strange logic of extremophilic microbes, disciples are to do enormously useful work while living in environments that would kill most people. Disciples are to experience suffering, self-denial, and even loss of life, but in the process serve others, and ultimately find their real selves. The divine irony of the gospel is that losing for Christ’s sake leads to heavenly gain.
Let’s say that we are “FCBC extremophilic Christians.” How well is our discipleship doing in today’s extreme environments?
First of all, life in a challenging and changing environment can make us stronger, wiser, and more trusting. It was no accident that the ancient Israelites got stronger through their period of exile in Egypt. Exodus tells us that the Egyptians set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and under the whip the Israelites built cities for Pharaoh.
“But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites” (Ex. 1:11-12).
In a very modest way, we are in exile from our church building on Waverly. And maybe as we minister out from the Lau school, from CEC, from the Y, all these changing environments, that we may begin to ask some tough questions about mission in Chinatown and throughout the Bay Area. Perhaps, we too, like the Israelites, will get stronger, multiply and spread out. Maybe our extremophilic discipleship of doing enormously useful and effective ministry will amaze and shock everyone around us.
And personally in my life and in yours, sometimes life breaks us, but then we become stronger in the broken places.
Sometimes challenges overwhelm us, but then we acquire wisdom that helps us to meet and overcome those challenges.
Sometimes we lose our faith in people and in the world around us, but then our faith in God becomes more secure.
An extremophile is not a person who hates the world, but instead a person who discovers that the world does not contain her salvation. Strength and wisdom and faith are always to be found on the edges of the world’s comfort, in challenging places where God resides.
You have heard me say before that Chinatown is an extreme environment. No parking! Few open spaces! A lot of trash! Firecrackers and funeral marches blaring into our worship time! Steep hills! Mysterious smells! Lots and lots of people everywhere! Chinatown is a challenging extreme environment on the edges of the world’s comfort. And it is exactly in this place of danger and extreme conditions that God resides! God lives and has an address in Chinatown!
Not Extremist
I’m not saying that an extremophile is an extremist. Christians who live on the edge are not people who go looking for oppression or suffering or martyrdom.
Here’s a St. Peter’s joke:
A man arrives at the pearly gates, and St. Peter looks up his record and says, ”Well, you didn’t do anything particularly good, but neither did you do anything particularly bad. I’ll tell you what: If you can tell me of one really good deed you’ve done, I’ll let you stay.”
So the man says, “Well, once I saw some bikers menacing a young woman. I stopped my car. I took out my tire iron. I walked up to their leader, a huge, hairy, ugly man, full of tattoos. He had a nose ring. I ripped it right out of his nose, and I said, “You leave this girl alone, you hear?” I stared at all of them, and I said, “Now get out of here, or you’ll have to answer to me.”
St. Peter was impressed.
“When did this happen? he asked the man.
“About two minutes ago.”
To be an extremophile is not to be like 24 year old Julia Butterfly Hill either. Hill spent a year living in a tree she calls Luna. This forest activist was protesting the logging of ancient redwoods in California.
“People ask me what it will take for me to come down,” she says. “I want to come down to a world where there is no more clear-cutting, no more herbicides sprayed on our trees, and the remaining 3 percent of our ancient forests are protected forever.”
While we may admire Julia Hill for going to great lengths to take a stand for her beliefs—perching as a lightning rod 180 feet above ground in a giant redwood—many would question the effectiveness of making ultimatums from extremist positions.
Christian extremophiles take stands not in timber tops, but at the timberline—in the rough-and-tumble engagements with other people, down where people live, right in extreme places like Chinatown!
FCBC Extremophiles
It is where people live that extremophiles take a stand. They can be found in the marginal and transitional worlds of Egyptians and Israelites, Jesus’ disciples and the elders, chief priests, and scribes, rich and poor, urban dwellers and suburbanites, youth and retirees. Extremophiles take a stand where people live. It is in the midst of real-life joys and pains that they lose their lives for the sake of Christ, and in this process discover a life that is radically real and extremely worthwhile.
In this real-life world, we FCBC extremophilic Christians are extremely compassionate, extremely humble, extremely hospitable, extremely patient, extremely long-suffering, extremely forgiving, extremely loving, extremely faithful. We are extremely committed to Chinatown in that we are donating as much as $1 million dollars to stay here because God resides here on the edge of a challenging extreme environment.
We do all this enormously worthwhile work because it gives us great joy. Remember times when you have given everything you had like
running in a race
or working all day and night on a school project
or completing a house project that your wife said you should call a professional
or working on a new product in your company until you it is marketed
or practicing a song until you can sing it perfectly?
When we achieve something enormously worthwhile, we sense a joy in our hearts.
When we do this enormously worthwhile work of being a committed and faithful church, it gives us this deep sense of satisfaction and a rush of pleasure that can never be found by punching a clock and drawing a paycheck. When we are extremophilic Christians, we discover this joy of being a part of God’s divine plan in the world.
Spending a $1 Million dollar is a bit extreme, some might say. It’s like winning the California lottery. Rather than spending this money on entertainment or a vacation or something new for our house or even perhaps a new church where there’s no extreme conditions like Chinatown. “No,” we say and we affirmed together that we will spend this money on something totally and extremely illogical according to human terms but faithfully and obediently according to God’s divine plan!
God has not promised us safety insurance at no risk to us. But rather, God invites us to participate in an adventure called the “X-treme game of being his kingdom on earth.
As Jesus told his disciples, he is telling us today that if we want to play this extreme game of God’s Kingdom, we are to “take up our cross and follow him.” “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
We are a bit like extremophilic microbes—tiny and small compared to the big world out there. But with Jesus Christ as our leader, we are on an extremophilic journey that challenges us to do enormously useful work while living in situations that would terrify most people, way out there, in dangerous places, on the edge.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, call us to live an extreme life of discipleship where our words, deeds, and hopes are making a difference in the world that you loved so much. Continue to show us how to deny the things that may hold us back and to take up the cross and follow you. For only in that extremophilic discipleship in you will we find life. Amen.