Re/Turn: Mark 8:27-38
Second Sunday in Lent
27 Jesus went on with
his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his
disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And
they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one
of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you
say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” 30 And
he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to
teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by
the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three
days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But
turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind
me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human
things.”
34 He called the crowd
with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life
will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of
the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will
it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed,
what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those
who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation,
of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father
with the holy angels.” (NRSV)
He was the best kind of nonsense,
this Jesus. He was the kind of whirlwind
that blew through a people tired of being on the bottom rung, forgotten by the
Empire that ruled them until it was time to take the money and the labor that
kept that empire running. He was the
kind of balm that soothed not only the soul but the bodies that were broken by
this frailty of mortality. He was the
kind of nonsense that made even the most practical of fishermen drop his net and
walk toward something only barely glimpsed, a little bit like light in a world
of overlapping shadows.
He spoke the
worst kind of nonsense, this Jesus. How
could a ministry that had only barely gotten started be coming to an end where
He would be rejected and killed? What
did it mean for Him to say He would rise again, and how would that make the
suffering okay? No—the empire was not
yet overthrown, He could not be done.
The people of Israel were still under someone else’s rule; He could not
be done. The covenant of Moses that YHWH
would be their God and they would be God’s people still felt lopsided; He could
not be done. “You do not mean to
say that, Jesus,” was the only response that made any kind of sense.
“Get behind
me, Satan,” Jesus said, and Peter froze.
Satanas—what has become Satan, the transliterated word for adversary,
a title rather than a name but a powerful one nonetheless. It was satanas who had broken Job’s
life into pieces, satanas who came and stole away the seeds that did not
find nurturing ground in the parable of the sower,[1] satanas who had
tempted Jesus in the wilderness after the Spirit had thrown Him to the
desert. Peter had just named Jesus
Messiah—now Jesus was naming Peter “adversary.”
But Jesus was
not finished. Not only could the
followers, disciples and crowd alike, not stand in the way of his saying that
this hope would have an end, but those who followed that light in the shadowed
world, those who fell for that best kind of nonsense—they would have to bear
too much. “Take up your cross,” He said
to the crowd of people who knew exactly what a cross was. The Romans lined the roads with them, sickly
orchards of dire warnings—this is what happens to those who believe in
nonsense, in hope, in a life beyond the empire’s rules that tell you exactly
how far out of line you can get and absolutely no further. The dying were part of the landscape, their
skin cracked open under the sun, the joints of their limbs dripping blood like
sap onto the thirsty ground. Take up
your cross and follow? What kind
of life was that? How could Jesus ask
for something like that from the ones who just wanted a leader who would
save them?
We Christians
of the 21st century have become so used to the cross symbol that we
hardly see it, let alone flinch at it.
Even as I stand here in this pulpit, I have two crosses behind me and
one on the paraments of the altar. I
have a cross—a crucifix, actually, which means it has a depiction of Jesus’
body instead of simply being the shape—in my pocket right now. The concept of “take up your cross” is so
familiar that we sometimes shrug at annoyances like a hard-to-please
father-in-law and say well, it’s my cross to bear.
We have
glorified the cross because we, as Christians, celebrate that death did not
have the final word with Christ and the cross was no longer the powerful symbol
of death and pain and power that it once was.
Every time we put a cross in a prominent place of decoration, we are
mocking the power of the Empire and scorning the fear that was used to control
citizens. But we must take care that
such glory does not outshine the very real warning Jesus is issuing here.
“If any want
to become my followers, 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, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Jesus had just finished dressing down Peter
for Peter’s attempt to override Jesus’ prediction of suffering and sorrow, and
it may seem that Jesus is doubling down on the doom and gloom. Professor Matt Skinner writes that, “Peter’s
claim, ‘You are the Christ,’ makes an astounding statement. So far, Jesus
hasn’t done anything that looks particularly ‘Christ’-like. The few
intertestamental Jewish texts that mention ‘the Christ’ paint a very different
picture. This means Peter’s comment is anticipatory. Peter cannot be saying, ‘The
stuff you’re doing, Jesus, reminds me of those obscure references we find in
some writings about a uniquely anointed — that is, divinely authorized —
deliverer.’ No, by calling Jesus ‘the Christ,’ at this point in the story,
Peter declares, ‘I think you’re the one who will purify our society,
reestablish Israel’s supremacy among the nations, and usher in a new era of
peace and holiness. I’m expecting big things from you.’ No wonder Peter lays into Jesus in verse 32.
Suffering? Rejection? Killed? Wasn’t Jesus paying attention when Peter said he
was the Christ? Everything Jesus describes in verse 31 would appear
to disqualify him from being that person.”[2]
“You are
setting your mind not on divine things but on human things,” Jesus says to
Peter, and then He speaks of taking up a cross, of giving up one’s life, of
suffering, of these extremely human moments that will be wrapped into the
experience of the divine in ways far beyond human understanding. It is not doom and gloom but a corrective
response to Peter’s rebuke—you think the Messiah is going to be someone who
throws your enemies to the dust, who raises you, who makes everything easier. You have heard—but I say.
This scene is
almost exactly halfway in the book of Mark and Jesus is taking the opportunity
to state very clearly not only who He is but what He is on earth to do before
anybody goes any further in following Him.
The Messiah has not come as a king to conquer the empire and institute
His own—the Messiah has come to challenge the system itself, to tear down the
institutions that keep people on the margins, that uphold the rich at the
expense of the poor, that glut themselves on violence against creation. The Messiah has come to build God’s kingdom
and it will not look like anything Peter has known before—and the things Peter
knows will not be happy to be so replaced.
The United
States passed the half-million mark this week of COVID deaths.[3] That is just under the 2019 estimated
population of Atlanta, Georgia.[4] We have lost an Atlanta’s worth of people to
this disease. Our cross in the 21st
century is no longer a wooden construction lining the roads we walk in the
empire; it is actively working against the ways others are crucified for
profit, or convenience, or disdain. It
is refusing to be silent when 500,000 people are dead and instead demanding
that businesses, family members, and friends continue to take precautions of
distance and masking and to be vaccinated as soon as they can. It is drawing attention to the fact that
communities of color are as much as three times more at risk of dying from the
disease as white communities.[5] It is championing a living wage for the
people in jobs considered essential enough to have to go in to work but not
essential enough to be paid fairly. It
is demanding change from a denomination that has put off its own reckoning for
too long and is stumbling in the snarls of it while the world reels from too
many catastrophes. It is doing the hard
work of finding the ways we, I, have settled for something that doesn’t
hurt as much as a cross, have been content with making it ornamental rather
than feeling its splinters in my shoulders.
To take up my
cross and give up my life means admitting that the vows I took at my
confirmation of baptism have to be vows that matter every day.
It is a gift,
to have Arista and her family here, to be able to baptize her even amidst the
precautions that keep us all safe. It is
a gift to be reminded of what we who have gone through the rite have
sworn: I do renounce the
spiritual forces of wickedness and repent of my sin. I will accept the freedom and power
God gives me to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms
they present themselves. I do confess
Jesus Christ as Lord in Whose grace I put my whole trust, promising to serve.[6]
Promising to
take up my cross and lose my life.
“Return.” To go back to a place or a person; to turn
one’s attention back to something.[7] We are in the wilderness, Church, and not
just because it’s Lent. We are in the
wilderness of a world that asks us to buy into a god that grants us what we want
so that we will stop bothering people about difficult things like equity and love
that values the other simply because they exist in this world and we, like
Peter, have so many days when we do not want to hear anything about suffering,
loss, grief, pain. But Christ calls us
to give up our lives so that we might find them. We who stand in the 21st century
get to hear Jesus’ words of suffering and death knowing that the story goes
on. We understand what the crowd and
the disciples didn’t: that Jesus saying
He would be raised again was not an empty gesture of comfort. Christ did not stay dead, thanks be to God,
which is why the cross does not frighten us, why the grave does not have the
same power over us, why the work of standing against the empire is something
that we can face with the strength of the Spirit rather than bowing before in
the fright of the fallen. In the work of
God’s love that reaches out to all in invitation to wholeness, we are given
back the lives that we freely gave with the realization that they are not
ours—they are on loan to us, these lives, so that we might do God’s work with
them, might shoulder our crosses and follow that marvelous nonsense of light into
a shadowy world.
We make the
choice every day to return not to what we know will not hurt us, what we find
comfortable and safe, but to return to the God Who calls us into the unknown
with the promise that whatever happens, we will not encounter it alone. We take up the cross of being
counter-cultural to build a whole different kind of kingdom that raises the
lowly, celebrates the outcast, welcomes all to the table that has enough. We return to the vows that bind us to this
faith and say that we cannot do this alone and God says yes, I know, and here
are all the people and resources I will give you to do the work to which you
are called. And we return to the One Who
calls us, Who suffered before us, died before us, was resurrected before us;
Who knows how deep the valleys sink and how high the mountaintops soar.
Return, child
of God. Return to the cross that scrapes
at your hands and hold them to the Healer Whose hands are scarred. Return to the life that is no longer yours
and delight in wonder that it is a prized possession of the God Who made it in
the first place. Return every day to the
life of faith that is filled not only with suffering but with joy, for the Spirit
was given us in reminder that we do not do any part of this alone and we need not
mortally fear what we are being asked to build.
Greater, after all, is the One Who is in me than all the ferocity of the
systems that are in the world.
May Christ
give us the strength to choose this returning each day, the courage to bear the
suffering that is inevitable, and the faith that goes so deep that we can lean
on it when our own legs buckle beneath us, steadying us in the knowledge that
resurrection is real and the cross is only a part of the life we are
given. Amen.
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