04 Lent 2nd Sunday in Lent
My friends, I greet you today in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our lesson comes to us from the 8th chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel. Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
One of the truly awesome things about the gospels is that they are narratives. They are stories. They put us right in the middle of the action. We read or hear these words and we suddenly find ourselves standing next to Peter and watching in amazement as Jesus takes the hand of his mother-in-law and heals her. We watch with dropped jaws and the roof over our heads is removed and a man on a mat is lowered through, and Jesus forgives his sins and heals his body too.
Well, here we are again. In the midst of another amazing scene. Can you see it? We are walking with Jesus and his disciples in the villages around Caesarea Philippi. It is a beautiful and fertile area. You hear the wonder in the voices of the disciples as they recount the past miracles they have witnessed and what it all means. And while they are walking Jesus asks a question. Now it is not unusual for Jesus to ask questions. But this one causes everyone to stop in their tracks.
“Who do people say that I am?” The question hangs there in the air for a moment. Then you look at the faces of the disciples as they offer up their answers. “John the Baptizer. Elijah. One of the Prophets.” Jesus responds with another question. “But who do you say I am?” Peter says, “You are the Messiah!” And Jesus orders them not to tell anyone about him.
Now you and I have the benefit of hindsight. We know that Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone who he is because the disciples don’t fully understand what is going on. They don’t realize what it means that Jesus is the Messiah.
You see, the disciples thought that Messiah was the one who was going to come in and liberate the people from their Roman oppressors. It was not a pretty situation. The taxes were outrageous. The soldiers were mean. It was not fair and life stunk. But there was hope. The Hebrew Scriptures spoke about Messiah. He would liberate people from their oppression. He would save them.
It wasn’t unreasonable for the disciples to expect that Jesus would lead an uprising that would give the Romans the left foot of fellowship and kick them out. But they didn’t get it. That is not who Messiah is. Not at this time. The disciples were expecting a lion, not a lamb. Jesus tells them very clearly though. He tells them that the Son of Man would have to suffer a lot. He would be rejected by the leaders and the chief priests and the scribes, he would be killed, but after three days he will come back to life.
Can you see their faces become long, eyes opened wide in shock. Their shoulders droop down. They probably loss Jesus after the word “killed.” They probably didn’t even hear him say that after three days he will come back to life. From the perspective of the disciples there is only one word for this kind of talk coming from Jesus, nonsense.
So Peter pulls Jesus aside. Probably just far enough to be out of ear shot of the others, but you and I know what is being said. Peter voices his objection. He rebukes Jesus. St. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Peter said, “Heaven forbid Lord! May it never happen to you.” And Jesus turns to look at his disciples. He knows that the road to their life is the road to the cross. He has to suffer and die for them. In his death and resurrection their sins would be forgiven. They would have a relationship with God.
The same goes for you and me by the way. Through the death and resurrection your sins are forgiven. My sins are forgiven. And we life our lives in relationship with God.
Jesus looks at his disciples, still outside of ear shot and he responds to Peter’s objection, “Get out of my way, Satan! You aren’t thinking the way God thinks but the way humans think.” Ouch. Now I don’t know how you hear these words. Are they loud? Are they angry? I hear them with a firm but gentle tone. It is firm because Jesus knows what he has to do, and he is not going to let anything get in the way of that. And yet it is gentle because of Jesus’ love for people that he will not let anything keep him from the cross. His love for his disciples, for the crowd, for the Romans, for you and me and all people, is what keeps him on the road of the cross.
Poor Peter. He has to be shocked. Did Jesus really just say, “Get out of my way, Satan!”? But remember. Peter doesn’t get what it means that Jesus is Messiah. But Jesus wants him to understand what it means. And so the story doesn’t end there. Jesus calls over the crowd and the other disciples.
He says, “Those who want to follow me must say no to the things they want, pick up their crosses, and follow me. Those who want to save their lives will lose them. But those who lose their lives for me and for the Good News will save them. What good does it do for people to win the whole world yet lose their lives? Or what should a person give in exchange for life? If people are ashamed of me and what I say in this unfaithful and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of those people when he comes with the holy angels in his Father’s glory.”
In this scene that we have just witnessed Jesus turned upside down the disciples’ understanding of messiah and being a follower of Jesus. It is not one of military might and political freedom, as was commonly thought. No it was a road that went to the cross. It went to the cross because of the sins of the world, the sins of the disciples and of the Romans, the sins of all people, the sins of you and of me. It went to the cross because there the price for those sins would be paid. And three days latter Jesus would be raised to life.
This victory over sin and death and the devil is greater than any military or political victory could ever be. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection we have been restored to God. Being restored to God means that your sins are forgiven. You have been washed clean. They have been removed from you as far as the east is from the west. Being restored to God means that you have the assurance of salvation, of life everlasting. The relationship that you now enjoy with God does not end at death. Jesus destroyed the power of death. So you can know, because of Jesus and what he has done, the relationship that you now enjoy with God will continue on forever.
Being restored to God also means that we live differently from the rest of the world. Jesus died for all people, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for the man who died and was brought back to life for them. Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.
This new way of living is what Jesus described as saying no to the things you want, taking up your cross and following him. This is what Deitrich Bonhoffer, a pastor who resisted the Nazis in World War II, was talking about when he made a distinction between cheap grace and costly grace. He says that cheap grace is cheap because there is no accountability. There is no saying no to things you want. There is no taking up your cross and following Jesus. Therefore cheap grace is really not grace at all. However costly grace is costly because it calls us to say no to the things we want, to take up our cross, and to follow. And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus.
Taking up our cross is simply living the Christian life. It is when Christians suffer for living out the Christian life in this world. Think about that for a moment. What images come to mind for you? For me I think of those who have been murdered because the called Jesus Lord. I think about those who are oppressed because the follow Jesus. You see the cross that you and I are to carry is not the normal everyday suffering that we have in our lives because of living in a sin-sick world. It is not the sickness and the turmoil that we face. But the cross is the troubles that we have because we choose to follow Jesus in our lives.
Now to be sure you and I do not face persecution like some of our brothers and sisters in the faith do in other parts of this world. The first hearers of Mark’s gospel were most likely in Rome. They were undergoing great persecution. You see there was a fire in the year 64 which was probably set by the emperor Nero but was blamed on the Christians that were living there. This even lead to the death of some of those believers. So as they and all believers see the account of Jesus’ life in this Gospel, there is strength because Jesus did not avoiding suffering, and the suffering that we face for his sake is, the suffering that we have because we are living out the Christian life in this world, this is something that brings glory to God.
But we do have a cross to bear in this our lives in this place and time. We still face challenges as you and I strive to live out the Christian life in this world. What are those challenges? What do they look like?
I would say one of the biggest challenges is time. If you could describe our lives in one word that word would be busy. It can be a real struggle to find time to be in God’s word and in prayer. It can be a real struggle to be in church every Sunday and Wednesday and for this committee meeting and that rehearsal. And yet these are all good things. These are things that should and need to be up on our priority list. Because they are part of our living out the Christian life in this world.
Another aspect with the balance of time is to make sure that in the midst of the church related work that we do we do not neglect our families and our children. In addition to being called to serve in this community of faith we are also called to be husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. So we want to make sure that our families have also have an appropriate place on that priority list.
Another challenge would be simply living as Christians on a day to day basis. How Christian do you feel when you are trying to merge on to I-25 and the guy next to you won’t let you over? How Christian do you feel when you find out that you owe a lot more for your taxes than you ever anticipated? How Christian do you feel when you are made fun of, or mocked or teased by friends and family because you believe in Jesus? Yet it is in these times that we are called to a life of love and service. We are called to say no to the things we may want, and to follow Jesus. Because we are no longer living for ourselves, but for the one who died and rose again.
Now keep in mind that we will not always be able to do this perfectly. You will mess up. You will make mistakes and bad choices. But know that as we walk this road, our God walks with us. When we fail to do something that we should have done, when we do something that we should not have done, we can go to our God and ask his forgiveness. He will forgive our sins and cleans us from all that we have done wrong. He is also with us and will give us the strength that we need to do what he has called us to do.
May God bless you and me as we learn to say no to the things we want, take up our cross and follow Jesus. And may he be glorified in our lives as we do this. Amen.