Second Sunday in Lent
Year B, RCL
February 28, 2021
North Fork Ministries
Gospel:
Mark 8:31-38
Then Jesus began to teach his disciples 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. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 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."
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. 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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 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."
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I’ll have to say that in this Gospel reading, Jesus seems a little hard on Peter. It must have really stung for Peter to hear Jesus rebuke him with the harsh words, “Get behind me,” and then hear the man he had earlier called “Messiah” call him “Satan”. Jesus must have been growing impatient with his disciples. But perhaps Jesus’ impatience is understandable, since it was the third time in the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus tried to explain to the disciples the nature of his mission on earth. And they just weren’t getting it. Jesus had just returned from spending 40 days in the wilderness, asking himself what it meant to be Jesus. And now that he had gained some understanding of what it was that awaited him, he wanted his disciples to understand as well.
Jesus was teaching his disciples that he was to undergo great suffering, be rejected by everyone who counted for anything in society, and then be killed. The disciples were so distressed at this news, that they probably didn’t even hear that part about rising again three days later. No wonder Peter protested. This wasn’t the kind of messiah they had signed up to follow. They were still caught up with the idea of a glorious leader, one who would liberate his people from their oppression. And they already knew about suffering. Most of the disciples were old enough to have heard the stories, or perhaps even seen firsthand, how in a single year, just after Jesus’ birth, the Romans had crucified two thousand Galilean insurrectionists. When the disciples left behind their fishing boats and nets and families, Jesus hadn’t said anything about taking up a cross. They already understood what that particular instrument of death was about. And they didn’t want any part of it.
It seems to have suddenly occurred to the disciples that there is more to being a follower of Jesus than hanging out with this really cool guy who could heal the sick, cast out demons and offer cryptic bits of wisdom. He could stick it to the man like nobody they had ever seen. But it was one thing to stand on the sidelines and cheer Jesus on while he irritated the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. It was altogether something different when he started talking about suffering and death and the cross.
Peter, just a few days before, had proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah. But the full implication of his proclamation had escaped him, until now. And Jesus’ words of explanation provided small comfort, “For those who want to save their life will lose it”.
Peter and the others hadn’t quite understood what it really meant to be a disciple. So Jesus makes it plain here, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Jesus could see the cross everywhere he went. As a subject of the Roman Empire he could not escape the ubiquitous presence of the Roman equivalent of our electric chair. But Jesus saw in the cross the suffering of all humankind. It was by taking up the cross, that Jesus understood and absorbed the suffering of all. And so it was that he suffered and died for us, so that we might not suffer.
One of my important teachers, Dr. Lynn Baumann, describes the spiritual journey in terms of a horizontal and a vertical dimension. The horizontal line represents the worldly dimension, the physical, the everyday, that which we see and hear and touch, our jobs, our goals… our stuff. The vertical plane represents the divine, that which is Godly, mysterious, unknowable, and distinctly not of this world. Humans spend their lives somewhere on the grid. Some of us operate strictly on the horizontal plane, never concerning ourselves with more than the temporal, our survival, acquisition, power and possessions. And there are others, whose life is a quest for the divine – those saintly few for whom the material world has no allure. Their lives are devoted to knowing the unknowable. Most of us, however, live our lives in a less singular fashion. We reside in this world, but we are not entirely of this world. We move in and out of true consciousness. Most of the time we live as if the material world is all there is, but occasionally, sometimes deliberately (like when we engage in prayer, meditation and worship) we start to move up the vertical dimension toward realization of the divine.
It is not by accident that this description of the interplay between that which is material and that which is spiritual takes within the framework of a cross. For it is at the cross that true transformation takes place. No matter how high we elevate the cross. No matter how we adorn it with finely hammered copper and brass, the cross is a symbol of suffering and death. As Christians we understand that suffering and death leads to new life, but there is no escaping the role that suffering plays in that transformational process. In speaking of the transformative power of the cross, Richard Rohr says, “The only two things that are strong enough to accomplish this training are suffering and prayer.”
We all know suffering of one kind or another. And in what we hope are the waning days of the pandemic, many of you have known suffering in ways you never imagined. It is common to seek relief from suffering along the horizontal dimension, concealing our pain with the solace of new experiences, new faces, more things. Or we can take full advantage of our suffering and move to the center, toward the cross, the intersection of two worlds.
The way of the cross runs completely counter to what culture has historically expected of divinity. God’s love and mercy are available to sinners, not simply to the righteous. God’s strength is revealed in weakness, not through flashy displays of power. And the wisdom of God remains hidden in paradox and in parable, not laid out in simplistic platitudes and clichés. Life is found within death. And Jesus tells his disciples that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
The world tells us that success comes with personal fulfillment, accruing wealth, attaining stature. The way of the cross takes us down a path of uncertainty, danger and suffering. Such is the nature of the discipleship that Jesus offered his followers and offers us. The question we face, the question that disturbed Peter as much as it disturbs us, is this, “What are we willing to give up, in return for our lives?”