The Way of the Cross - 9-12-21
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me;
Mark 8:27-38
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?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. 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. 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.”
Prayer – Wisdom of God, from the street corners and at the entrances of the city you proclaim the way of life and death. Grant us the wisdom to recognize your Messiah, that following in the way of the cross, we may know the way of life – amen.
If I asked you to pull out your bulletins for a moment and write on it who do you say that Jesus is, what would you write? We all have some answer; we all have some images of Jesus. Some of them are images we learned as children in Sunday school which have proved troubling and we don’t have anything to replace them with. Sometimes we dismiss Jesus on that basis of what we knew about Jesus at age six. Some of us never examined the evidence for ourselves.
One of my main goals in preaching is to invite you to think, to dig deeper into what you think, what you believe, what you hope, what you trust as each of us gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand this itinerant Jewish street preacher from 2000 years ago. I’m sorry to tell you this almost as much as I hate to admit it myself, but you and I probably understand very little of this man Jesus. Because what happens sometimes is that presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity. Jesus is sometimes obstructed by clouds of well- intentioned misinformation both yesterday and today.
But ultimately, rather than give you my answers to that question I’d rather challenge you to answer the question for yourself because that is the only answer that matters. Is Jesus the Messiah? If that’s what you think, what does that mean for you in 2021? Jesus clearly didn’t fit into what a Messiah was expected to be some 2000 years ago; Messiahs were supposed to have power, were supposed to take charge, were supposed to set things right and free the Jews from political oppression. But Jesus refused to stiff arm anybody. He refused to dominate or take up arms.
Is he a Savior? Ok. But what is he saving us from and what is he saving us to? Some people clearly have no interest in being saved, assuming that they can save themselves. When Jesus said the poor are precious and the rich are in big trouble, only those on one side of that equation found it intriguing. Is he a Teacher? Surely, but is that all? Who do you say he is? Messiah, Savior, Lord, shaman, teacher, friend, prophet, prince of peace?
Now as you try and answer that question, don’t be too alarmed if you can’t nail it down in the context of Sept 12, 2021. Even those of us who wrestle with the question regularly find it difficult, because Jesus is downright incomprehensible; he is often enigmatic, ambiguous. From the very beginning, who Jesus was, what he was about, was far from self-evident. There were people who stood face to face with him and said, “He is God Incarnate.” There appear to be many more who said, “This man is nuts.” Although I think for most of us, the biggest issue isn’t that we have listened to Jesus and found him incomprehensible; it’s that we have listened to him and found him to be too difficult. (Herb Miller, Who Do You Say That I Am?)
Every way we turn in the life of the church, we seem to hear the question of ‘who is Jesus?’ More conservative voices have a clear and compelling answer about Jesus’ identity and the requirement first, to accept him as Lord and Savior, and second, to convince others to do the same. More progressive voices strive to explore the mystery of who Jesus was and who Jesus is in our lives today; they also focus on Jesus’ actions as much as his words in order to understand his identity. It makes one wonder – do we find a clear answer more compelling than a mystery? Both have their power in our lives and perhaps we need both, clear answers and an appreciation of mystery.
Shane Hipps has written an interesting book, Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith, in which he describes one experience of conversion that “can feel like a light switch has been flipped from off to on, and everything is suddenly illuminated,” while another can “feel like the gradual brightening of a long darkness – or like a long fade from clarity into doubt.” Perhaps the gospel of Mark so far, has been about the gradual brightening of the disciples’ understanding of who Jesus is. Peter’s bold claim about Jesus might sound like the ‘light switch’ kind of conversion, but he’s taken some time to get there, after witnessing one impressive deed of Jesus after another, and hearing Jesus proclaim the reign of God throughout the first half of Mark’s gospel. Like us, he has stumbled and struggled at times, but today he seems to have a moment of great clarity. It would seem that Jesus joins us both in the darkness and the light; in both sudden epiphany and unhurried evolution.
What we have heard about Jesus and what we have been taught is important, but so is the encounter we have with Jesus in our own lives and in the life of the church. Scholars agree that not only Peter but the rest of the disciples must have recognized Jesus as the Messiah; why else would those disciples have given up everything to follow him? In a culture where most people still claim to be followers of Christ, and few of us turn the other cheek or take up his cross and follow him, perhaps there is a second question in our own lives, “So what?” So, what will we do today, in our lives, if we accept Jesus as the Messiah?
The response of Peter that some people think Jesus is Elijah, some John the Baptist, and some ‘one of the prophets,’ is significant. According to Richard Swanson, “Whereas John and Elijah promise to change Israel’s position over against its enemies, the prophets of old challenged Israel’s character in the face of her enemies.” But in the importance of this moment in Mark’s gospel, where the truth of who Jesus is begins to dawn on his disciples – he’s not a figure of the past but “God’s anointed one.” Marcus Borg notes that this is the first time that any human voice has called Jesus the Messiah, an identity that is not at the heart of Jesus’ message in Mark’s gospel. Jesus didn’t teach doctrine of exhort his followers to believe a certain set of statements about him; rather Jesus proclaimed the coming of God’ kingdom in the here and now. So what does it mean to you and to me to believe in and follow this man called the Christ? What does it mean to proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom as present rather than future tense?
That question is pretty important when Jesus commands his disciples to take up their crosses and follow him. How does it feel to contemplate denying yourself in the context of 2021, to take up your cross, the most shameful way to die? Even the phrases – ‘denying yourself and taking up your cross’ have been interpreted in many ways. How does denying oneself relate to communal living today as compared to 2000 years ago? I wonder if in the context of Covid it means getting a vaccine and wearing a mask out of care/concern for your neighbor and fellow church member? Was there a harmony to self-denial and community back then that has been lost in the evolution of society in the 2000 years since Christ lived and died? Perhaps we think of self-denial as an ascetic lifestyle, but this form of discipleship is far deeper, down to the very roots of who we are and what we value most in our lives. It is a challenge today to connect ‘self-actualization, self-esteem and claiming our identity with denying ourselves. Perhaps they are in conflict, or maybe they aren’t, if we find our deepest authenticity, our truest self in being a follower of Jesus. Perhaps these values lie in creative tension with one another. How do we reconcile self-denial when historically oppressed people have lived their whole lives being denied their personhood? Is self-denial really good news to peoples who have been denied and oppressed historically?
The same might be said of ‘carrying our own cross.’ Many women, people of color, and poor people have been told to accept their suffering as ‘carrying their cross.’ My grandmother on my mother’s side was quite difficult and after she died I asked my grandfather why he had stayed with her for all those years – he said, “It was my cross to bear.” I can imagine what Jesus would have to say about that today and it might be pretty colorful. And, in the same breath, there is no question that faithfulness to the gospel is costly. Rather than identifying our small, or large, burdens with ‘cross carrying,’ would we be willing to be embarrassed (shamed) because of our relationship with Jesus? What price, what cost, are we willing to pay as disciples of Jesus?
Peter was clearly uncomfortable with Jesus’ talk about betrayal, rejection, suffering and death. If Jesus was the Messiah, good things should be happening, not bad ones – which causes us to wonder even today when bad things happen to good people. Like us, Peter is beginning to understand not only who Jesus is but what it can cost to follow Jesus. Peter’s human rebuke of the divine Jesus represents our human fear of what it means to be a follower of someone who is leading us to the cross – a place of ultimate decision.
What if everything we have done in our religious living and personal relationship with God has been done for the wrong reasons?Are we seeking our heavenly reward to avoid suffering, rejection, persecution and death?Peter’s discomfort and our discomfort with following Jesus to the cross is ultimately what this passage is about.Today’s gospel passage demands a decision from you, from me and from us as a faith community – will we follow this man to the place that he is going?This is a decision that is urgent in our personal lives and in the life of our congregation.Are we willing to go the way of the cross?Your answer, my answer, our answer is all that really matters – amen.