2. Sunday in Lent, 03/04/2012

Sermon on Mark 8:31-38, by Samuel D. Zumwalt

³¹ And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³² And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³ But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." ³⁴ And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. ³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul? ³⁸ For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

PRIORITIES IN ORDER

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Put yourself in Peter's shoes. He's trying to give Jesus what he considers to be some friendly advice in private, but instead Jesus scolds Peter in front of all the other disciples. You can imagine that Peter's face burned with embarrassment. This episode, of course, occurs right after Jesus asked the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, "But who do you say that I am?" (8:29). Peter declared: "You are the Christ" (the anointed King of Israel). In Mark, Jesus doesn't respond, "Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah." Instead Mark comments, "And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him" (8:30, ESV).

The way Mark presents things Peter doesn't get verbally affirmed as he does in other gospels. Peter clearly feels that he's given the answer Jesus was expecting: "You are the Christ" after Jesus says not to tell anyone about Him. Whether it's on the basis of that or on account of his reputation for being outspoken, Peter thinks he's doing the right thing to express his disapproval to the rabbi privately for having said that the Son of Man would suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.. How tough, then, it must have felt when Jesus looks at the other disciples and publicly says to Peter: "Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

He doesn't stop to check out Peter's feelings or to apologize to Peter for having made a public rebuke. This isn't a touchy feely Jesus in Mark's gospel. Rather, we see a Jesus who clearly sets forth a different set of priorities for Himself than the ones that Peter and others appear to be operating with: He's not the kind of Messiah who lives in a palace, sits on a glorious throne, and hands out political patronage to His closest friends and supporters. Rather, Jesus puts forth a different set of priorities for Himself and for those that are following Him. Jesus says: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

Now let's stop and think about what has just happened. What does Jesus mean when He calls them to take up their cross and follow Him? Everyone present would be more than familiar with the Roman method of crucifixion. It was the type of execution they reserved for the worst criminals. First, the condemned had to carry the cross piece to the place of execution. They would be stripped naked to maximize the humiliation, nailed to the cross so that the weight of gravity would slowly cause them to die of suffocation, their legs might be broken to speed the process, and the bodies would be left to be picked over by predatory birds and to rot in public as a deterrent to other would-be criminals.

So, you can imagine that Jesus' disciples and the crowd would have recoiled at such a graphic image. Put into such a stark verbal picture, to take up your cross and follow Jesus means something very different than what many people often mean today when they talk about having a rough cross to bear in life. In other words, having to put up with a few unpleasant people at work or having a nutty set of in-laws or being put on an specialized diet for life or never being able to get ahead financially, none of that gets anywhere near the ballpark of Jesus' meaning. Is it any wonder that even though Jesus told His disciples three times what was going to happen to Him they never got it? Could it be they didn't want to get it? Could it be they were clinging to a very different set of priorities even though Jesus kept telling them: "No, you're not getting your way?"

WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?

Now think about this. If you were to ask someone else to give you a list of priorities for your life, you would have no problem finding someone that was willing to do that for you. For newlyweds, if it's not your in-laws, it's your new spouse who often is under the illusion he or she can change you. Even when Jesus was a grown-up rabbi, His mother was still trying to reset His priorities! If you listen to Relevant Radio, the popular Marian piety of our Roman Catholic friends often suggests that the reason you need to talk to Jesus' mother is so that she will talk God into rearranging His priorities in your favor. That's not what the Nicene Creed has in mind when it calls her "the mother of God." Her role in salvation is to give God's Son His humanity not to run His life!

There are many vocations in life where someone else rearranges your priorities. Just by being a brand new attorney, brand new doctor, brand new teacher, a university graduate student, or a seminary intern, you have your life completely reordered by supervisors. We are not just talking about what happens during a normal shift for other kinds of workers. They go home at the end of the shift. But when you enter into the so-called professional vocations, you have very little time to call your own. In short, just by being accepted into a graduate or residency program or by being new to your profession, you have given up almost all of the right to set your priorities. And some of that process is a necessary part of preparing you for the rigors of your new vocation. And some is like the shakedown cruise a new ship undergoes before being put into service fulltime. Just as sailors have to find out if a ship is seaworthy, so supervisors have to find out if you are up to the life that will be expected of you.

The Lord Jesus scolds Peter and then lays a rather stark picture of discipleship before the crowd in order to get clear that they are not going to rearrange His priorities. He has not come to take up residency in a palace and hand out patronage to His cronies like a newly elected president or governor. Jesus has come to do His Father's good and gracious will that all the world might be saved. He will be totally obedient to His Father even unto death on a cross. And no one will deter Jesus from His mission to destroy the ultimate power of sin, death, and Satan. So far so good: no one rearranges Jesus' priorities except His Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit (remember how last week He drove Jesus out into the wilderness in Mark 1:9-13?)!

Following Jesus - the life of discipleship - is something entirely different from church membership. This is not some idea I cooked up in my prayer closet during last week's retreat. It's not even some idea that some writer or some professor managed to plant in the preacher's head as he was trolling around for some new Lenten program to foist on the folks in the pews. No, it comes from Jesus. The Master says: ""If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." The Greek verb rendered deny "aparnesastho" literally means "to renounce claim to; to forget one's self; to lose sight of one's self and one's own interests." In short, it's not about you and me!

Back in the 70s this out-of-the-box Lutheran pastor opened a church in a suburban strip mall. Before you could join the church, you had to sign a covenant for one year. You had to promise to be a regular worshiper, a regular Bible student, and regular pray-er. You had to promise to give a significant amount of time in service and income to the parish. In short, the life of discipleship, following Jesus, was taken very seriously. At the end of the year, they evaluated how everyone had done, and everyone's membership ended on December 31. Those that were not committed to the life of discipleship were no longer members. Every member had to start over each New Year. Church bureaucrats didn't like it, because it played havoc with statistics and all those local traditions that end up quenching the fire of the Holy Spirit. The pastor was a gutsy guy that listened to Jesus not bureaucrats!

Of our 800 baptized members, 200 showed up for Ash Wednesday, and some of the 200 were actually visitors. Of our 800 members, 315 showed up last weekend, and some of the 315 were actually visitors. If you adjust for shut-ins, the ill, those on the road, and those working, you're probably talking at most 100. I won't belabor the point that some call themselves St. Matt's members but never show up. (Why they maintain the illusion of membership here is beyond me!) So, adjusting the number by 100, almost 500 of our members chose not to worship on Ash Wednesday, and almost 400 of our members chose not to worship on the 1^st Sunday in Lent. Ah, but if it were some kind of fellowship event, a congregational meeting, or a youth event, lo and behold, the dyed-in-the-wool St. Matt's members will show up. Does it sound like a lot of people are forgetting themselves and their own interests? There is a great deal of difference between church membership and discipleship. If you have problems with that, talk to Jesus about what He means!

Lest we think He's just exaggerating, the Lord Jesus goes on to say: "³⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. ³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul? ³⁸ For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Gosh, you would think Jesus was a Baptist preacher or one of those old-time Lutheran pastors from years and years ago! Thank God, we're the kind of Lutheran church members that are used to a kinder, gentler Jesus who lets people be whatever they are and never makes any demands on us! We really should send the Jesus in this text to a good therapist who will help Him work out His control issues. This guy sounds like a narcissistic personality with delusions of grandeur. Who does He think He is...God?

DROWNING THE OLD ADAM AND EVE

The old Adam or old Eve in each one of us doesn't mind religion as long as we continue to be in control. Did anyone see the op-ed piece by the Roman Catholic woman who insisted that they just need to take control away from those conservative bishops? The old Eve or the old Adam really does think that the Church is a democracy in which the people can pick and chose what to believe and when and how they will follow Jesus. They should become Lutherans. We send a bunch of biblical amnesiacs to our assemblies, who can choose to ignore God's good and gracious will all day, and then the press release has the hubris to say it's the Holy Spirit's work. As we said on Ash Wednesday, death is the way God gets the point across to the old Adam or Eve that is intent on ignoring Jesus' call to discipleship!

We have this gospel lesson in Lent so that the Lord Jesus can grab the old Adam or Eve in us by the neck and drown that old person in the waters of Holy Baptism. He says, "Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." The only way to live as a new child of God is to have our old Adam or Eve killed daily. So long as we have any illusion of control or that this is our church or that we can pick and choose among Jesus' sayings, the old Adam or Eve is still not drowned. In short, a church can have thousands of members and be draped with the trappings of worldly success and still be full of old Adams and Eves. Meanwhile, the Lord Jesus says: "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul? ³⁸ For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

There is a different way, the way of the cross, the way that often looks like losing to the world. Getting our priorities in order isn't a self-help program. It is dying with Jesus to our own will and our own priorities. It is being filled with God's own life and love in Word and Sacrament. It is real life that, ironically and amazingly, turns out to be exactly what God had in mind when He first made each of us. When we die to the old life daily in the washing of Holy Baptism, we discover the gift of real life where we serve God and neighbor with joy!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Samuel D. Zumwalt
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net

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