Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
The 17th Sunday after Pentecost, 09/16/2018
Sermon on Mark 8:27-38, by Luke Bouman
Mark 8:27 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."
If Any Want to Become My Followers
They show up on my social media feed every so often. It is no surprise, since a good number of my friends on platforms like Facebook are Christians of one sort or another. These posts show up in a variety of forms. Most include a meme of a very European looking Jesus with text that reads something like, “I’m not ashamed to claim Jesus,” at the top and “Share if you are not ashamed of Him either,” at the bottom. The text beneath the meme says something like, “Most people are ashamed of Jesus and will not repost this picture. Are you ashamed of Jesus?” Then they quote the final verse from the passage above, basically trying to bully people into sharing the meme or risk some kind of retribution from Jesus at the last judgement. I never share the meme.
It isn’t that I am ashamed of Jesus, or ashamed to follow Jesus. I’ve spent a lifetime doing those things, or at least trying my best and failing to do those things, sinful person that I am. It is just that I have a very different notion of what “following Jesus” might entail than copying and sharing a meme on social media. It isn’t as though the folks who are sharing the meme are doing something wrong, necessarily. There is no actual harm in the meme, I suppose. And bullying aside (perhaps they felt bullied into doing it, after all) there doesn’t seem to be anything amiss here. It is just that I think something is missing. That something is “taking up the cross.” That something entails the dichotomy of saving/losing one’s life, and all that suggests. Upon closer examination, very little is risked in sharing a meme among social media friends and followers. Perhaps the odd person in my feed who is an Atheist, or Jewish, or Muslim, might take offense. But for the most part I sacrifice nothing, certainly nothing approaching losing my life, in order to share such a thing. I suspect those in my feed who shared it in the first place risked little as well.
What Jesus is calling for in this passage is a different kind of following than just words. He is calling for a total commitment on the part of the individual. And his words are not the idle words of the general in the tent, willing to send troops into battle to sacrifice their own lives while the general stays safe far away from the action. Jesus is leading by example. This is not about piety or religious sentiment, either. This is about faith in a different way of life, a different way of being in the world. It is not about traditions or worship in the normal sense of the way we think of these things (or the normal way they might have been considered in the 1st Century, for that matter). It is about where, or more specifically in whom, Jesus places his trust. And he extends the invitation to others to place their trust in the same one. Let’s take a closer look at some important factors in all of this.
At the start of this passage, Jesus and his disciples have traveled to Caesarea Philippi, which a quick look at an ancient map will tell you is as far away in Mark’s Gospel as Jesus travels from Jerusalem. He is nowhere near any cites associated with Messianic power or prophecy. This is not a place where one would expect to garner much support for a movement to restore David’s throne to Israel. In fact, it is one of the communities built by the Herodian monarch Philip, a puppet and supporter of Rome, who names the community after Caesar and himself. It is in this far away place that Jesus teaches the disciples by asking them his grand questions.
The questions themselves, and the subsequent answers, are the most pointed we get in Mark’s narrative at really identifying Jesus. They are close, but not really, as the answers come not from Jesus but from the disciples, and not even really from them. “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks. The answers come from the rumor mill, which has apparently been churning. They range from a reincarnation of his cousin, John the Baptizer, to Elijah or “one of the prophets.” These answers are not insignificant, as each of these, in turn, is connected to or a forerunner to the coming of the Messiah. Then Jesus asks the disciples for their own opinion. Mark does not say so, but I imagine a bit of hemming and hawing before Peter finally steps forward to make his confession. “You are the Christ” which is the Greek way of identifying him as the “Anointed One” or the Messiah. Note that Jesus does not confirm or deny this “confession” on the part of Peter. Oh, he praises his star pupil. But then he simply moves on. I suspect that this is because that title brings with it a lot of expectation. The Messiah was coming to restore the throne of David (mentioned above). The Messiah was coming to remove the foreign occupation (currently Roman, but really Greek, Persian, Babylonian and Assyrian before the Romans, dating back almost 800 years). The Messiah would re-establish Israel as the preeminent power in the known world (leaving aside the debate as to whether or not Israel had ever been such in the first place). The fortunes of the downtrodden people would be reversed and they would be back on top. That sums up the expectations and they were powerful. They were rehearsed in prayers and dreams and discussions every day and every night for 800 years.
Jesus, however, has none of this. He immediately sets out teaching the disciples what Messiah really comes to do and how that work will be carried out. He offers one of the three predictions of his own fate in Jerusalem recorded in Mark’s Gospel. And it follows the same pattern every time. He says that the Son of Man (closest we get to a messianic title from his own mouth) will suffer, be rejected by the religious leaders of that day, and be crucified. He also predicts that there will be vindication after all of this: that on the third day he will be raised. The problem is that even with the vindication, none of this is on the minds of the disciples, or the people of Israel for that matter. This is simply not what they are expecting, hoping, or praying for.
And here, two thousand years later, I suspect that many of us do not expect, hope or pray for it either. The most popular religious figures among us proclaim wealth and prosperity as the results of properly following Jesus. Even less callous religious leaders, pastors like me, talk an awful lot about being religious in order to get an eternal reward of everlasting life, especially of comfort, so we think, to people who don’t seem to have much power or prosperity in this life. Religion has become a proposition of seeking out one’s own self-interest, either in terms of health, wealth, or prosperity in this world, or some version of that in the next world. We, too, have expectations of Jesus. So, we ignore his words here, or we join Peter in his rebuke of them.
Peter, of course, steps forward again to speak for all of the disciples. He takes Jesus aside and whispers into his ear. His words are not recorded here, but we can imagine what he might say, almost like a campaign advisor telling a candidate that his proposed speech will not help in the election. “Jesus, you can’t say things like that. That isn’t what people expect, and by people, I mean your followers here. Take my advice and drop all that suffering and death stuff.” And Peter goes from head of the class to the dunce chair in a matter or seconds. I often wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea for Jesus to come down and do the same thing to a preacher or two in our time. Except that I know he would probably do the same to me. That is the way of Jesus’ followers and religious leaders of every time and place, we are prone to ask Jesus to follow us rather than submitting ourselves to following Jesus.
But Jesus was patient, then as now. He sits down his core group of followers and teaches them perhaps the most difficult thing about following him. If you are here to GET something, you will LOSE everything! If you are willing to GIVE UP everything, you will GAIN something. There it is. It makes no sense, at least no practical sense. It doesn’t seem possible for those who try to follow Jesus. So strong in our world is the message that you have to accumulate possessions for the life to amount to anything, or that the point of religion is to do enough to please God that you earn some kind of favor, that the opposite just does not register for us. Dunce caps for everyone.
But what Jesus is saying does make sense in a world in which death looms for each one of us at the end of life. So that rather than seeing death as a part of our life, nor seeing what God is doing in Jesus to transform both death and life, we struggle to make ourselves immune from death, we struggle to save our lives only to find that in that struggle there are no winners. Everyone loses. Trying to accumulate wealth, status, power, fame in order to make something of ourselves only succeeds in making our lives empty and meaningless as death takes us in the end anyway. Living in this way, regardless of whether or not we share that Facebook meme, we are ashamed of Jesus way of giving himself, even to the point of death.
What Jesus is offering us is a glimpse into the heart of God, and a way that we would not have discovered to find ourselves there without seeking or grasping after it. Jesus is saying that lives lived in giving rather than accumulating, find a different kind of meaning. Jesus is telling us that we become fulfilled when we stop trying to be filled full. And this is because God is this very kind of self-giving love. God’s very being has given this way in creation, has suffered this way with his people, and through joining us even in the emptiness of death, has shown us a way to a much richer and fuller life. Of course, this is something that we don’t always, maybe even can’t always find or do while we live on this earth. But we can catch glimpses of it, here and there, as God’s people in the world. And at the end, we can realize that it isn’t OUR doing that is going to remake the world and our lives anyway. It is God’s doing, through the Holy Spirit. We are all invited to know, and to love, and to live as Jesus did. Even when we fail, we acknowledge that there is a better way to be human, and daily reorder our lives accordingly. It is in that way that we follow Jesus shamelessly.