Mark 8.31–38

„Following His Cross-bearing Way“ | REMINISCERE. THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT [B] | 25 February 2024 | Mark 8.31–38 | Paul G. Bieber |

Genesis 17.1–7, 15–16

Psalm 22.22–30; Tone 2

Romans 4.13–25

St. Mark 8.31–38

Verse: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. (St Jn 3.16)

Hymns: 487, 325, Taizé 19, 496, 482

Jesum Juvat

Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This is the turning point of Mark’s Gospel, as Jesus begins to teach something new and unexpected. He has been proclaiming that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom is drawing near, calling his hearers to repent and believe. Now, just after Peter’s confession identifies Jesus as the Christ, the promised Messiah, Jesus begins to teach what that means. It’s quite unexpected, not what his disciples want to hear. And he goes on to teach what it will mean to follow him. Mark’s story turns here from the mostly successful Galilean ministry of teaching with authority, healing, recalling a dead girl to life, and casting out (and silencing) demons— although opposition to Jesus has been steadily building—to the journey to Jerusalem, the passion, and the cross.

Is it any wonder that Peter pulls Jesus aside to rebuke him? Remember—after that first incredible day of the Galilean ministry, in Capernaum, when Peter tracked down the teacher with authority who had cast out the unclean spirit in the synagogue, healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and then, at evening, helped so many sick and possessed sufferers. Jesus had gone away before sunrise to pray, but Peter found him and told him that everyone was looking for him. What a great teacher, healer, and exorcist! Who wouldn’t want to follow?

But now Jesus speaks of suffering and rejection and death. That’s not the way of a conquering Christ, a successful Messiah. But Peter’s sensible rebuke of this negative talk is met with a rebuke in turn. The one who, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel, was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, now applies that name to Peter, the spokesman of his disciples. To try to persuade Jesus to turn from the path he has begun to teach is to tempt him to disobey the will of God. To want a mostly successful ministry that culminates in victory is to be not on the side of God, but rather to be human, all too human.

And it gets worse. Those Jesus has called to follow—and any who would come after him—must consider the image of a criminal convicted by the Romans of a capital crime, carrying the heavy crossbar of his own cross to the place of execution. This, Jesus says, is the image of the one who faithfully follows him. It’s quite unexpected. It’s not what we want to hear. If I would follow Jesus, I must deny myself, he says. Then he goes on to speak of saving by losing—our translation says “life.”

Mark’s Greek word is psyche, but he doesn’t mean specifically mental functions, as in “psychology.” Nor, though, does he mean simply the physical life of a person, for then what Jesus is saying would be nonsense. What Jesus is teaching is a paradox, but it is not nonsense. The key is that psyche can mean “life,” but it can also mean “soul,” in the sense of the innermost self of a person, that which constitutes the real “me.” And so it is possible for me to deny my “self,” the “self-centered” me, and even to lose my physical life, yet save my soul, my real life that I live by faith in God’s promises. That life, that real life, Jesus says is more valuable than the whole world.

But, we ask, how can that be? Come on, really: Is gaining health, wealth, and power really something we should deny ourselves? We spend every waking moment—and some of our sleeping moments, in dreams—trying to secure our lives; yes, our physical lives in this world. Physical well-being and economic success are at the top of our charts. We make decisions so that this life here and now will be secure, safe, and comfortable. And under our control. We want to bend our lives to our own will.

And what about this business of carrying a heavy cross? Jesus Christ crucified is hard enough to accept. If we take up the cross, we will crucify those passions and desires that govern our choices in this world. And so what happened when Jesus began to teach what it would mean to follow him is not really so surprising. Peter’s recoiling at the idea of a crucified Christ is echoed after each of Jesus’ two subsequent predictions of his passion, in chapter 9 and chapter 10 of Mark’s gospel, when the disciples can’t get their minds off glory. Indeed, whenever in our lives we recognize that to follow Jesus is to follow him to his cross, bearing our cross, our “common sense” causes us to recoil. What is surprising is that anyone would embrace this paradoxical life of saving life by losing it. And that is why embracing this life, this trajectory, this destiny, depends on faith.

Hoping against hope, Paul says, Abraham believed God’s promise, although “old,” “barren,” and “as good as dead” are Paul’s descriptors of his life. And, we should add, patient. Thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael, when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him again and renewed the covenant, renewed the promise, changing his name from Abram, exalted father, to Abraham, father of many nations, for he is the father of us all in faith. God changes Sarai’s name to Sarah. An old, much-traveled couple, hanging on to a promise, hoping against hope.

That means hoping when it looks like there is no “commonsense” basis for hope. That is what it is to stop thinking that security, comfort, and “my will be done” are the ultimate goods of life. There’s the paradox again: These may well be the ultimate goods of this life, but what if our “commonsense” view of life is terribly shortsighted? C. S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity: “Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live forever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever.”

If following Jesus’ cross-bearing way, hanging onto God’s promise, is the way my real self encounters the kingdom that draws near in Jesus Christ, now and eternally, then this Lenten path of self-denial is the way to real life, genuine life, to the inestimable value of that life, and to the rewards of following Jesus in this paradoxical way. Yes, rewards. Because the greatest misunderstanding of Jesus’ passion predictions and his call to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow, is missing the goal of it all: After three days he will rise again. Jesus is risen and we shall arise.

After every Good Friday there is an Easter. Out of our losing, God saves. Out of our losing our self-centered desire and control-hungry selves, we save our souls, the real lives that we live, hanging on to God’s promise, all the way through Lent, even through Good Friday, to Easter’s fulfillment of the promise—indeed, until the consummation of that fulfillment when he comes with the holy angels in the glory of his Father, the one who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit—to give us the gift of real life in the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, forever.

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

Soli Deo Gloria

Paul G. Bieber, Preacher

SERMONS FROM ALL SAINTS LUTHERAN CHURCH