“Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we could ask or imagine.”[1] I speak to you in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
Today is the Second Sunday in Lent. A Lent like we have never experienced before. Seems like we have been in LENT for a year! Boy have we had to give some things up. Things like, eating out with friends, eating out period, family birthday parties, being physically around others, singing and hugging each other and visiting in person with family even those who live in other states.
Frederick Buechner suggests that after his baptism, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness asking himself the question of what it meant to be Jesus, and that during Lent Christians are to ask in one way or another what it means to be Christian.[2] Maybe during this Lenten season our focus should be “what does it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ?”
We have some very famous words in today’s Gospel Lesson, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We could start here.
In this Gospel, Jesus is talking about what is going to happen to him. He 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. ”In other words, Jesus must go in front of the supreme Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin, get scorned, then put to death, murdered in fact, and in three days come back from the dead. WOW. Jesus is letting the disciples know his destiny. That must have been a HUGE shocker, or the disciples just did not understand it. Or perhaps they did not want to hear it? Afterall, this is not what they wanted! This is the last thing that the disciples were hoping would happen. While first century Jews had different expectations of the coming Messiah, this notion that a Messiah would deliver them from Roman oppression was widespread, and Galilee was the center of revolutionary activity.[3] Everyone wanted a Warrior King Messiah, one who with great strength and might and power would ride in on a majestic horse and kick the heck out of those horrible Romans with their domination & cruelty. Give them what they deserved.
This is where the disciple’s heads are. The last thing any of them expected was a suffering and dying Messiah! But this is exactly what Jesus is trying to teach them in Caesarea Philippi.
In Chapter 8 verse 27 in Mark, which we do NOT get to hear in Year B, it is called Peter’s Confession, Peter identifies and calls Jesus the Messiah, and the crowd goes crazy – Yay! Yay Peter! Although not the first disciple to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, Peter goes from hero to zero very quickly. Clearly Peter is not thinking on the same page as Jesus when Peter rebukes Jesus privately for suggesting such a horrific messiahship. Jesus then rebukes him publicly to make his point very clear. Jesus refers to Peter as Satan. Peter is speaking for Satan, the great deceiver. From the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, Satan has been there to try and steer him off course, to turn him away from the cross ---into being another kind of Messiah.
I think that Peter’s thinking reflects the way we think too, the way to victory is the way of power and might. Might is right. Look at our history when that happens. With Jesus there is another way. Jesus is speaking to the crowd and to the disciples – to everyone - when he speaks about denying self and taking up the cross.
Many nations of the ancient world used crucifixion, a method for capital punishment including Assyria, Media, and Persia. Alexander the Great of Greece crucified thousands of inhabitants of Tyre when he captured the city. Romans later adopted this method and used it throughout their Empire. Anyone who threatened the rulership of Caesar was put to this most horrific kind of death – death on a cross. Crucifixion was the most severe form of execution. It was reserved only for slaves and criminals. No Roman Citizen could be crucified.[4] The Romans put up crosses along the roadways like we see billboards put up today.
Crucified Slaves from the Movie Spartacus 1960.
It got the message across. This image would be very vivid for anyone listening in first century Palestine. AND In 6 CE (Common Era) they had seen the Romans crucify over two thousand Galilean insurrectionists. Imagine the impression that would have made on a very young Jesus. Jesus could not have painted a more powerful image for the disciples.[5]
The honesty of Jesus is so striking here. He does not get followers by false pretenses. He did not try to bribe anyone by offering an easy way, he did not offer peace. He does not promise his disciples things that would attract most of us. Quite the Contrary. However, He did offer glory. God’s glory. But God’s glory is another sermon.
Great leaders have always had the characteristic of being honest leaders. “In the days of the Second World War, when Sir Winston Churchill took over the leadership of the country, all he offered (men) was “blood, toil, tears and sweat. Garibaldi, the great Italian patriot and considered to be one of the greatest generals of modern times, appealed to his recruits in these terms: “I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced matches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me. Soldiers, all our efforts against superior forces have been unavailing. I have nothing to offer you but hunger and thirst, hardship and death; but I call on all who love their country to join me.”[6]
Jesus never had to bribe anyone to follow him. Jesus challenged them, to awaken the sleeping kindness in their souls by offering them a way that was higher and yes harder. Jesus never asked anyone to do anything that he had not or would not do or was not prepared to do. That is how Jesus got the people to follow him. It is also easy to follow a leader who would never demand from his disciples what he himself would not endure. We do not have crosses to bare, it is not our burden. But picking up our cross means being willing to die in order to follow Jesus. This means dying to oneself. It means absolute surrender. Not your will but His will. It means saying no to ourselves and yes to Christ. Without hesitation saying yes to the voice and command of Jesus Christ.
We would along with Paul be able to say that it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. Living no longer to follow his own will but to follow the will of Christ and in that service, he finds his perfect freedom. “Opportunities appear daily before us, times when we may give our lives sacrificially to acts of love, compassion, justice, and peace, even in the face of the same imperial forces of sin and death that confronted Jesus.”[7] When we recognize Jesus for who he is, the suffering Messiah who lays down his life for others, then we can recognize who we are to be as his disciples, and denying our own self, we can take up the cross and follow him in paths of love and service. AMEN.
Citations:
[1] Ephesians 3:20. [2] Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark: an ABC Theologized (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), p 74. [3] David Lyon Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Word. (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville 2008; 2011), p. 69.
[4] Ronald F. Youngblood et al, Thomas Nelson, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary,
(Thomas Nelson Publishers 2015), pp 315.
[5] David Lyon Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Word. (2008; 2011, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville) 73.
[6] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press 1957) p 201. [7] David Lyon Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting on the Word. (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville 2008; 2011), p. 72.
References:
1. Attridge, Harold W., Wayne A. Meeks, and Jouette M. Bassler. 2006. The HarperCollins Study Bible: New revised standard version, including the Apocryphal Deuterocanonical Books. Fully revised and updated Student ed. San Francisco, Calif.:
Harper San Francisco.
2. Barclay, William. 1957. The Gospel of Mark. The daily study bible series. Philadelphia:
Westminster Press.
3. Bartlett, David Lyon, and Barbara Brown Taylor. 2008; 2011. Feasting on the Word. Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
4. Markham, Ian S., and Samantha R. E. Gottlich. 2017. Lectionary Levity: The Use of Humor in Preaching. New York: Church Publishing.
5. Youngblood, Ronald F., F. F. Bruce, R. K. Harrison, and Thomas Nelson Publishers. 2014; 2014. Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary. New and enhanced. Nashville: Thomas
Nelson.
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