Faith Enough

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16
Mark 8:31-38

Peter has always been my favorite disciple. John may have been Jesus’, but Peter is mine because of how the Gospels portray him as very human and flawed. In the previous passage in Mark that we didn’t read today, Jesus asks the disciples who they say he is and Peter promptly replies, “The Messiah.” He earned instant approval from Jesus even as he tells them to not speak of this to anyone.

There was a two-fold reason for Jesus to request for them to not say that he was the Messiah. The first is that Jesus has never been about telling people how to think and what to do; he shows them through example, and through parables. The second reason he does not want them to repeat this is because Jesus still has a lot to teach his disciples about what it means to be the Messiah.

As some of you may be aware, the Jewish people understood the Messiah to be the one who would vindicate them. The Messiah would desecrate the Roman army and sit on the throne that the Caesar now sits on and once again rule the Jews like the kings of old. They held tight to the idea that the Messiah would come from King David’s lineage. Peter and the eleven other disciples were no different in their expectations. They too wanted to be free from tyranny.

The passage we read today is where Jesus shows them a different side to what being the Messiah is all about. He speaks of humiliation and contempt, of beatings and death. Immediately, the disciples’ minds closed down, their ears could hear no more. It is doubtful they even heard let alone understood what Jesus meant by “and then in three days he would rise again”. All they could hear is that the blessed Messiah, the one they had all waited for was not talking about becoming king; he was talking about becoming a laughingstock that would be killed!

The shock and fear that must have coursed through Peter is unimaginable. In a fit of anger and frustration, he pulls aside the man he has just named Messiah and begins to yell at him. Peter tells Jesus that he has it all wrong. This is NOT the way it is supposed to go down. Jesus is supposed to amass an army and take down the Romans and get his hands on the crown. Jesus isn’t supposed to DIE and on a CROSS – the worst and most humiliating death a person could suffer.

But just as Jesus told Satan no in the wilderness, when he hears the voice of Satan in Peter’s words he tells him to “Get behind me! You do not have your mind on the concerns of God, but of human ones.”

Then, to make things worse, Jesus tells the disciples and the crowd following them that they too will have to take up their cross to be true followers of him. He tells them they must deny their own wants and needs and follow Jesus even unto death. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that with those words, some or many of Jesus’ crowd of followers began to slowly drift away.

It’s one thing when Jesus is speaking of love and acceptance and forgiveness. When Jesus heals the sick and comforts the injured and lame, but when he begins to speak these radical ideas of death and suffering in the name of God, that is a whole new story and one that many do not want to hear. It is one that we often do not want to hear.

Our favorite part of Easter is Easter morning. Some will deny it, but most will freely admit it. We like the hymns of praise and glory hallelujahs. We enjoy the scent of lilies in the sanctuary and the children singing contemporary praise songs. We like shouting HE IS RISEN much better than we like solemnly declaring on Good Friday that Jesus is dead. It’s human nature to gravitate more toward the happy news than the sad news.

But Lent is a season of reflection. Lent is the time when we take stock of our lives, of our very souls and denounce them as unclean and unfit for Jesus. Or at least we should. Sometimes Christian churches concentrate too much on the empty cross of the Risen Jesus rather than the cross upon which hangs the torn and bloody body of our dead Savior. We need to remember both during Lent and Easter.

Yes, the Good News is that Jesus beat death and so can we. But the news we really need to know is that if we are to be true followers of our Lord and Savior, then we will be willing to follow where the Lord leads us, even if it is to a place of sorrow, despair, or even death.

Jesus’ life on earth wasn’t a very pleasant one. Jesus didn’t seek out the rich and famous to hang out with. He didn’t seem to be very interested in collecting money or clothes or anything else of material wealth. Why do so many of us think that Jesus wants us to only be happy, to only have the best of everything and to never know a day of pain?

Is that what Jesus truly wants for us? Have we become so blinded by our possessions that we truly believe the idea that prosperity should be ours because we believe in Christ? How arrogant. How wrong we would be.

What does Jesus want from us? The very same things he wanted from his disciples. “Take up your cross and follow me. Do not be ashamed of me and I will not be ashamed of you.”

Are we listening? Perhaps a man named G.A. Studdert-Kennedy who wrote a poem in the early 20^th century called Indifference can shed some light on if we are listening or not. It says:

When Jesus came to Golgotha,
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands
and feet, And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of
thorns, Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap!

When Jesus came to Washington
They simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die;
For men have grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, "Forgive them,
For they know not what they do!"
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through;
The crowd went home and left the streets,
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.

Amen.