Sermon Notes 3/4/12 Mk.8:31-8

Right after Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, Jesus them upturns that magic moment by radically changing the notion of messiah. Jesus take the triumph, the power of the Messianic hope away and replaces it with words about cross, death, and yes rising again.When Peter makes his great testimony of revelation of Jesus as Messiah, he is called Peter, Rocky, but now his name is turned as he is placing rocks in the path of Jesus otward the cross.

Peter is appalled. He knows what the messiah will do: take power, clean up the religious establishment, lead Israel into a new golden age. Now he hears this business of suffering, death, and resurrection. He worries about Jesus and pulls him aside to perhaps exorcise the demon that has touched the mind of Jesus. Jesus turns the tables and calls him Satan. Peter is tempting him without meaning to. Jesus is not chasing after martyrdom. He wants to live, a long, rich, full life. He does not want to have his life end, just as his mission was getting off the ground.

We have to be so careful here. It could easily seem to me that we are expected to chase after suffering, to accept our lot. it is especially dangerous when these verses get used as advice to people in trouble. Countless women have been told that it is their cross to bear under the repeated beatings of their husbands.Countless poor people have been told that poverty is their cross to bear. I remember the elderly ladies climbing the steep hill to our church as they walked maybe a mile to get there. Biedya, biedya, poverty, poverty, poverty they would say. theirs was a voice of resignation. My sense is that the cross seeks to put to death our fear of living, of living fully into this world knowing full well it is full of risk and pain, as well as certainties and joys.

At the same time, we need to be reminded that when we sell the Christian faith as some sort of talisman against the suffering of life, we are selling a bill of goods. Against what they and we would desire, Jesus points toward a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice. We can be grateful daily that we rarely face organized opposition to our religion, but Christians do practice their faith and risk and lose their lives.Reinhold Niebuhr who had connections to Eden Seminary across the river spoke of a logic of the cross. Its divine logic works within human tragedy, suffering, and yes sin. To work from within includes working from within the vast panoply of suffering we endure.

Lenten disciplines are thought to be ways of learning self-denial. I suppose that one could see them as baby steps to being able to follow Christ to the cross. Spiritual practices are deeper than mere duties, mere items on a checklist (see review of Davison Hunter book) They are designed to use the ego’s abilities to drain power away from being egotistical, from making the self the measure of all things. We may not be able to kill off the sin that lurks within, but we do learn to control our impulses. In losing a part of our life, we do gain hold of a sense of eternal life breaking through. that commitment to life Paul sees in Abraham. At 100, Abraham was as good as dead to be an expectant father. God calls into existence a new life all of the time.God is god as God gives life to the dead. After all, God can make the darkest cross shine with light. We are more than a collection of impulses. down deep, we discover resources to face and face down the crosses we bear.