Second Sunday in Lent
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Mark 8:31–38 (NIV84)
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” 34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
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The good news is that our God so loves us that he entered INTO the brokenness of our world in order to set it right
But setting the world right requires more that just giving it a boost to get it over the hump
Or giving it a nudge to get it back on track
It requires renewal
It requires a healing and transformation so total that rebirth is necessary
Thus, the theme of the gospel isn’t improvement
It’s death and resurrection
Jesus came to usher in and open up this renewal, this new kingdom where creation is set right
And what Jesus reveals is that the way of the kingdom doesn’t sync too well with the way of the fallen world
Which you would expect if it really is about renewal, not just improvement
The fallen world runs on self-centeredness
The kingdom directs us to God and neighbor
The fallen world is survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, only the strong survive
The kingdom belongs to the meek and marginalized
The fallen world is caught in an endless cycle of violence and hate
The kingdom calls us to turn the other cheek and pray for our enemies
Because of this contrast, Jesus, living in line with the kingdom ends up suffering
His suffering reveals the depth of the problem: the world is so broken that God himself could come to us in love and be torn apart
But his suffering also reveals the profound beauty and truth of the way of love: as God himself gave his life for us and to us
The cross reveals the choice set before us
The way of the violence in the fallen world
The way of peace in the kingdom
And as we discussed last week, if we follow this man Jesus, walking in the way of the kingdom, contrary to the way of the fallen world … we should expect to suffer to some degree as well.
People who play the world’s game suffer in the competition and struggle of it
How much more if we choose not to play it at all and are instead pursue something different
Thus in 1 Peter we have the author essentially saying “if you’re going to suffer in this fallen world, might as well have it be because you are seeking the kingdom”
We can map all this out now. But it’s hard to overstate just how much the idea of suffering was not on the agenda for people waiting for the messiah.
They would have had in their minds a glorious messiah, wielding untold strength to conquer Israel’s enemies.
They would have had in their minds a kingdom of power displayed in military might.
The messiah would bring political and cultural dominance for their tribe forever.
Jesus suffering just would not have made sense.
Which is partly why people fall away when he is arrested and his death at the hands of the state seems imminent.
The messiah wouldn’t be conquered like that.
He must not be the one.
Fleming Rutledge puts it like this
Who could have known that the way through the wilderness to redemption would be a path of humiliation trodden by the Son of God? What religious or secular insight would have led anyone at all to foresee a ghastly, exposed, reviled death for God-made-flesh? … The last thing anyone would ever have imagined, even with Isaiah 53 right in front of them, was a crucified Son of God.
Ultimately his resurrection reframes the whole passion suffering experience.
Because it shows that he was actually victorious, just not by the script the world knows
But in this account before it all happens, we see Peter hear Jesus lay it all out and then take him aside
Peter has JUST confessed that Jesus is the messiah, which is a big deal
“Nah man, you’re mistaken. That’s now how it works with the messiah. You're going to conquer, not suffer.”
Jesus tells Peter HE’S the one who is mistaken. Or, better yet, Peter doesn’t have new eyes to see the way of the kingdom yet. He’s still operating out of a heart and mind that is formed by the fallen world.
He’s still playing by the old script and the way of violence.
“You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”
Peter's arc is an interesting one.
Here affirming the script of the fallen world.
He acts on it numerous times, like pulling out a sword and attacking a soldier that comes to arrest Jesus.
Then when Jesus is arrested his whole worldview crumbles into confusion and he denies Jesus.
Then seeing the resurrected Jesus he finds those new eyes.
And he becomes a rock on which the way of Jesus takes root in the world.
Peter needed to be transformed too.
His thoughts.
His emotions.
His will.
His actions.
His relationships.
His SOUL.
Author Dallas Willard talks about the soul being the deepest dimension of the human life that integrates all of these other components (mind, body, affections, etc.) into one unified person.
We see the biblical authors speak of the soul as the core unifying aspect of a person - Psalm 42
“My SOUL thirsts for God.”
“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?”
All of creation has been effected by the fall
And every aspect of our person has been shaped by it
Even our very soul
The core of who we are, in it’s natural state, is more aligned with the fallen world than the kingdom
It is, in fact captive to the fallen world because we’re so totally formed by it that we can’t break out of it ourselves
Thus, what we need is wholistic renewal
Total transformation of every aspect of our person including our relationships
Truth is, even in our modern context this idea of a path of suffering that leads to wholistic renewal is a hard sell
We want a triumphant story with no pain, no repentance, no change, and only reward
We want easter without good friday
We want the king without the cross
We want a savior to help us maximize our lives and feel good in the process
The biggest church in our state had billboards for years with the slogan “win at life”
That sells.
Especially when accompanied by photos of perfect smiling families.
I think that’s the equivalent of Peter taking Jesus aside and saying, “Come on Jesus, it doesn’t have to be like that. Be positive.”
The message of Jesus, and the way of Jesus, is much more profound than simply feeling a little better about life in our fallen world.
It’s about making all things new.
It’s about rebirth.
And as Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
That’s gonna be our billboard.
Church of the Desert: come and die.
As many times as I’ve heard that quoted I never heard anyone quote the sentence before that.
It comes from his book Discipleship, which is just essential reading.
Incidentially if you want a biography of Bonhoeffer, skip the Eric Metaxes one, I can point you to others
But really you should just read what Bonhoeffer himself wrote.
Anyway, here’s the fuller quote
“Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Christ bids us to come and die, not as a heroic effort for some noble cause.
He bids us come and die because it marks the beginning of new life.
And unless we’re willing to go there, we’ll never experience it.
This is where Jesus’s words in this passage begin to make sense
You have to pick up your cross
You have to deny yourself
You have to be willing to lose your life to find it
We need to be totally transformed like Peter
Self-denial does not mean some dreary act like eating celery when we want ice cream
Rather, it means learning to let go of our false selves, our ways of being that are formed by and tethered to the fallen world so that we can be transformed
so that the very core of who we are can be healed and realigned to the kingdom
Dallas Willard is great on this
“The self-denial of Matthew 16:24 and elsewhere in the Gospels is always the surrender of a lesser, dying self for a greater eternal one—the person God intended in creating you.”
We develop an imagination for a world restored in peace and love and justice.
We develop trust in Jesus that he is leading us there.
As Bonhoeffer
“All that self-denial can say is: ‘He leads the way, keep close to him.’
So as a church ...
If all we’re after is to have friends in this fallen world
That’s a fine thing but we can get that anywhere
If all we’re after is self-improvement to maximize our time in this fallen world
We can go to a gym or read any of the one million self-help books.
But if we’re after wholistic renewal and rebirth
Then we press close to Jesus together and go where he goes and expect that there will be some pain points along the way as our old lives and false selves are challenged and as we disconnect from the ways of competition and violence in the world
We can try to hold on to all those old things
But we can’t keep playing the world’s game and be made new
What good is it to gain the whole world and forfeit your soul?
Jesus leaves it in our court
“whoever wants to lost their life for me will save it.”
whoever wants to come, come
that’s the invitation presented to us