Ps 22:23-31 & Mk 8:31-38

12 March 2006

2nd Sunday in Lent

“Can I Get a Witness?”

            In some churches, when the minister is preaching the sermon, he or she is not the only one speaking.  (I’m not including those who may be grumbling or heckling!)  Especially in a lot of traditional black churches and Pentecostal churches, the congregation helps preach the sermon.

            After a key point is made, you might hear this from the pulpit:  “Can I get a witness?”  Responses might include:  “Amen!” or “Hallelujah!” or “Praise the Lord!”  Now, in those churches, if a request for such a witness is followed by a stony silence, that is probably not a good sign.  Perhaps the people are struck by the minister’s eloquence.  And then again, perhaps the people are preparing to strike the minister!

            Can I get a witness?

            I want us to look today at both the psalm and the gospel readings.  They each deal with someone who is giving a witness—someone who is testifying to something.  In the psalm, we have someone who goes from complaining to God to praising God.  In the gospel text, we have someone (Peter) who has just professed that Jesus is the Messiah and then begins to scold him.

            Our psalm begins with the cry that Jesus utters from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v. 1, Mk 15:34).  Psalm 22 is one of the Good Friday readings.  Of course, Jesus isn’t the first one to feel the way the psalmist does during the first two-thirds of the psalm.  We’re hearing stuff like, “All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads” (v. 7).  The psalmist complains that “dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me” (v. 16).

            But, as I indicated, just as we get to the part that is today’s reading, he starts singing a different tune.  Sadness gives way to gladness.  “Words of my groaning” are replaced by “my praise in the great congregation” (vv. 1, 25).  Pray tell, what has brought about this change?

            We aren’t told exactly, but there’s been some kind of deliverance from danger.  Maybe the psalmist has been healed from a deadly disease.  He says that God “did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him” (v. 24).

            Filled with new life, our boy has his mind made up:  “my vows I will pay before those who fear [the Lord]” (v. 25).  As a result, “The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord.  May your hearts live forever!” (v. 26).  Eugene Peterson has his own take on what happens with his paraphrase of verse 26.  “Down-and-outers sit at God’s table and eat their fill.  Everyone on the hunt for God is here, praising him.  ‘Live it up, from head to toe.  Don't ever quit!’”

Can I get a witness indeed?

          John Calvin once said that “the chief part of the service of God consists in this, that the faithful should openly show that they acknowledge God to be the author of all good things.”[1]

          The psalmist has gone from sorrow-filled despair to hope-filled witness.  No longer, as in verse 15, is his “tongue [stuck] to [his] jaws.”  No longer is he laid “in the dust of death.”  He has literally found his voice.  Our psalmist seems to have gotten back on the right track.  Our gospel reading speaks of one who seems to be veering off of it.

            I mentioned earlier the dramatic statement Peter makes right before today’s gospel reading.  Jesus is wondering about something.  He asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (Mk 8:27).  They have a number of responses:  John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the other prophets.

Then he asks them, “But who do you say that I am?”  We don’t know if there’s a pause.  We don’t know if they’re asking themselves, “Just who is Jesus, anyway?”  We don’t know how long it takes, but we do know that it’s Peter who answers, “You are the Messiah” (v. 29).

It’s hard to get a more powerful, heart-felt witness than that!  Peter sees in his teacher—and his friend—the dearest hope of all the prophets…of his entire nation.  So when he hears his teacher and friend say that he “must undergo great suffering,” “be rejected” by their leaders, and worst of all, “be killed,” imagine the horror and pain he must feel.  (After hearing that other stuff, that last bit about rising again probably doesn’t register!)

“This just can’t be right!” Peter must be thinking.  “As his friend, I need to talk with him.  It’s true; people have been placing a lot of demands on him.  I’ll admit it; I’ve been part of it.  But this is just crazy talk!  I think Jesus needs to take a little time away from the crowds and…settle…down.  Maybe he’ll listen to me.”

Mark tells us that “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind, not on divine things, but on human things’” (vv.32-33).  I’ll dare say:  that’s not the reaction Peter was expecting!

I want us to notice something that can be easily overlooked here.  When Jesus is predicting all of this morale-draining stuff that he sees coming his way, verse 32 adds, “He said all this quite openly.”  When Peter decides that he needs to talk some sense into Jesus, he does so by taking him aside.  To Peter, that might seem the best way to go.  He may not want to raise a big stink in front of the others.

But notice how Jesus responds.  He turns and looks at his disciples.  He wants to make sure that he has everyone’s attention before he quite sternly deals with Peter’s protest.  Jesus then ups the ante by calling together the various onlookers before saying that his followers must deny themselves and take up their cross.  This needs to be crystal clear.

            Still, the question is asked, with good reason, why the sharp response to Peter?  Admittedly, we really don’t know what Peter said, much less his tone of voice.  But why address him as “Satan”?  Why demonize him, if only for a moment?  On the face of it, that does seem to be a bit of overreaction.  And even if Jesus is speaking to the devil he perceives behind Peter’s statement, still…it may seem a bit much.

            B. D. Prewer has commented on this:  “The anger of Jesus is most revealing.  It tells us plenty about what had been going on in [his] mind and soul…  Peter was saying what Jesus had already been tempted to think.”[2]  It’s not like Jesus is some kind of weirdo who enjoys pain.  Of course he doesn’t want all these horrible things to happen.

Prewer goes on, “If we have been tempted fiercely, with the struggle having been long and painful, then we [likely may] react very angrily to a friend who, no matter how well-intentioned, tries to undercut our hard won decision to do the right thing.

“Maybe at some stage Jesus had been tempted to bend just a little to the ways of a crooked world.  Maybe the temptation increased the more he saw hostility building among the religious nit pickers.  Maybe of late, as he saw the terrible destiny ahead of him, perhaps the temptation to divert and save his own skin had become excruciatingly powerful.”[3]

Jesus knows he has to combat the voices urging him to give in.  The last thing he needs is his good friend Peter joining those voices.  So Jesus puts it all out there; he commits himself.  He openly states his decision to stick to the path of God’s love, come hell or high water!  He becomes his own witness.

Still, Jesus’ statement—that his followers must deny themselves and take up their cross—may sound strange to our ears (to say the least!).  This declaration of his has resulted in plenty of confusion.  Many people believe it means that we’re worthless and should embrace suffering.

It’s important to remind ourselves that not all cultures have identical views on what constitutes the self.  Our very individualistic, American, idea of self is not the only one.  Throughout the ages, and even today, the individual has not been seen as the basic building block of society.  Rather, it’s usually been the family, especially the extended family, the clan, one’s kin, that’s the primary concern.

To follow Jesus means to deny that, as well.  It means not identifying oneself with the clan.  It means replacing the family determined by blood and ethnicity with the family that follows Jesus.  Episcopal writer Joanna Dewey says that doing this would “put [oneself] outside the accepted social-political order.  It was indeed a radical act to renounce kin.”[4]

We see Jesus doing this very thing earlier in Mark’s gospel.  In chapter 3, we’re told that “a crowd was sitting around [Jesus]; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’  And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’  And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’” (vv. 32-35).

That’s a revolutionary take on the idea of family!  How much trouble—how much blood has been shed through the centuries—because we stubbornly insist on identifying ourselves with family, as determined by blood and ethnicity?  That’s one reason why grudges and wars never seem to end.

The second part of Jesus’ call, to take up our cross, has also been misunderstood.  Again, remember the context.  In this time, the cross is a method of capital punishment.  Dewey tells us, “To take up your cross is specifically to pick up the cross beam, to carry it out to the place of execution, where you will be nailed or tied to it and then hoisted up on the upright pole.  It is like instructing someone today to ‘take up your electric chair’” or your lethal injection kit![5]

Not only that, crucifixion is a shameful way to be executed.  The Romans use it as a form of humiliation.  Carrying one’s cross also means subjecting oneself to the insults shouted by onlookers on the way to execution.  Crucifixion was especially reserved for the dregs of society.  Remember last week when I said that Jesus descended to the lowest of the low?

So, Jesus’ hearers know exactly what he’s talking about.  They’re not thinking of some vague reference to suffering in general.  They know what he means.  If you follow me, then be ready.  Be ready for the cross.  Be ready to give witness, come what may.

It’s been noted about verse 38 that it “relates to the believers’ relationship to the adulterous and sinful world and to Jesus and his word.  Are we ashamed of being Christians in our lives in the world?  Are we embarrassed to let others know about our beliefs?”  Are we afraid to live out our faith?

A pastor tells a story about “a picture gallery in our church with photographs of many of our members.  I don't know how many times at a wedding or at some other function in the building, someone has looked at the pictures, pointed, and said, ‘I didn't know they went to this church.’  Why didn't they know?  I also wonder, ‘What do they now think of our congregation now that they know so-and-so belongs here?’  What kind of witness has that member been making of [the] faith and of the church?”[6]

That’s a question for all of us.  That’s a question for me.

“In grief we tremble before God who wraps us with compassion.  The death of our beloved colleague and friend pierces us with pain.”  These words were posted on the Christian Peacemaker Teams’ website after Tom Fox’s body was found Thursday, on a road outside of Baghdad.  He was the hostage I spoke of in one of my sermons during Advent.  He decided to live out his faith by going to Iraq and helping the ordinary people.  And he followed Jesus to the very end; he indeed took up his cross.

The statement continues:  “We mourn [Tom’s] loss…who combined a lightness of spirit, a firm opposition to all oppression, and the recognition of God in everyone…  Even as we grieve the loss of our beloved colleague, we stand in the light of his strong witness to the power of love and the courage of nonviolence.  That light reveals the way out of fear and grief and war.”[7]

I pray for the grace and the strength to follow Jesus—to deny myself and to take up my cross.  I pray that we all will want that grace and strength.  That’s how the final words of our psalm can come true.  “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it” (vv. 30-31).

Can I get a witness?

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