Mk 8:31-9:1
2nd Sunday in Lent
16 March 2003
“You’re the Best! So What?”
Once upon a time, a wise man by the name of Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, uttered a statement reflective of his dry wit: "Many people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the passages in Scripture which trouble me most are those which I do understand."
I completely relate to that sentiment. I, too, like Mr. Twain, fail to be troubled by obscure Biblical passages. For example, the “woman clothed with the sun” in Revelation 12: is she Israel, the church, the Virgin Mary? I’m not sure, but I won’t lose any sleep over it tonight! (Now having said that, I’ll probably have some horrible nightmare!) Again, like Mr. Twain, my problem is with those scriptures that speak very plainly. Today’s gospel lesson is definitely in that category.
Peter clearly has similar feelings. He’s been listening to Jesus talk about how he “must undergo great suffering, and be rejected…and be killed” (v. 31). And as verse 32 puts it, Jesus “said all this quite openly.” The Revised English Bible says, “He spoke about it plainly.” There’s no mistaking what Jesus is saying.
Peter is horrified. Has Jesus finally gone mad? The disciples have heard him come out with some insane stuff in the past, but nothing like this—nothing so…suicidal. And Peter just can’t take it. He’s deeply concerned for Jesus, the one he just recently affirmed to be the Messiah.
And as the scripture says, he “took him aside and began to rebuke him” (v. 32). “Lord, what are you saying? Come to your senses! You can’t die! You’re too important!” Peter’s argument makes a lot of sense. After all, what good will Jesus be to anyone if he simply lets himself be captured, tortured, and executed? Who can blame Peter for his anguish? He’s hearing the best friend he’ll ever have speak of his life as though it were something to be disregarded. You know, this is personal. What good will Jesus be to Peter?
Notice that none of the disciples ever seem to pick up on Jesus’ comments about rising again. It’s just too far out of their field of vision. It never dawns on them that such a thing could exist in their world. Instead, the concern is with what is right in front of them—it’s with the world that they understand.
So, how does Jesus take Peter’s words of concerned correction? How does the Lord receive his plea to rethink all this? “Get behind me, Satan!” Yikes! I’ll surmise…that’s not the response Peter was expecting. I’ve thought about that response many times. Why is Jesus so severe in his rebuke, in his reprimand, of Peter? I wonder if it’s not because it’s such an enticing temptation.
It’s a temptation the world offers to us all the time. I pay attention to commercials. I often notice a line of reasoning some of them use to sell their merchandise. It goes something like this: “You should get our product because you deserve it! You’re the kind of person who insists on the best! You’re number one!” I realize, the best commercials are a little more subtle than that! Usually, I tolerate that stuff in silence, but sometimes I give Banu an ear full.
They have no idea who’s watching that commercial. For all they know, I could be someone who poisons little puppies! The strength of that appeal lies in the inflated sense of my own ego—in my own promotion of self. That’s how someone who doesn’t know me from Adam can persuade me by saying, “You’re the best!”
How much Jesus must have struggled with voices that whisper, voices that demand, “Save yourself! Think of yourself first!” And now he hears that voice coming from the disciple he has nicknamed “the Rock”! I can’t help but believe that the ferocity of Jesus’ response to Peter reflects the insidious nature of the temptation, which seems to make perfect sense.
The problem is, Peter’s thinking the way the world does, not the way that God does. Unfortunately, the way we humans do things and the way God does things very rarely coincides.
With verse 34, Jesus has to spell it out. He has to make it even more plain. There’s a bit of foreshadowing earlier in chapter 8, when Mark presents Jesus as taking two tries at healing a blind man. The first attempt only gives him partial vision. In the same way, Peter and the others need a second explanation; they need an elaboration.
Jesus really lays it out: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Not many churches would want their greeters to use that line! The cross doesn’t make for the most warm and fuzzy atmosphere. Nonetheless, it’s been said, "’Christianity’ without the cross is not Christianity at all, but a shabby, slimy substitute.”[1]
Why does Jesus insist on doing it the hard way? Why can’t he make becoming his follower an easy procedure—no muss, no fuss? Instead, he seems to go with the “no pain, no gain” school of thought.
And what’s worse, he insists on bringing up this business about the cross. The cross! To appreciate the intense…abhorrence that Peter and the others feel, we need to understand what the cross involves. If it were simply the way we often imagine “carrying our cross”—dealing with some trial or hardship—it wouldn’t be so bad. Everyone has that, to one extent or another.
But for the disciples, the cross is much more. For them, it’s an instrument of the death penalty. And not only that, it’s an instrument of shame. They know that the Romans only crucify the most vile of criminals. Before being nailed to a cross, the condemned prisoners are beaten and stripped naked. Besides execution, the cross is intended to bring about humiliation. And that is what Jesus says awaits those who follow him—and anyone who says otherwise is speaking the words of Satan! Yikes, indeed!
Ray Stedman says that “the cross stands forever as a symbol of those circumstances and events in our experience which humble us, expose us, offend our pride, shame us, and reveal our basic evil.” He goes on, “This does not mean only the big things in our life; it is the little things as well. Do you feel hurt when someone forgets your name? Do you get upset when a cashier will not cash your check? Does criticism hurt, even when you know it is justified?…All these are minor forms of the cross at work in our lives. The Lord's word is that if we are going to be a disciple, we are not to be offended by these things, we are not to get upset about them; we are to welcome them.”[2] To welcome them!
I won’t pretend that it’s easy to do that. No one enjoys looking foolish. For the first couple of months after my second brain surgery in 1996, I wore a bandana as a head covering. For a little while, there was some medical necessity in doing so. The incision took time to heal, and bumping that part of my head would have been dangerous.
But I continued wearing a bandana for much longer than I really needed to. The truth is, I was embarrassed at the appearance of the surgical scar. I remember telling Banu that I look like Frankenstein. It was bad enough that I’d lost the hair on top of my head! I remember, in my early 20s, thinking that, when I got old, I would much rather have gray hair than to be bald. Finally, on a trip in the summer of 1998, I decided that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding my head! Of course, as has usually been the case with this kind of thing, most people scarcely noticed when I did unveil myself.
My point is, it was only after I was willing to swallow my pride and look ridiculous (at least, in my mind!) that I was able to be free of those feelings. I needed to embrace the cross, the cross which was acceptance that I do have a scar on my head—not to mention that my days as a cool-looking guy with awesome hair were long gone! (My next cross is to recognize the delusion of that last statement!)
But that’s the power of the cross. It stands as the refutation, the denial, of everything the world tries to sell us. “You’re the best!” So what? The cross, as an instrument of shame, is also the rejection of what we try to sell to ourselves. Understand, I‘m not saying that we need humiliation—after all, that was one of the evils of the cross, which the Romans exploited very well. It’s a terrible thing when we romanticize suffering. On the contrary, what we need is humility, which is a very different thing.
Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, which is not something like, “I will deny myself chocolate during Lent.” No, it’s much more fundamental. We’re called to yield ownership and rule of ourselves, to in a sense, cast our crowns at the feet of Christ. We’re called to deny that we run our own lives, that we have the final say.
“Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” Jesus asks (v. 37). Indeed, what can we give in return for our life? It is in embracing the cross that we find our life as it was always meant to be—that we become the people and the church that we were always meant to be.