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Pentecost 16B
Sept. 12, 2021
Mark 8:27-38
INTRODUCTION
“The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.” I love this line from our reading from James today, and I think it offers great insight for all of our readings. We will see a lot today about how the tongue, that is, what we say, can praise God and deny God, in quick succession. It can heal, and cause great pain. It can bless, and it can curse. In our readings, we will see the tongue used for all these things and more. Yet thanks be to God that no matter what situation our tongue may get us into (and the apostle Peter can tell you a lot about this!), God’s grace for us is always bigger. Listen today for words of guidance, as well as words of grace. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
“I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.” It’s a sweet, simple song, one I learned as a kid and maybe some of you did, too. There are some theological concerns about it for Lutherans – like, do we really decide to follow Jesus, or does Jesus choose us in baptism and we respond – but at the end of the day, it goes pretty well with today’s Gospel lesson, in which Jesus lays out what it really means to follow him, in some of the more famous words of the Gospels: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
Imagine how shocking this must have been to hear for Jesus’ disciples. Here they have given up everything to follow Jesus, and now Jesus is upping the ante: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Take up your instrument of torture and public humiliation and follow me. Youch! Do you still want to decide to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back?
Well, before we throw in the towel, let’s look more carefully at what this might mean. First, Jesus says that those who want to follow him must “deny themselves.” This may rub the wrong way for people in a culture so focused on encouraging people to be exactly who they were created to be, to embrace your God-given identity, gifts, and talents. And isn’t scripture replete with that message – the idea that we are each endowed with unique and wonderful gifts, and we should not deny those gifts, but rather, be empowered by the Spirit to use them for the good of the world? Yes, yes we should. Jesus is not undermining that message at all. When he says, “Deny yourself,” he does not mean, be someone other than who you are. Rather, what Jesus is urging his followers to do is to deny our natural human inclination toward selfishness, and putting our own comfort and needs first, to deny our various unhealthy fixations that keep us from closeness with God. Instead, we are to focus on God and what God is calling us to, namely, to love God and our neighbor. To deny ourselves is to let go of all those shields and walls and coping mechanisms we have come to rely upon, and trust instead in God’s grace for us.
Next, Jesus urges followers to take up their cross and follow him. This is one of the most painfully misused and misunderstood things Jesus says. To be clear – Jesus is not advocating for us to just grin and bear it when we are suffering or victimized. Too often this text has been used flippantly or even abusively, justifying mistreatment or even violence, as in, “That’s just your cross to bear.” But Jesus has spent the previous seven chapters alleviating unnecessary suffering – healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding the hungry. This sort of suffering is not ordained by God. What Jesus is talking about is a sort of suffering that comes with being his disciple, and that is the persecution that sometimes comes along with that gig. Being a follower of Jesus is counter-cultural. You don’t always fit in. We are blessed to live in a country that allows for religious freedom, so the level of persecution isn’t the same as what the early Christians faced, or what Christians in other parts of the world face. But there is some level of suffering that comes from living the life that Christ calls us to – because that life is really hard! And that, is our cross to bear: living the life Christ calls us to, even when it is hard and contrary to the ways of the world around us.
And finally, Jesus says that those who lose their life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it. This is such a compelling concept, and one so central to the Christian faith – that when life is lost, life is saved. It is, of course, the story of resurrection, in which life was lost on Good Friday, and eternal and abundant life was found on Easter morning. But it is a story that is central to our lives all the time, even apart from Lent and the Easter season. Indeed, we all have such stories of when the resurrection became very real to us, when we experienced a sort of death, and then saw the new life that came from that death.
We were talking about this in the Dorcas Rachel women’s group this week. Our monthly program through the fall is that we are working through a Bible study exploring the Holy Spirit, and this week we were talking about ways the Holy Spirit comes alongside us and guides us toward Jesus. I asked if anyone there had, either personally or with a loved one, experienced what is sometimes called a “rock bottom” time, that is, a major breaking point, a time when things got just about as bad as you could handle. Almost everyone raised their hand. I often think of those times as a Good Friday – those moments when the sky has darkened, the earth shakes, and all you can see are endings and sadness and hopelessness. I have experienced such a time with a loved one, and I suspect most of you have, too. It is fearful and devastating.
And then comes the three days – that time when God doesn’t feel as present, when we are lost, and uncertain, and wandering in a sort of wilderness of grief, doubt, even fear. It’s a time with more questions than answer, and it usually lasts far longer than a mere three days. Even as Christians who believe in resurrection, it can be hard during that three-days time to remember that there is life on the other side of this, that it ends with Easter. But even when we can remember, that Easter promise of new life feels at once so close we can taste it, and also so far we think we’ll never get there.
But of course, we do get there. That is the promise of our faith – that Easter does, always, come. There is always new life. That new life doesn’t always look like we expected it would, and that Easter isn’t even always joy and sunshine – remember, the Easter accounts in the Gospels are all full of fear and doubt, as well as joy! But we know that, because God is the one bringing it about, and God is good, that such life that follows death is just what it needs to be, just what God ordained. And that new life could not have come about, were it not for the death that made it both necessary and possible.
What about you? What are your stories of deaths, and what is the life that has come from them? Perhaps you are experiencing a sort of death right now – a kid gone off to college, a loved one died, a breaking or broken relationship, a breach of trust. Even good things can be deaths – a marriage is the death of single life, a birth is the death of taking care primarily of yourself. We face these big and little losses every day. What is your story? …
And while we can’t always see the big picture in the midst of things, what is the life, the resurrection, that you have experienced by losing some part of your life as you know it? How is God using death to bring about life in you?
Friends, our faith is one of resurrection, but resurrection cannot come until something has died, until we have lost our lives for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the Gospel. Until we have denied ourselves, and taken up our crosses. Until we have given up the identity the world tried to give us and taken on the identity that Christ gives us: as beloved children of God. But when resurrection does come, we shall indeed have life, and have it abundantly.
Let us pray. God of life, you have endowed us with many good things, but we also face many challenges in our lives, many denials and brokenness and deaths. Help us to see that in you, death is always followed by resurrection. Grant us the courage to believe this, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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