Laying It All On The Line
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Mark 8:31-38
Like many of you as a young child I liked superheroes. I thought there was something marvellous about Batman and Superman, and later on in my life, about Wonder Woman, but for entirely different reasons that I won't go into right now! There was something amazing about the transformation that took place in those characters: what was deemed as being ordinary transformed into something extraordinary, somebody who was a human being with normal powers becomes a person with super powers. While I am not as carried away with this as some of the characters in the Big Bang Theory, I still think they are remarkable! To think that a Bruce Wayne would somehow become Batman or Clark Kent would become Superman or Diana Prince would become Wonder Woman, how could one not be quite amazed at that power of transformation?
I think it is even something that dates back thousands of years in the mythology of the human life and the human story. It was Zeus, who in Greek mythology would transform himself. It was those who were seemingly ordinary, Aphrodite or Hercules, who would be given special powers to be able to deal with life and its problems. From time immemorial human beings have liked the superhero, the extraordinary and the unusual.
I have often wondered why we identify with them. I think that we identify with them in their many and various forms because we like to think that there is a source or a power or a hope that can help us deal with the issues that face our world when we ourselves cannot: that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, and if there is a transformation that takes place, we can take on even the greatest challenge. It is as if this desire resides into our soul. While everyone is not going to have the same attraction to superheroes as others do, there is this sentiment, this desire to overcome by being somewhat different.
I am not suggesting this morning that our passage from the Gospel of Mark is a mythological transformational story in the way of superheroes, but there is within this story if not a transformation, a transition. Before last Sunday, and the Sunday before that when I was away and David preached, I had been concentrating on the Gospel of Mark and the early part of Jesus' life and ministry. What was fascinating about that was that Jesus did remarkable and spectacular things. He was able to do extraordinary things, like heal Simon Peter's mother, or drive out demons in the Temple, and I suggested to you at that time that there was a sense that Jesus was like a superhero, that he was above the ordinary, that he was spectacular.
Mark's Gospel transitions in Chapter 8. Jesus moves from being the superhero of the early part of the Gospel to something entirely different: he reveals himself and his mission in a new and fascinating way. Peter, who like all the other disciples dropped his fishing nets to give up his career and follow Jesus, was caught up in the wonder and the ecstasy of the superhero Jesus. They had seen him do all these wonderful things, and crowds were following him, so much so that Jesus had to get away from the crowds in order to find some peace and quiet and to be with his Father. Peter loved that! He was on the bandwagon! He was with Jesus, the superhero. This was going to be a marvellous, marvellous ride!
Jesus confronts him with something shocking. He says that he would suffer and that he would die, that he would be rejected by the civil and religious leaders, and that on the third day he would rise from the dead. Peter is shocked by this. This isn't the superhero language that he was used to. Persecution, suffering, dying, rising from the dead, this is not what he had envisaged, this was not the kind of discipleship that he had bought into when he sold his business, dropped his nets and followed Jesus. So he tells himself and rebukes Jesus. He says, “How can you do this? This isn't right. You are speaking foolishness.” He couldn't get over the fact that he wasn't following a superhero at all, but a man who was going to suffer and die and face rejection.
In some of the strongest language in the whole of the New Testament, Jesus rebukes Peter. I think this is Jesus at his strongest, perhaps along with the moment that he threw out the money changers from the Temple, this ranks as the most solid, strong statement by Jesus of rejection. He says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” Then, he says, “You are not thinking with the mind of God; you are thinking with the mind of humanity.” Why so vociferous? Why so challenging?
It is because Jesus knew that his mission was not to be the superhero, the big healer, the wonderful, miraculous converter of water into wine and deliverer of fish to feed thousands. This isn't what Jesus wanted to be known for. He knew that his mission was much greater than that and that these early miracles were a sign and a symbol of his power and his identity, but they were not the end in themselves, and Jesus knew that.
Of course, there were others who were also revolutionaries like Jesus and who were going around Palestine proclaiming that they were going to overthrow the power of Rome. There were those, such as Bar Kokhba or Judas the Galilean, or some of the Pharisees who removed the eagle from Herod's Temple, who really wanted to take on the might and the power of Rome. Jesus Barabbas, in the Crucifixion story, may have also been one of those zealots.
All of them also said, as Jesus did, that they would suffer, that they would face rejection, that they would be killed. Some scholars have argued that Jesus was really no different than Bar Kokhba and Judas the Galilean: he was just a revolutionary who was a realist and knew that he was going to be despised and run out of town.
Where Jesus differs is profound. Jesus says that if you do not now follow him and pick up your Cross, you can actually forfeit your life and your soul. More importantly, he says that even though he will suffer and die, on the third day, he will rise again. His ministry and his mission is not about defeat or the promise of rejection, but is the promise of hope. To get to that hope, he wanted Peter to understand the cost that would be borne. He wanted Peter and all the disciples, and indeed all the crowd to know and to understand and to appreciate fully the extent to which his sacrifice was going to be made.
We wonder why Mark would place this story in the Gospel. I will be honest with you, if I were to write my own Bible, if I were to make up my own faith, Mark 8 would be removed from the Gospel. If I could make up my own religion, Mark 8:31-38, would have no place within it! But it is there.
Thank God it is there, because it epitomizes all that Jesus stood for! Mark knew in including this that he was giving an account of something that would shake the world, just as it had shaken Peter, who was in many ways the source for Mark's Gospel and probably conveyed to Mark the stories of Jesus' life. It is here for a reason. What is the reason? I think first of all to tell us not to seek worldly security at the expense of courageous living.
As I was waiting at the airport a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a magazine sitting at one of the coffee tables and read it as I had nothing else. It is boring, isn't it, to travel these days? I sat there looking through the various stories and I came upon one that was fascinating! It is, according to the author, a true story of something that happened during the American Civil War.
In it, a cotton farmer in Tennessee decided that he was going to try to protect himself in the midst of the conflict. Tennessee evidently, according to this writer, was one of those states that seemed neither North nor South. It was primarily from the South, but there were still those who saw it supporting the North. So, the Tennessee farmer wasn't sure which forces would come through his town and to his farm.
He had heard there would be a battle and that fighting would probably occur around where he lived, so he made a decision, which was that he was going to wear a light grey jacket, dark blue pants, and a dark blue hat. He thought that if he wore a Confederate jacket, then he would be safe when the Confederates arrived, and that he would wear the navy for when the northern Yankees came, and he would be safe.
So he did this, and he went out into the field with great confidence that in the internecine conflict he would be spared. Of course, once the Confederates saw the blue hat and the blue pants, they shot him. Once the Confederates had run away and the northerners came in and saw the light grey jacket, they shot him. He was shot from both sides, because they saw the opposite to what he saw. He saw security, neutrality, and the desire to please everybody, but his enemies saw only the representation of the enemy.
Jesus made the point in another parable when he said, “You know, you cannot serve two masters. You will end up loving one and hating the other. You cannot serve two masters because in the end you will serve neither.” In other words, you have to make a choice. You have to make a decision. But, it is not a decision just on your terms. Neutrality has no place in the Kingdom and in life itself. We think it does, we think that we give ourselves security by being completely neutral, but as that cotton farmer from Tennessee found, the opposite is true.
Peter was looking for both. He wanted on the one hand the security and the splendour and the joy of following a superhero, of getting carried away with this man Jesus, who could do all these wonderful things and perform all these miracles. Holy Batman, it's great to follow him! But, on the other hand, he didn't want to hear what Jesus was saying, namely that the Son of Man would suffer and die and face rejection, and rise on the third day. He wanted discipleship on his terms, but there is no such thing. He had to make a choice.
I think that one of the great dangers in being a disciple of Jesus Christ today is that we somehow think that Mark 8 is not for us, that it doesn't demand a choice. Jesus says, “Take up your Cross and follow me.” In other words, be willing to walk with me, if you do that, you will actually save your life not lose it because what happens to you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul: you have all the splendour of the world at your feet, but you do not have me.
There is a wonderful book that I was given in the middle of last year that I have been reading every day. It is a series of morning and evening meditations. It was given to me by an elderly Anglican minister who thought that it would be an inspiration to me. The book itself was written by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great preacher from the nineteenth century. I must say I thought it was a little outdated in its language and in its illustrations when I first started to read it, but the more I got into it, the more I realized there was something timeless about this book.
In the meditation this week, Spurgeon wrote the following, and I thought, “This I needed to hear!”
There is nothing Christ dislikes more than for his people to make
a display of him and not use him. He loves to be employed by us.
The more burdens we put on his shoulders, the more precious
he will be to us.
Spurgeon was arguing in this whole meditation that, having made the decision to follow Christ and be his disciple, it is not in fact a burdensome thing. Even the taking up of the Cross is not a burdensome thing. Why? It is because of the promise that Christ will actually be with us through those burdens and will walk with us. The one thing Christ doesn't want is for people to make a display saying that they are following him or they are worshipping him, and then not allowing him into their lives.
Only later on, after the death and the Resurrection, did Peter came to fully appreciate what Jesus was saying in Mark 8. Only later on, when Jesus had gone through the rejection and the suffering and the Cross and the Resurrection did he realize that Christ was doing this for the very reason of being with us forever more. When he discovered that, Peter realized the power of courageous living rather than seeking worldly security. It had been worth giving up his nets to follow Jesus of Nazareth, but he had to follow him all the way.
The second thing is that I think Mark wanted us to make sure that we don't exchange eternal imperatives for personal choice. By that I mean we have as people the ability to make choices in our lives. We are free beings. That is the wonderful thing about being human! We are not always free to do what we want. There are always constraints around us. But we are free people, and our choices do matter. In fact, we are told more and more that the choices that we make have consequences. They have consequences for the environment, for the world, for relationships. They have consequences for the way we interact and have faith and develop and grow.
The world teaches us that the choices we make are deemed good or bad by virtue of the consequences that come from them. In other words, if there are not negative consequences, then the choice must be right, because consequence is the test of the choice. It sounds very nice. Jesus would think it was hokum! He would say, “No, that is not right!” The reason he would say that it wasn't right is because there are consequences beyond those that we ourselves perceive. There are eternal consequences. There are eternal imperatives.
Peter had made a choice: his choice was to follow Jesus. His choice was to say, “I will go wherever you want” as long as it was according to his terms. There was no cost to be borne, no pain to suffer. “I'll do that! I will follow you, gladly, because good things will happen!” A lot of people think like Peter. Jesus, on the other hand, comes back to him and says, “If you don't follow me according to what I really am and do, then there are consequences that are eternal for, what profit you if you gain the whole world and have all popularity and follow a superhero, but then lose your soul and do not follow God's path?”
The choices in life are not just based on whether there are consequences to them. They are based on whether they are in accordance with Christ's will and Christ's purpose. Let me put this clearly: Jesus knew that in his encounter with Peter everything was on the line. He knew that if he said to the disciples, “I'll take the easy way. You come with me. I have particular divine powers. I am going to do great things. All you need to do is follow me, and it will be wonderful.” They would follow him and the crowds would follow him and for a while it would be a great run. But Jesus knew that everything was on the line, because that was not his purpose.
The reason it wasn't his purpose is that Christ didn't just come for popularity, and he didn't just come for the spectacular and the powerful; he came for the broken and the sinful world. He came for the lost and the lonely and the poor. He knew to identify with them, and God's way of identifying with them was to bear that sin, to take it and carry it himself in order that it can be transformed. There is the transformation! It is not from an ordinary to a superhero, but from being a superhero to dying for the ordinary. That is the Christian way! From time immemorial, Jesus has been identified with, and has found a following by, those who are the broken in the world. They have seen in him their life and he is their source and their strength.
This was very evident to me this week. I mentioned a few weeks ago that a gentleman had come into the Church to see me because he had been the subject of torture and a refugee. The torture was horrendous! He could speak very little English and he simply didn't know where to turn so he came to the church. He walked in and sought Christian help, because Christians do help. I am pleased to say that this man came back to our offices this week. He came back not to seek assistance or money. He didn't come back and walk into our staff meeting to say, “Look at all that I have done!”
He just came in to tell me that he had been granted disability funds, which means he doesn't live in penury and extreme poverty. What happened was, to the credit of the MPP, Social Services, the City of Toronto, the Church, and his psychiatrist he was able to get the help that he needed. This poor, lost soul, so wounded by evil, so beaten down, so frightened, had found someone who cared and listened, and he was feeling free. He simply just touched his heart again and as I mentioned before, said, “God is one, and I love Jesus!” He just wanted me to know.
That man made some choices. Evil had beaten him down, sin had nearly destroyed him and broken his soul, but he made the choice not to allow that to be the final word. He did it because of faith. He took a courageous step to go into a place that he had never entered before, into a religion that was only part of his upbringing, to people he had never met before, speaking a language that he barely spoke, pleading that he wanted his life to be more than it is, that he wanted it to be better, and he did it. You don't do that without faith.
Why would he do it at all? Why would he come to a Christian church? Why would he? I think it was because he knew Jesus has always taken the broken, the sinful, the lost and embraced them, taken them with him and asked them to follow him. I think that is precisely what Peter needed to know. That was what was on the line when Peter rebuked him. Jesus wanted him to know more than anything else that it was in fact as a crucified Lord that he saves and changes humanity. He had laid it all on the line! Amen.