Jesus called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “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.” In the name of +Jesus.
Today’s Gospel reading reveals Jesus’ identity, and opens our eyes to the reality of God’s kingdom.
Jesus and his disciples are in Roman territory as they visit the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Deep in Roman territory, past the Jewish boundary, Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am? And the disciples answer. A prophet. And then Jesus asks the real question: But who do YOU say that I am?
Peter tells Jesus, you are the Messiah. The Christ. For the Jewish people of antiquity, AND for the Jewish disciples of Jesus, the Messiah would come as a powerful leader. Strong, mighty, perhaps a military king like David. Peter envisions this kind of Messiah when he proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah. But Jesus turns the tables on Peter, and describes the opposite of the king image that Peter sees. The reign of this Messiah involves great suffering. Rejection from everyone that matters in society. Death. This is NOT the Messiah Peter and the disciples had imagined.
We have the benefit of hindsight. We know how Jesus’ story ends. But the disciples are completely surprised by this news. It’s easier to imagine a Messiah that hasn’t come yet. A Messiah coming in the future lets us imagine exactly what we want our Messiah to be. A Messiah in the future is completely there for us and yet makes no demands of us. But a Messiah in the here and now calls for an altered image of what we think….a present-day Messiah demands us to alter our ways.1
And so today, just as Jesus asks the disciples, we are asked, “Who do you say that I am?”
And we can look at the cross in front of us, with just a hint of the nails that pierced the Lord that day when he was crucified. We are such resurrection people, we don’t bear the crucified Jesus on our crosses, but the resurrected one. Even Peter joins us in wanting to fast forward, to only see the glory of God as we wish to see it.
But you can’t get to the resurrection without going through the crucifixion. Martin Luther talks about this in his writing on the Theology of Glory versus the Theology of the Cross. And though I spent semester learning about what this means, I can narrow it down for you in a few sentences. “The Theology of Glory confirms what we want in a God.” In other words, God created in our own image. “The Theology of the Cross contradicts everything that people imagine that God should be.”2 In other words, God beyond our ability to imagine. God transforming our limited image.
Theology of Glory is what leads Jesus to say to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” The divine things are being replaced by human desires. Jesus will call us on this every single time we place our own selfish images and desires in front of the self-sacrifice needed to follow, to walk as disciples of God.
One of the reasons I have dedicated over two decades walking with teenagers is their ability to challenge our ideas of glory. My own ideas of self-sacrifice have been challenged this week. As I listen to student after student standing up to us, demanding that we make a change in what we glorify. Our individual rights over and above the common good.
This week, I listened to the words of Emma Gonzalez, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. She cried out, “We are going to be the last mass shooting. We are going to change the law.” In her teenage years, she is learning what it is to sacrifice self for the sake of the common good. To stand up not for her own selfish gain, not to bring her friends back from the dead, but so that no one has to know the pain again. To restore some semblance of safety in the lives of people.
She asks President Trump very directly in her passionate words, “Will you choose NRA campaign funds or us?”
Is it really that simple? I don’t know. Teenagers have a way of exposing our theologies of glory. When we picture God and our world in our own way, with our own preferences and viewpoints at the helm. How God always seems to agree with our opinion. The students of our most recent mass shooting are reframing the question that Jesus asks. They ask of us, “who do you say that YOU are?”
In order to faithfully answer that question, that we are followers of Jesus, we have to first understand who Jesus is. The Messiah. Not some King who meets our standards of royalty. A King who dies by a tragic form of terrorism, allowed by the people. For the sake of the people.
We are dangerously close today to being Peter. Our children are crying out for change, and I have heard so many arguments in our own personal views. Reasons guns are rights by law, reasons guns should be banned. Reasons to fund mental health. Blame the victim. Blame the shooter. But don’t blame me.
Theology of glory. We are focusing on the wrong questions. Human, not divine. What does it look like if we dare to imagine what taking up the cross looks like today?
The self-sacrifice I need to make. Will I lay down my life – and all the possessions and beliefs and glories of this world – in order to take up a cross of self-sacrifice, even if I don’t get my way, for the sake of God? Will you? And what in the world does that look like in 2018? Not the theology of what we want, but the theology and belief of what God needs and call us to do?
In some way, it is the children calling to us in this year’s Lenten journey to the cross. I hear the words of Jesus in Matthew in the pleas of the Florida students: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”
God is not calling us to follow, so that we may divide each other. God is calling us into our new identity. One where we shed the things we possess. The things that possess us. Does self-preservation give us life?
It doesn’t. This is what Jesus is saying. If you and I want to be Christ’s follower, we have to stake our claim on what matters. And it’s not what we think. Those who want to save their lives will have to lose them. And that is humbling.
That cross reminds us of who we are…and whose we are. We are God’s beloved children, marked with the cross of Christ at baptism. We are already marked with the cross of Christ, strengthened by our baptismal promises.
Taking up the cross, that’s a different thing. We aren’t asked to take up the cross that brings us fortune and fame, easy living, our own desires. We don’t take up a cross for our own glory or to be known as a hero. It is a transfer of power.
We give up the identity that we have created for ourselves, denying ourselves. And we accept and take up the cross that Jesus explains in the Gospel. With all its hardship and self-sacrifice, faithfully following Christ into all the areas of this world that need our attention. Places we might not want to be. Losing ourselves in a moment, in order that we may be saved for all eternity. We can’t get to the resurrection without the crucifixion.
We stand on the holiest ground today as we ponder those words of Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?” The present day Messiah awaits our response, because our very identity in this world AND the next rests in this question. Jesus knows the answer leads to true life. Eternal life.
This is why God continues to find us in our brokenness, and cry to our sinful selves with the words, “Choose me. Follow me.” May we be bold enough to let go of ourselves and follow.
1 Commentary on Mark 8. Preaching through the Christian Year (B). Craddock. Hayes. Holladay. Tucker., pg 411
2 Commentary on Mark 8. Feasting on the Word. Year B, Volume 2. Small, Joseph D. pg 72