St Luke’s, Havelock North –
The 2nd Sunday in Lent 2009 – Living The Contradiction
“If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me.”
I say this often, but today I really mean it – there are lots of things
I could preach on this morning. Every single one of our readings, up to and
including the Psalm, are just packed with an absolute boatload of opportunities
and invitations for sermonising, and it’s oh so tempting to try to tackle all
or most of them, but I won’t.
I won’t because while some of today’s readings meld together clearly –
such as those from Genesis and Romans – even in those cases there is still so
much information and detail in each that they really have to be given their own
individual focus, so I have to choose.
I want to come back to Genesis and Abraham and Sarah at Evensong this
evening, so if you want to hear that be at St Matthew’s at 6.30, but for this
morning I’m sticking with the Gospel and those extraordinarily difficult words
at the tail end of Mark chapter 8.
“But turning and
looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’”
Today is one of those days when I really don’t know what was going on in
the mind of the person who chose this Gospel reading. There is no sensible
reason I can discern for starting it where it does, and every possible reason
not to. The fact is, we can’t even begin to grapple with the final section of
Mark 8 without at least some knowledge of what goes before it - as usual,
context is crucial, so I want to go back for a few moments and look at this
rest of this crucial chapter in Mark’s Gospel.
First though, cast your mind back over the past few weeks as we’ve
trawled through the early chapters of Mark and you may remember that it’s been
one miracle after another, with Jesus constantly on the go, never refusing a
request for healing, and constantly clashing with the authorities along the
way.
Chapter 8 starts in much the same way, with a miracle on a grand scale
as Jesus feeds four thousand, clashes with the Pharisees, and then confuses the
disciples by using a yeast metaphor while they’re still thinking about the
bread he had provided for the crowds.
Verse 21 brings us to a question that really stands at the heart of
Mark’s rendering of the Gospel – Jesus has confused the disciples, and out of
anger or frustration – we don’t really know which – he asks, ‘Do you not yet
understand?’
Do you not yet understand? Meaningfully, straight after asking this
question, Mark has Jesus healing a blind man before quizzing his disciples
again, this time on the question, ‘who do people say that I am?’ Jesus has made
a name for himself, travelling through all these villages, healing and feeding
all these people, these aren’t things you do if you want to remain unnoticed.
Obviously people were beginning to talk, and Jesus wants to know what they’re
saying. ‘Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one
of the prophets,’ his disciples reply, and then Jesus hits them with the real
question.
Mark isn’t entirely generous to the disciples in his writing. Constantly
we get this picture of a bunch of people who just don’t get it, who aren’t
quite figuring it out, who don’t yet understand. So when Jesus asks, ‘who do
you say that I am?’ it wouldn’t have been out of character for the disciples to
get it wrong, but then Peter steps up; ‘You are the Messiah.’
Plain and simple, and surely proof positive that he at least really does get
it, which brings us to today’s reading. Having reached this climactic moment in
the Gospel story, where the disciples seem to be finally cottoning on to what
exactly is going on here, and having finally had Jesus clearly identified as
the Messiah, he then turns around and says, now here’s what that really means,
and Peter doesn’t cope.
“Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.” In what will turn out to
be the first of three passion predictions in Mark, Jesus starts to tell his
disciples, his friends, about what is to come and Peter takes him to one side
and says, ‘Lord, don’t even go there.’ What happens next proves this isn’t some
fluffy, cuddly Jesus who speaks gently and kindly to all. “Get behind me
Satan”. Jesus doesn’t just pat Peter on the back and say, ‘there, there,’ or
tell him quietly that he’s wrong, he calls him ‘Satan’. This is Jesus, with one
of his closest friends, one of his most trusted followers, and he calls him
‘Satan’.
I’m not going to try to make excuses for Jesus’ response, except to say
that it’s far from the only time when Jesus doesn’t live up to the meek and
mild image some would like to bestow on him. Jesus was many things, but he was
most definitely not a diplomat, or one of those softly, softly people who want
to continually ask ‘how do you feel about that?’ What I’m interested in here is
Peter’s reaction.
It might be hard for us to really grasp what recognising Jesus as the
Messiah must have meant to Peter. This is the Messiah, this is the one Peter
and his forebears and his forebear’s forbears have been waiting for forever,
and they’ve finally recognised him, and now there’s no way all this awful stuff
he’s saying can possibly happen.
What Jesus says being the Messiah means makes no sense to Peter. He had
grown up with the understanding that the Messiah would come in power and glory
to redeem
“Get behind me
Satan. For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
After the great revelation of verse 29 we’re back to verse 21, ‘Do you
not yet understand?’ Peter just doesn’t get it, and then to compound all the
confusion, Jesus goes on to make it crystal clear that it won’t be only he who
faces hard times, but also any who want to follow him. ‘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.’
Surely being a follower of the Messiah would be a good thing? A positive
thing? So what’s all this talk of crosses and denying self? Where’s the Good
News in that? And how is it that you can save your life by losing it? Surely
that’s a contradiction? And it is.
It is a contradiction, and while we might be confused by that or
unsettled by that, we shouldn’t be surprised, because contradiction is a
constant theme that runs and weaves throughout not just the Gospel, but the
entire canon of scripture. It’s a contradiction that God would choose an
elderly couple who have been unable to have children for decades and decades
and pronounce them the parents of generations to come. It’s a contradiction
that the Psalmist can begin with a desperate cry of ‘why have you forsaken me’
and end with a hymn of praise to the God who never deserts us. It’s a
contradiction that the Jesus who brings life to so many through healing should
face suffering and death. It’s all a great contradiction, and maybe that’s the
point?
In his life and action Jesus affirms and fulfils centuries of Hebrew
expectation and anticipation, in his crucifixion and death he annihilates both.
All those assumptions about what the Messiah would be and do go out the window
in the face of the cross. That is what lies at the heart of Peter’s complaint,
that is what confuses and bewilders the disciples, that is the great contradiction
that lies at the heart of the Gospel, and at the feet of those who would seek
to follow.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take
up their cross and follow me.” Our challenge is the same as the challenge
facing the disciples – the challenge to not only hear the contradiction and
understand the contradiction, but also to live the contradiction.
To find new life in death, to experience affirmation in denial, to gain
from loss – these are the great contradictions of the Christian life, and they
all lead us back to the greatest contradiction of all in Christ Jesus, who in
life called his followers to die to self and in death brought life to many.
May God be with
us in our struggles to understand and our acceptance that at times we don’t.
Amen.