Mark 8:27-38
“Get Behind Me, Satan”
I’ve read that marketing firms have now learned how to make money from churches.
One congregation sent a glossy advertisement out describing their “casual, creative, contemporary church.”
They listed five reasons for people to “come and check them out”:
1. Jeans and t-shirts, no suits and ties
2. No guilt; leave your wallet at home
3. Positive messages you will enjoy
4. Awesome programs for kids and teens
5. Pop, rock, country—our band rocks!!!
Another congregation invited people
to come for four special Sundays.
The first Sunday was to feature, “possibly the funniest guys on the planet.”
The second Sunday would have a
jazz trio playing “possibly the best jazz on the planet.”
On the third Sunday they would hear “possibly the best singer on the planet.”
And on the last Sunday Chaggy the Clown and Leno the flutist will lead “possibly the most diverse service on the planet.”
A third church promises, “We won’t make you listen to organ music; it won’t take more than an hour; we won’t visit your home unannounced; we will let you remain anonymous; we serve espresso drinks.”
It’s been said that the “cotton-candy, give me what I want, name it claim it, gain is godliness sales gimmicks might draw a big crowd, but so does Britney Spears.”
As we see in our Gospel Lesson for this morning, selling God like we sell cereal doesn’t appear to be Jesus’ technique.
Instead Jesus began to teach the disciples that He will be rejected, will suffer greatly, and will be killed.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Jesus goes on to say that Jesus’ followers must also take up the cross, must lose themselves for the sake of the gospel, and must be prepared to die.
Well, Peter was the one who understood church marketing.
He realized that entertainment is always in style and sacrifice is always out.
Talking about taking up crosses is no way to sell a church.
When Jesus starts preaching about suffering, rejection and death, the disciples do not want to hear it.
So, Peter taps Jesus on the shoulder and motions for a word in private.
I mean, you might as well have had a football captain tell the team that he was going to let the other team score ten touchdowns right away!!!
This wasn’t what Peter and the rest had in mind.
They may not have thought of Jesus as a military leader, but they certainly didn’t think of Him going straight to His death.
As Charlie Brown once said, “Winning ain’t everything but losing ain’t anything,” and Jesus seemed to be saying that He was going to lose.
Worse yet, He was inviting them to come and lose alongside Him.
We are told that “Peter took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him.”
Perhaps Peter said something like this, “Jesus, what are you talking about? Your popularity is skyrocketing! You don’t need to talk about dying.
Suffering, rejection and death are not on the agenda!!!
Prestige, power, and dominion are the agenda.
We signed on for a crown, not a cross!!!”
Jesus’ response to Peter is equally dramatic.
Jesus hears Peter out.
Then, turning and looking at all the disciples, Jesus rebukes Peter.
And what a rebuke it is!!!
Peter is speaking for Satan, the great deceiver.
From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Satan was out to change Jesus’ course, to turn Him away from the Cross.
Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness were temptations to avoid the Cross by being another kind of Messiah, a temptation that Jesus faced again, that last night in the Garden before His arrest and brutal death.
But without the Cross there would be no ransom paid for our lives…
…without the Cross, the full extent of God’s love for humanity would and could not be revealed…
…without the Cross there would be no salvation…
…for without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for sins…
…without death there is no life; no Resurrection!!!
When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”…
…Peter got the title right, but the essence of what that title means and is…
…well, he was a bit fuzzy on that.
And aren’t we all a bit fuzzy on “Who Jesus is” and what it means that “Jesus is Lord, Savior and God”?
Thus, like Peter, we all fail at times to respond fully to Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?”
It’s easy to get “caught up” in what we think we want in a god or how our human minds expect a god to act in the world.
Makes sense though, we are all sinners who fall so short.
I mean, who would think that the God Who Created this universe and everything in it would willingly suffer, be rejected and die the most gruesome and horrible of deaths?
I mean, would you do that if you were God?
But amazingly, the hinge in the Gospels in the Cross!!!
The hinge of Christianity is the Cross!
The love of God is shone most brightly, not necessarily through the healings of Christ, or the even the teachings of Christ, but through the Cross of Christ!!!
For God has come to where we are, and thus through the Cross—God’s self-revelation is so often found in the weakness of suffering and death.
For when we are weak—in Christ—we are strong!!!
To know God is to know the True God Who is hidden in suffering!!!
How many of you came to know Jesus most personally during a time of terrible stress, heartache, pain and suffering?
Would you have turned to Christ if you were happy in your sins, in your lost-ness, in your darkness, in your pain?
Do we realize just how great God is?
Can we even glimpse a bit of it?
God so loves us that He climbed down from heaven, got involved in our muck, took our rejection, took our sin upon Himself, and allowed us to kill Him on the most inhumane and torturous execution device known to humankind!!!
Again, “Who do you say Jesus is?”
Plumbing the depths of a cross-centered life is difficult when many of the dominant expressions of the Christian faith in North America applaud success in corporate life, personal fulfillment, and influence in national politics!!!
A theology of the Cross declares that Church is not some “Jesus Disneyland” where all the trash and is scooped up and hidden away as soon as it falls to the ground by workers in cute outfits.
No, Church is messy.
It’s filled with messy, sinful people who sometimes don’t smell so good, look so good or act so good.
And faith is not necessarily certainty, love is not painless.
Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk.
And entering the radical Kingdom of God doesn’t just mean that there will be merely a few minor adjustments in our ordinary lives.
The Cross of Jesus Christ is foolishness and weakness to a world so focused on self-promotion, power, war, greed, me, me, me.
As Paul says in 1st Corinthians Chapter 1: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed.
But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved…”
And, “This is because the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”
In our Gospel Lesson Jesus calls a crowd together along with His disciples and says to them, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.
All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them.”
At first glance, this might sound like bad news rather than good.
But to be called to follow Christ and to do what Christ has done is the greatest privilege imaginable!!!
To die to self and live for Christ is indeed to be Resurrected to eternal life!!!
To remove ourselves from the center of our concerns, to let go of our competitive race to the top of the food chain—wow, what a stress reliever!!!
We don’t have to go the way of the world!!!
There is another way…
…there is a way of meaning…
…there is a way of hope.
Having a successful life has nothing to do with the abundance of our possessions or how high we rise on the ladder in our careers.
A successful life is a life focused not on self, but on others!!!
In other words, it’s not about me—it’s about Jesus!!!
Many of the things which cause us to become anxious and depressed have to do with our quest for status and material stuff—and thus our focus on ourselves, and how good we can be.
Take that junk out of the equation, and we have life and life to the full!!!
There is a way that seems right to human beings, but it is foolishness to God!
Shane Claiborne, who spent a summer in the slums of Calcutta with Mother Teresa, wrote the following about one of his experiences there:
“People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like.
Sometimes it’s like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo.
She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery—like a beautiful, wise old granny.
But there is one thing I will never forget—her feet.
Her feet were deformed.
Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them.
I wondered if she had contracted leprosy.
But I wasn’t going to ask, of course: ‘Hey Mother, what’s wrong with your feet?’
One day a sister said to us, ‘Have you noticed her feet?’
We nodded, curious.
‘Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them.
And years of doing that have deformed her feet.’”
Jesus said, “All who want to come after me…
…or I suppose we could say, “All who want to be like me, must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”
You know, “self” has been the problem since the Garden of Eden, and so long as that Satanic concern is in charge we will never “take up the cross.”
As long as “self” reigns, we will forever be seeking shortcuts to the kingdom, but those short-cuts are dead-ends.
“Who do you say that I am?” asks Jesus.
How do you answer that?
How do I answer that?
Will we lose our lives because of Christ?
Or are we going to listen to Satan instead?
Will we die to self, or are we too in love with self and thus ashamed of the Cross and of Christ?
“Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives?”
Again, how do we answer that?
Who do we say Jesus is?
