Potholes
Mark 8:27-35
Bumpy streets are so commonplace in New Orleans that residents have taken some extreme measures to draw attention to particularly bothersome potholes. There was the birthday party in New Orleans East for a 5-foot-wide pothole on Cannes Street. They had cake, balloons and a "Happy Birthday, Pothole" sign. Then there was the Broadmoor couple who turned a 2-foot-deep, 8-foot-wide pothole into the “Broadmoor Green Space Migratory Bird Refuge and Wetlands Reclamation Project” Decorated with plastic flamingos and toy boats. Potholes are a fact of life in New Orleans. But when you think about it, they’re just a fact of life. We’ve all experienced potholes in the road of life that either slow us down, delay our journey or sometimes totally disrupt it. Potholes are anything in life that keep us from moving forward.
The thing about potholes is that for the sake of your car, you always try to avoid them. And we try to do the same thing in life as well, don’t we? Our hope is that the journey of faith will be devoid of potholes. Isn’t there an expectation that when you draw closer to God, that life will get easier? And yet the Biblical record shows just the opposite. Abraham received God’s call to be a father of a great nation and then was asked to sacrifice his own son as a test of his faith. Joseph was blessed by God to play a pivotal role in God’s plan but his brothers got jealous and sold him into slavery. Elijah the prophet was to challenge the pagan ways of King Ahab and princess Jezebel, who got so angry that she put a contract out on Elijah’s head. Each of the Apostles sustained imprisonment, beatings and eventually died a martyr’s death. And Jesus? After he was baptized, he was sent into the wilderness and tempted. And the challenges and potholes kept coming all the way to the cross. When you follow Jesus and do the God’s will, the question isn’t if potholes are going to come but “When?”
And when they do, there is often a crisis of faith. When the potholes of life hit, we cry out, “Why, God?” And it’s precisely in those moments that we have a decision to make. Our Scripture today teaches us that potholes and questions of faith can come unexpectedly. Jesus was traveling with the disciples and out of the blue, he posed a question: “Who do people say I am?” After they answer, Jesus then asks: “who do you say I am?” This is a question that every single person must deal with in his or her life, most often when our life has hit a pothole. You can answer that question rationally, historically and even Scripturally, but when you’ve hit a pothole, the question becomes personal, “Who do you say who Jesus is?” All of us have to come to a point where you have to make a personal decision of who Jesus is in your life, right there in the midst of your pothole, crisis or tragedy.
Peter’s pothole revolved around two things. First is Jesus’ mission. When Peter confessed Jesus as the Messiah, “Jesus began to teach them the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the teachers of the law and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.” And you can almost hear Peter quote Arnold from “Different Strokes”, “Whacha you talkin’ about Jesus?” What is this about suffering, rejection, and death? I didn’t know any of this when I signed up to follow you. This is not the expectation I had of who you were, Jesus, or what you were going to bring into my life.” This wasn’t the Messiah that Peter looked for. He was expecting a King, a conquering Messiah that would make all wrongs right and overthrow the Roman oppressors. How could the Messiah, the all-powerful Son of God, be subject to the same humiliation of a common criminal? And how could He be defeated in death? Suddenly, Peter’s expectation was not aligning with Jesus’ mission.
Peter’s second struggle revolved around Jesus’ call on our lives. And this is where we usually struggle as well. For Jesus said “If anyone wants to come after me you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me.” What were Peter and the disciples expecting? In Mark 10, we have the story of James and John asking Jesus, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked. They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.” In other words, place us in the seat of honor, power and authority. This is what they were hoping to get from following Jesus. And isn’t that the way it often is with us. We make Jesus and our faith journey about us, about Jesus meeting our needs, answering our prayers and giving us the guidance to make life go smoother. And when we do, we begin to make Jesus into a personal Savior, not the Savior of the world. Jesus becomes a Jesus of our imagination. But we’re called to follow the real Jesus.
Robert Weber tells of going to India when he was in seminary. While in Calcutta, he thought he would try to meet Mother Teresa. On a whim he went to the Sisters of Charity House. He didn’t even know if she was in the country. He knocked on the door, and asked the little nun that came to the door if he could meet Mother Teresa. She ushered him into a really sparse sitting room with wood furniture, gave him some tea, and he sat and waited. About 15 minutes later Mother Theresa came into the room and sat there for 20 minutes drinking tea and talking with him. He got up to leave and said “Mother Teresa I just have one question to ask: “Do you have any advice for a young seminary student?” And she said “Follow Jesus, the real Jesus, the true Jesus, the resurrected Jesus and not the Jesus of your imagination.”
So many of us have a Jesus of our imagination which focuses on our needs. Matt Mikalatos has identified several Imaginary Jesus’ we hold. There’s TV Jesus, who says: "If you follow me, you will have the life you always wanted. Money! Wealth! Big house! Fancy plane! Unending health!" There’s Hollywood Jesus who is mild and kind and never asks for anything difficult. There’s the Magic Eight Ball Jesus who’s good for quick guidance. There’s the Political Jesus, who wants to take over the American government with Christians and transform the entire nation into a "Christian Nation." The fact is we all have an image of who Jesus is and the roles we want him to play for our benefit. Jesus challenges us when he says, “You don’t seek me for who I really am, you seek me because I give you bread.” And, if we’re honest, our view of Jesus and the role we want him to play in our lives doesn’t quite match up with the Jesus of the Gospels.
When Jesus talks about suffering, rejection, and death, suddenly our expectation of Jesus doesn’t align with the call of Jesus to follow him to the cross. There comes a point in time when all of us have to wrestle with the real call of Jesus. We’ve been comfortable attending worship, maybe being involved in a Bible study, making a nominal offering or occasionally serving in a ministry and basically doing the religious thing but living our lives like the rest of the world during the week. Then we hit a pothole and suddenly we realize Jesus doesn’t want a part of your life, He wants to be your life. He wants everything: your time, your talents and your treasures. Jesus isn’t here to make you more comfortable, he’s here to call you beyond your comfort zone. He isn’t here to serve your needs, He calls you to become a servant to others. Jesus isn’t here to give to you but instead asks you to give everything of yourself.
And so those potholes of life come and if we let them, they can open our eyes to see the real Jesus. Remember we are created for eternity. One of the things we learn from potholes is that God is more concerned with our character than our comfort. Did you hear that? God is more concerned with our character than with our comfort. See growth takes place in tension. If you are living in equilibrium and everything is staying the same, there is no motivation for growth or change.
One of the greatest challenges is to create spiritual inertia when you’ve been standing still spiritually and are comfortable where you are. But potholes in life can get us off balance and cause us to make course corrections. They can be a catalyst for us. What we find is too often if there’s not an intense catalyst of pain, a pothole, we will resist change. The pain of staying the same has to be worse than the pain of change. You see it in the life of an alcoholic or drug addict. You see it with those who are in debt. The pain and discomfort has to increase to the point where you become proactive in seeking recovery. God uses pain, not necessarily causes pain, to challenge and change us to become more like Him by embracing His call to the cross in our lives. That is why the cross is central to the journey of faith.
God doesn’t remove potholes, pain and suffering but that in them we can find God and true life. The cross is the life we are called to when we follow the real Jesus. Paul writes in 2 Cor. 11:24 “Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches….” Can you imagine watching this on TV as a commercial to follow Jesus as it concludes with “Try Jesus!” Paul continues, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 1 Cor. 12:9-10
This is the call of the cross and this is the price of following Jesus. This is what you are signing up for, sisters and brothers, when you say yes to Jesus. The cross is what causes so many believers to step back, turn around and continue to live their lives as only a faint glimmer of Jesus. In John 6:60, many of Jesus’ followers cried out, “This is too hard,” and they ceased to follow him.” Well I am going to be straight up honest with you. The way of Jesus is hard, harder than just staying where you are. So Jesus turned to the 12 disciples and said “Are you going to leave me too?” If this is what we have to look forward to, then why follow Jesus? Why would we choose more pain and suffering than we’re already experiencing? Because it’s in the pain and suffering that comes from following Christ that we experience his presence is most real and we draw closest to Him. Paul stated it this way: “I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of faith that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself. If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it.” Phil. 3:9-11
Thomas à Kempis writes in his book, “The Imitation of Christ”: “Why do you fear to take up the cross when through it you can win a kingdom? In the cross is salvation, in the cross is life, in the cross is protection from enemies, in the cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness, in the cross is strength of mind, in the cross is joy of spirit, in the cross is highest virtue, in the cross is perfect holiness. There is no salvation of soul nor hope of everlasting life but in the cross. Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you shall enter eternal life. He Himself opened the way before you in carrying His cross, and upon it He died for you, that you, too, might take up your cross and long to die upon it. If you die with Him, you shall also live with Him, and if you share His suffering, you shall also share His glory.” Amen and Amen
