The Foundation of Christian Spirituality: Treasuring Christ Above All Things
Mark 8:27-9:9
S. H. Mathews
Background of the Text: Mark 8:27-30
27 Now Jesus and His disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi; and on the road He asked His disciples, saying to them, "Who do men say that I am?"
28So they answered, "John the Baptist; but some say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets." 29He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ." 30Then He strictly warned them that they should tell no one about Him.
A. These two stories are the turning point of Mark’s gospel; they transition from
the life of Christ to the death of Christ.
B. These two stories are an inclusio: bracketed by confessions of Christ as God’s Son; one from Peter in vs. 29, one from God in verse 7.
C. The crucial issue in these two stories is the crucial issue for Christian Spirituality: Jesus Christ as the Son of God
I. The First Story: Ascetic Spirituality- self denial- Mark 8:31-33
31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He spoke this word openly. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 33But when He had turned around and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, "Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."
A. This is the ascetic dimension of discipleship: denying self, flesh, sin.
B. This is God’s “No” in Christ. Jesus is teaching that following Christ means
saying no to all that is not of Christ.
C. The ability to say “No” is part of the image of God in humanity. Every animal God made is bound to follow its instinct. But humans have the ability to subjugate instinct to holiness.
D. “No” is a freedom word. “No” to the flesh and to the agendas of the world
sets us free to say “Yes” to Christ.
E. This asceticism is not life-denying abuse, but life-affirming, joy-producing discipline.
F. Self-denial is the spirituality of the road. The road takes us to the mountain.
II. The Second Story: Aesthetic Spirituality- the beauty of Christ
1 And He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power."
2 Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them.
4And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. 5Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah"-- 6because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid.
7 And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!"
8 Suddenly, when they had looked around, they saw no one anymore, but only Jesus with themselves. 9Now as they came down from the mountain, He commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
A. This is the aesthetic dimension of spirituality: finding beauty in Christ, the
beautiful Son of God: the Lilly of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star
B. This is God’s “Yes” in Christ. Yes, we can know true beauty. Yes, we can
see glory. Yes, the holiness of God is white-hot, yet we are not consumed. Yes, the law and prophets have led us to the person of Christ. Yes, we are accepted in the beloved.
C. The ability to say “Yes” is part of the image of God in humanity. Only we can say “yes” to Christ.
D. “Yes” is a freedom word. In saying “yes” to Christ, we say “yes” to freedom,
to life, to beauty, to worth, to value, to holiness.
G. The beauty of holiness is the spirituality of the mountain. The mountain takes us to the glory of Christ, the revelation of the Word, and the voice of God.
Illustration:
Hear the words of John Piper:
“What follows from this, I have found, shocks most Christians, namely, that we should be blood-earnest—deadly serious—about being happy in God. We should pursue our joy with such a passion and a vehemence that, if we must, we would cut off our hand or gouge out our eye to have it. God being glorified in us hangs on our being satisfied in him. Which makes our being satisfied in him infinitely important. It becomes the animating vocation of our lives. We tremble at the horror of not rejoicing in God. We quake at the fearful lukewarmness of our hearts. We waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not to pursue that satisfaction in God with all our hearts. There is one final word for finding delight in the creation more than in the Creator: Treason. ”
III. Peter’s Wrong Responses: Denial and Containment
A. On the road: Peter tried to avoid the cross; a denial of the asceticism required by the Gospel
B. On the mountain: Peter tried to possess the beauty of the moment; an attempt to contain and control the white-hot presence of Christ; to hold the weight of glory in his hands.
A Final Illustration: Father Kolbe
Raymond Kolbe was born on January 8, 1894 in Poland, the second son of an impoverished weaver. Early in his childhood, his heart was drawn to God, and in 1910 he became a Franciscan monk, taking the name Maximillian. He was immensely successful in his order. He studied at Rome, and became a professor of church history. He founded a monastery near Warsaw which, at its peak, housed 762 monks and printed 11 periodicals, one of which circulated over a million copies. In 1930 Kolbe was sent to Asia, where he founded monasteries in Nagasaki and India. Six years later he was called back to Warsaw to oversee his original monastery. In 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, he dismissed most of his monks for their safety. He, however, remained behind, and was eventually arrested for using his monastery as a shelter for over 3,000 refugees, including 2,000 Jews. He was sent to Auschwitz in May of 1941.
His presence at Auschwitz was a living example of the person of Christ. One day an SS officer loaded Kolbe’s back with heavy planks and forced him to run. When he fell, the guard kicked him in the face and stomach repeatedly. When Kolbe lost consciousness, the Nazis left him for dead. Some other prisoners smuggled him to the camp infirmary. His doctor, Rudolph Diem, would later say of him: “I can say with certainty that during my four years at Auschwitz, I never saw such a sublime example of the love of God and one’s neighbor.”
After his recovery, Kolbe was returned to the work details. The workers were fed only a cup of imitation coffee in the morning, and weak soup and bread after work. There was not always enough food, and Kolbe often gave his portion to other starving prisoners. Eyewitnesses say that at night, he would not lie down to rest, but would go quietly from cot to cot, asking, “I am a Catholic priest. Is there anything I can do for you?” Late into the night he would hear confessions, pray, and share Christ with the dying. When he was beaten, he did not cry out, but prayed for his tormentors.
Maximillian Kolbe’s greatest ministry began in July, 1941. The SS guards had a policy that if one man escaped, ten would be starved to death in his place. One day the count was one man short. Ten men were called forward to die. One of them was Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Polish freedom fighter. Unable to contain himself, he cried out, “My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?”
At this, Kolbe stepped forward to the ranking officer, removed his hat, and said quietly, “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.” The guard stood, stone-faced, for a moment, then shoved Gajowniczek back in line. Better to kill an old priest than a young, strong man. Kolbe was led with the others into the cellar of the starvation building.
Gajowniczek remembered the day clearly:
“I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me- a stranger. Is this some dream?”
“I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximillian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all around the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.”
“For a long time I felt remorse when I thought of Maximillian. By allowing myself to be saved, I had signed his death warrant. But now, on reflection, I understood that a man like him could not have done otherwise. Perhaps he thought that as a priest his place was beside the condemned men to help them keep hope. In fact he was with them to the last.”
The ten condemned men were thrown into the killing cellar. After two weeks, only four were living. There were more condemned men to kill- the cellar was needed. An executioner was sent to inject the last four men with carbolic acid. Kolbe was the only one conscious. He prayed as he offered his left arm to the needle. A prayer for mercy for his killers. Not long after, he slipped into the arms of Christ. His body, like millions of others, was stripped and burned in the crematoriums. On August 14, 1941, Maximillian Kolbe, prisoner number 16770, was killed at 12:30 p.m.
Whatever happened to Gajowniczek? He survived the death machine at Auschwitz, and returned to find that his wife was living, but the war had taken his two sons. He died on March 13, 1995, at the age of 95- 53 years after Maximillian Kolbe saved his life. Every year on August 14, he went back to Auschwitz to remember the man who had saved him. He took over fifty trips back to the hellish place where so many had died, to remember just one. To the day he died, Maximillian Kolbe’s picture hung in his home.
What else could he do? Kolbe had bought him through his own sacrifice. He had given his life for a condemned man, and the man, now free, lived in homage to his redeemer. What else can we do? Christ has given His life for us, condemned in our sin, and we are compelled to live lives that honor Him. We are compelled to come again and again to Calvary and the empty tomb, to remember the One who died so that we could live.
Footnotes:
1. John Piper and Justin Taylor, A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 27.
2.Summarized from Dewar, Diana, Saint of Auschwitz: The Story of Maksymillian Kolbe (New York: HarperCollins, 1983).
