“Whoever Wants to Be My Disciple…”
Mark 8:31-38
If we are honest haven’t we all at, some point, have disagreed with Jesus, asking Him why He doesn’t do what we want?
Why He won’t He see the world our way?
I mean think about it.
I’d imagine we can all come up with scenarios without me having to give examples of how people do this—how we all do this.
In a sense, that can be seen as “rebuking” Jesus—of “not [having] in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” as Jesus puts it in verse 33.
Maybe we aren’t so different from Peter.
(pause)
Just a few verses before today’s Gospel Lesson Jesus asks: “Who do you say that I am?”
And Peter gets the answer right.
Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of God.
Jesus is the One Who the prophets spoke about, the One for Whom Israel has waited, the One Who was supposed to restore God’s people.
Peter is right and yet he also doesn’t understand.
He has an image of what the Messiah is supposed to do and Who the Messiah is supposed to be and Jesus isn’t describing Himself in those terms.
We probably all have our own images and wishes about Who Jesus is and what He should do.
All is well when Jesus is casting out demons, healing the sick, preventing death, and feeding the multitudes.
We like that Jesus.
We want to follow that Jesus.
He is our Lord and Savior.
Jesus will not, however, conform to our images of Who we think He is or Who we want Him to be.
Instead, He asks us to conform to Whom He knows Himself to be: The One Who “must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law…” and “be killed and after three days rise again.”
And He sets a choice before us.
It’s a choice we each have to make.
Again and again, the circumstances of life set that choice before us.
We either choose ourselves and deny Jesus or we deny ourselves and choose Jesus.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple,” Jesus says, “must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Self-denial is the beginning of discipleship.
I suspect that is not what Peter had in mind when Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
Likewise, I wonder if that is what we had in mind when we came to church today, or what we think about when our baby is baptized, or how often we understand and practice our faith as daily self-denial.
Let’s face it.
Jesus is radical and this is hardcore stuff.
It’s not fluff.
Jesus’ words are hard and His Way is extreme.
Jesus doesn’t think the way we think.
We are told this in Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
The disciples learned this in what must have been the most shocking thing Jesus had ever told them up until now.
You and I are so accustomed to the message of Jesus’ crucifixion that it’s easy to overlook how jarring that prospect would have been for the disciples.
The great hope of the Israelite people at that time was freedom from the Roman overlords.
Having seen Jesus’ miracles, experienced His magnetic personality as they followed Him, and watched Him draw enthusiastic crowds, it would have been totally natural for them to assume that Jesus would somehow challenge the Roman occupation.
But our ways are not God’s ways.
And Jesus contrasts Christian discipleship with the ways of the world.
According to human values, our own lives come first.
We might be kind and generous and thoughtful toward others, yet our cultural norms dictate that the priority is for our own safety or privilege or comfort.
To follow Jesus is to risk our life for the sake of another.
In other words, to be willing to lose our life for the sake of the gospel is to find it.
The way of Jesus, self-denial, reminds us that our life is not our own.
It belongs to God.
It reminds us that we are not in control, God is.
Our lives are not about us.
They are about God.
And there is amazing freedom in knowing these things.
Because when we live this way, we are free to be fully alive.
Through our self-denial our falling down becomes rising up, losing is saving, and death is resurrection.
As long as we continue to believe our lives are about us we will continue to wield power over others, try to save ourselves, control our circumstances, and maybe even rebuke Jesus.
When you think about it, Jesus Himself rarely wielded power over others or tried to control circumstances.
Instead, He made different choices.
Self-denial is not about being out of control or powerless.
It’s about the choices we make.
Think about Jesus’ life and how He lived it.
Jesus chose to give in a world that takes, to love in a world that hates, to heal in a world that injures, and to give His life in a world that kills.
He offered mercy when others sought vengeance, forgiveness when others condemned, and compassion when others were indifferent.
He trusted His Father’s abundance when others said there wasn’t enough.
With each choice, He denied Himself and showed us God’s ways, and God’s concerns in comparison to human concerns.
When Jesus says: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and the gospel will save it”...
When Jesus says this I think Jesus is saying that the “life” that has been packaged and sold to us isn’t real life and we need to die to those illusions to be born into the abundant life God wants for us.
Here’s the thing: many of us tend to think that life is something you go out and get, or earn, or buy, or win.
But it turns out that life is like love, it can’t be won or earned or bought—only given away.
And the more we give it away, the more we have.
Only when we love others do we understand what love is.
In the same way, only when we give away our life for the sake of others do we discover it.
Somehow in working to fulfill the needs of others our own deepest needs are met.
It’s the mystery of life and the key to the Kingdom of God.
That’s one reason why becoming involved in “hands-on” ministry is so important for our spiritual lives.
Volunteering at the Food Pantry, visiting the sick and homebound, befriending someone who is lonely, teaching Sunday school, rebuilding the bathrooms like Lee Hashe has been doing, or fixing the outside of the building like Clark Calabrese and Tate Smith, Raymond Beebe and Stephen Barker and I could go on and on and on—these things are not only essential to the life of the church—they are essential to our spiritual lives as well.
A few years ago I read a story written by a person named Kyle Childress.
He shares the following:
“Thirty-five years ago, our small, struggling congregation was faced with caring for some men with HIV and AIDS.
It was controversial: we were small and didn’t know if we were going to survive as a church or not.
We were desperately trying to attract young families and here we were talking about caring for men with AIDS.
We couldn’t come to any resolution and we were afraid of our church dying, but we knew there were some particular men who were sick and alone and who needed someone to help them buy groceries and take them to the doctor.
So, we started there.
We knew that Jesus wanted us to do at least this much.
Over time, one small step at a time, our care expanded into creating a new organization, putting together worship services of prayer and healing, and becoming friends with people we never dreamed ahead of time we would befriend.”
He continues, “Was that the way of the Cross?
I don’t know.
At the time it seemed to be the hardest thing we had ever faced.
We had few doubts about Jesus wanting us to care for these sick and dying men and we became so focused on the many small steps that we rarely looked up to see if our church was dying or if we’d end up on a cross or not.
Thirty years later we’re still here although we’re still small.
We didn’t die although we buried many good friends who died from AIDS.
I do know we don’t panic as much when Jesus starts talking about taking up the cross.
We’re more likely to cinch up our belts and ask, “Okay, where do we start?”
Taking up our cross is not about dealing with some normal suffering or problem or part of human existence.
That happens to everyone every day.
When Jesus took up His Cross, what did He do?
He chose—He wasn’t forced—to carry out the ministry that God wanted Him to do.
That is what “take up your cross” means—it is making an active decision to live into the ministry and the life that God has called us to, every day.
We have all kinds of crosses in our world.
They can be found in jewelry stores made out of gold and covered in diamonds.
But in Jesus’ day, a cross was the ugliest thing in the world.
It was a device for torture and death.
It was the most horrible shaming tool the Romans had at their disposal.
It was the worst thing human beings could come up with.
A person carrying a cross had been rejected, hated, and cast aside-sent off to die by the government.
In the eyes of the world, they were the biggest losers in life.
And following a crucified Messiah made the disciples a laughing stock to many.
Perhaps that is why Jesus said, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of [them] when he comes into his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
(pause)
Let’s pause here and think about it for a second.
What gives you the greatest joy in life?
What creates, for you, the deepest sense of purpose?
When do you feel most alive, most true to the person you believe God created you to be?
My guess is you aren’t thinking about something you bought, or even earned, but rather something that was rooted in relationship, in acts of service, and even in acts of what the world calls “sacrifice” when you are caring for another person.
Self-denial and cross-bearing are not about being less happy, but about discovering the real and abundant life—a kind of life the world can’t even imagine—that comes in and through merciful love and service to God and people.
And this is what it’s all about.
Will you pray with me?
Dear God,
We acknowledge that Your ways are not our ways and our ways are not Your ways.
We live so much of our lives having in mind human concerns rather than Your concerns.
But we don’t want to live that way any longer.
We want to be your disciples.
Give us the desire and understanding to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow You.
Enable us to choose to lose our lives for You and the gospel and thus save them.
Whatever it takes, this is what we want.
This is our covenant with You.
Lord, enable it to become a reality.
In Your mercy, grace, and love we pray.
Amen.
