Whoever Wants To Be My Disciple...

“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.