Sermon: Cross-Shaped Mindsets

Mark 8:31-38

Cross-Shaped Mindsets

James Sledge                                                                                       February 25, 2018

Imagine for a moment that a political candidate has caught your eye. The office doesn’t matter. It could be school board, state legislature, Congress, anything You’re incredibly impressed, and the more you hear, the more you read, the more your admiration grows.

You decide to get involved in the campaign, and your tireless efforts are noticed. You’re invited into meetings about strategy, policy, and advertising purchases. You become a part of the inner circle and see things the public doesn’t, Yet even here, you admiration only grows.

But then one day in a strategy meeting, your candidate insists on taking a position that everyone knows is political suicide, a position so unpopular with the voters that defeat is inevitable. Everyone is stunned. Jaws drop, mouths hang open, a pall descends on the room.

Something similar happens in our gospel reading this morning. Up to this point, the gospel of Mark has largely focused on the question of who Jesus is. The disciples have heard teachings and seen healing and other miracles that witness to Jesus’ identity. Following one spectacular miracle, these disciples ask the very question Mark is focused on. “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

In Mark’s gospel, no human realizes that Jesus is Son of God prior to his death. But the disciples have seen enough to know that Jesus is no ordinary guy. Clearly God’s power is with him, and so when Jesus asks them directly, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter quickly answers, “You are the Messiah,” a term that means God’s anointed.

Peter gives a correct if incomplete answer, and Jesus takes this as a cue to begin teaching about what lies ahead. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Jaws drop, mouths hang open, and a pall descends over the group. At first, no one speaks, but finally Peter decides he had to do something, has to make Jesus rethink this. Peter is discreet and pulls Jesus aside to rebuke him, to warn him what a huge mistake he’s making. Jesus responds by making sure all the disciples are listening when he calls Peter “Satan”

Then Jesus calls in the crowds. These words aren’t just for disciples. They’re for anyone thinking about following Jesus. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” The gospel does not say, but I would be surprised if many in the crowd did not pick up and head home right there.

I was working on this sermon when the shooting occurred in Parkland, Florida. That spurred me to write a blog post that I’m going to quote from here. 

Jesus insists that being his followers requires denying ourselves, and it requires a cross, a willingness to take up voluntary burdens and suffering for the sake of others. Jesus' words are at totally at odds with the American ethos, which perhaps explains why American Christians are so often raving hypocrites.

Nowhere is the hypocrisy greater than on the issue of gun rights. For reasons I cannot fathom, many Christians have somehow linked their faith to a love of guns and an absolute right to defend themselves; Jesus' pacifist teachings be damned. But the insistence that protecting "my rights" is more important than the lives of young children runs completely counter to Jesus' absolute demand for self-denial and cross bearing. This core teaching of Jesus demands that as his follower, I must be ready and willing to give up things dear to me, no matter how costly to me, for the sake others.

 Now this is easy for me to say when talking about the issue of guns. I don’t own one and haven’t done any hunting in forty years. It is easy for me to look at others and see how their placing gun rights above all other considerations is incompatible with the call to follow Jesus. It is easy for me to proclaim that followers of Jesus are called to do all they can to make the world safer and more peaceful, more loving and less violent.

It is also easy for me to say such things because I won’t upset many  people in this congregation, a few perhaps, but not many. It costs me nothing. I’m not giving up anything or bearing any sort of cross. In another congregation that might be different, but not here.

That raises the question of just what it means for me to deny self and take up the cross. It’s all well and good to tell other people what they need to deny themselves and what they need to give up, but what about me? And what about you?

I suppose that getting involved in efforts to revive an assault weapon ban or create a mandated waiting period for gun purchases might be giving up something if I used lots of vacation time to march and protest, if I gave significant donations that required me to change my spending habits, or if I got arrested for acts of civil disobedience. But then again, I’m an introvert who loves and guards my time away. I’m a first born who’s always been a good little boy. I’m not so sure about getting arrested. Let’s face it, I’m a lot like Peter. Much of the time my mind is set on human things… not on divine things.

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I don’t know exactly when it happened, hundreds of years ago I suppose, but the Church made a colossal blunder when we decided Christianity was primarily about believing a few things and joining a congregation. Jesus talks a lot about making disciples, not so much about members. He calls people to follow him, often into difficult places, sometimes at great cost.

I’m not discounting belief, faith, trust. Who would do the things Jesus asks if they didn’t have faith, didn’t trust that his way was right, even if it often doesn’t feel that way, even if self-denial and crosses seem really scary.

Lent seems like a particularly good time to ponder such things, to pause, be still, simplify, and take a good hard look at whether we do trust Jesus, at what we need to let go of in order to focus more on divine things and not be so distracted by human things. Lent seems like a really good time to think about what  needs to change for us to be the disciples we’ve promised to be.

Like anything that really matters, being disciples is hard. Just ask Peter. He doesn’t mess up only in today’s reading. When Jesus is arrested, Peter, the bold leader of the disciples, denies even knowing Jesus. He just wants to save his own skin. But the risen Christ seems hardly to remember Peter’s failure. Grace abounds. All is forgiven. And the call is ever renewed, “Come, follow me.”

I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

      – Martin Luther King, Jr.