Mark 8:27-38
Getting Behind
Jesus
James Sledge September
12, 2021
Take
Up Your Cross, Gary Bunt, 2016
The beginning of this school year has been
accompanied by fierce resistance to masks by some. One parent in Texas ripped
the mask off a teacher. For reasons that baffle me, resistance to vaccines and
masks is often couched is religious language. Last year, in a rebuttal to such
views, Scott Hoezee, a pastor on the faculty of Calvin Theological Seminary
wrote a blog post entitled, JWWM: Jesus Would Wear a Mask. The post opened with
an updated take on the story of Jesus being tempted by the devil. 
Then the devil led Jesus to the entrance of the Jerusalem Farmers Market. Jesus observed that most people were prudently wearing face coverings and masks to protect from a severe virus that had made many in the Holy City sick in recent weeks. And the devil said unto him, “If you are the Son of God, then enter the market, talk, shop, and laugh but do not wear a mask for it is written ‘He will give his angels charge over you’ and so we know God will protect you and others from the virus.” And Jesus replied, “It is also written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Jesus then put on his face covering and entered the market in search of some fresh figs. The devil then left him . . . until a more opportune time.[1]
“Until a more opportune time” is a reference to Jesus’ struggle in the garden of Gethsemane, where he is once more tempted to turn away from the path God has placed before him. But there is a hint of that later temptation in our gospel reading for this morning.
Much of Mark’s gospel is occupied with questions of Jesus’ identity. The reader is told that Jesus is the Son of God as the gospel opens, but no human in the gospel identifies Jesus as such until after his death on the cross. When Jesus stills as storm while in a boat with his disciples they ask one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” A fair amount has transpired since that event when Jesus asks the disciples about who people say he is, and about who they say he is.
Who is Jesus? How would you answer that question? On some level, there is a fair amount of agreement among Christians, be they liberal, conservative, or in between. When people join any Presbyterian church, they say that Jesus is their Lord and Savior. People in the most fundamentalist, evangelical church would be happy to say the same thing.
Christians can agree on a number of labels for Jesus. Christ, Messiah, Lord, Son of God, and more can be used as easily by conservatives as by liberals, yet a casual observer might be forgiven for concluding that there are multiple Jesuses out there. So many seemingly incompatible behaviors are embraced by those who claim to follow him.
One Jesus is a pacifist, and another believes in a strong military, personal freedom, and the right to bear arms. Another Jesus is simply a wise sage, while yet another is an advocate for the poor and oppressed. Some people who profess Jesus as their personal Savior also profess undying loyalty to Donald Trump and felt compelled to storm the US Capitol on January 6. Other devout followers of Jesus are absolutely convinced that such Christians have irreparably damaged the Jesus brand.
This problem of competing images of Jesus is already present in the Bible. The stories of Jesus being tempted by the devil wrestle with what sort of Messiah Jesus will be. And in our gospel reading for this morning, one of Jesus’ most ardent supporters has a picture in his mind of who Jesus is that leads him to rebuke Jesus, to try and straighten Jesus out.
Peter, perhaps speaking for all the disciples, correctly identifies Jesus as Messiah, Christ, God’s anointed. But for Peter, that identity is incompatible with suffering and dying. A Messiah should be a conquering hero, not a victim, a loser. Surely Jesus can see that.
What sort of Lord, Savior, Messiah, Son of God do you picture when you think of Jesus? Perhaps more importantly, where does that image come from? Jesus says that the problem with Peter’s image is that he got it because his mind is set not on divine things but on human things. And Jesus offers a corrective to this problem. It involves getting behind Jesus, self-denial, and a cross.
I’ve frequently borrowed a well-worn quote from the wonderfully irreverent Christian writer, Anne Lamott who said, “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” This is a perfect definition of setting your mind on human things rather than divine things, and it is a perennial problem for religion.
All too often, religion, both the conservative and liberal sorts, wants to enlist God, enlist Jesus in the things we want and desire. But Jesus insists that salvation, life that is good and whole and what it is meant to be, requires exactly the reverse. It requires letting Jesus lead, letting what God wants and desires reshape us and give us new identities.
_____________________________________________________________________
Recently I’ve been reading a book that explores how the obscure, Jewish, messianic movement focused on Jesus somehow spread like wildfire over the Mediterranean world. It argues that one of several reasons was the odd behavior of Christians during a pair of horrible epidemics. The first began in the year 165, lasted fifteen years, and may have wiped out as much as a third of the population in the Roman Empire. A second epidemic, nearly as bad, struck seventy years later.
The Romans knew nothing of germs or treating viral epidemics, but they did correctly intuit that contact with sick individuals could spread illness. And so, during these epidemics those with means fled the cities, and people avoided contact with others as much as possible. Those who were ill were often abandoned and left to die alone.
But the Christians did not flee the cities nor allow others to die alone. They ministered to the sick, both fellow Christians and non-Christian neighbors. Many Christians got sick and died as a result, but many people were saved by their efforts, people who never would have recovered without someone to bring them food and water, to provide comfort and care. In the end, Christians actually survived these plagues in greater numbers because of their risky care for each other. And non-Christians were grateful and impressed by these people who would risk their own lives caring for others.[2]
Perhaps these Christians had grasped what Peter could not, and least not until Good Friday and Easter. The God who comes in Jesus moves toward the suffering of the world, suffers with the world. And this Jesus says to those who are drawn to him, “Get behind me. Follow me toward the world’s suffering, and be prepared to suffer with it and for it.”
Understandably, pain and suffering frighten us. No doubt that is why Peter didn’t want a Messiah who would suffer. And why would we follow Jesus on a path that can lead to suffering? Why would we open ourselves to such pain? Why become so vulnerable? Richard Rohr says this about vulnerability.
Only vulnerability forces us beyond ourselves. Whenever we see true pain, most of us are drawn out of our own preoccupations and want to take away the pain. For example, when we rush toward a hurting child, we also rush toward the suffering God. We want to take the suffering in our arms. That’s why so many saints wanted to get near suffering—because as they said again and again, they meet Christ there. It “saved” them from their smaller untrue self.[3]
I do not fully understand the mystery of a God who suffers, a God who in Jesus is not at all what Peter or we expect or maybe even want. But there is something comforting in knowing that God is not removed, distant, or aloof from the pain and suffering that are all too common in our world, in our lives. And if this suffering Jesus is to be believed, getting behind him, giving our lives over to him – losing them for him if you will – will save our lives, will let us find life in all its true fullness.
Dare we believe this? Dare we be Christian? Dare we actually follow this Jesus?
[1] Scott Hoezee, “JWWM: Jesus Would Wear a Mask,” Reformed Journal, blog.reformedjournal.com, July 28, 2020
[2] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, (New York: Princeton University Press, 1996)
[3] Richard Rohr, “Vulnerability: A Divine Condition” in his Daily Meditations for August 1, 2021, https://cac.org/vulnerability-a-divine-condition-2021-08-01/
No comments:
Post a Comment