Peter's Confession of Christ
27Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?"
28They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets."
29"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Peter answered, "You are the Christ.[a]"
30Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Jesus Predicts His Death
31He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
34Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life[b] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
Mark’s gospel is drama without the melodrama. The story-telling is fast-moving, down-to-earth, and compelling. Mark does not mess around, does not explain, does not expand, and does not stray. Mark is all business. From the gospel’s opening line, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” to the bridge passage we encounter today, “Who do YOU say that I am?” to the skimpy eight verses given to tell his abrupt Easter account “He is risen. He is not here”. Mark is all business. Tell the story. Skip the details. Forget the nonsense. Defy the reader to deal with Jesus. Mark remains unobtrusive & nearly anonymous. Tradition claims that Mark wrote his gospel while in Rome in the presence and under the authority and influence of the Apostle Peter. At the time Peter, the original leader of the disciples, was being readied for martyrdom. At least, that is the church’s tradition.
Eugene Peterson writes, “In Mark, glorification of Peter is blocked at the source. Whatever stellar qualities Peter acquired through his leadership and preaching in the early church, they are deleted from the story; only his weaknesses and failures are kept. The Jesus story includes a colorful company of others, but none of them obscures or surpasses the centrality of Jesus. Peter is portrayed as a bungler, as a blasphemer, and as a faithless human being. Mark doesn’t permit us to look up to Peter as example. Like the rest of the disciples, Peter is thick-skulled and dim-witted. They all turn out to be a bunch of cowards”. St. Mark tells this salvation story in such a way as to prevent us from putting any leaders even Peter on a pedestal. The story focuses on Jesus. The rest of us are followers. To grasp what this means we need to begin at the beginning of chapter 8, “again a great crowd had gathered”. Up to now, Jesus had encountered controversy, resistance, and enthusiasm. Crowds have clustered around him as the hungry are fed and the sick are healed. Now Jesus divulges that he must suffer, die, be sacrificed. And his followers are required to be crucifers. Peter knows this will not help recruiting. The campaign was going well. Now Jesus wants to round up some crucifers. Not the path to numerical growth.
Their company slogans include, “a career is a job that goes too long”, “you have got to hustle life before life hustles you”, and “turn that pink slip into a golden ticket”. They are “Odd Job Nation” and they are a resource for the growing list of part-time opportunists. Their website says “Why sit at a desk all day when you could get paid to watch TV, tell fortunes, and dance in videos?” Odd Job Nation gained a good deal of publicity and media notoriety when they provided fake employees to some New York advertising firms. Part-time Odd Job Nation workers went to work as corporate seat-fillers in these advertising offices in order to instill confidence in prospective clients. The fake employees were meant to send the message this firm is productive and industrious. CNN commented, “If finding a real job evades you, now may be the perfect time to just pretend you have one”.
As a leader in the church, I can relate to Peter’s concerns. Part of me would like to hire Odd Job Nation to fill a few pews. Imagine the possibilities, covert staff paid to heighten the profile and performance of Vinland. Send a few of our stealth staff to other non-Lutheran worship services and comment loudly, “This is just okay, but not like Vinland, that place had real depth, heart, faith”. What if we hire actors to stuff the offering plate with cash overly contagious, “Hey, this is fun?” I’d like a guy posing as a retired pastor to say to my class, “Pastor, I love your Christology.” We can all relate to Peter with our own marketing agendas and resource allocation.
Just as the movement has everyone’s attention, just as the momentum of life, life, and more life crest, he starts talking about death. For the first eight chapters, Jesus is ministering, healing the maimed, the disciples are multiplying. As chapter eight begins, “Again a great crowd gathered”, Peter sees the opportunity to take this ministry to the next level. But, Jesus wants to talk about denying yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. Peter pulls Jesus aside to try to get him back on track.
Peter had just answered the big question “Who do YOU say that I am?” correctly and was feeling like he had some political capitol & hefty influence to wield here.
Soon there is whole lot of rebuking going on. First, Peter rebukes or reprimands Jesus. Peter is giving him a talking-to because this talk of death is a bummer and asking people to carry crosses is going to be bad for business. But, Jesus counter rebukes Peter with “Get behind me, Satan”. Jesus clobbers him because Peter is thinking outside the cross. Jesus reacts so violently because it is a real temptation.
But, Jesus stays on message. “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will save”. Hard words for Peter and for us to hear. Mark Twain said, “Many people are bothered by those passages in Scripture which they cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the Scripture passages which trouble me most are those which I do understand.”
This is definitely one of those passages. Who knew discipleship would be so difficult? Jesus is laying on some teaching that diametrically opposes what the culture expects of its religion. Note: a cross here is not something that you bear because you are a human being- bad health problem, annoying neighbor, grumpy boss, or conflicted family. The cross that Jesus talks about is that which results from following him. The cross is the result of walking with him.
Earlier this week I got together with a friend who was terminated from his job. As we talked, he disclosed his superiors were asking him to sign off on some shady transactions. His was a good-paying job in an extremely tight job market. Yet, he refused to sign off. They terminated him. What I admire most is that he is not pursuing legal recourse.
He sticks in my mind as a true cross bearer.
This emphasizes the good news in this passage. After Jesus speaks of sacrifice, suffering, and death to this rag-tag bunch, they don’t all pack up and leave like you might expect. “I’m out of here”. They kept walking with Jesus. William Willimon says, “It is rather amazing, when one considers how dumb and disappointing the disciples are in Mark, that Jesus would enlist such people to follow him. I can relate to failure. Last Sunday during the Children’s Message I talked of giving up TV for Lent. I made it to Monday, then I adjusted the time frame to post-7 PM. By Tuesday at 9:30 PM, I confess I caved in.
Not a big deal, but it reminds me how problematic even small sacrifices are for me.
Sacrifice is God’s way of dealing with what is wrong in the history. What is wrong with you and me, the world and the church, the past and the present. Our solutions for what harms and hinders us are usually more in line with force or education or distractions or economic growth. None of these approaches is without merit. But, God’s way of saving, forgiving, recreating, reconciling, and reforming is sacrifice.
Sacrifice always involves material; grain, goats, incense, etc. People built altars and offered sacrifices. It was burned up as a fragrant offering. The fire transformed the gift. In the Old Testament,, offerings were not always collected and kept. In the day, they were literally burned up. It was spiritually necessary for it to be destroyed for God. Only later did they say, “Hey, why don’t we collect the money and put it to use?”
But, the old way, burn it up, underscores that God takes what we have and what we are and makes something new. This is how God works. Our offerings we give not to impress God but to submit so God can do a new thing in us. Romans, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice”. Our lives are mostly a mix of good intentions and rebellious ways. In worship we put them on the altar to see what God can do with them. We give it up, let it go. This is how and where Jesus works. From the inside out. Entering our troubled condition, he receives it himself. Offered up on the altar of the cross for our salvation. Our part is to follow, to learn to be crucifers.
A Pastor tells of a discussion that his church, at a worship meeting about who should serve as the crucifer, the person who bore the processional cross in at the beginning of worship. Some said it should go to a mature, recognized Christian because this is sign of all that is about to take place. The pastor spoke on behalf of the practice of having a teenager in the church carry the cross. Someone said, “I think that it is nice to recognize our youth in this way”. The pastor responded, “I don’t think that a teenager ought to be the crucifer in order to honor them. I think we, the church, have the responsibility to train up our youth in the practices of discipleship. Let’s get them started in carrying the cross. If they do it enough on Sunday morning, maybe they will be able to do it for the rest of their lives, Monday through Saturday.”
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