Nine Miles of Bad Road.

Mark 8:27-38

September 16, 2018

I.

The Lord continues “on the way” in the far north of Galilee, in the borderlands of Gentile territory, in the towns surrounding a city named for Caesar.  By mentioning this Mark reminds us that the church will live in a conflicted and ambiguous environment, dominated by an extractive empire, where there are conflicting loyalties.  

Back in chapter 7, with the help of a persistent foreign woman, Jesus breaks with tradition, crosses a big social and religious boundary, and includes non-Jews in his mission, thus making himself even more dangerous and heretical to the establishment.  Jesus is about dissolving and ignoring boundaries, not enforcing them with draconian cruelty.

As they are walking along he asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  The disciples report the different things they have heard that people are supposing about Jesus’ identity.

Were he to ask us that question, I wonder what we would say.  What people say about Jesus in our time is complicated by 2000 years of talk about him.  Some would agree that he is a prophet, a great spiritual teacher.  Others would be wary of any talk of Jesus since so many of those claiming to follow him did, and continue to do, so much unspeakable, self-righteous damage.  Talk of Jesus can be a sure-fire conversation terminator.  Then there are those who learned what they are supposed to say in order to be theologically correct.

Peter seems to get it and makes his famous confession of faith in Jesus as “the Messiah.”  This is the first use of the word “Messiah” in Mark’s gospel.  It’s a word Jesus kind of accepts, but doesn’t want to get around about him.  He never uses it about himself.  I think that’s because it carries too much baggage and has too many associations and expectations in people’s minds. 

The question, “Who do you say that I am?” is one the church, and every disciple, has to answer, every day.  I mean, we can claim he is our “Lord and Savior”… but then do our actions and lifestyle show that to be true?  Do our lives reflect and express his life and teachings?  Or is this yet another label we choose to adopt, with no more meaning than wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Bart Simpson on it?  

Worse, do we wear his name as an expression of pride and superiority?  Are we trying to differentiate ourselves from others?  Are we touting our personal allegiance?  Peter’s confession is really an affirmation that Jesus is a winner!  And for this brilliant insight Jesus yells at him and basically calls him no less than “Satan.”

Satan is the one who tempted Jesus in the wilderness in chapter 1 and who swooped down and gobbled up the seeds landing on the road in the parable of the sower in chapter 4.  If you are hard-hearted, bone-headed, intransigent, unreceptive, and stubbornly set in your own ways, Jesus’ Word of liberation bounces off of you like an acorn hitting the sidewalk.  You are easy pickings for the Evil One.  This is what Jesus calls Peter.             

II.

Peter doesn’t understand the real meaning of the word, Messiah.  Which is why Jesus “sternly” orders his disciples “not to tell anyone about him” using this loaded term.

To clarify things, the Lord then teaches the disciples that he, referring to himself as 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.  

Jesus is saying, in effect: “So if you’re expecting me to become King when we get to Jerusalem, don’t.  It is necessary that the Son of Man will suffer, that is, I will suffer, be rejected by the establishment, and be killed.  That’s what we’re in for here.  But what will look like loss, defeat, and annihilation from a human perspective, will actually from God’s perspective be the way of truth and wholeness.  You guys don’t get that yet.  Indeed, very few people will accept this.  But it is the only way.

“If you set your mind on human things, if you go along with conventional ways of thinking, this mission is going to look like a wall-to-wall train wreck.   As if we’re in for nine miles of bad road that leads off a cliff.  My Way appears to the world like a nihilistic suicide cult, glorifying death, hating the body, destroying families, irresponsible, atheistic, anti-social, unpatriotic, and so forth.  This is what people will say about me, and my followers.

“But if you set your mind on divine things, the things of God, if you begin to look at the world from a heavenly perspective, that is, from an all-inclusive, all-embracing, integrated, connected, wholeness point-of-view, then it will become apparent to you that my Way is the Way of healing, salvation, liberation, and peace.  

“In order have this vision you have to follow me.  Not just by changing your thinking and imagination and opinions, but by changing your actions.  This means you have first to deny yourselves.  That is, you have to let go of your small-minded, selfish, ego-centric, personality-driven way of thinking and acting.  You have to observe your desires, assumptions, motivations, reflexes, opinions, and commitments, and realize that these are all based on insufficient and faulty information.  You are swamped in ignorance.  Everything you think, do, and are is hopelessly distorted by self-interest.

“Second, you have to take up your cross.  In a world that depends on everyone slavishly following their narrow-minded self-interest, where our leaders depend on you being in competition and enmity with each other over supposedly scarce resources, you who live differently will necessarily and inevitably become pariahs, enemies of the State, heretics, and subversives.  You will be seen as dangerous because there is nothing more threatening to the status quo than people who are waking up to what is true and real.  And the penalty for such blasphemy and sedition in this empire is crucifixion.  

“So you may indeed have to take up a literal cross and get your body actually nailed to it by Roman soldiers.  More likely you will be subject to the rejection, humiliation, hatred, mocking, and legal penalties of those in power.  Taking up a cross means taking on yourself the consequences of resisting a corrupt and violent, exclusive, judgmental, and adversarial world.

III.

Jesus elaborates: “Those who want to save their life will lose it.  If you only want to try and preserve the little, limited, temporary, fragile, perishing existence you now think is your whole life, you will lose it.  Eventually, your mortal body will give out.  There will be nothing left if you identify with that ego-centric material existence.  When it dies so will you.  

“Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  If you relinquish that false excuse for life by learning to think and act differently, according to the broader vision I am teaching you of the Kingdom of God, if you lose your sense of separation and independence, if you embrace the compassion and justice, equality and peace which is the good news I embody, you will save, and allow to emerge, the deepest, true, good, blessed, and eternal life that God has for you.”

“You can gain the whole world!  You can be the richest person on the planet!  But that will matter not at all if, in order to get all that, you forfeited your real, eternal life.  If you gained by selfish violence, you will lose not only what you thought you had, but your real Self.  Your true life is more precious and valuable than all the money in the world because it lasts forever and connects you to everyone and to God.  

  “If someone is ashamed of me and of my words, when I hang humiliated and defeated on a Roman cross, victimized as a scapegoat by this adulterous and sinful generation, then the Son of Man will be ashamed of them.  Because they do not see the truth of what is going on there.  It is in my act of loving sacrifice, pouring out my life for the life of the world, that I reveal the true Light of God and all who share in that Light.  That, my death on the cross — not in any military victory of some self-serving, nationalistic Messianic fantasy — is the coming of the Kingdom of God, for those who are able to perceive it.  And some of you will actually see it!  You will get it!  You will understand the good news of reconciliation!  You will participate in it yourselves!  And you will be sent into the world with my message of salvation.”

IV.

The good news is that we are not who we think we are.  We are who Jesus Christ reveals we are.  And the only way from one to the other, from who we think we are to who we really are, is his Way of self-offering, self-emptying in love.  When he talks about denying our selves or taking up our crosses, it is not about hating, depriving, or hurting ourselves.  It about what is necessary for our true selves to emerge.  It is actually the highest form of self love and self-gratification!  Jesus is not calling us to lose or deny anything except what is killing, constructing, enslaving, and limiting us.  He is talking about what we have to do to save our real life!

This is what he is asking us to see by setting our minds on divine things, as opposed to the blindness and ignorance of human thinking.  Nothing less than the arrival, the emergence of the truth, the Kingdom of God, the new order of goodness, beauty, abundance, and blessing that is the truth of God’s life and creation.  It is always here and always was.  It comes to us when we let go and let God.

+++++++