Sermon for February 28, 2021

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Second Sunday in Lent, Mark 8:31-38

The holy gospel according to Mark. Glory to you, O Lord.

³¹Jesus began to teach them that 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. ³²Jesus said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

³⁴He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For 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. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ.

Listen again: “[Jesus] began to teach them that 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.” These words constitute one of the passion predictions in Mark’s Gospel, an occasion when Jesus tells the truth about what is before him, giving focus to the nature of his ministry and mission.

Quite importantly, Mark reports that Jesus “said all this quite openly.”

Recall other occasions in Mark when Jesus sternly ordered the followers and others not to say anything about things they had just experienced with Jesus. Just prior to this story in Mark, Peter makes his confession about Jesus, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus response was this: “he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.”

Following today’s story in Mark is the account of the Transfiguration, which liturgically we commemorated a couple of weeks ago on the Last Sunday after Epiphany. Of all the dramatic goings on high on the mountaintop, again Mark reported that “As they were coming down the mountain, [Jesus] ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” (Mark 9:9)

But about his suffering and death and promise of resurrection, Jesus was quite open.

Peter, who had just confessed Jesus as Messiah would have none of this. After Jesus spoke of his suffering and death, Peter “took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him.”

As if to say, Peter sought to censure, chide, reprove, admonish Jesus for predicting his suffering and death. Or more viscerally, Peter sought to repel or beat back on Jesus for his open prediction of the grave and mysterious things that would happen to him.

Clearly such perceived bad news was not part of Peter’s vision for what the Messiah should be about.

It’s as if Peter was ashamed of a Messiah that would have to suffer and die, as suggested by Jesus’ words that Mark reports at the conclusion of today’s passage: “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38)

Which is to say, Jesus rebuked, or pushed back on Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine thing but on human things,” Jesus says to Peter in Mark.

Satan is the one who makes false accusations. By addressing Peter in connection with Satan, Jesus concludes that Peter’s vision of the Messiah is false and sourced in human logic and human expectations, not divine wisdom.

That’s when Jesus then elaborates on the wisdom of God in the presence of Peter and the other disciples and the crowd whom he gathered around himself: “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.” (Mark 8:34-35)

Here we have the grand paradox of Jesus’ mission and our discipleship in relation to it. Striving to save our lives, we end up losing our life. Losing our life by letting go is the way to save our life.

At first blush, this teaching can appear to be rather Buddhist, a call for radical detachment as the means to happiness. Or it can seem like the stuff of self-help pop psychology.

Yes, there is in Jesus’ teaching here a kind of practical wisdom and logic that can be true to human experience. The harder we try to achieve something, the greater the likelihood of failure, because of our performance anxieties. Paradoxically, the less we try to control outcomes, the greater the likelihood that we’ll get what we are looking for.

But Jesus is not a Buddhist. Jesus is not a popular psychologist. Note again the focus of the words that Mark reports Jesus saying: “those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” It’s not just losing life generically speaking. No, it’s losing life for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the gospel quite specifically.

On this Second Sunday in Lent, we continue a seasonal journey with a more intentional focus on the central things in our Christian life together, studying them, pondering them – Christ, cross, the empty tomb, the mystery of the Trinity, our life together in the church, begun and rooted in baptism and sustained by the holy meal from which we have absented ourselves during the pandemic, but for which we long.

In this season of more focused engagement with these central things, we are invited to submit, to surrender, to the divine logic of the gospel.

This submission, this surrender is not something that we can do on our own power.

Recall how the Lord appeared to Abram as recorded in today’s first reading. In response to that appearing, Abram fell on his face in humble submission, and then the Lord made the promise that Abram would be the ancestor of a multitude of nations – a promise that seems outlandish given Abram’s advanced age and that of his wife Sarai who was well beyond child bearing age.

Paul invokes this story in today’s second reading from Romans suggesting that Abraham did not become the ancestor of many nations by his own doing in the works of the law, but simply by faith, by trust in the promise of God.

Here’s what Paul says: “Hoping against hope, [Abraham] believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations’….He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’” (Romans 4:18-22)

How could Abraham willingly submit to God’s radical promise, hoping against hope? How did Peter and the other disciples end up offering up their whole lives in radical faith in Christ? How can we submit and surrender in faith to God’s logic and wisdom which runs completely counter to the wisdom of the world?

Here’s where Martin Luther helps us, as he himself grounds his own affirmations in the teachings of Paul elsewhere in the epistles. Recall Luther’s explanation to the Third Article of the Creed: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the truth faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.” And Luther concludes that explanation with the affirmation: “This is most certainly true.”

Luther’s words are basically an elaboration on what Paul said in direct simplicity, “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3b)

We are thus not left orphaned in our attempts to put our whole trust in the logic of God’s confounding grace and mercy (cf. John 14:18). We have the Holy Spirit’s, that is to say, the Counselor’s, the Advocate’s accompaniment and power.

May this same Spirit free us from the burdens of our strivings.

May this Spirit birth in us renewed faith and trust in the divine logic concerning the life that comes from Jesus’ suffering and death.

May this same Spirit give us the words that we need to bear witness to the hope that is in us in Christ Jesus to our striving neighbors for the sake of their freedom and healing as well. Amen.

And now for your reflection and holy conversation at home:

Have there been occasions in your life when you have, in a sense, lost your life by trying to save it?
Have there been occasions when you have gained life by losing it, especially for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the gospel?

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