Scripture
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
Then he 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. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But 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.”
He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come after me, 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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 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.”
Sermon
What is it about slightly cooler temperatures and the word “September” on the calendar that fills me with a kind of sweet nostalgia, one that puts me right into “back-to-school” mode? It doesn’t matter that the last time I took part in formal education was more than 20 years ago. Fall, to me, will forever be the time to look happily at piles of new books, to transition gradually from cotton clothes to knits and woolens, and to get cracking at the new schedule at church, which, this year, includes weekly Bible Study with our Spirit Squad Youth and Juniors.
This is the way it always was for me. When I started Holy Spirit High School, I was thrilled because I would finally be taking classes to help prepare me for what and who I wanted to be when I grew up. I had a pile of new (and used) books to dive into, and I was deep into the questions of who I was, and who I would be, and I believed I’d found my answer: I’d be studying biology, so that I could go to medical school and become a doctor! Little did I know that the high school retreat, in which twenty students and two priests had Bible Study together, and I accompanied hymns on my guitar (as well as learning how to play “Diamonds and Rust” from one of the senior girls) would plant seeds that would eventually result in a change of plans for me. I didn’t know it, but when I got home from that retreat, something about the choices I was making and the way I saw myself had already begun to shift. I went into my bedroom and put on James Taylor, “Shower the People You Love with Love.” Who was I? Who would I be?
This morning’s passage from the gospel According to Mark is a turning-point that finds Jesus asking the question, “Who am I?”, or more specifically, “Who do people say that I am?” The ultimate answer to that question—who is Jesus?—puts him on a path—the only possible path—for the rest of his ministry. The answer to that question poses a question for us: Who are we, if we claim to be followers of Jesus? What does that mean for our lives? It’s a very September kind of question, if you know what I mean. Who are we? Who will we be?
Jesus is with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, an area that represents the furthest northern boundaries of Judaism, and which, like his recent stops, includes a significant Gentile population. While there he asks his disciples that loaded question: Who do people say that I am? They answer him with names familiar to us, all suggesting Jesus is one of them, risen from the dead: John the Baptist, who died at the hands of Herod for preaching theology that Herod found personally offensive; Elijah, who spent much of his mission running from the murderous rage of Ahab and Jezebel—who were offended by theology that had no room for their idol worship. And, other prophets—many of whom also met violent ends as a result of trying to bring their people back to God from wherever it was they had wandered.
Jesus hears these answers and asks a more personal question: But who do you say that I am? Peter answers. “You are the Messiah,” also known as the Christ, also known as the Anointed One of God. And, once again ordering them not to spill the beans about this, Jesus proceeds to tell them what that means.
It does not go well. Jesus tells his friends that he—just like the people the crowds were identifying him with—would face trial, persecution, and death. Unlike those people, though, Jesus would be raised from the dead.
Peter does not take this well, and that makes sense. Up until this point in the gospel, there has been a joyful, hopeful cast to Jesus’ ministry. It’s all about building up the people he encounters through teaching, healing, and feeding them. He calls them to turn their lives around and believe the Good News of God’s kingdom. What Jesus has just described is bad news to Peter, and doesn’t fit at all with the notion of Messiah that he has grown up with: one who will “purify [Jewish] society, reestablish Israel’s supremacy among the nations, and usher in a new era of peace and holiness.” Peter is expecting big things from Jesus.[i] He pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. He cannot imagine that torture and death are in the job description of the Messiah, and in his opinion, Jesus has to get that mess out of his head this instant.
Jesus, in turn, rebukes Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he yells. The word, the name “Satan,” means “Tempter.” Jesus is saying, “This is what God is calling me to do, don’t you dare try to tempt me to turn my back on God’s calling.”
Before Peter or anyone else has a chance to respond to this, Jesus calls the crowd to him. Remember, what has gone before has been between him and his disciples. Now, Jesus is ready to let the Messianic-secret-cat out of the bag.
If you want to be my follower, Jesus says, here is what you must do. You must deny yourself, and pick up your cross, and follow me. This invitation is not just for Peter and the other eleven. It is for everybody.
Who is Jesus? He has tacitly admitted it, by not denying it. He is the Messiah—not the “Guy on the throne” Messiah, but the Suffering Servant Messiah, who will, as he encourages his followers to do, save his life by losing it.
So who does this make us? These two components—denying ourselves and taking up our crosses—mind you, not Jesus’ cross, but our crosses, the ones meant for us—these sum up what it means to follow Jesus. So, let’s take them one at a time.
Two thousand years or so after this exchange, we tend to have a very specific, very limited understanding of what “denying ourselves” means. No chocolate. No alcohol. No cursing. We’ve come up with lists of things that we think, well, if I don’t do this, that’s denying myself. And, honestly, the church has been complicit in these narrow notions of what Jesus meant.
Jesus wants us to deny ourselves. This speaks to everything that we believe makes us who we are, based on societal expectations and norms. Our successes. Our wealth. Our place in society. Our race. Our religion. Our political persuasion. It’s not that we must “give these things up,” like we might give up drinking soda or eating meat for Lent. It’s that these kinds of things, which society values, can’t be the scaffolding on which we hang everything it means to be “ourselves.” Jesus wants to be our scaffolding. Who Jesus is, and how Jesus is, is our primary identification—not who the Raube family is, or who a Presbyterian is, or who a white woman is.
This sounds hard. This is hard. Are we followers of Jesus? If so, he wants to be our primary way of identifying who we are. His values. His work of teaching, healing, and feeding. His compassion. His generosity. His radical welcome. His selflessness. Because, borrowing from our Wisdom of Solomon reading, Jesus Christ “is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of God’s goodness.” Denying ourselves means embracing Jesus, that image of God’s goodness. We are invited to identify with him, and to walk in his Way, and to offer all this freely to those we encounter every day of our lives. Jesus doesn’t call us to impose any of this on others. Jesus imposes himself on no one. He forces no one to do anything. He invites. And so, we invite. We invite others to join us in these ways of being, these ways of living. But we impose them on no one.
The second component of following Jesus is “taking up our cross.” One writer reminds us:
“A first-century audience living within the Roman Empire understood the purpose of crosses: implements of death wielded by the state in contemptuous, very public spectacles of capital punishment.”[ii]
But we are invited to take our cross, not Jesus’s. Which means, each of us has a cross that is specific to our life and circumstances. It’s common for us to think of difficult or painful things that have happened to us as our “crosses to bear,” things like loss and illness, hard circumstances of all kinds. But those are not our crosses. They may be hard. We may require lots of prayer to get us through—not to mention the help of friends and loved ones. But our cross is never something that has been imposed on us—again, Jesus doesn’t do that. Our cross is something difficult we willingly bear, something we pick up, to lighten someone else’s load, to ease someone else’s suffering. It is usually something that calls to us, tells us, this is our work to do, and no one else’s. Once it occurs to us to take it on, we usually really want to do it. And picking up that cross, whatever it may be, will deepen and strengthen our ability to love.[iii] All this—denying ourselves and taking up our cross—is both our “Yes” to Jesus’ invitation and our reminder that we are part of the beloved community—a global community of cross-carriers.
Who do people say that Jesus is? Depends on who you ask. Brother, Friend, Lord, Messiah… and also, these days, fraud, superstition, person who never existed, tool to control the masses. If we trust in the former, if our experience has suggested to us that there is something there, that this Jesus is the real deal, he invites us to follow him. Always invites. Never imposes. And, as he promises, in letting go of our attachment to the shallow values that the world seems to love, we find our lives. We find our joy. We find our love. And we find out who we are truly called to be.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Mark 8:27-38,” Working Preacher, September 16, 2012, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24-2/commentary-on-mark-827-38.
[ii] Skinner, Matthew L., "Denying Self, Bearing a Cross, and Following Jesus: Unpacking the Imperatives of Mark 8:34" (2003), 329. Faculty Publications. 195. http://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/faculty_articles/195
[iii] Flora Wuellner, Enter By the Gate: Jesus’ 7 Guidelines for Making Hard Choices (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2004).