Sunday, March 22, 2015

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Mark 8:31-9:1

In the Book of Common Prayer tradition, today is Passion Sunday and marks a shift away from self-evaluation in Lent to the Passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering and death on the cross to save us from sin and redeem us to God.

Today’s scripture reading also marks a shift of emphasis in Mark’s Gospel.  It comes right at the midpoint of what Mark wrote.  In the first half of Mark, Jesus primarily demonstrates the reign of God, in both what he does and what he says. Jesus heals the sick, empowers the poor, feeds the hungry, and demonstrates his authority in miraculous deeds.  This first half culminates in Jesus’ questions immediately before today’s reading, “Who do people say that I am?” and, to his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:27, 29).  Peter replies with his great confession, “You are the Messiah.” – And this fact changes everything.

The title Messiah (a Hebrew title, meaning the same as the Greek title Christ) refers to the great king who will rule forever over all nations, destroying all evil and exercising the reign of God over all the earth, an everlasting reign of peace and justice and righteousness. All the Jewish people would have thought immediately of the great prophecy in Psalm 2, which asserts all this, along with Isaiah 9:1-7, 11:1-11.  Thus Peter’s confession carries a great deal of substance.  Peter is saying, “Yes, Jesus, you are the Messiah, God’s all-powerful king, who will establish God’s reign of peace forever over all nations.”

As today’s reading starts, Jesus calls himself Son of Man, as he often does – and this title too refers to the Messiah: In his trial before the high priest, Mark 14:61-62, Jesus calls himself the Son of Man and identifies himself explicitly with Daniel 7:13-14, another key prophecy referring to the Messiah.

As soon as he identifies himself this way, confirming that he is the Messiah, Jesus starts teaching his disciples that he must suffer many things, be rejected by the religious leaders and be killed, and on the third day rise from the dead.  No wonder that was impossible for Peter to take!  Like all good Jews, Peter knew that the Messiah would be God’s triumphant, eternal king; the Messiah could not die and certainly would not suffer torture and rejection.  So Peter said “No! Never!” and started to rebuke Jesus.  

But Jesus knew exactly what he was saying.  He knew how contrary and revolutionary his words were for all conventional Jewish thinking. So Jesus immediately turned the table and rebuked Peter in the strongest terms, “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  Jesus’ teaching of his coming rejection, death, and resurrection dominates the whole second half of Mark’s Gospel, and is of the very greatest importance.  Without Jesus’ death and resurrection, our faith is void; we are still in our sins; we are of all people the most pitiable.  (1 Corinthians 15:17-19)

This very moment sets the Way of Jesus apart from the other great Abrahamic faiths.  Judaism accepts both the prophetic streams of the Messiah and of the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and others) but cannot see how both streams could be fulfilled in the same person.  Islam even accepts Jesus as the Messiah who will return to judge all nations, but Muslims cannot accept that Jesus suffered and died on the cross as the Bible teaches.

If Jesus had stopped right here, he would have left his disciples in shock as they learned he would soon face suffering, rejection, and death.  But Jesus didn’t stop; he went right on with even harder teaching, both for his disciples and the crowd:  “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (8:34) What!  Take that horrible tool for execution and carry it until you are killed?  Can you imagine how confused the disciples must have been?  How the crowds would turn away in utter shock and horror?  “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.”  (8:35)  How upside down Jesus seems!

After Jesus talks both about his own suffering and death, unimaginable for the Messiah, and the suffering and death of his disciples too, how does the teaching end?  In 8:38, Jesus says he will come “in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”  He is indeed the Messiah.  And he reassures his disciples (9:1) that some of them, too, “will see the kingdom of God when it has come with power.”

This is the secret of the Gospel, which the unbelieving world can never accept, which most of the crowd could not comprehend, nor could even the disciples understand until the Holy Spirit revealed it to them again after Jesus rose from the dead:  It is only the path through suffering and death, following Jesus as he first walks it, that leads to the joy, the glory, and the power that indeed are revealed in the kingdom of God, in the Messiah, Jesus, who is Lord of all nations and peoples, and for his followers who walk in his steps.

In the Anglican tradition, this truth is expressed concisely at key moments of the liturgy.  In the B.C.P., page 184, the Epistle for a second service on Easter Day includes 2 Timothy 2:11-12:

This is a faithful saying:

For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. 

If we endure, we shall also reign with him. 

In the B.A.S., page 213, this becomes the congregational response to the Breaking of Bread during Lent and Holy Week:

If we have died with him, we shall live with him.

If we hold firm, we shall reign with him.

May we remain faithful always.

– Robert Kruse