Crucis: Take Up Your Cross
God Raises the Dead
Mark 8:31-38
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. Feb. 25th, 2024
We make sense of our lives and our world by telling stories. Discrete facts and experiences mean very little to us unless we can frame it in a narrative. And the stories we tell ourselves can become the stories we live by. These stories are not just formed after the fact, but they become in some way determinative for how we live in the future. Because we can only act in a world we can see, and we can only see a world that has already been framed by some story.
If I were to ask you what it means to be an American, you’d probably end up telling me some story. A story of resistance to tyranny, free patriots, and the American experiment. If I were to ask you who you are, you would tell me a story. And, if I were to ask what it means to be a Christian, why, that is another story. A story about Jesus.
It is important to be clear about our stories because they are so determinative. If we are not clear about our stories then we might tell them wrongly. And if we tell them wrongly we might act wrongly. We might fail to recognize what Jesus has actually done, and actually told us to do.
This morning Peter finds himself in a muddled story that Jesus needs to set straight. Just before our reading Jesus asked his disciples “who do people say that I am?” They replied that some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say one of the prophets. But then he asks an even more pointed question, “who do you say that I am?” It’s Peter who answers for the group, “You are the messiah.” You are the anointed one. You are the one promised by God to bring salvation to his people. Peter here seems to recognize the story that he is in. He has found the messiah, he is walking with the holy one of God. His story is a story of mighty salvation and redemption.
But Jesus goes on to clarify the story. He clarifies the story by speaking of what it is that the messiah must do. That he must, “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.” This disturbs Peter who takes him aside to rebuke him. The messiah isn’t supposed to die! He is the mighty one of God! The messiah is not to be rejected by his own people! He’s supposed to restore them to glory! Has Jesus lost the plot?
But what Peter meant to do privately, Jesus does publicly. He rebukes Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He has muddled the story, because he’s inserted human things into it. When he needs to focus on divine things.
Jesus, then, doubles down. “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.” These remain hard words. Difficult words. It still challenges the stories we tell ourselves.
Most of the stories we tell ourselves these days tend to be stories of self-actualization. That there is a hero, where we always place ourselves, who is thrust into a situation. Perhaps they were chosen, perhaps circumstance brought them to the moment. And by the aid of wise figures and trusted friends they must learn to actualize their abilities and grow as a hero so they can win the boon and save the day. Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, all have this basic outline. And we tend to think of our own lives in a similar way. How might I actualize my abilities? How can I be true to myself? How can I fulfill my goals? Me, me, me.
Notice how there’s all sorts of programs and scholarships for leadership but hardly anything about followership. Our schools are producing the leaders of the future but never fess up to producing the followers of the future. Where are the leaders without followers? But the story we tell ourselves is the story where I might be the leader. I might be the hero. Even in this one case, this one instance. I might fulfill my abilities, get that boon.
And in the case of Peter he is telling a story where the Davidic dynasty will be restored to Israel, the temple cleansed, the Romans kicked out, and God mightily showing his power through military force. A very human way of looking at things. He wants to see his hopes and dreams actualized through Jesus. But that is not the story we find ourselves in. That is not the story Jesus tells. That is not the story of the Gospel. Rather, the story is you must die!
No wonder this remains countercultural. If we want to be Christians, Jesus says, we ought to deny ourselves. We ought to take up a horrific instrument of execution, and we ought to follow Jesus on his way to his own death. If we want to follow Jesus we need to lose our lives for the sake of Christ, that we might gain them. And to drive the point home, to show he’s not kidding, he adds, “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.”
To be clear Jesus isn’t telling us to be losers. He isn’t telling us to be placemats. To give up. To hold a pity party. To lose joy. To deny and reject life itself. But, as Paul reminds us this morning we worship the God who, "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” We are to empty ourselves that we might be full of the Spirit. Deny our self-will, that we may follow God’s will. Daily die to ourselves that we might daily live to God. That we may say with Paul, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Because those who wish to gain their lives, will lose it. Those who lose their lives, will find it. Those who follow Jesus to the cross, will join in his resurrection.
God raises the dead. God delivers those who have no other hope. The story of the Gospel is that of death and resurrection. Giving up our own attempts to save ourselves, relying on the God who can raise our dead selves. To this day that remains countercultural. But to this day it remains our hope.