Biblical Text

You can read Mark 8.34-9.1 here.

Sermon Video

You can watch the sermon video here.

Sermon Transcript

[Note: The actual sermon will differ somewhat from what I had typed.]

When we were planning the preaching schedule for the first months of 2016, I rushed to put down my name for today. Not because it’s Valentine’s day, mind you. Rather, today marks two years of a new lease of life that God has given me and I wanted to be here to give testimony to his faithfulness, protection, provision, and love. The prayer you heard is the hymn O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go by George Matheson, which I arranged as you heard some years ago.

If you have not seen the movie Dead Man Walking, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, you absolutely must. Not only is it an excellent commentary on capital punishment, but also it actually gives us picture depicting what Jesus describes in today’s passage.

This is the first Sunday of Lent and since the start of the year, we have been going through the Gospel according to Mark and walking alongside Jesus. Last Sunday we saw that there is no formula for authentic engagement with God and that each of us must relate to God in deeply personal and therefore unique ways. On Ash Wednesday we saw that what God wants is people who are not afraid of death and who therefore can wield power without being affected by its corrupting influence, but that Jesus was the only one who satisfied this criterion.

Recall the passage from Wednesday. After Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah and then rebukes Jesus for revealing the kind of Messiah he was going to be, Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind what God wants, but what humans want.”

Today we see how Jesus extends his teaching about himself and his mission to those who would follow him and in so doing tells us clearly what God wants of us.

It is important to observe how Mark narrates the incident. Our passage begins with the words, “Then he called the crowds to him along with his disciples.”

The world has always been pluralistic. There have always been different perspectives on who we are, what our problem is and what the solution to that problem is. The pluralism we see today, however, is quite insipid. People say things like, “All roads lead to God” or “all religions are the same.”

It’s like saying, “All flowers are the same” – a true statement for all flowers indeed are the same. As long as you ignore their colors and their perfumes. Yes, if you ignore what makes them unique all flowers are the same. Why stop there? If we are ignoring uniqueness a flower is the same as a stone!

Despite the insipid pluralism we may encounter, the introduction by Mark tells us something quite striking: It did not matter if the crowds believed in Jesus or followed him. For Jesus, what he was about to say was applicable to everyone. The invitation to and conditions of being a disciple of Jesus do not depend on a person’s present commitments. But discipleship to Jesus does have a bearing – a crucial bearing – in the long run.

So how does Jesus describe what discipleship to him looks like? He says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The phrase ‘deny themselves’ is strange and has given rise to some practices that actually go against what Jesus is telling us. The English verb ‘to deny’ requires an object. One always denies something. So I could deny that I gave the message last Sunday. Or I could deny that I spoke ill of someone.

But when used reflexively, as supposedly in the passage, the English idiom ‘deny oneself’ means ‘to refrain from satisfying one’s desires or needs.’ This gives rise to the common practices during Lent of giving up various things like meat, smoking, chocolates, coffee, alcohol – and these days the internet, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.

But Jesus is not talking about this. He does not require that his disciples engage in self-flagellation of any sort – literal or symbolic. What he does want goes far beyond that and we have found convenient ways of ignoring what he is saying, not least by relying on our weak translations.

The first thing we have to realize is that most idioms do not translate from one language to another. The second is that, while Jesus may have known Greek, he most likely spoke Aramaic, which would have been his first language. So even what we have in Mark’s Greek text is a translation of what Jesus originally said. So we have to ask ourselves, “What would Jesus have said in Aramaic, that is translated the way we read it in Mark’s Greek text?”

This is a difficult question to answer, but fortunately the key to it is in the context, as should not be surprising by now. In v. 35, Jesus goes on to say, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.”

What Jesus is talking about is not the act of abstinence from some practices that we enjoy, but a renunciation of the right enshrined in Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” – namely, the right to life.

So to paraphrase v. 34, Jesus is saying, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must renounce their right to live and take up their cross and follow me.” When we do this we can see that the taking up of the cross is no longer some symbolic or metaphorical idea that keeps us safe from the dangers of discipleship but one that throws us into the deep end with no safety line or lifejacket.

You see, discipleship is not costly. It is supposed to be life threatening. Only when Jesus’ words are allowed to remain sharp as they originally were will we see him as he truly is rather than as this teacher who utters platitudes to comfort us.

What do I mean when I say that discipleship is supposed to be life threatening? Jesus uses the language of losing and saving. He says that a person who tries to save his or her life will lose it and that a person who loses his or her life for Jesus will save it. What does that mean?

There are some who say that it means we must give up our carnal desires and live wholly for God. Others say that it means that Christians who are not faithful will not receive all the blessings that God wants to give them. Still others say that it means that if we try to save ourselves through works we will not be saved and that only by losing ourselves in Jesus’ work can we be saved.

And yet others say that it means that if we cling on to our Adamic nature, we will not be saved, but that if we lose our Adamic nature we will be saved. And there are those who say that it means that if we give up our flesh in this earthy life with the acceptance of Jesus we will reach heaven.

All of these so-called interpretations are wrong because they do not pay attention to the context of the passage. Jesus did not say these words without a context, in a vacuum. Rather, ever since he brought up the issue of the yeast of the Pharisees, he has been building on one single idea – religion, and by that I mean all religions, including organized Christian religion, promises comfort and security, but true discipleship to Jesus is fraught with dangers and uncertainty.

We can see evidence of this promise of comfort and security in Christian bumper stickers. Here are some examples:

Try Jesus! If you don’t like him, Satan will always take you back.

When there seems to be no way out, let God in.

Life’s problems. One solution. Jesus. It’s just that easy.

When temptation knocks send Jesus to the door.

To the contrary, Jesus tells his disciples “in this world you will have trouble.” Time and again, Jesus tells his first disciples that the road of discipleship is not a cushy, comfortable one, but one filled with perils, one pockmarked with pitfalls.

And so, in today’s passage he says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must surrender their right to live. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” Let me clarify. Jesus is not asking all his disciples to have some sort of morbid death wish. Rather, he is telling his disciples that to become his disciple is to be willing, if necessary, to die.

And he is not talking about dying to yourself, or putting your flesh to death – whatever that really means. He is talking about a simple psychological matter.

If I cling on to my right to live, if I am unwilling to die, I can never be free. And if I am not free, I cannot experience life in its fullest. If we even work in order to gain someone’s approval, we are not free. The whole gamut of human experience from the innocuous motivation of seeking someone’s approval to the dangerous motivation of preserving one’s life at all costs renders us captive, not free, and therefore unable to live.

But Jesus is not advocating a carefree or careless approach to life. Life is precious. While we may be willing to die, this does not mean we throw ourselves under a truck!

Rather, Jesus says that whoever loses their life for him and for the gospel will find it. In other words, the willingness to die is very specific. Life is precious and only a person and a cause worthy enough can be used as a reason for being willing to end it. The only person is Jesus and the only cause is the gospel. A person who is willing to surrender, to Jesus and for the gospel, their right to live has their priorities correct. And such a person will be able to experience freedom from the stranglehold of death and the freedom to live as Jesus leads.

You see, Jesus is not telling us a bunch of random things all disjoint from each other. We get that impression when we divide the text into small sections and deal with each section without reference to the ones that precede and follow it.

So let’s see what he has said ever since he brought up the issue of the yeast of the Pharisees.

“Beware of the formulaic approach to faith, by which you are made to believe that faith is comfortable and that a faithful life is neat and tidy, following clear rules, rewarding faithfulness and punishing unfaithfulness. This is the teaching of the Pharisees – and most religions and religious leaders – and it is a sham and not worthy of any human. The life of faith is filled with dangers. That is what makes it exciting and meaningful and worthy of undertaking.

“By the way, what do people think of me? Hmm… Ok. Understandable. And what do you think of me? So you acknowledge me as your leader, your Messiah? Well, then you must know that even I, your Messiah, am not excluded from the dangers of a life of faith. As a result of my faithfulness to God, I too will suffer at the hands of those who want faith to be safe and neat and like an accountant’s ledger. I will be killed, but I will rise again, so don’t be dismayed when I am killed.”

At this point Peter rebukes Jesus. And Jesus responds like this.

“Peter, by saying this, you have become my adversary, the one who would derail my mission. You have transformed from one who had faith in me to one who is an obstacle because you are still desiring things that humans desire rather than desiring what God desires.

“What humans desire is control over their lives and the promise of security. This is because humans, in general, are afraid of death and are therefore trapped by it.

“What God desires is people who are not under the stranglehold of death, people who are free therefore to live the dangerous life of faith and be faithful amidst the dangers.

“In fact, all of you, yes, you who are standing by and listening, come close. If any of you wants to be my disciple, know that I am the only one who will tell you that the life of faith is dangerous. In order to live it to the fullest, you need to not cling on to your right to live, but need to surrender that right to a qualified person and for a lofty cause. The only one who is qualified is me and the only cause lofty enough for the surrender of something as precious as your life is the gospel.”

The phrase ‘dead man walking’ is used in the US to refer to the final walk of an inmate from the prison cell to the execution chamber. And this is the life to which Jesus invites anyone who wants to follow him. It is a life in which the person has surrendered their right to live. But here we are convicted not of sin, but of following Jesus. Jesus invites us to live this cruciform life, this life shaped by the strange promise of the cross that beyond death is life – life eternal, life everlasting, life in the presence of the only one qualified to receive such surrender. And we know his name – Jesus.