He Spoke Plainly
Lent 2003
Week of March 17, 2003
Lectionary Texts
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
In his book The Ragamuffin Gospel Brennan Manning describes what
he calls a myth that flourishes today in many of our churches, the
suggestion that Christian discipleship consists of one rousing victory
after another. This myth, he thinks, has done many a believer
“incalculable harm” because it misrepresents the way Christian
life is really lived. The myth goes something like this:
Once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, an irreversible,
sinless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success
story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness (31).
We know from personal experience that this is not true, but for many
Christians it remains the standard, goal or expectation for which we
wrongly hope. Thank God for Lent, and for the Gospel text this week from
Mark, which shows another way. Lent reminds us that the road to Easter
resurrection zig zags through the valley of the shadow of death.
So it was in the life of Jesus. At one point in his ministry He began to
predict his death, much to the shock of his disciples who longed for a
victorious savior who would vanquish the Romans. In the Gospel text for
this week we read that Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man
must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and
teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise
again” (Mark 8:31, NIV). Yes, He would rise again, but not before
suffering, rejection and death. The disciples, who so often in the
Gospels misunderstood Jesus and were afraid to ask Him questions, got the
message loud and clear, for Jesus “spoke plainly about this.”
So plainly, that Peter, who a few verses earlier had just made his
magnificent confession that Jesus was the Christ, rebuked Jesus.
“This can never happen to you,” he objected. In perhaps the
sharpest rebuke in all of the Gospels Jesus characterizes Peter’s
agenda as satanic. No, for Jesus the road to Easter resurrection passed
through suffering, rejection and death.
Then came the second shock, that the same would prove true for all those
who wanted to follow Jesus and be part of his kingdom. After predicting
his own suffering, rejection, and death to the disciples, he turned to the
crowd and spoke similar words: “If anyone would come after me, he
must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to
save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the
gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). God’s grace is free but it
is not cheap, for it asks for everything. This is a high price to pay,
Jesus admits, but the risk-reward logic is powerfully telling: “What
good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or
what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36-37).
There is a remarkably parallel incident to this Gospel passage in the
life of Paul. Luke writes that Paul was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem by
the day of Pentecost. When their ship landed for a short stay at
Caesarea, a prophet named Agabus warned that the Holy Spirit had told him
that if Paul went to Jerusalem, he would be bound and handed over to the
Gentile authorities. Much as Peter rebuked Jesus who had predicted His
own sufferings, Paul’s companions begged him not to go to Jerusalem.
His rejoinder is instructive: “Why are you weeping and breaking my
heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for
the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:8-12). About a week after they
landed in Jerusalem Paul was arrested, the first step toward his eventual
martyrdom in Rome.
Paul’s entire life after his conversion is a challenging model of
Jesus’s injunction to self-denial and cross-bearing. When the
Corinthians demanded that he offer proof of his apostolic authority, he
resorted to biting irony. “You want proof,” Paul asked?
“Then I will give it to you. I have suffered more hardship,
suffering, weakness, persecution, conflict, beatings, imprisonments, sleep
depravity, hunger, hard work, lashings, and shipwrecks than anyone
else.” Three times he then tells the Corinthians, “If I must
boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness” (2
Corinthians 11:30; 12:5, 9). Even his one moment of glory, when he seems
to have been caught up into heaven, was balanced by a “thorn in the
flesh.” Paul boasts about his weaknesses, he says, because it is in
those weaknesses that he most experiences the grace, love and power of
God.1
Jesus says that bearing your cross is a necessary part of discipleship.
What does that mean? It is understandable that the world promotes
self-indulgence over self denial, but oddly enough sometimes the church
does too. Martin Luther made a very helpful distinction when he
contrasted what he called a “theology of glory” (theologia
gloriae) with a “theology of the cross” (theologia
crucis). The former is a sort of triumphalistic posture which seeks
to know God only or especially through His mighty acts of power, victory,
miracle, and glory. If you pick up almost any popular Christian magazine
you will find many examples. The best selling book The Prayer of
Jabez, for example, promises you “a front row seat in a life of
miracles.” It’s true that we read about God’s mighty acts
of power in both the Old and New Testaments, but it was Luther’s
great contribution to remind us that beyond all His mighty acts of power,
God’s ultimate act of love and self-revelation was through suffering
on a cross. A “theology of the cross,” then, acknowledges this
and affirms that we come to know the Father’s love not so much
through outrageous miracles or startling outbursts of power, but through
times of suffering, testing, trials, and human weakness.
The language of Jesus has even passed over into our modern lexicon, often
times used as a sort of joke, when we tease about having to “bear our
cross.” But surely Jesus meant to tell us something essential rather
than trivial about his kingdom. Luke put it this way, after describing an
incident when Paul was stoned and left for dead outside the city of
Lystra: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of
God” (Acts 14:25). Language like this is almost impossible to
understand for many western believers, but for the first three hundred
years of the church it was the status quo. Lent reminds us that Eastern
resurrection victory over sin, death and the devil is certain and on the
way, but the way that Jesus took passes through the via
dolorossa.
1 The three key
passages here are in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12; 6:3-10; and 11:1 to
12:10.
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