Hello friends -
I hope this finds you well. Today I had the privilege and joy of preaching at my home congregation of 25 years, Spring Garden Lutheran Church. I preached on Mark 8:31-38, talking about new discipleship, our call and commitment as a rural family in Christ, and reclaiming our identity as children of God. Without further ado, my sermon:
Friends, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and God’s Son Jesus the Christ. Amen. I invite you to think for a moment or two. What would be three things – family, material things, career, or a hobby – that you would say would best define your identity, or that you are most proud of? What are those? I have mine – I define my identity most deeply as a farm kid, a seminary student, and as someone who is deeply relational. Do you have yours? Hold those for a moment. Our Gospel text for today will take those identities and challenge them. In today’s Gospel reading, we are brought into a new reality: what it means to deeply, intentionally, and authentically follow Jesus Christ in a way that is starkly counterculture to the rural America we inhabit today.
We open the text today and find Jesus teaching. This teaching, this telling of the next part of Christ’s life, isn’t pleasant. Christ tells his disciples that he is to undergo “great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Christ is telling his disciples that he is, ultimately, going to be rejected by the top authorities of the religious system. He must die.
Peter, one of Christ’s disciples, is understandably concerned. He pulls Christ aside and talks to him in private. The passage doesn’t give us explicitly the exchange between Peter and Jesus, but I don’t think we need to know exactly what was said, for Jesus’s response was powerful: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Let’s pause here, just for a moment. I can imagine if I was Peter, I would be hurt. Being called Satan is nothing to be taken lightly. It’s a serious accusation. What does it mean when Jesus states that we have our mind on human things? Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of the time I have my mind on human things, as I’m sure many of you do as well. These words have always left me unsure, and slightly unsettled. Most days, I don’t know what to make of them. Maybe they’re just meant to linger, and to sink in. Maybe it’s for a greater purpose.
Jesus uses these words as a catalyst to make his larger, overarching point. He draws the crowd together – those who were around him and his disciples – and begins to proclaim. Again, they are words that we are not used to hearing, and are hard to rationalize in our 21st century American culture. We are told we have to deny ourselves. We are told that we need to take up our crosses, to lose our lives for the sake of the gospel. Christ says that it won’t profit us anything to gain the world and lose our lives at the end. For those who are ashamed of Christ, he will be equally ashamed of them when he comes with his Father.
These words are seemingly so antiquated. How does this relate to us, little Spring Garden Lutheran Church? We live largely in a culture that is driven by consumerism. We live largely in a world that is telling us to be individual – to be ourselves. We live in a world now that is, more and more, not utilizing organized religion in it’s proper, life giving means. There is no doubt that, even as faithful followers of Christ, we are still influenced by the world in which we live. We are comparing ourselves to others in terms of our wealth, health, family, career, personal happiness – and the list goes on. We get caught up in the “human things” of life so often that it is easy to lose sight of the One who has welcomed us into faith.
Jesus’s words are a clarion call to us all. These words, while they appear difficult, distasteful, and backwards, are actually an invitation and welcome into something greater. I don’t think Jesus expects us to give up what we identify ourselves as – as hardworking, honest, good rural folk who love each other. I think immediately of the meal train set up for Beth Windhorst – families immediately showed up with food, hugs, and prayers. Those are good identifiers. This is precisely what it means to be a part of God’s activity in the world. What Jesus is talking about, I believe, is a more selfless devotion to his teaching, to himself, and ultimately to God. As I mentioned before, we get caught up in the negative things that can soon define us – broken relationships, a dead-end job, or whatever is weighing you down right now – we get thinking about those very human, real things and suddenly it becomes difficult to carry our cross, to show the love of God to our neighbor and ourselves.
In the midst of this, we are invited to give up our identities – to give up the bad things that hold our thoughts captive and to move past our good identities into simply being what Christ has called us to – being children of God. When we fully carry our cross – when we love each other out of authentic good will – that is when our identity as children of God, as disciples, takes full form. These words – losing our lives, all the rest – are a radical call to new discipleship – they explain how we can model our lives after Jesus. They’re just as applicable now in Cannon Falls, Minnesota as they were in 1st century Israel when Christ was about to be put to death. To fully follow Jesus, we are encouraged to let go of our identities and claim our status as God’s beloved. To lose our lives means becoming fully involved in God’s activity in the world for the sake of the gospel – through sharing meals, prayers, communion, and in countless other ways in how you treat others Monday through Saturday. This work, this new discipleship, begins at our baptism and is concluded when we join the saints triumphant. It’s as simple as that. I know – it’s easy for me to say, but it’s another thing to remember and embody it.
In short, yes, these words are what we are not used to hearing. We are so often defined by what the world’s standards are. Jesus calls us into something different. He calls us to abandon everything – to lose our life for the sake of the gospel – so that we might find our hope and new life in Christ as we discover together what we’re called to proclaim and do in God’s mission. In following Christ wholeheartedly and unashamedly, we indeed do gain everything – and that, my friends, is more than what the world could ever promise. As you go into this week, look for ways to more fully carry your cross as an example to this world. Look for ways to disciple. Look and see how God’s love, by your witness, is everywhere. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Dean
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