Year B

Mark 8:31-38

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Embracing the Cross

“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be killed, and after three days rise again”. On this second Sunday in Lent, we receive the invitation to journey with Jesus toward the cross. Every one of the texts today locates us squarely in the deep drumbeat of the Lenten season and in the tension that all but defines who we are as Christ’s disciples. Author Frederick Buechner suggests that during this Lenten season, the one question that should dominate our thinking is: “What does it mean to be a faithful disciple of Jesus”? Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness asking him-self the question of what it meant to be Jesus, and during Lent, we are to ask in one way or another, what it means to be a Christ follower.

Being a good Christian, for many this time of year, means self-denial. This can be very good but this idea has also been abused and often trivialized causing some to think Lent amounts to a kind of magical thinking: “Maybe if I voluntarily give up these little luxuries, God will be impressed enough not to put me to any real test! We can certainly hope that would be the case and yet, we know that is not how God or Lent works. The value of Lent and its disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving can help us examine and redirect our lives. They can help us take time to set aside the earthly lives we have and claim the lives promised to us by God.

With Abraham and Sarah, we are called to hope again for what we had given up as impossible; to trust that God will bring something new out of our barrenness; that God will bring life out of death. In our well known OT text today, God calls Abraham and reestablishes God’s relationship with the people of Israel. Abraham stands at the beginning of God’s promise or covenant promise that Israel will be a people blessed by God. The reality is that God willingly binds God’s self to a people who, like us, persist in turning away from God. Abraham and Sarah are deeply flawed, yet they remain faithful to God’s promise.

They can remain faithful because they have had experiences with God’s calling and ample time to learn to trust God without knowing for sure how things will turn out. This trust led them years before to leave their home in Haran only knowing that they were heading to the land of promise. At their much older age, with no evidence that they will ever be parents, much less the parents of a nation, they continued in relationship with God. Their trust was unconditional. What is naturally impossible, God makes possible. In years, three distinct religions will spring from their trust; Judaism, Christianity, &Islam all claim Abraham as their grandfather in faith.   

Abraham’s inheritance of the covenant and ours today insists Paul, is by grace, through faith. The promise to Abraham, founded not on law-keeping but on faith, includes all—Jew or Gentile—who live by faith, To “hope against hope” as Abraham did means hoping not in whatever future may be anticipated or planned on the basis of present circumstances, but in the future promised by the God who “gives life to the dead and calls things that don’t exist into existence.” Paul, in earlier chapters, had reminded the church in Rome that all have sinned and all deserve God’s wrath. The law that was given to Moses as a good gift had become a sin-producing snare instead. Paul claims that Abraham is an example for us, because God counted him righteous not because of his obedience to the law but because of his faith in God.

And since the promise of relationship with God is built on faith, not on obedience to the law, that promise is open to everybody. Anyone who trusts in God’s grace in Jesus Christ can receive what seems impossible for us sinners “righteousness,” or a right relationship with God. Trusting in the God who, as Paul declares, “gives life to the dead” connects our faith and hope with the faith and hope of Jesus expressed in today’s gospel text. Jesus understands that if he continues faithful to the purposes of God, he can expect rejection and, ultimately death. Our gospel text today gives us the meaning of Jesus’ messiahship and the true nature of what is means to follow as disciples. The rest of Mark’s gospel focuses more and more on the cross and the disciple’s failure to understand or accept what is ahead. 

In this season of Lent, we along with Peter are charged to set aside our expected destinies and enter into a completely different way of thinking about life and its value. In contrast to the approach of this world, which tells us the way to protect ourselves is by having greater power, money and influence, Jesus teaches life can be saved only when we remain faithful to him and the gospel. The idea that we can somehow manage to please the powers of this world even as we follow Jesus to the cross is a false idea. Jesus’ question and Peter’s response which makes up a crucial hinge in both Mark’s gospel and our lives of faith, is understandable, given the change in his worldly plans required by Jesus.

Peter seems to have imagined having the kind of power and authority aspired to in this world, standing alongside the powerful and authoritative Messiah. He knows his destiny, as Jesus’ disciple is tied to the destiny of Jesus. No wonder, then, he is shocked and against hearing about Jesus’ rejection and death. The idea that the Messiah would deliver the Jews from Roman oppression was prevalent, and Galilee was the hotbed of revolutionary activity. No one expected a suffering and dying Messiah! Jesus hears Peter out and then he rebukes him. From the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Satan was out to change his course, to have him turn away from the cross to be another kind of Messiah.

Peter’s rebuke is the way we humans think but for Jesus and any who would be his followers, there is another way. Lent is the time to set aside our earthly lives we work so hard to create and strengthen, and claim the lives promised to us by God. With Abraham and Sarah, we are called to hope, again, for what we had given up as impossible; to trust that God will bring something new out of our barrenness; that God will bring life out of death. With the psalmist, we are given strength to rise up out of our brokenness in praise, as people who teach, preach, and prophesy about the way God can transform our lives.

We receive again from Jesus the invitation to journey toward the cross, but always as life-loving people of faith who hold the destinies God promises in clear view. On the third day Jesus will rise, and soon Sarah will bear a son, and someday all the earth will turn to the Lord. And so we who rightly dread suffering and are caught up in our own priorities and schedules; are standing alongside Paul, Peter, Abraham, and the psalmist; empowered by the grace of God to change our plans and come along; to risk taking up our cross and embracing the saving purposes of God.