Losing Your Life

Mark 8:27-38

Lectionary 24 ~  17thSunday after Pentecost

What kind of investor are you?  How much are you willing to risk in order to gain? Are you conservative, hiding your dollar bills under your mattress?  Are you one who takes risks, helping to fund speculative start-up companies?  Maybe you keep your money in safe savings accounts, or certificates of deposit. I’m only asking because in our reading today Jesus talks about saving, and losing, profit and gain, forfeit and return.

We also hear about suffering and rejection, denying ourselves, picking up our cross, being killed and losing our life.  “All this can be yours,” Jesus says.  “Just follow me!”  (I think he needs a new public relations director.)   So what kind of investor are you?

The answer to that question is predicated on our answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter, the disciple who usually blurts things out without thinking, who normally misunderstands Jesus, and the one with whom I closely identify, answered, “You are the Messiah!”  For once, Peter got it right! The other disciples patted him on the back and gave him high fives.

But then Jesus teaches them that he will suffer greatly.  He will be rejected by those in leadership positions.  He will be killed.  While Peter was trying to wrap his mind around all of this, Jesus said something incomprehensible, “After three days, I will rise again.”  Still trying to understand suffering and death, Peter took Jesus aside and scolded him. “Jesus, no!  That’s not how this works!  A Messiah doesn’t suffer!  A Savior doesn’t get killed!  A Savior saves people!  Your job is to make my life better, and keep me safe, not get me killed!  Get rid of that oppressive Roman government!   While you are at it, stimulate the economy so that my savings account increases significantly.  Bring an end to those things that break my heart.  Let me have a peaceful, happy life.  Let’s skip the cross.  Nobody wants to go to the cross.  We can just go right to Easter.”

“Who do you say that I am? Jesus asks.  To Peter, Jesus was the one who would defeat his enemies.  Jesus was the one who would make life easier. Peter thought Jesus’ miraculous deeds of feeding and healing were about power, when they were really acts of love. Who is Jesus to you?  Suffering, rejection, death, and rising on the third day, this is what defines Jesus. The cross is God’s entering into the depths of our human suffering.  The cross gives shape to our lives.

“Deny yourself and take up your cross,” Jesus tells us.  This saying has been misinterpreted to tell people that they need to put up with abuse. There is no justification for abusing someone. Abuse should not be endured. Suffering is not redemptive in and of itself. Those who were hurt by others and marginalized by society are the very ones Jesus spent his life healing and restoring to community.  Through his actions and teaching, Jesus’ compassion reflects God’s claim that everyone deserves love, and dignity and respect. The suffering of which Jesus speaks comes through proclaiming the gospel of God’s love and forgiveness, seeking justice for the marginalized, and challenging social systems that reject the humanity of various groups of people.

“We have substituted a cushion for a cross,” Martin Luther King wrote.  “We have substituted the soothing lemonade of escape for the bitter cup of reality.  We have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.”[1]  Just a few days after his home in Montgomery was bombed, Dr. King preached this in a sermon.  Martin Luther King took up his cross, and suffered the ultimate consequence of following Jesus. “Deny yourself and take up your cross,” Jesus tells us.

What does it mean to deny yourself?  To deny ourselves means that we should deny those parts of ourselves that are shaped by society instead of created by God.  In Dr. King’s case, that would be systems and people telling him that blacks are inferior and that they don’t deserve the same rights and privileges that whites do.

Deny yourself.  Deny the voice in your head that says you are not worthy of love or that you are enough.  Deny the parts of yourself that are devoted to impressing others.  Embrace what Richard Rohr calls your “true self.” To deny ourselves is an invitation into community, to recognize the we can never become fully who we are without others.  To deny ourselves is to stop asserting that we have all the answers.  To deny ourselves is to let God be God and stop acting like we are in control.

Peter thought that he would find God in Jesus’ strength and power, but God’s son had come to suffer and die.  In the pain and forsakenness of the cross, we discover that there is no place God will not go to redeem us.  Jesus invites us, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Follow me into people’s pain and brokenness.”  It is the journey to and through the cross that enables Jesus to enter into our lives.  It is our experience of suffering that allows us to enter into the lives of others.  It is out of our wounds that we find compassion and love for those who are struggling.  It is out of our hurt that we find connection with each other.  In the depths of pain, we are changed.  God is present in all of it.

On the other side of the cross is new life.  Life that has been formed by the cross will find life in the resurrection.  “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.”  That’s the paradox of the cross, and God’s promise to us.

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1]http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol06Scans/5Feb1956It%27sHardtoBeaChristian.pdf accessed 9/14/2018.

 

Author: Pastor Cheryl Griffin

Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin thinks God has a sense of humor for leading her into ministry, but can’t imagine doing anything else! Pastor Griffin received her BA degree from the College of William and Mary. She worked as an accountant before God led her to the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, where she received her Master of Divinity degree. In the Virginia Synod, Pastor Griffin is a member of the Ministerium Team and frequently leads small groups at synod youth events. She is also a representative to the VA Synod Council.

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