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Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 15, 2024
Mark 8:27-38
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked the disciples. And after Peter correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah, as the promised Savior, Jesus sat them all down and began to teach them what that meant. He taught them what kind of Messiah he would be. He taught them how he would save. Jesus told them that he would undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
To put it lightly, this was not at all what Peter had in mind! We don’t know what exactly Peter expected Jesus to do as the Messiah, but it certainly didn’t involve him undergoing great suffering! This was the furthest thing from Peter’s mind. A suffering and dying Messiah wasn’t on his radar at all! And so Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him. In Matthew’s account of this incident he tells us that Peter said, “No, Jesus! This must never happen to you!”
To be sure, it was a gutsy move to dare to take Jesus aside and rebuke him – but to be fair to Peter, this was a very human response. Peter was having a very human reaction to suffering, which is, naturally, to avoid it at all costs! Peter was thinking in human terms, which are bent towards self-preservation, towards self-fulfillment, towards self-serving ends. But therein lies the problem: Peter was setting his mind on human things, not divine things. This is exactly what Jesus says to Peter as he rebukes him right back: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”
The divine thing that Peter didn’t yet get was that it would be through suffering that Jesus would accomplish his saving work as the Messiah. The divine thing Peter didn’t yet understand was that Jesus would suffer and die on the cross for the sins of the world, and then rise again on the third day.
And Jesus wouldn’t be the only one who would bear a cross. His followers would too! “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus continued, “let them deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow me. 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.”
This all sounds very gloomy on the surface, very negative. Troubling, even. It seems that way from a human point of view. But Jesus is describing divine things. He is describing divine love. As St. Paul writes in Romans 5:8, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” As Jesus says in John 15: “There is no greater love than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This suffering and dying Messiah would do his saving work through divine, sacrificial love.
Jesus first describes the divine act of saving love which he is about to accomplish on the cross, and then he describes how this will impact the lives of his disciples. As his followers are swept up in the sacrificial love of the cross, they will begin to follow him by taking up crosses of their own. They will begin to willingly deny themselves for the sake of others. They will begin to willingly endure suffering as a response to the saving love they have received in Christ. They will begin to lose their old self-centered life and live into something new through him. This might not be easy, but it sure isn’t gloomy! This is what it means to live a redeemed life rooted in divine love. This is what it means to live the new life God provides through the power and promise of the resurrection.
On our wedding day I gave my wife a gold crucifix necklace. A crucifix, of course, is a cross with the body of Jesus still on it. After all our wedding festivities were over and it was just the two of us, I gave it to her. She unwrapped it. She opened the velvety jewelry box and took it out. She held it up, the suffering body of Jesus dangling from the chain. As we both looked at it, I pointed to it and said to her: “That is what it’s going to be like to be married to me.”
Just kidding. That’s been the joke ever since, but that’s not what I said. To be honest, neither of us remember exactly what I said, but we both agree on what it meant to us, and what means to us now. That crucifix represents to both of us that our marriage is rooted in and shaped by the sacrificial love of Christ. And this being the case, there is a little kernel of truth in the joke!
It is blessedly rare, but sometimes we suffer because of each other. I’m not talking about anything major. I’m talking about those inevitable disagreements and misunderstandings and kerfuffles that come up. A professor of mine once colorfully said of marriage that when you put two sinners belly to belly for a lifetime there is bound to be trouble once in a while. It is unavoidable!
Sometimes we suffer not because of each other, but with each other. My wife and I have both had a difficult few weeks emotionally as we’ve adjusted to having an empty nest. Don’t get me wrong, isn’t all bad – but it has stirred up more grief in us than we were expecting. There is a tremendous sense of loss as we come to terms with the reality that a truly wonderful time in our lives, a time we both enjoyed very much, has come to a close. This is something we’ve suffered through together.
And then there have been the times when one of us has entered into the suffering of the other. There are those times when one of us has been there for the other when one of us has had a bad day or when there has been a sickness or a medical worry or a traumatic event impacting one of us more than the other. We have shared in the suffering of the other as we’ve walked through it together, offering our encouragement and our support along the way.
There is a lot of joy in our marriage, a lot of laughter, a lot of fun, but love really shows itself in an especially profound way in these times of suffering. I’m not holding us up as the ideal couple or saying we have this all figured out. We aren’t, and we don’t! But having the sacrificial love of the cross at the center of our relationship, being steeped in the sacrificial love of Christ delivered through Word and Sacrament, has shaped us in ways that make us more willing to bear crosses for and with each other.
This is what Jesus is describing in our gospel reading. This is what he is teaching the disciples, and us – and it applies to all Christians, and to all of Christian life!
Today Jesus teaches us that the Messiah came to undergo great suffering. Jesus suffered because of us. It is our sins that put him on the cross. Jesus suffers with us, weeping with us when we weep, bearing the pain of the world with us. Jesus comes alongside us in our suffering to encourage and support us, assuring us that we are not alone and that our suffering will not have the last word.
And through his sacrificial love for us, he changes our hearts and minds, turning them away from human things and towards divine things. We are always works in progress. This won’t be completed until the day of resurrection. But even now our Lord Jesus pours his divine love out for us in such a way that we begin to deny ourselves, we begin to take up our own crosses, we begin to loosen our grip on our self-centered lives and start to live more and more for others – not only for our loved ones, not only for our families, but also for our brothers and sisters in Christ next to us here at church, for our neighbors, for those around us in need, even, Jesus would tell us, for those we consider our enemies. We are sacrificially loved and so we sacrificially love!
Dear friends, there is a deeper joy and a richer life to be found when Christ is at the center instead of you. Jesus has come to free you from your bondage to sin and self. The Messiah has come to suffer and die and rise again in order to prove his great love for you. There is no greater love than this, and he gives it to you!
Carry this divine, sacrificial love around your neck. Carry it in your heart. Put it at the center of your life instead of yourself. Hold fast to it through all suffering.
Let Christ fill you with this divine, sacrificial love of the cross today, and then watch as it begins to flow through you as you take up your own cross and begin to love others like Jesus loves you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church