"The Counter-Cultural Gospel (part I of II)"
Bill Chadwick
Oak Grove Presbyterian Church
September 13, 2009
Mark 8:27-38
I’m 24 years old, appearing before the Candidates Committee of Presbytery, being examined to
be approved for ordination. Greg Ritter, the associate pastor of my home church, Oak Grove,
is on the committee. That’s reassuring to me and I am glad for his presence because I’m
nervous.
The committee chair says a few opening words and then turns to the committee, “What are your
questions for Bill?”
Greg Ritter says, “Bill, we often talk about the good news of the gospel. Is there bad news of
the gospel?”
And I think to myself, “Yes. It’s bad news when your own pastor throws you a trick question like
that!”
The bad news of the gospel.
We see it in this passage. (Read Mark 8:27-38)
Some context. The first eight chapters of Mark’s gospel are quite thrilling. Let me read some
passage headings from my NRSV Bible: Jesus Calls the First Disciples, The Man with an
Unclean Spirit, Jesus Heals Many at Simon’s House, Jesus Cleanses a Leper, Jesus Heals a
Paralytic, The Man with a Withered Hand, A Multitude at the Seaside, Jesus Stills a Storm,
Jesus Heals the Gerasene Demoniac, A Girl Restored to Life and a Woman Healed, Feeding
the Five Thousand, Jesus Walks on the Water, Feeding the Four Thousand…You get the
picture.
Jesus is on a roll. Teaching and healing in Galilee for the first seven and a half chapters,
establishing his power and authority. Things are going swimmingly.
But here in Mark 8 we come to the hinge of the gospel as Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem
and the Cross. He must teach them what to expect.
The first thing he wants to do is to see if his disciples get it. Do they know who he is?
It’s very interesting where he takes them to ask that question, Caesarea Philippi. Originally
named Balinas, because it was the center for the worship of the Phoenician god Baal. Later
named Panias after Pan, the Greek god of nature, whose birth supposedly took place nearby.
“By Jesus’ time, this area is a province of the Roman Empire and the site of a magnificent
marble temple built in honor of Caesar Augustus, the Emperor of Rome” (who claimed to be a
god). (David L. McKenna, The Communicator’s Commentary: Mark, p. 177)
In this land rich with claims of divinity Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?”
And Peter gets it right, God bless him. “You are the Christ” (which means the anointed one of
God.) By his confession Peter is saying “Baal is not God, Pan is not God, the great Caesar
Augustus is not God. You, Jesus, are the anointed one of God.”
Peter gets it right. Jesus is the Christ. But then he immediately gets it wrong. When Jesus
starts to explain to the disciples what it means to be the Messiah, including all this suffering and
death talk, Peter is mortified. Vs. 32 “Peter took (Jesus) aside and began to rebuke him.”
You’ve heard dozens of sermons about how the disciples were expecting a very different kind of
messiah than what they got. They were hoping for a military leader to overthrow the occupying
forces of the Romans. Instead they got a messiah who would be crucified by the Romans.
When Peter begins to argue with him, Jesus doesn’t pussyfoot around saying, “Hmm. That’s
another way to look at things. Interesting. Let’s talk about this.”
He says, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Whoa. Pretty harsh. You see, it’s the exact same temptation that Jesus experienced from
Satan in the wilderness immediately following Jesus’ baptism. “IF you are the Son of God,”
said Satan, “use your powers to turn stones into bread…to throw yourself off the temple…in
short, to wow the people and be a BIG DEAL.”
It’s one thing to face temptation in the wilderness from Satan, in whatever manifestation he took.
But here Jesus faces the same temptation put forth by his best friend. (Dick Donovan and
others.)
We can imagine Peter putting his arm around Jesus and gently consoling him, “Jesus, Jesus.
You’re just tired. You’re having a bad day. Trust me, suffering and death is not what the
Messiah is about.”
But Jesus is very clear about the kind of messiah God wants, not the conquering here, but the
suffering servant as depicted in Isaiah 53: “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of
suffering and acquainted with infirmity…he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with
the transgressors…” Elsewhere Jesus said, “I am among you as one who serves.”
When Jesus says he must suffer at the hand of the religious leaders and be put to death, this is
shocking news to the disciples.
And so far he’s been speaking just to the disciples. But at vs. 34 he calls the crowd to hear as
well, demonstrating that what he is about to say isn’t just for the disciples, the super-Christians;
it’s for all who would follow.
Jesus couldn’t be clearer: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and
take up their crosses and follow me.”
The bad news of the gospel.
At the time Mark’s gospel was being written, between 60 and 70, the followers of Jesus were
actually being nailed to crosses. Tradition has it that ten of the disciples had followed their Lord
to martyrdom. For the listeners of Mark’s gospel it was a literal command: Take up your cross.
In the first decades of the church before you became a church member you didn’t go through a
two-hour class in the Fireside Room on a Sunday evening, you went through months of
teaching about what it meant to follow Jesus. Because choosing to follow him might well cost
you your life. As one of my pastor friends says, “Before you head down this path of following
Jesus, you’d better be sure you look good on wood.” (John Schramm).
Where is the living word for us today?
1. Persecution for being a Christian—persecution unto death—still happens today. One
journalist estimates that over the 2000 years of Christianity about 70 million people have died
for following Jesus. 65% of them, 45 million people, in the last hundred years. More people are
being killed for their Christian faith today than in the early years of the church. (Italian journalist
Antonio Socci presented his work today during a conference on "Anti-Christian Persecution in
the 20th Century" held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum. 10-May-2002 --
ZENIT.org News Agency)
The list of nations where Christians are routinely persecuted is a long one: China, North Korea,
Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, East Timor, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Cuba, Iran,
Iraq, Saudi Arabia —to name only a few. (Dick Donovan in Sermonwriter.com and other
sources.) Those folks being murdered in Darfur are Christians being martyred for their faith.
Literally hundreds of thousands of people today are being discriminated against, arrested,
threatened, imprisoned, tortured, brutalized, sold as slaves, and killed solely because they are
Christians. May we work for justice on their behalf and pray for them.
2. What would it mean for us today to deny ourselves and take up a cross?
Now let’s be clear about the definition of “cross.” The term has made its way into common
parlance and has become rather mushy. People talk about all unfortunate circumstances and
tragedies as someone’s cross to bear. “He was born blind and that is his cross to bear.” Or her
son was always in trouble, frequently in jail. His mother sighed and said, ‘It’s my cross to bear.’”
Those are really sad things. But they are not crosses.
A metaphoric “cross” is a painful result which has derived directly from our following Jesus. I
urge us to reserve the term for those things.
Here are some metaphorical crosses: Someone blows the whistle at work, pointing out illegal
activity by superiors because it violates her Christian ethics, and then loses her job. That’s a
cross to bear for a 12 year-old kid.
A middle school kid, trying to follow Jesus, refuses to join in the taunting of another student and
instead speaks up and is himself ostracized or even beaten up. That’s a cross to bear.
In the Civil Rights Museum there is a list of 40 martyrs of the Movement: Martin Luther King,
Jr., Medgar Evers, of course. Did you know there is a Presbyterian pastor among the martyrs.
A young white pastor from Cleveland, married with two young children, who stood up for equal
opportunity housing in his city and was crushed to death by a bulldozer. That’s a cross.
Today speaking out against war or on behalf of gay people or immigrants or other unpopular
groups and therefore being threatened with bodily harm or being fired from your church, that’s a
cross.
If we’re not being persecuted in some way maybe it’s because we’re not really following Jesus.
As Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms put it, “Maybe you’re an admirer of Jesus, not really a
follower.” (I’m preaching to myself here more than any of you.)
Let me also list some things that might not quite be “crosses,” but they certainly fit under the
category of “denying oneself” for Christ’s sake. You’ll see by this list that to follow Jesus is
counter-cultural.
A college student using spring break, not to party on the beach, but to travel to
Appalachia and work on a Habitat for Humanity project.
Working as a physician in Guatemala instead of in Rochester. That’s denying oneself.
Not having that affair even though it is SOOO tempting.
Working as a lawyer defending indigent migrant laborers instead of working as a lawyer
for a giant corporation with a corner office on the 30th floor.
Not buying that fancy car, that bigger house,…you fill in the blank, so that money can
feed the hungry.
Wilbur Rees writes:
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don't want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I'd like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Ouch. That fits me much of the time.
The bad news of the gospel: deny ourselves and take up a cross.
But notice that the cross is not the last word. It wasn’t the last word for Jesus and he wants to
reassure his followers that it won’t be for them, either.
They may die for their faith, but God has the last word: resurrection to eternal life.
And even if our faith doesn’t cost us our literal life, only costs us some of the temporal rewards
of life, Jesus’ words are still true.
Those who save their lives will lose them. That is, those who pursue the selfish ends, the goals
of the culture, will not find the happiness they seek. But those who lose their lives will save
them.
Philip Yancey is a wonderful Christian author. I encourage you to read anything he writes. In
several of his books he writes words to this effect. “In my work as a journalist I have been
privileged to interview hundreds of people, from all walks of life: movie stars, pro athletes,
scions of business, wealthy and famous people, and on the other extreme, the Mother Teresas
of the world, folks who worked in soup kitchens and leper colonies and refugee camps and
everything in between. Friends, you have never met a more unhappy group of people than
those who have material wealth and fame. For the most part, they are miserable. As to the
folks working for little or no money, pouring out their lives on behalf of the poor and oppressed.
Well, I was prepared to admire them. I was not prepared to envy them. They are filled with joy.”
Madison Avenue lies to us. Jesus tells us the truth. Those who seek their own selfish desires
do not find life and are not satisfied. Those who deny themselves and follow Jesus find lasting
satisfaction.
Friends, the joys of being a Christian come on the far side of halfway.
The bad news of the gospel is really good news. Let us follow Jesus and find joy.
To Him be the honor and the glory and the praise, now and forever! Amen.
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