Mark 8:31-38

There is a rather cruel game that children sometimes play while riding bikes. A type of modern jousting occurs where each rider attempts to unseat the other rider by jabbing a stick between the wheel spokes. The sudden lurch of the bike as it slams to a halt causes the rider to sometimes be thrown over the handlebars, landing with a jolting thud on the ground. For the rider experiencing the resulting crash, it is painful and disorienting. Despite the awareness of the potential consequences of such a game, there is shock, nonetheless, when jolted from their seat.

Like a child jabbing a stick into the spokes of a speeding bike, Jesus unfolds a vision of the messiah, of God’s people, and the way of God’s Kingdom. It is not a way of triumph but of humility. It is not a way of conquering but of serving. It is not a way of gaining advantage over others but being emptied for the sake of others. Grasping to secure our lives, preserving our lives at all costs, cannot be reconciled with the vision that Jesus offers. Jesus says to the crowd and to the disciples, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” To follow Jesus is to follow him to the cross, testifying to the Good News of God’s coming redemption of all things. 

Consequently, the way of Jesus announcing the reign of God confronts the current arrangements of power. It is not simply a call to personal morality and piety, although it includes that, but repudiates the modes of life that seek to “gain the world” at any cost. In other words, Jesus comes preaching a word of repentance, a turning toward a new way of communal life – namely, the way of God’s neighborly shalom. Jesus consistently casts out the demonic in Mark’s Gospel. The demonic is the deathly ways of this world personified and embodied in the lives of those who consistently pledge allegiance to the power systems of this world. But Jesus knows that the ways of death not only have a tight grip on us, we like to maintain a tight grip on it as well. The way of the cross relinquishes our need for power that maims and embraces the exhaustion of death by refusing to participate any longer with Death’s agenda. But, when Death is a lucrative and influential means in which to navigate the world, people will defend it vehemently, life and limb. 

If anyone should have anticipated a Christ that would be taunted, crushed, and crucified surely it would have been the priests, teachers of the law, and the elders. Those who dealt with the sacred texts, knew the story of God’s people, had recited the lives of the prophets, and had memorized every dot and dash in their sacred scripture should be capable of recognizing the Christ. The religious leaders of the day, constantly dealing with the holy, should surely be able to identify when the Holy One arrives. Yet, Jesus points out that they will be the ones through whom persecution and death will come. Dealing with the holy does not render one incapable of doing unholy, ungodly things.

If anyone should have known who the Christ is and what that entails, it should have been the disciples. Leaving everything behind and following Jesus, hearing him teach, watching him work, and mimicking the ways of Jesus was now their life’s work. Yet, it is Peter who swiftly condemns Jesus’ outline of the messiah’s ministry. The disciples cannot imagine a Christ who suffers and dies. How can a messiah win if he suffers? How can a messiah bring about victory and freedom if his enemies triumph? How can a messiah redeem if he is killed? To be in close proximity to the life of Jesus does not exclude the possibility of misunderstanding and misinterpreting the way of Jesus.

If anyone should know who Christ is and what the way of Christ looks like it is the Church. Yet, like the disciples and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, it is often easy to mold Christ into our image rather than to be molded into his. Dealing with the holy, being in close proximity to Christ, can sometimes give us a false sense of familiarity while insulating us from a “costly discipleship.” Ours has too often been a discipleship which excluded the inconvenience and perturbing prospect of martyrdom. Our voices sound in unison with Peter, rebuking Christ’s way of the cross as unrealistic, too idealistic for the real world where power prevails.

Yet, like the jolted crowd and disciples addressed by Jesus, we are confronted again with these words: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.” A costly discipleship recognizes that the death and resurrection of Christ is the ground of all reality, it is the foundation of the Church. It is not simply the historical conclusion of Jesus’ earthly ministry. It is the ongoing life and ministry of the Church as the Body of Christ fleshed out in the world. Being ashamed of Christ does not always appear as out-right denial of Christ. Sometimes denial is enacted by those who claim Christ and yet embody a way antithetical to Christ. Our lips utter praises while cursing neighbor. Our hands raise in worship while practicing violence against the vulnerable. Our minds ponder the glory of God while harboring hatred toward our enemies. Rather than being crucified, we crucify others. 

Jesus’ words serve as a rebuke to us as disciples. However, those whom Christ rebukes, Christ can also redeem. To be chastised is to simultaneously be offered grace to change our direction. Bonhoeffer reminds us, “The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every [person] must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old [person] which is the result of [their] encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a [person], he bids [them] come and die.” The call of Christ is not a call to sure victory, to success, to power. Ultimately, it is the call to a life of faithful witness, regardless of the outcome.

In the Age of the Cult of Personality, it is easy for us to become obsessed with the glamorous and the powerful platforms. Big churches. Big budgets. Big stories. Big names. The Gospel hardly feels glamorous anymore, unless it can be validated by the hottest athlete, the hippest cultural icon, or the successful entrepreneur. Our stories have vacated cruciform lives for successful images. And, typically, it is in the hope that our church might climb the ladder of success, to be a trend-setter, to be on the cutting edge. Yet, it is difficult to ignore how repulsive and repelling the way of the cross is to both the crowd and to the disciples. Following Jesus cannot be done without embracing the way of the cross. In the tender, quiet, mundane moments of life and ministry, God is at work unfolding the new creation. In the heartbreak, God is present. In the face of the poor, Jesus is suffering. In the cries of the lonely, the Spirit groans. To neglect the downtrodden and the broken spaces in our world to pursue fame, fortune, and relevance may very well leave us paupers pushing a pallid gospel. As Jesus reminds us, his Church: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”