Mark 8:31-38
The season of Lent invites us to follow Jesus to the cross. Following him is not easy and as the Gospel text will show, even the most sincere disciple will be confronted with the truth that their way of life and the life Jesus calls us to live do not always align. A potentially fruitful starting point to preaching is to consider how this text honestly unearths what it means to be a follower of Jesus. If we are to be honest about following him, we will admit that we often confess Jesus as Messiah and, like Peter, reject the implications of a cross-bearing way of discipleship. Our values, hopes and aspirations don't always align with the way of Christ despite our sincere desire to follow faithfully. When we suffer, whether self-inflicted or as victims of another’s actions, we may struggle with who God is in the midst of our pain.
The Gospel text for this week shows that following Jesus will bring us to places where we are made aware of the incongruence between our lives and the life Jesus calls us to live. Like Peter, we follow a Christ who may not be who we want him to be. But, what if arriving at places of such incongruence are moments of grace, not judgment? What if the places of incongruence are a more common experience for sincere disciples and an expected part of the journey? For many of our hearers the strong chastisement Jesus gives Peter (v.33), does not seem to reflect a moment of grace in Peter’s life. But what if we can we become open to seeing grace and not condemnation in this text? What if even Jesus’s rebuke of Peter, “to get behind me Satan,” serves to direct the disciple to find his proper place behind the Messiah so that he may find the place and posture from which to see what he is yet to understand?
The Gospel passage for this second Sunday of Lent recalls one of several moments of incongruence in the life of Peter (see Mk. 14:29-31). The text selection affords us, early in the season of Lent, with the opportunity to extend a gracious invitation for reflection upon the motivations, desires, and unmet expectations we carry as disciples. To do so requires that we refrain from presenting Peter as a poor example of discipleship and see him as an honest one; one with whom we can identify. Instead of criticizing him for his failure to grasp the meaning and implications of his confession, we may want to stand alongside Peter, as those who confess our tendency to reject the ‘hard things of life’ as we follow Jesus. Lent is the season for repentance, perhaps we will risk acknowledging our need for grace by naming that which is left unmet in us and in our world. Our text invites us to confess the incongruence in us who desire to follow Jesus so that God can restore us to the posture and place from which to follow well.
The work of the preacher is then to close the gap between the hearer and Peter’s shortcomings so that we together may stand in the honesty and discomfort of our shortcomings before Jesus. Doing so as preachers may enable us to extend grace to those who have been living with disappointment and the accompanying doubt due to unmet expectations of God. Such a preaching approach holds the potential to subvert unrealistic expectations of discipleship rooted in perfectionism, something holiness people have struggled with historically, and redirect our hearts and minds to the grace and mercy of God we see in Christ. The pathway to preaching grace from such a text is to consider the rebuke that Jesus gave Peter as a ‘gracious directive’ to reset and realign his life with the mission and message of Jesus (v.33).
Thus far in the Gospel of Mark we have been shown that the disciples made following Jesus a bit of a competition (9:33-34). It is plausible that Peter’s confession was viewed as a step up, an advantage gained over other disciples as the one disciple who first possessed such insight. Whether Peter or the disciples viewed it this way is not made clear in the text. What does however become clear is that Jesus’ rebuke of Peter to “get behind him” shows that Peter was getting ahead of Jesus. Here, getting ahead is to presume upon Jesus that which Peter wanted the Messiah to be while simultaneously rejecting who Jesus reveals he is. This is not the place or posture from which to follow! The rebuke of Jesus then serves as a strong admonition to Peter to find his proper place as a follower behind Jesus. It is Jesus who leads, and it is he who sets the criteria for discipleship: “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (v.34b).” We may also find that approaching the text this way can offer the hearer the opportunity to close the door on poor perspectives of discipleship that leaves no room for incongruence in our lives as we follow Jesus. We can then become open to the grace of God even in the moment’s we become aware of our shortcomings!
In my pastoral care of parishioners over the years, I have often discerned the disappointment with God that many carry due to life’s heartache and losses. Some have presumed upon God a life that did not include what they have suffered, and they dare not state this out loud believing that such honesty is not justified as followers of Jesus. Our people, and we as preachers, need not only to hear that suffering is implicit in following Jesus but that our unmet expectations and accompanying disappointment because of it do not make us unfit disciples. If we truly believe this, we may find grace in unlikely places, as Peter did, and even discern in the rebuke of Jesus the loving invitation Christ extends to find our way back. Discipleship is messy, difficult, and challenging. Following Jesus requires more than we are often willing to give. Yet, it is only as we follow that we see what it means and in so doing we are drawn into a way of life we would not choose but need.
Finally, Peter’s resistance to a Messiah whose life would be marked by suffering, rejection, crucifixion, and resurrection reveals how far away Peter was from seeing who Jesus truly was (vv.31-33). He will eventually see Jesus as Messiah following his crucifixion when the resurrected Christ appears to him. Yet, at this point in Peter’s journey, we would do well to pause and stand alongside him to acknowledge our disappointment and to name the unmet expectations we hold of God as followers of Jesus. May God’s grace meet us in the space of incongruence as we learn to follow the Messiah Jesus all the way to the cross.