Mark 8:27-38
“From Information to Commitment”
This morning’s Scripture passage is scandalous!!!
First there is Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Christ or the Messiah.
Then there is the startling prediction of Jesus’ suffering and death.
Finally, Jesus gives His call to discipleship, which, at its center is a call to “lose one’s life.”
After reading these verses, it’s amazing that anyone is a Christian.
It’s scandalous alright!!!
But, after all, scandal is a term that has been associated with Christianity from the beginning…
…as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians Chapter 1: “we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.
But to those who are being called—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s power and wisdom.”
And God’s power and wisdom goes in the opposite direction of how most of us would interpret power and wisdom.
A British journalist once wrote, “I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die.
For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.”
Yes, this Scripture passage is a scandal.
And it’s even more scandalous if we look at what comes before it.
At the beginning of Mark Chapter 8 we have Jesus feeding the 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish.
Now, this is the second mass-feeding of this kind.
The first one happens in Mark Chapter 6 when Jesus feeds 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish.
In the first feeding miracle, Jesus is in Jewish territory—feeding Jewish listeners.
In the second feeding miracle, Jesus is in Gentile territory (anyone who was not a Jew was considered a Gentile or unsaved—not one of God’s Chosen People) feeding Gentile listeners.
And the Messiah or the Christ was expected to come to vindicate the Jews only—and destroy their enemies…
…or to at the very least, make their enemies their footstool.
So when Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”
And when Peter answers correctly, “You are the Christ,” the disciples still really have no idea what that means, because Jesus has redefined the definition.
When Peter calls Jesus the Christ or the Messiah, he doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus is “divine,” let alone the Second Person of the Trinity.
What Peter means is that Jesus is the true King of Israel, the final heir of the throne of David.
And what this meant for the Jews of Jesus’ day was that the Messiah would clean out the Temple.
He would defeat the enemies of Israel.
Israel would be number one again, and the Gentiles (all the non-Jews) would be put in their place!
But Jesus hadn’t been gathering up a military force.
He hadn’t been on the campaign trail—announcing His program and plan to topple the high priests and their associates.
Instead, Jesus is giving the idea of a Messiah a face-lift.
And this Messiah is divine.
There will be no more Temple, for those who worship God will worship God in Spirit and in Truth.
And this Messiah has come not only for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles…
For in Christ there is “neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female,” for we are all one in Christ Jesus!!!
Yes.
This is scandalous indeed!!!
As a matter of fact, it’s so scandalous that most of us living 2,000 years later still “don’t get it.”
It’s too inclusive.
It’s too big for our minds to wrap around it.
But that is part of what makes it so exciting!!!
For it is different.
It continues to be “something new.”
Mark tells us, beginning in verse 31 that Jesus “began to teach his disciples: ‘the Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts, and be killed, and then, after three days rise from the dead.”
You might as well have a football captain tell the team that he plans to let the other team score ten touch downs right off the bat.
This wasn’t even close to what Peter and the others had in mind.
They may have figured out by this time that Jesus wasn’t a military leader, but they certainly did not expect Him to go straight to His death!!!
As Charlie Brown once said, “Winning ain’t everything but losing ain’t anything,” and Jesus seemed to be saying He was going to lose.
And worse yet, He was inviting the disciples to come along and lose with Him!!!
This was and is a scandal!!!
Messiahs don’t get killed by the authorities.
A Messiah who did that would be proven to be a false Messiah.
But that is not the way it works; and after-all, the disciples seem to miss the part about Jesus rising again.
In any event, Peter is completely blown away…
…so much so that he “took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him.”
And as we see, opposition to the plans of God are Satanic!!!
How many times and in how many instances do we take hold of Jesus, and scolding Him, begin to correct Him?
“After calling the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them, ‘All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.
All who want to save their lives will lose them.
But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them.’”
Scandalous!!!
We might not say it out loud, but by our actions, our desires, our shrinking away…
…how often do we “scold” and “correct” Jesus…
…for Jesus’ claim of our undivided allegiance to Him…
…for Jesus’ refusal to use violence…
…for Jesus’ choice for the Way of Love…
…for Jesus’ insistence on the denial of self…
…for Jesus’ call to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and share what we have with our fellow human beings…
…for Jesus’ call on our lives to love all people—even our enemies, to turn the other check, not to judge or discriminate and I could go on and on and on…
…how often do we “scold” and “correct” Jesus by our insistence on not doing these things…
…by our insistence that we can be disciples of Jesus in a way that leaves the Cross out of it?
A Christianity where we think we can “have our cake and eat it too” is of Satan.
The prosperity Gospel is a masterpiece of Satan!!!
A concept of Christianity in which there is no room for the “foolishness of the Cross” is a satanic triumph!!!
The New International Version of the Bible reads, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
And these are the two hardest words that any person can ever face—deny and cross.
“Deny” isn’t just some “foggy,” “vague” kind of word that we can easily talk our way out of.
Denying ourselves means a lot more than refusing to give ourselves certain things like candy or chocolate or a new pair of shoes.
It’s easy to applaud our own self-control and generosity with that kind of simple behavior.
We can make spiritual “Little Jack Horners” out of ourselves, saying, “What a good boy or girl am I!”
To deny self is something much, much deeper than this.
Denying self is making ourselves not an end, but a means, in the Kingdom of God.
It is letting go of our clamoring egos, with their preoccupation with “I,” “me,” and “mine.”
It is letting go of our need for control, and our insistence on having all the latest creature comforts like the Jones’ next door.
Denial of self is done for Christ’s sake--
--For the sake of giving our lives completely over to Him, and putting ourselves into Jesus’ mission to love and save the world!!!
Denial of self involves tithing at least 10% of our income to the church before we pay our bills or buy some new toy we might want.
It involves listening to others when all we want to do is talk.
It involves giving our time and talents for the good of God and others.
It means loving as Jesus loves, and putting the needs of others above our own.
Jesus said, “Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives?”
Now, that is scandalous!!!
While in College, John Wesley the Founder of the Methodist Movement, had just finished paying for some pictures for his room when one of the chambermaids came to his door.
It was a cold winter day, and she didn’t own a coat.
All she had on was a thin linen gown.
Wesley reached into his pocket to give her some money to buy a coat, but he didn’t have enough money left.
And immediately he asked himself, “Will thy Master say, ‘Well done, good and faithful steward?’
Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money which might have screened this poor creature from the cold!...
…Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid?”
Perhaps as a result of this, John Wesley started to cut down on his expenses so he would have more money to give to the poor.
He continued to do this throughout his life.
One year Wesley’s income was 1,400 pounds.
He lived on 30 pounds and gave away the rest.
Wesley denied self by identifying with the needy.
He preached and believed that Christians should consider themselves members of the poor, whom God had given money to help.
So Wesley lived and ate with the poor.
In 1744, Wesley wrote, “[When I die] if I leave behind me ten pounds…you and all mankind [may] bear witness against me, that I have lived and died a thief and a robber.”
When he did die in 1791, the only money in Wesley’s will were the miscellaneous coins found in his pockets and dresser drawers.
It’s been said that the word “Cross” has been one of the most misused words in the whole vocabulary of Christianity.
We might think of some bad situation as a cross that we must bear.
People speak about sorrow or loss as a cross.
People even talk about their own shortcomings as a cross.
But the Cross for Jesus was His deliberate choice of giving His life as a ransom for all who will believe.
And taking up the Cross as a disciple of Jesus Christ means the deliberate choice of something that could be avoided, to take up a burden which we are under no compulsion to take up, except for the compulsion of God’s love in Christ.
It means the choice of giving ourselves to alleviate the burdens of others, and putting ourselves—without reservation—at the service of Jesus Christ for the sake of the coming of the Kingdom of God; putting ourselves in the struggle against injustice and evil no matter the cost.
And this is scandalous.
A certain journalist once wrote, “I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die.
For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.”
Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
In answer to His question they gave a number of names, none of which were on mark.
Then Jesus asked them, “And what about you?
Who do you say that I am?”
Our answer to that question and how we respond to it with our lives is…
…well, it’s what this life is all about.
Everything hinges on it.
