Psalm 116:1-9, Isaiah 50:4-9, James 2:14-26, Mark 8:27-38
There is a wonderful hymn by Isaac Watts, usually entitled “Alas, and did my savior bleed.” Those of us who were evangelized and nurtured by the Southern Baptists or those similar to them have probably heard is hundreds of times. What is not so well known is that the chorus to that hymn is not original with Watts, but was tacked on at a later time.
At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light
And the burden of my heart rolled away-
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day!
That last line often generates comment, and one of the most straightforward ones I’ve ever run across was penned by a Missouri pastor who posted these words to a popular blog for Christian leaders: “I cannot bear to sing the final line- "And now I am happy all the day-" … [That] chorus that was needlessly tacked onto the wonderful Watts hymn, "Alas and did my Savior Bleed?" I don’t know anyone who is happy all the day. We put those kind of people in institutions. [http://www.sharperiron.org/archive/index.php/t-2199.html].
I suspect this pastor’s opinion is pervasive. When I was a ten year old boy in the Vacation Bible School of First Baptist Church of Needles, California in the late 1950s, we sang that song a lot. And, even a ten year old boy knows enough to know that no one is ever happy all the day. Nor, for that matter, is he happy most days. And, yet, this version of Watt’s hymn is still around in many quarters. Why do you think it has survived?
I think one reason may be found in the gospel lesson for today, and that reason is seen in the answers to Jesus question to his disciples: “Who do men say that I am?”
The disciples offered several answers, no doubt gleaned from their contacts with the people who came to hear Jesus teach, or from those whom they met when Jesus sent them out to preach in the towns and villages. One of these ideas about Jesus’ identity was that Jesus is John the Baptist risen from the dead. Others thought Jesus was the prophet Elijah. After all, Elijah had not died at all – he was whisked away into heaven on a fiery chariot, and he was widely expected to return to the earth. Others identified Jesus with other Old Testament prophets, no doubt because Jesus’ teaching ministry was so similar to theirs – to rebuke sin and to call for repentance.
And, then, Jesus emphatically and bluntly asks them, “Who do you say that I am?” The question is addressed to the disciples as a group, and it suggests that Jesus views all these other opinions about his identity to be erroneous. Peter gives the answer, as he often does, as their leader, as their spokesman. “You are the Christ.”
Now here is an interesting thing. Mark first tells us that Jesus strictly forbade his disciples to tell anyone else what they had come to understand about him. The disciples are NOT supposed to spread it around that Jesus is the Messiah. Next, Mark tells us that at THIS point that Jesus BEGAN to teach them some things about himself that he had not taught them before.
31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke this word openly.
Is this weird, or what? Why does Jesus shut them up, on one hand, and then begin to teach them about his impending suffering, death, and resurrection?
The answer is not difficult to fathom. The people to whom Jesus spoke – including his own disciples – shared an idea that was off the mark. The disciples were expecting – sooner or later – for the religious leadership to wake up, to come to their senses, and to receive their Rabbi as the Messiah as they had come to do. And, after that, Jesus would be elevated to the throne of David and lead the Jews in throwing off the Roman yoke. And, then, all the Jews would be happy all the day.
But, … oooops. What Jesus tells them is quite different. The leaders of the nation will not accept him; instead they will reject him. Jesus won’t ascend to David’s throne; instead he will suffer and be killed and after three days rise again. You might think that last bit would have caught their attention, but clearly it did not.
And, Peter, the chief of the disciples, wasted no time in taking action to repair the damage. Mark tells us that he took Jesus aside. He didn’t ask him a question; he took stronger action than that. It would have been something like grabbing Jesus’ arm and pulling him away from the rest of the disciples, so that Peter could bring Jesus up to speed on how he was alarming and confusing the disciples. And, both Mark and Matthew say that Peter rebuked Jesus.
Well, of course, Jesus was having none of this, and he gave to Peter as much and more than Peter gave to him. Turning away from Peter, Jesus faced the other disciples. And, then and only then did Jesus rebuke Peter – while Peter was at his back, and Jesus was looking at the rest of the disciples. And, so, Jesus rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
What an awkward situation that must have created. I don’t think the disciples had much doubt about what Peter was doing, even if he did take Jesus aside. And, they certainly didn’t have any doubt at all about how Jesus received Peter’s rebuke. Peter’s rebuke of Christ was intended to be private, but Jesus’ rebuke in response was about as public as you can get! Indeed, what Christ does next ensures that NO ONE can possibly ignore what he is beginning to tell his disciples, because Jesus puts his message out there not only for his disciples but for everyone outside this Apostolic circle.
34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” There’s no shilly-shallying here. Not only is Christ going to suffer, but his disciples are called to do so as well, and their suffering is precisely because they have denied themselves and followed their leader.
What is the problem the disciples are having here? I think it is the same problem that the person had who stuck that silly line in the chorus of Isaac Watt’s hymn. Jesus is the Messiah, and so now they’re going to be happy all the day. Jesus’ warning could not be more clear: “… whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
But why would the disciples be ashamed of Jesus? Well, because they did not understand that the Messiah was going to be an offering for sin, that he was going to suffer at the hands of sinful men, that he was going to be killed, and THEN he would rise from the dead. If they disciples did NOT understand this, then they would be ashamed of Jesus when these things came to pass.
None of this was new, you know. It was foretold in the Old Testament. We find an example of this in the Old Testament lesson for today from Isaiah 50. This is one of the servant songs, prophecies of the coming Messiah, found in the latter chapters of Isaiah’s prophecy. Listen again to what the Servant of the Lord says in this passage:
5 The Lord GOD has opened My ear; and I was not rebellious, nor did I turn away. 6 I gave My back to those who struck Me, and My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting. 7 “ For the Lord GOD will help Me; therefore I will not be disgraced; therefore I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I will not be ashamed.”
I think Jesus had this very passage in mind when he warned his disciples not to be ashamed of him in the midst of the persecutions he would undergo.
And Jesus’ confidence that he would be vindicated is nothing new either. You find this very confidence in the words of the Psalm appointed for today: remember what we sang a short while ago? –
“The pains of death surrounded me, And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow.
Then I called upon the name of the LORD: O LORD, I implore You, deliver my soul!" … Return to your rest, O my soul, For the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. For You have delivered my soul from death, My eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.”
The principle we see here – a spiritual principle one may see throughout the Old Testament, one that you can see in the life of our Savior, the very principle which he is urging upon his disciples at this point – that principle is found in the New Testament. In Acts 14, after Paul is stoned until they thought he was dead, Luke records this in verse 21ff: When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, 22strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Recalling his persecutions at the end of his life, as Paul was writing to his disciple Timothy, he penned these words in 2 Timothy chapter 2:
10You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra--which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.”
Please note that Paul did not say that the LORD kept me away from all these persecutions. No, rather Paul endured the persecutions, and the LORD rescued him out of them. And so, Paul continues, …
12Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
This is why Jesus said to his disciples that if any of them would follow him, they should take up their CROSS and follow him.
There are two problems that arise from this teaching by Jesus and by his apostles. One problem comes to those who are in Christ’s church as we are this morning – living our lives in relative peace and quiet. No one is outside the doors with stones, waiting to pound us into mush. The danger we face is to discount or to simply ignore this theme in the New Testament. Whether we sing “Now I am happy all the day” or not, these ideas in the New Testament will seem more than a little unreal to us.
When we are tempted to think that this stuff about suffering as we enter the Kingdom of God – that it is mostly irrelevant to us, I’d ask you to consider two things:
Christians are suffering the modern equivalent of stoning and worse somewhere in the world today, most often in Africa in the face of Islamic persecutors. I will say now that I am ashamed of Pope Benedict, who seems today to be wallowing in apologies for upsetting those people who are guilty of the very thing he said they were guilty of – seeking to impose their religious faith by the point of a sword. Make no mistake about this, Christians – the Christian faith is the faith that is shown to be what it is by facing the point of a sword. And, Christians today are dying at the point of swords wielded by the cruel hands of Islamic jihadists. If that sword is not pointed at you this morning, it is pointed at your brothers and sisters in Christ in Africa, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in parts of India. Pray for them. Pray for them as Jesus prayed for his disciples, that their faith fail not.
But, closer to home, even if a sword or a stone does not have our name written on it, there is still hardship and suffering to be endured in our own personal battles against sin that so easily besets each one of us. After reviewing the heroes of the faith in chapter 11, the author of Hebrews, no doubt in light of their sufferings, wrote this:
3Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
Why would we grow weary or faint hearted? Well, in context, it would be in the face of suffering. And whence comes that suffering? The author of Hebrews tells us in the very next verse:
4In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
Here the Scripture puts on the same plane suffering that comes from persecution for the gospel’s sake, and suffering that comes from struggling against our own personal sin. One source of suffering comes from without, the other from within.
It is critical for our spiritual success that we endure suffering from both sources. And, so the author of Hebrews says this: “ 12Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. 14Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Today’s churches are full of the values of the world, appealing to people the way Madison Avenue appeals to them. “This will make you happy!” or “You’ll really like this!” is how they pitch the gospel. And, as far as it goes, such a message is accurate IF AND ONLY IF you get ALL the message that Jesus preached. Jesus’ message to his disciples is NOT a message of happy-clappy, cheesy good-times for everyone. It is a message of victory, and that victory is over death. And that message is meaningful and helpful ONLY for those who understand that they are going to die, and whose hope is on One who overcame death and the grave, and everything that leads up to it.
God grant that we may not fear this world, or anything in it. Jesus has overcome this world. Though we die in this world, or though we die to our sinful habits and lusts, because we are following Christ, Christ died in this world as well and rose from the dead. And because we are His, and His Spirit dwells in us, so also will we will overcome death and share his kingdom when he comes in judgment with the holy angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
