February 28, 2021
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Mark 8:31-38
The Lost and Found
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Most public places have a lost and found. Schools, churches, grocery stores, bus stations. Somewhere they have a box stowed with random things: the orphaned mitten, the lonely earring, the sad teddy bear waiting for its child to return. Lost items of greater value are placed in a more secure place. The billfold left on the counter, the ring absently left beside the sink, these get placed in a locked drawer.
Jesus says today that we might lose something even more significant than a billfold full of cash. We can lose our soul. Where do they go, lost souls? Sometimes we’ll say that about a person. “He’s a lost soul.” Where is the lost and found for lost souls?
Jesus announces to his disciples that his ministry is just about to shift gears. He’s moving from the Galilee region and headed for Jerusalem. He has an appointment with the chief priests and elders. Peter had understood Jesus to be the long-promised Messiah of Israel. Jesus was the anointed heir of his ancestor, King David. If Jesus is Jerusalem-bound, then he’s headed for his throne as the king of Israel.
In Peter’s eyes, Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem would lead to his ascension as king. But Jesus says otherwise. When he gets there, Jesus says he’ll be rejected by the Jewish leadership. He’s going to be killed and put in a grave. And then in three days, he’ll rise to new life.
Peter couldn’t hear it. Jesus was headed for his throne, not to a grave! Peter says, “God forbid, Lord! Don’t talk like that!”
Jesus responds with a shocking reply. His words couldn’t be more extreme: “Get behind me, Satan!”
Peter’s expectations for the Messiah aren’t aligned with Jesus’ plan. Jesus presents a radically new vision of the Messiah. He doesn’t come for glory and power. This Messiah has come to suffer and die for the sake of the world. He’s come to take up his cross.
Peter’s brand of thinking is still alive and well today in Christianity. It’s called a Theology of Glory. In a Theology of Glory, things are getting brighter and rosier. Believe in God, and you’ll be blessed! God takes delight in a believer. Good things come to God’s faithful believers: health, financial blessings, a happy family. The more we align our lives to God’s purpose, the more divine blessings will shower upon us! Faith leads to our success.
But this Theology of Glory is contrasted by a Theology of the Cross. In a Theology of the Cross, God’s connection to this world isn’t a ten-step Bible study to a better life. It finds its fulfillment in the cross.
To a mind set on glory, like Peter’s, the cross is foolishness. But Jesus points to a higher wisdom. The cross is going to be the vehicle through which we understand the love of God. God’s love will be made manifest not through strength, but in weakness. As Jesus meets his destiny on his cross, there we see the tremendous lengths God has taken to redeem and save a fallen and lost humanity. Salvation is in the cross. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
When we are at our weakest, when we have absolutely nothing we can offer up to our own credit, then and only then will we have eyes to see all that Christ has taken on for us. It’s a love that will go anywhere and do anything – indeed, a love that DID go everywhere and DID accomplish everything – for our sake! This love is made perfect in its weakness.
Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me!” Peter wants to take Jesus by the hand and lead him in a different direction. But you can’t FOLLOW Jesus if you want only to LEAD him. To follow Jesus, you have to get behind him. You have to go where he goes.
There was a certain Wisconsin family who lived on a dairy farm. It was winter, and about five inches of fresh snow had fallen overnight. In the morning, the father and his 10-year-old son took off to lead their herd to the barn to be milked. The cows had spent the night in a field.
That morning, the father and son both put on their galoshes. They headed out to the field where the cows were located. The father led the way. He crossed the farm yard and headed for the meadow.
His son walked directly behind his father. He was careful to place his feet inside the footprints his father had just created in the snow. After the two of them had crossed the yard and arrived at the meadow gate, there was only one set of footprints to be seen.
This is what the Christian life is like. To follow Jesus is to follow his example. We align our footsteps to follow Jesus’ direction. And Jesus’ footsteps led him to his cross.
Jesus addresses Peter and the crowd around him. “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Following in Jesus’ footsteps will lead us to our own cross.
There’s a frequent misunderstanding about bearing crosses. When some kind of suffering or misfortune befalls an individual, somebody might say, “Well, that’s your cross to bear.” A cross is associated with any kind of adversity that comes your way. Did you get diagnosed with MS? Did you lose your job because your position was eliminated? Do you suffer from allergies every spring?
These things are certainly unfortunate, but they are not crosses. They’re suffering, plain and simple. They’re hardship. But they’re not crosses because they’re missing something critical to a cross.
Jesus made a decision about his cross. He chose to pursue it. He intentionally walked the road to Golgotha for our sake. Jesus took up his cross, he took on this suffering for the sake of others. He took on this pain, this agony, this death so that he could bring healing and life to humankind.
A cross is a hardship that we take on for the sake of another. When parents stay up through the night with a sick child, they are bearing a cross. When we take on the stresses of our job so that our organization can fulfill its purpose, that is bearing a cross. When a teacher patiently explains long division to a student for the ninth time, they are carrying their cross. In short, bearing a cross is acts of service for the sake of our neighbor.
These days, we have no finer example of cross bearing than the dedicated healthcare workers who are ministering to the sick in this pandemic. They’ve undertaken tremendous hardship and personal agony. They take care of the sick in ICU’s. And when patients reach the end of their lives, these selfless workers are often the only human contact the dying have as they take their final breaths. Our healthcare workers shoulder a huge burden of grief from accompanying so many to their ends. Some of those people are members of our own parish. If this is you, then I say, thank you. Thank you for taking up your cross.
Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
It’s in giving ourselves away that we discover our true self. This is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, “Those who lose their life for my sake and the gospel will save it.”
When we’re swept up in compassion for our neighbor, we lose ourselves. At that moment, our focus is on them and their welfare. We cease thinking about ourselves. What we think about, what we care about, is the person or creature before us. But in that same moment, we discover a new self. It’s an identity greater than just our individual self. We find our new self – our real self – in purpose, beside of our neighbor.
The lost and found. The cross is the location of our lost and found. In taking up our own cross, in losing our lives for the sake of our neighbor, we find our true self. And in Christ’s cross, our soul is found, never to be lost again.
