After our summer of jumping through the Hebrew Scriptures with the stories of women in our Old Testament and the section of the Bible we call the minor prophets, we have returned to the Gospels and will center most of our learnings until Advent in five chapters of the Gospel of Mark. Although Mark is full of stories of Jesus’ healings and miracles, this morning’s passage, found in the middle of the Gospel, is a lesson in who Jesus is and what it means to be his follower. Listen now to the lesson of discipleship told in Mark 8:27-38.
27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”[a] 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,[b] will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words[c] in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Google Searches….. I bet each of us has looked up a person we want to know more about on Google to get the scoop on them. I have Googled old boyfriends, people from my past and those I have just met to find out what is on the internet about them. Come on…. don’t be shocked….. we all have done it….. I remember when my mother asked me about someone and I told her to do a google search. The next day, she thanked me, like I had given her the keys to some magical place and she said she spent the entire day looking up people about whom she wanted to know more. But, have you ever Googled yourself? That is a really humbling thing. The internet knows no cut off point as far as the knowledge it keeps. Bo and I have been married 35 years and you still can find my marriage announcement as well as the engagement announcement to another man that ran two years before. The internet keeps the dirt on us all.
I thought about Google searches when I read this morning’s Gospel lesson. Jesus is traveling with his followers and turns to his disciples and says, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ It is an interesting question. In today’s world this would be like doing an internet search on what is in cyber space on him. Possibly Jesus wants to hear if his message is being heard…. Maybe he wants feedback as to whether his message and ministry is taking root in people’s hearts. Perhaps he wants…. who knows…. a job review?!?!?! Whatever the motives, his disciples quickly prove that their ears are to the ground and they know what people are saying and to whom Jesus is being compared. They answer and then Jesus, in a true Socratic method, turns the question to them and asks who they, his closest associates, say that he is.
And we all know that people know us in different ways as well. There are the people from outside our close circles who know us by our looks, our careers, our family makeup, and then there are those who know us well. Those people are our inner circle, who are privy to our thoughts, desires, and sometimes the things we don’t want others to know.
And Peter, probably his closest and most bold disciple, said he was the Messiah. Peter hits the bull’s eye with his response and says what is the foundation for our faith as Christians. And Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone. But as with most of the disciples declarations, their statements become the beginning of the conversation and the lesson Jesus wanted to give.
And then what he says, at first, does not seem like quite a clean story line. One commentator describes this as a weird juxtaposition. Peter states a confession of faith and Jesus responds with ominous words of pain, rejection, and denial. But, what follows is actually the meat of the story…. he states in a new way what he tells his disciples over and over. Following Jesus has consequences. And, Jesus presents them with a big bit of theology, intended to inspire them to become large hearted people.
Jesus shares lessons about what it means to be a true disciple…. to explain what is the nature of this vocation is and we, centuries later, who call ourselves followers of Jesus have that same vocation.
First, Jesus poses a counter cultural understanding of divine power. He talks about a God who suffers. Jesus teaches us that our God is relational God who enters into the world and loves. Alfred North Whitehead, the father of process philosophy, described God as the fellow sufferer with us who understands. A few decades after Whitehead, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that only a suffering God can help us. These quotes and Jesus’ depiction of a suffering Messiah counter the cultures images of an all-powerful and all-judging God. They challenge images of a God who remains distant and apathetic to our lives and is untouched to the pain of the world.
After Jesus describes this suffering deity, he teaches that discipleship also is relational and sacrificial. We cannot be disciples and be untouched by the world, because we become the God we believe in as God’s disciples.
Jesus talks about losing one’s life to gain life. We cannot be unilateral but must become relational in how we live. If we followed a unilateral God, we would prioritize creeds over relationships and would marginalize anyone who is different than they are. When we following a relational God, we do not focus on the individual success but to live big spirited and relational, embracing and caring for all of God’s creation.
Jesus calls disciples to move from attitudes of selfishness to generosity, from fear to love, from hatred, to compassion, and from the narrowness of self-righteousness to the wideness of mercy. This call to discipleship is a change of habits, assumptions, and actions.
Jesus asked his disciples what it is they thought he was. Peter said that he was the Messiah. We are asked as people of faith to say who it is we follow as well. Do you follow a God who created a beautiful world and told us to be its stewards? As a church, we do. Do you follow a God who loves all people unconditionally? As a church, it is at the center of our mission. Do you believe in a God who calls for justice and righteousness for all people? Our call with social justice is at the center of the DNA of this church. We become the God we believe in.
Perhaps the lesson in our scripture passage for today is to live so that others know we are a follower of Jesus’ life and teachings. We should live so that others see our commitment to the ethics of radical love taught to us in the Gospels and of an uncompromising commitment to justice and equality seen in our Hebrew Scriptures. What if we actually had the nerve, like Jesus, to ask others what they thought of us? It is a pretty scary humbling thing to allow others to judge you and to let them speak truthfully about what they think of you. Will you be seen as loving? Will I be seen as kind? What does that Google search of our lives say about us? Our challenge is to live so that each of us can stroll with our friends and ask, with confidence, what others are saying about us. And when they do, our goal is to know we have lived the life to which we are called. To live directed by an ethic of unconditional love. That is our goal. That is discipleship here at this church. That is truly the life and ministry to which God calls us and by which we all should want to be identified. Amen.
