Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Paul Kolbet, February 25th, 2024

At one point in his happy ministry, Jesus began to teach his disciples that he would go to Jerusalem, was to suffer greatly, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and then be killed, and after three days, rise again. Peter, the leader of Jesus’ twelve disciples, takes Jesus aside and explains to his friend that this suffering thing is better avoided. It certainly isn’t something you go looking for. And it tends to find you anyway. He says, “Jesus, let’s not go looking for suffering and death, and maybe, instead, let’s try to fend it off as long as possible, we could save some money, get comfortable, be happy, and try to live as long as we can? In fact, Jesus, looking at the growing crowds that you are drawing, you need to think about some self-protection. We are fisherman, but we know some guys down at the docks that could help you out with that.” Sounds like the voice of a friend, right? Maybe the world would have been so much better if Jesus didn’t suffer, didn’t die at thirty-three years old? Oh, the things he might have been able to teach and do if only he had lived! Perhaps we would still have Christianity, but without that ugly cross and all the suffering.

Jesus did not hear Peter’s well intentioned admonition as having anything good about it at all. Instead, he rebukes Peter harshly saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mark 8:33). What Jesus means is, “ I recognize that voice, it’s the satanic voice of temptation I heard in the desert before I began my ministry, the one that called me to turn stones to bread.”

It is easier to understand Peter here than Jesus. It is easy to imagine a seemingly better world than the one we live in, a world without suffering, without viruses, without death, without the danger, without the fear, without the sickness, without the pain, without the struggle. As the world is, it can all seem like too much. And it can all seem so unfair in so many ways. Don’t we all have our grievances against the world? Peter at least is warned ahead of time of what is in his future. That’s not how it usually works. You all have likely had the much more common experience of being pushed through some metaphorical door that you did not even know was there, but by the time you realize what happened, there is no going back. Things happen to us apart from our own choosing. We, like Peter, have reason to complain.

Jesus, however, turns to us and says, “I must suffer and die.” And with Peter, we say, “No you don’t have to Jesus.” And Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan!” Peter and Jesus argue because they most likely disagree about what life is all about. How are we to understand Jesus’s point of view? What does he mean by telling Peter that his error has to do with “setting his mind not on divine things but on human things”? Is he not supposed to worry about the human things as a human being? Have you ever tried to explain to your dog that its problem is that it is looking at the world too much like a dog? “Dog, what you need is to see the world from a human perspective, so, for example, you need a bath or you need to go to the vet.” That may be absolutely right, but it is not that convincing to a dog. Faced with suffering, Peter struggles to understand. And we do, too, with our minds set “not on divine things but on human things” (Mark 8:33). 

To answer this hard question, it is best to turn to that formative story we read in Genesis about Abraham (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16), a story Jesus would have known word for word from childhood, as a story of his own ancestor. It is a remarkable story of suffering, pain, and humanity. When we meet Abraham, he has spent his life wandering with no land to call his own and his wife Sarah for years has been unable to bear a child. The only thing they have is a promise from God that one day they will have a land to call their own and descendants who live in that land. The remarkable thing is that Abraham and Sarah cling to this promise when they have nothing else to cling to, when all else is suffering.

 St. Paul reflects upon this story in the passage we read from his letter to the Romans. Paul says, “Hoping against hope, Abraham believed…. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead… or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he promised…. Therefore, his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:13-25). His faith, his capacity to hope against hope, was his righteousness. And here is the key point for Paul, for why Paul thinks this story explains so much about Jesus and life. Paul wants us to notice that Abraham didn’t do anything to make the promise happen other than believe it and live that belief out. He never conquered land or infertility. The value and meaning of his life was not based on these sort of victories. What he discovered was in Paul’s words “that the promise” [he received] was about “grace.” Abraham’s suffering took many things from him. It is a story of loss. But that suffering never robbed him of the faith and hope and grace that was the meaning of his life. And that is a remarkable thing. That is what made Abraham Abraham. The sort of thing that Peter probably wished he had when he told his friend Jesus, “Don’t go to Jerusalem Jesus, don’t suffer, don’t die!”

Jesus says to Peter, the rest of the disciples, and the gathering crowds, “If any want to become my followers, let them … take up their cross and follow me.” Whatever this means, the avoidance of pain and suffering is not the priority here. And that can seem really puzzling because all of us fail to avoid pain and suffering even though we sure try hard to avoid what we can’t avoid. I’m sure seeing the puzzled expression on the face of his friends, he tried to explain saying, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” Does that help? Clear things up, did he? Maybe this will help.

Has there ever been anything that was really precious to you in this world, so precious that you could not bear anything bad to happen to it? When I bought my very first new car, myself with my own hard-earned money, not a used car, but really new, where I was its first driver, I remember how proud I was at the dealer with my shiny new car without a scratch on it. It made me anxious even to park it because just about anybody could open their door into it and scratch it. I drove it anyway and within a week some inattentive driver rear-ended me just enough to punch a four inch wide hole in the rear bumper and scratch the rest of it up. I was upset because I thought it was so unfair that my new car would only be totally new for just a few days. I regretted ever driving it off the car lot. It took me a good deal of time to realize that the most important thing to do with a car is to drive it. By doing so, it will, for sure, take some hits along the way. The damage shows. I never fixed that hole in the bumper as more and more scratches and dents appeared. But that sort of losing is what gaining looks like and all the attempts to not lose is what losing looks like. All of that will hurt. Sometimes hurt a lot. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Mark 8:35).

We are not cars, and there are many things more important than they are, but the point is to live and to live to the fullest. It is hard to know what is and is not fair. What is clearer is whether or not you are living or not. Abraham’s faith didn’t save him from the pain. It may, in fact, have exposed him to more of it rather than less because it took him so much farther in life. He loved more and grieved more because, hoping against hope, he kept going and living. Having called his disciples, fed the hungry, healed the sick, visited prisoners, taught the crowds, Jesus says to his friends, be ready because here comes suffering, betrayal, rejection, death. He’s not saying that any of that pain is good, but that he is not going to lose his life by avoiding it when it becomes hard. He will instead take up his cross and gain his life while losing it and instructs his followers to do the same, full of faith, hope, and grace. Would Christianity be better if Jesus had listened to Peter, avoided the cross, and made a nice life for himself in Nazareth? That would have been a safer, longer, more secure life but that Christianity without suffering and the cross would have been a faith unworthy of the faith of Abraham and never had the power to lead us generation after generation wherever life may lead, no matter how horrible, or wonderful, it may be.

Jesus asks, “What will it profit those who gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” Jesus was free to take up his cross for us because the thing that really matters, more so than what we may or may not have suffered, more than what we may or may not have lost or gained, more than what is fair or unfair, is who we become in the process. One way or another this life never fails to expose who we truly are. And this ‘who we become’ matters to our Creator far more than the length or our days or our creaturely comforts. Like Peter we protest, we rail at whoever may have made this unfair and dangerous world we live in, but chances are, if we can listen to more than our own voice of protest, we also, like Peter, will hear “you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things!” God may not be wrong to value who we are more than what happens to us. We, too, faced with the challenges of life, argue about what life is all about and we, too, are challenged to value ‘who we become’ more than we often do.

To set our minds with Jesus upon divine things is to, in spite of all, to hope against hope, to grow strong in faith, and to give glory to God. That sort of faith, which breathes of life and love, come what may, isn’t only about believing in God, but also about finding oneself believed in by God. As hard as it is to hear his invitation to take up your cross and follow him, and meet him not only in the joys but also in the sadness, not only in the happiness but also in the grief, not only in health, but also in sickness, not only in the abundance, but also in scarcity, know that he is the one in whom dwells the entire fullness of life, and he is the one who said, those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it.

Let us pray, Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may discover the fullness of your love in every area of our lives; for the honor of your Name. Amen