He Spoke Plainly
Lent 2003

Week of March 17, 2003

Lectionary Texts

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:23-31
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38

In his book The Ragamuffin Gospel Brennan Manning describes what he calls a myth that flourishes today in many of our churches, the suggestion that Christian discipleship consists of one rousing victory after another. This myth, he thinks, has done many a believer “incalculable harm” because it misrepresents the way Christian life is really lived. The myth goes something like this:

Once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, an irreversible, sinless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness (31).

We know from personal experience that this is not true, but for many Christians it remains the standard, goal or expectation for which we wrongly hope. Thank God for Lent, and for the Gospel text this week from Mark, which shows another way. Lent reminds us that the road to Easter resurrection zig zags through the valley of the shadow of death.

So it was in the life of Jesus. At one point in his ministry He began to predict his death, much to the shock of his disciples who longed for a victorious savior who would vanquish the Romans. In the Gospel text for this week we read that Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31, NIV). Yes, He would rise again, but not before suffering, rejection and death. The disciples, who so often in the Gospels misunderstood Jesus and were afraid to ask Him questions, got the message loud and clear, for Jesus “spoke plainly about this.” So plainly, that Peter, who a few verses earlier had just made his magnificent confession that Jesus was the Christ, rebuked Jesus. “This can never happen to you,” he objected. In perhaps the sharpest rebuke in all of the Gospels Jesus characterizes Peter’s agenda as satanic. No, for Jesus the road to Easter resurrection passed through suffering, rejection and death.

Then came the second shock, that the same would prove true for all those who wanted to follow Jesus and be part of his kingdom. After predicting his own suffering, rejection, and death to the disciples, he turned to the crowd and spoke similar words: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). God’s grace is free but it is not cheap, for it asks for everything. This is a high price to pay, Jesus admits, but the risk-reward logic is powerfully telling: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36-37).

There is a remarkably parallel incident to this Gospel passage in the life of Paul. Luke writes that Paul was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem by the day of Pentecost. When their ship landed for a short stay at Caesarea, a prophet named Agabus warned that the Holy Spirit had told him that if Paul went to Jerusalem, he would be bound and handed over to the Gentile authorities. Much as Peter rebuked Jesus who had predicted His own sufferings, Paul’s companions begged him not to go to Jerusalem. His rejoinder is instructive: “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:8-12). About a week after they landed in Jerusalem Paul was arrested, the first step toward his eventual martyrdom in Rome.

Paul’s entire life after his conversion is a challenging model of Jesus’s injunction to self-denial and cross-bearing. When the Corinthians demanded that he offer proof of his apostolic authority, he resorted to biting irony. “You want proof,” Paul asked? “Then I will give it to you. I have suffered more hardship, suffering, weakness, persecution, conflict, beatings, imprisonments, sleep depravity, hunger, hard work, lashings, and shipwrecks than anyone else.” Three times he then tells the Corinthians, “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness” (2 Corinthians 11:30; 12:5, 9). Even his one moment of glory, when he seems to have been caught up into heaven, was balanced by a “thorn in the flesh.” Paul boasts about his weaknesses, he says, because it is in those weaknesses that he most experiences the grace, love and power of God.¹

Jesus says that bearing your cross is a necessary part of discipleship. What does that mean? It is understandable that the world promotes self-indulgence over self denial, but oddly enough sometimes the church does too. Martin Luther made a very helpful distinction when he contrasted what he called a “theology of glory” (theologia gloriae) with a “theology of the cross” (theologia crucis). The former is a sort of triumphalistic posture which seeks to know God only or especially through His mighty acts of power, victory, miracle, and glory. If you pick up almost any popular Christian magazine you will find many examples. The best selling book The Prayer of Jabez, for example, promises you “a front row seat in a life of miracles.” It’s true that we read about God’s mighty acts of power in both the Old and New Testaments, but it was Luther’s great contribution to remind us that beyond all His mighty acts of power, God’s ultimate act of love and self-revelation was through suffering on a cross. A “theology of the cross,” then, acknowledges this and affirms that we come to know the Father’s love not so much through outrageous miracles or startling outbursts of power, but through times of suffering, testing, trials, and human weakness.

The language of Jesus has even passed over into our modern lexicon, often times used as a sort of joke, when we tease about having to “bear our cross.” But surely Jesus meant to tell us something essential rather than trivial about his kingdom. Luke put it this way, after describing an incident when Paul was stoned and left for dead outside the city of Lystra: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:25). Language like this is almost impossible to understand for many western believers, but for the first three hundred years of the church it was the status quo. Lent reminds us that Eastern resurrection victory over sin, death and the devil is certain and on the way, but the way that Jesus took passes through the via dolorossa.

¹ The three key passages here are in 2 Corinthians 4:7-12; 6:3-10; and 11:1 to 12:10.