21 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Matthew 16:21-28 (Year A August 28-September 3) consider the importance of the cross in Christian discipleship. After every reference to his approaching death, Jesus begins a new lesson on discipleship. The Synoptic Gospel story divides the ministry of Jesus into two stages, one in Galilee, and one on a journey toward Jerusalem.
16:21-23 First Prediction of the Passion
Matt 16:21-23 (Mark 8:31-33, Luke 9:22) is the first prediction of the passion. It is a post-Easter statement of the faith of the early church regarding the end of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It reflects a summary of the core beliefs of the early church. The moment of the confession by Peter that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God in the previous passage becomes the hinge moment. The Rabbi Jesus shows, not teaches, that there is a divine necessity upon his life. Both "show" and "must" are terms frequently emphasized in apocalyptic writings. A sequence of events is about to unfold whose outcome is part of the divine plan‑‑not the choice of Jesus. In this case, the sequence of events conforms in details to what we know will happen as Jesus approaches his violent end: the movement Jesus describes (Mark 8:31 Son of Man) toward Jerusalem and the undergoing of great suffering there through the actions of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, but God affirming his life and ministry by raising (ἐγερθῆναι) him from the dead on the third day, the resurrection vindicating the suffering of the faithful, as in Dan 12:1-3, II Macc 7. Such a statement conforms to the kerygma as identified by Paul in I Cor 15:3-4, which also must have been the formula known in the early church.[1] Jesus expected his suffering and violent death and announced it to his disciples. There can be little doubt of this.[2] The disciples have just affirmed their faith in Jesus, but Jesus discloses that in addition to being the Christ, he is also the suffering servant.
Paul in I Cor 15:3-4 wrote a summary of the core beliefs he received, undoubtedly soon after his conversion, which would have been about three years after the death of Jesus. It contains a summary that relates the death of Christ for our sins “in accordance with the scripture,” and of God raising him to life “in accordance with the scripture.” Luke uses similar terms. In Acts 2:23-24, Jesus the Nazarene received death through the power of the Jewish leaders and the foreknowledge of God, crucifying him through Gentile powers, but God raising him to life, freeing him from Hades, for Hades did not have the power to hold him. In Acts 3:15, Peter again says that they killed the prince of life, but God raised him from the dead. In Acts 3:18, God said through the prophets that the Christ would suffer. In Acts 13:27-31, Paul relates that the people of Jerusalem and their rulers fulfilled the prophets. Jesus was innocent, but they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him put to death. They carried out scripture foretold. Then, they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead. He appeared to his companions, and they became witnesses. We can see that the early tradition behind the passion story recognizes the divine necessity of the innocent suffering and death of Jesus in fulfillment of the prophetic testimonies of scripture. We can contrast this early tradition with later theological interpretations that give the death of Jesus an expiatory significance.[3] However, this view of the death of Jesus corresponds well with Galatians 5:2, which says that Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. The crucifixion is not so much the goal of his message and ministry as the result of his faithfulness to his prophetic call.[4] However, some scholars believe Jesus concluded that the Son of Man and Messiah must suffer. Thus, although Mark (and Matthew accepting it) has framed the prophecy that reflect post-Easter faith, there is no reason to think Jesus could not have thought creatively about his own fate, considering the prophets, the death of John, and the hostility of Jewish leaders. Jesus may have surmised his fate, but the details may come from the early preaching of the church. Under this view, Jesus prepared the disciples with the concept of Messianic suffering and later exaltation. This would mean that Jesus made the unique combination of the Isaiah 53 passage with the apocalyptic hope regarding the Son of Man. In this view, the Son of Man, even as Isaiah 53 points to the later victory of the suffering servant, would find God exalting him.
Returning to the text, Jesus speaks of the approaching suffering plainly and openly. Jesus presents the passion as a cold and difficult fact. This is a private revelation to the disciples. This lesson of Jesus is one that flies in the face of conventional concepts of success and gain, of winning and losing. Thus, Peter steps out of his tenuous identity as a disciple and rebukes his rabbi. He may have wanted to protect Jesus from pain or to keep Jesus focused upon being a prophet, teacher, and healer. The popular mindset was the arrival of the Jewish Messiah was to herald the defeat of Israel's enemies, the victory of God's chosen people over all their oppressors. The Messiah was to be a powerful figure with a military answer to Israel's problems. The Messiah was not to be an unarmed teacher killed in the most shameful, humiliating form of execution the Romans had at their disposal. It seems hardly surprising that Peter takes exception to the scenario Jesus outlines. So soon after expressing his insight into who Jesus is, Jesus deflates his expectations by referring to a demeaning path toward death. In verse 23, Jesus responds strongly: Get behind me, Satan! The one who is to protect the followers of Jesus from the powers of the underworld has become the one doing its bidding. Satan confronts Jesus in Peter. You are a hindrance (σκάνδαλον) to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. The recent recipient of divine revelation has become consumed with human thoughts opposed to divine revelation.[5] The temptation Jesus experienced in the wilderness after his baptism has returned in the person of Peter. What is human is opposed to the divinely appointed path to salvation.[6] He urges Peter to accept his proper role as a disciple and get out of the way of the plan of God, referring to Peter in this moment as Satan, as if some temptation he experienced in the wilderness (Matt 4) is coming back through Peter. The text reinforces this by saying that Peter is becoming an obstacle to him, setting his mind on human things rather than divine things. Peter has focused upon what is finite and temporal when eternal matters are at stake. The temptation is always present to think in an ill-informed and earthly way, the way human beings usually think of things, rather than think from the perspective of eternity. The point is that what the early church expressed in its kerygma, its core teaching regarding Jesus, was a movement of divine necessity. The temptation to trust the way human beings usually think, focusing upon the power equation of economics, the political order, or domination through violence, is always present. For most of us, the temptation is through soft forms of devotion to a political ideology to which we find ourselves drawn. We might do so for what we have convinced ourselves is the best of reasons, but it is always a trust in human things rather than the divine movement through Jesus.
16:24-28 Sayings on Discipleship
Matthew 16:24-26 (10:38-39) Mark 8:34-37, Luke 9:23-25, 14:27, 17:33) contains sayings on discipleship. The fate of Jesus will have implications for those who follow Jesus. They have to do with loyalty and fidelity by the followers of Jesus when faced with circumstances that call for courage and sacrifice. We learn some hard lessons about discipleship here. Yes, salvation is free and a gift. Yet, discipleship will cost you your life.[7] At this point, it becomes quite clear that theology is necessary to make preaching as hard for the preacher as it must be.[8] I will not try to soften the blow. Instead, I will try to make the point as sharp as I can.
In Matt 16: 24-26, Jesus offers discipleship advice for his followers to carry with them on this journey to Jerusalem. Having spoken to the disciples about his identity, he will now show them their identity as disciples and the cost of following him. This instruction occurs while they are on the way to Jerusalem. They are on the way to the cross. This road is one that every group of disciples in every generation must walk.[9] Let us remember that Jesus called the disciples, saying, “Follow me.” Jesus will now articulate some of the harsh realities that define a discipleship that has the cross in its sights.
In Matt 16: 24 (Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23; Matt 10:38, Luke 14:27) If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.[10]
The first condition of following Jesus is to deny the self. To deny self, which received its definition from the family group with which one identified, would have been to give up your world as you knew it, to give up that which defined you. It also meant that your identity, which is always forming in a human life, receives its definition by your relationship to Jesus and the company of persons whom you join in following Jesus. We must renounce, withdraw, and annul our natural primary loyalty to self, leave the self constituted by yesterday and the person we had become, give up our previous form of existence, and step into the open, into the freedom that a moment can bring in following Jesus, regardless of the cost.[11]
The second condition was to take up the cross, a familiar form of public execution by the Romans, designed to keep conquered people submissive. The pain, brutality, and degradation of a death by crucifixion ‑‑ including the spirit‑stripping practice of making the condemned "take up his cross" on this final death march to the execution site ‑‑ was a torture reserved for only the most despised of state criminals. Jesus envisions a point in time, the beginning of the way to execution when the victim takes the patibulum on his shoulder and goes from the judgment hall into the street to face the ridicule of the mob, making the person end life as an outcast, the helpless object of contempt and mockery. To agree to follow Jesus means to venture on a life that is as hard as the last walk of a condemned to death. This applies to all who follow him. Discipleship involves the readiness to tread the lonely road and to bear the hatred of the people.[12] Yet this is the very image Jesus chooses to represent as the fate of his most devoted disciples. This means that each disciple has a cross to take up, rather than to fear, hate, avoid, evade, or escape the affliction that falls on the disciple. Discipleship becomes a matter of each Christian carrying one’s own cross, suffering one’s own affliction, bearing the definite limitation of death that in one form or another falls on one’s own existence.[13] Paul said he died every day (I Corinthians 15:30). Jesus is already suggesting that to follow him means co-crucifixion, a theme we find in Paul as he refers to his own crucifixion so that his life is a matter of Christ living in and through him (Galatians 2:19-20). The focus is on discipleship as identification with the destiny of Jesus. Thus, it pulls individuals even further away from the safety of a self that the kinship group defines. To take up my cross is to renounce the representation of God as the locus of absolute knowledge, the guarantee of all my knowledge. It is to accept knowing just one thing about God, that God was present in and is to be identified with Jesus crucified. God took up the cross. To take up the cross of Jesus will have a different reorienting effect depending upon our setting. For the one who is part of a community of knowledge, it means not to over-evaluate my knowledge, caught up as it is in questions of proof and guarantees, before this necessity, a higher than any logical necessity. For all the power God has, God only gives Christians the sign of divine weakness, which is the sign of the love of God. to allow oneself to be helped by the weakness of this love is, for the question of making sense of my faith, to accept that God can be thought of only by means of the symbol of the Suffering servant and by the incarnation of this symbol in the eminently contingent event of the cross of Jesus.[14]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said in his Cost of Discipleship, that when Christ calls us, he bids us to come to him and die. Thomas à Kempis wrote,
In the Cross is salvation;
in the Cross is life;
in the Cross is protection against our enemies;
in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness;
in the Cross is strength of mind;
in the Cross is joy of spirit;
in the Cross is excellence of virtue;
in the Cross is perfection of holiness.
There is no salvation of soul,
nor hope of eternal life,
save in the Cross. (The Inner Life)
"If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you"
(The Imitation of Christ, 2.12.5).
C.S. Lewis wrote (The Four Loves) that if you would love you would suffer. We cannot even love a dog without at one point or another feeling the pain of loss, assuming we outlive the dog. The greatest of all things-love-is itself most intimately bound with suffering. It is a poignant irony, I think. In our attempt to avoid suffering, we cut ourselves off from the one thing that can mitigate it: each other. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain. When we know that the way of love, this exodus, this going out of oneself, is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others and becomes more human. People who have consistently avoided suffering do not understand other people. They become hard and selfish. We have no literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy. We have only moral answers. Yes, in the face of suffering at the hands of other human beings we may despair. Yet, hope also comes from other human beings.[15]
The third condition is to follow Jesus. Peter must be the first to do this, but the way of the cross is for the multitudes through all generations and cultures. We dare not separate Christology and discipleship. We may find our purpose in life as we take up the symbol of punishment, the cross. We may find our true self as we lose ourselves in following Jesus. The lessons we learn in life may lead to nothing other than the crowning discovery of Christian life, that God is enough.[16] Nothing is of greater value than learning that we will find the purpose of our lives in shifting focus away from protecting ourselves and toward the discipleship process that is following Jesus.
To turn away from all that has defined you, good or bad as it may be, to take up the unique cross that you must carry because you have heard and responded to the call of God upon your life, and re-identify yourself by following Jesus, is an act that gives depth to your life. Have a vocation gives life its motive and purpose, which is the path toward fulfillment and happiness in life. However, it also involves suffering. You may think you have heard a calling, but months or years later, you have doubts as to whether you heard rightly. The mistake is your own, but it still resulted from the belief that it was God who called. The longer you live in that mistaken path, the greater are the limitations upon your life. All this becomes the cross you bear. You may sense a calling to unite yourself with a group within the Christian community: Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, evangelical, liturgical, progressive, anabaptist, and so it goes. You may find fulfillment in that calling, but you will also bear your cross. There will be aspects of your chosen community that will embarrass you, that you will wish were not there, and that you wish were there. There will be people who are part of your group who embarrass you and that you wish were another group. This will be your cross to bear as you if you are to fulfill your calling. If you do not have such responses to the group with which you associate, you have over-identified yourself with your group, making it idol. I hope such reflections clarify that the cross you take up is the result of your embracing of your sense of calling or vocation. Saying Yes to the call will not mean your life will be free of suffering. It may well bring more suffering than if you tried to take the path of least resistance. It will also be the path of your greatest sense of fulfillment and happiness. You may be the type who is thirsty for knowledge and in satisfying that thirst, you see the disjunction between the faith you have embraced and the universe as science sees it. This universe is explainable on its term and thus not need or point to another type of spiritual world to establish it or to give it meaning. Seeking to be a credible and reasonable while being a person of faith becomes a cross one must take up. What I am pointing to here is that the cross one takes up is different from the suffering one experiences by being a human being. This cross does not have to mean a threat to one’s existence, as it clearly did for the first believers. The existential moments that define your life will have a cross to take up, but the rose of that moment will be faith, hope, and love that motivate the decision you make and will lead to fulfillment and meaning.
In Matt 16:25-26 (Mark 8:35-36, Luke 9:24-25), Jesus offers those who would confess him to be Messiah the challenge of the paradox of discipleship.
Verse 25 (Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, John 12:21, the earliest form in Matt 10:39, Luke 17:33), is a paradoxical aphorism typical of wisdom literature: For whoever would save (σῶσαι) his life (ψυχὴν, soul, self) will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Discipleship oscillates between two senses of human life, its present stage and its future. True disciples must give up their "lives," their primary commitment to a kinship group, and instead willingly make God their final authority. Only this kind of transformation will bring them eternal life. That is the only deal that a disciple can take. Focus on saving your own life and making it easier, and you will lose in the end. Focus on giving away your life by going down this path with Jesus, and you will find real life and not the kind that is artificially and temporarily inflated by the attractiveness of a devilish deal. The first person to live out this pattern was Jesus. Jesus saved his life at the cost of proclaiming his message of the rule of God. Had he saved his life, he would have made himself independent of God. He would not have been the Son by an unending finite existence. Jesus chose an earthly existence consumed in divine service. He did not cling to his life. He showed obedience to the mission, regardless of the consequences.[17] Choosing to protect that which has defined the self until now will result in losing what we seek. [18]Renouncing what has defined the self occurs in the context of embracing Jesus. [19] Discipleship and finding the desire of the heart will require setting aside the natural tendency to overly focus upon self. [20]
Such a wisdom saying invites us to a radical reorientation. Wisdom aims at a basic form of miscalculation that orients the whole of life to the point of constituting our everyday existence. In the early Jewish-Christian and Hellenistic communities, such losing of one’s life acknowledged the tribulations that accompanied bearing witness during a time of persecution. In many parts of the world, people lose their lives because they are not ashamed of Jesus or of his words in front of other human beings. However, what are we to make of this saying in a pluralistic society where persecution is no longer practiced? In this context, being ashamed of Jesus and his words taks on the more subtle forms of abstention and silence. The most honest and courageous form of testimony, where it is needed and required by both the situation and our fellow human beings, is neither easy to discover nor to formulate. Such verbal testimony does not exhaust the question of discipleship. On the practical interpretation of the saying, St. Francis of Assisi is an example of those who divested themselves of all their possessions. On the spiritual interpretation of the saying, expressed in the classical devotional, The Imitation of Christ, seeking to participate as believers in the sufferings of Christ, through a life of sacrifice and letting go of self. Such letting go of self, such reorientation of the self, means the letting go of the attempt to make use of God as the guarantee for our desire to have a guarantee.[21]
The problem here is that the love of oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance (Oscar Wilde). We have learned how fascinating the self is. We explore the richness and fullness of the self in spiritual formation and psychology. Psychology has also taught us that addictive relationships involve us in losing the self for the sake of a relationship that has no redemptive purpose. We are justly suspicious of any call to self-denial. Yet, preserving the life of what has been will not bring fullness of life. Setting aside what has defined the self for us will lead to happiness and true life. Such a life is meaningful: for it is in dying self that we are born to eternal life (Prayer of St. Francis).
Verse 26 (Mark 8:36, Luke 9:25), considers the question of what good is. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul (ψυχὴν)? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul. Acquiring the world while losing the soul would be a bad exchange, for it is beyond all value, and one can exchange it for nothing of greater value. The saying suggests the supreme value of the soul or true self. We cannot put a price on it. Adolf Harnack thought with good reason that he had found a Magna Carta of the message of the infinite value of every human soul.[22] We can see a parallel in Plato as he suggested that the upright and good are happy, while the pursuit of happiness for its own sake is egocentric and leads us astray. Only those who seek the good for its own sake will find happiness and identity (Gorgias 491bff, especially 506c.7ff and 470e.9f).[23] Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr has a wonderful prayer with this theme.
O Lord, who has taught us that to gain the whole world and to lose our souls is great folly, grant us the grace so to lose ourselves that we may truly find ourselves anew in the life of grace, and so to forget ourselves that we may be remembered in your kingdom.
Such a wisdom saying invites us to a radical reorientation. We may well ask what is at stake in where one loses what one gains and gains what one loses. Wisdom aims at a basic form of miscalculation that orients the whole of life to the point of constituting our everyday existence. The two major symptoms of this error in calculation is that the gaining of the world means have possessions and power. Yet, to become the master and possessor of nature is the motto of modernity as announced by Descartes. The dream of hegemony is the secret dream of us all, which we only lack the strength to carry out. It also calls those committed to acquiring knowledge to question themselves as soon as one turns from humility to its own will to power. None of us is innocent of the dream of mastering the world through science. This wisdom saying exposes the elevation of humanity as the bearer of knowledge, beyond everything else. It calls such secular knowledge into question. It also calls into question religious knowledge. Rigorous proofs for the existence of God hides the desire for God to be the supreme guarantee upon which to establish our claim to mastery over the world a mastery based upon knowledge backed up by the guarantee of our scientific proofs. The height of the mastery of knowledge may well be the well to include God in our enterprise of intellectual domination, by demanding of God that God guarantee our obstinate search for a guarantee.[24]
16:27-28 Prophetic and Apocalyptic Saying on the Son of Man
Matt 16:27-28 (Mark 8:38-9:1, Luke 9:26-27) refer to the coming Son of Man and to the reminder that every human being will be held accountable for what they do with their lives. such apocalyptic Son of Man sayings go back to Jesus.[25] For, as in Dan 7:13, the Son of Man (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then, as in Ps 62:12, Prov 24:12, and Rom 2:6, he will repay each person according to what he has done. Here is an explicit statement of the coming judgment, where the Son of Man is the judge.[26] This saying refers to the coming rule that holds every human being accountable, as in 24:30 as well. Paul can refer to the future, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels (II Thess 1:7). Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man (τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) coming in his kingdom. This affirmation of the nearness of the rule of God has no parallel in the literature of the world of Jesus.[27] He is referring to a future event.[28] The date of this future event will be soon, which suits the admonition found often in the gospels for vigilance.[29] The saying stresses the independence of the Son of Man, especially in reference the coming rule of the Son of Man with his angels.[30] Jesus identified the Son of Man as the one who would vindicate his mission and message at the end.[31] This saying refers to the rule of the Son of Man, which we shall soon see, begins with the resurrection. It is like 10:23, where they will not finish going to the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. It promises that some of the disciples will escape the violent death in the tribulation. They will receive consolation.[32] Consistent with the apocalyptic expectation of the Jewish scholars of the time, Jesus offers both warning and consolation. The statement that the Son of Man will come with the angels in the glory of the Father, repaying everyone for what they have done, a message that has a parallel in Rev 22:12, is also consistent with the apocalyptic dimension of first century Judaism. Such a statement is a warning of future judgment for those who reject the Son of Man but is consolation to those who suffer for the sake of Christ. The warning is puzzling: some standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming to rule. The Son of Man becomes the eschatological judge of humanity. The nearness of the coming rule functions as encouragement to remain faithful, and to follow the path of Jesus. We could consider the possibility that Jesus made a mistake. If we are afraid of the implications of that, we could ponder other possibilities. Does it suggest that the rule of God arrives in the words and deeds of Jesus, especially as he casts out demons? Could the saying refer to the following story of the transfiguration of Jesus? Could it refer to the resurrection? Could it refer to the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost? For what it is worth, I think each of the options has some validity, especially as the early church wrestled with the meaning of the saying.
Application
History is full of legends of people who made such a deal with the devil. Faust, the protagonist of the classic German legend made famous by Goethe, exchanged his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The term "Faustian bargain" has ever since been a sophisticated way to question the meteoric rise of a person to fame and fortune who did not seem to pay his dues in diligence and hard work. Musicians are especially associated with the Faustian bargain. Niccolo Paganini, the late 18th-early 19th century violinist who many still believe was the greatest who ever lived, played the violin with such force and velocity that one Vienna concertgoer swore that he saw the devil helping Paganini play. The violinist's fiercely difficult works led others to believe that he was the son of the devil himself. Two legendary, early-20th century, Mississippi-delta guitarists, Tommy Johnson and Robert Johnson (not related), are similarly associated with making a deal with the devil down at a crossroads, exchanging their souls for a wicked good ability to play the blues.
It is not just musicians and academics who have historically made deals, however. Clergy have historically been tempted to strike a bargain as well. Long before Faust, in the 6th century, a Christian named Eutychianus of Adana wrote of a cleric named Theophilus who, being disappointed in the advancement of his worldly career because of a meddling bishop, sold his soul to the devil so that he could become a bishop himself. Years later, fearful for his soul, he prayed to the Virgin Mary for forgiveness and got a reprieve.
Most famous of all, however, is the even older story of the one to whom the devil offered multiple deals which were all turned down. If anyone had reason to take a deal, it was Jesus, who knew he was facing a horrifyingly painful death if he kept doing and saying the things he had been doing and saying around Judea. If a deal with the devil is about skipping the hard parts, Jesus understood that his life was nothing but hard parts. He was not going to skip them.
This story occurs in Caesarea, the place where Romans built a temple to the god Pan. When we think of the devil we most often picture him in the form of a horned creature, half-man, half-animal with cloven hooves, a bifurcated tail and a pitchfork. Exchange the pitchfork for a flute and lose the tail and you've got a perfect image of the god Pan right there at the gates of Hades. While the Bible does not try to physically describe the devil, there near the cave of Pan the devil certainly rears his ugly head - not from the rock of the cave, but from the Rock upon which Jesus' own church was being built. Jesus will not only be bumping up against the gates of death and the realm of evil, he will be walking through them. Peter rightly named him as the Messiah, but Jesus' understanding of messiah was not one of triumphant accolades, throngs of followers and political power. Instead, Jesus defined "Messiah" as one who would save his people through his own suffering and death.
The easy way would have been to play on his popularity and avoid the pain, and the temptation to do so had been with Jesus all along. The devil had met him out there in the wilderness before all this began, and offered Jesus the chance to have it all, without any cost to himself (4:1-11). All Jesus would have to do is give up his mission and buy into the devil's agenda. As Bono sang it in U2's song "Vertigo," the devil essentially offers the proposition this way: "All of this, all of this can be yours. Just give me what I want, and no one gets hurt." Peter, fresh off his anointing as Jesus' own Rock, can't believe what he's hearing. Suffering? Killed? These aren't words you're supposed to associate with a Messiah. You have an opportunity here, Jesus, and so do we. None of that works if you're dead. There's an easier way and we'll help you find it. Like a man standing at the crossroads, Peter's ready to make a deal. Jesus, however, recognizes Old Scratch in Peter's rebuke. Jesus has a definite road to take and he won't make a deal with the devil to take the easier way out.
One can already observe the double nature of the community of Jesus in Peter. Peter is like all persons who follow Jesus. We want to follow Jesus, but the way is often confusing. The temptation is always present to think in an ill-informed and earthly way, the way human beings usually think of things, rather than think from the perspective of eternity. God chooses the community, endowed with the gift of new knowledge, and under way toward the kingdom of heaven; at the same time, it continues to live in peril of temptations and even under threat of judgment. Just as Jesus calls Peter back to discipleship, where he must learn to think God’s thoughts, so too is the community. Peter represents every disciple. The gospel story already paves the way for a theology of the cross arising from experience, like Paul’s theology of suffering and defeat.
I find it difficult, then, that any preacher would say that you cannot succeed by preaching the cross. A popular preacher supposedly said this. His argument was that people do not want to hear about the cross from the standpoint of discipleship because they have enough problems. In any case, following Jesus may well add to your problems. We need to find our cross, that for which we will spend our lives for the sake of the calling God has issued. Many people have discovered joy and happiness in life only when they chose to die to the selfish pursuit of happiness. They have found joy in discovering a mission that will require sacrifice for something grand and meaningful. Here is an analogy. Diamonds do not dazzle with beauty unless they are cut. When cut, the rays of the sun fall on them and make them shine with wonderful colors. In an analogous way, when we are cut by the cross, we can shine as jewels as we participate in the mission of following Jesus in displaying the rule of God.[33]
Discipleship is a matter of forming a new identity in the destiny of Jesus. The bearing of your cross is the consequence of the special calling and sending we receive from God. The way of Jesus is the way of the cross, so the disciple follows in that destiny.[34] Just as following Jesus means denial, so also it means death. Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously said in his Cost of Discipleship, that when Christ calls us, he bids us to come to him and die. Thomas à Kempis wrote,
In the Cross is salvation;
in the Cross is life;
in the Cross is protection against our enemies;
in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness;
in the Cross is strength of mind;
in the Cross is joy of spirit;
in the Cross is excellence of virtue;
in the Cross is perfection of holiness.
There is no salvation of soul,
nor hope of eternal life,
save in the Cross. (The Inner Life)
"If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you"
(The Imitation of Christ, 2.12.5).
C.S. Lewis wrote (The Four Loves) that if you would love you would suffer. We cannot even love a dog without at one point or another feeling the pain of loss, assuming we outlive the dog. The greatest of all things-love-is itself most intimately bound with suffering. It is a poignant irony, I think. In our attempt to avoid suffering, we cut ourselves off from the one thing that can mitigate it: each other. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain. When we know that the way of love, this exodus, this going out of oneself, is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others and becomes more human. People who have consistently avoided suffering do not understand other people. They become hard and selfish. We have no literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy. We have only moral answers. Yes, in the face of suffering at the hands of other human beings we may despair. Yet, hope also comes from other human beings.[35]
These discipleship statements stand at the center of the message of Mark, and they need to stand at the center of the proclamation of the church today. Following Jesus is difficult when our definitions of power and success get in the way. If we, as his followers, try to tell him what he should or should not do, as Peter was attempting, then we have not denied ourselves. If we do not continue with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, anticipating the cross and its sufferings, with our own cross bar across our backs, then we are not following. It is only after we have turned in our understandings of power and success from a worldly perspective and exchanged them for a power that denies itself, and a success that manifests itself in sacrifice, that we see the role faith plays in this passage.
None of us wants to lose something precious. Our lives are precious to us, or at least, they should be. If it gives us a sense of security, and we lose it, we will become anxious. Security is important to us.
The notion of denying self is difficult for many people in the West today. I think the difficulty arises from at least two fronts. One is that we have learned how fascinating self is. Whether in spiritual formation or in psychology, we explore the richness and fullness of the self. Two is that studies in addictive and co-dependent behavior have taught us that too often we get ourselves in relationships in which we sacrifice ourselves for no redemptive purpose. Each of these insights makes us justly suspicious of any call to self-denial.
Yet, do you not agree that if we focus too much upon self, if we protect self too much, if we seek security in self, we open ourselves to the possibility of losing who we are? I understand it seems paradoxical. Yet, focusing on saving our lives may well derive from fear. Losing ourselves may well arise out of faith. A large part of learning what you really want in life is learning what you are willing to give up to get it.[36] We may find our purpose in life as we take up the symbol of punishment, the cross. We may find our true self as we lose ourselves in following Jesus.
Clearly, such reflections do not lead to safety and security in the traditional sense. We are not in as much control. Yet, I wonder if this type of insecurity may not lead to the greatest security of all – eternal life. It may well be that the greatest lesson one learns in life is that God alone is enough for true life. The lessons we learn in life may lead to nothing other than the crowning discovery of Christian life, that God is enough.[37]
Jesus is saying that we should not value anything more highly than discipleship — even our own lives. Following Jesus is supposed to be our Number One priority, higher than success, security, wealth, health, power, and prestige.
A little boy had a sister who needed a blood transfusion. The boy had recovered from the same disease two years before. Her only chance for recovery was to have a transfusion from someone who had recovered from the disease. The boy had the same rare blood type and recovered from the disease. He would be the ideal donor. The doctor asked if he would be willing to do this. At first, the boy hesitated. His lower lip started to tremble. Eventually, he said, "Sure, for my sister." Attendants wheeled brother and sister into a hospital room. They were side by side. They did not speak, but when their eyes met, the boy smiled at his sister. He was so healthy, while she was very pale and sickly. The nurse put the needle into the arm of the boy, and his smile faded. He watched his blood flow into the tube. When the ordeal was almost over, his voice slightly shaky, he said, "Doctor, when do I die?" Only then did the doctor realize why the boy hesitated, and why his lip trembled. In that moment, he made a great decision.[38]
John Wesley, on his 85th birthday, said that for the rest of his days he wanted to spend to the praise of Jesus Christ, who died to redeem the world. Many or few, he owed and devoted the rest of his days to Christ.
On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. On the night before his death, he gave a speech in which he said, "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life -- longevity has its place. However, I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. Moreover, he has allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land."
Garrison Keillor tells of some wayward Catholics who return to their hometown, Lake Woebegon, on Christmas Eve. They are spiritual exiles who, in having left home and church in order to find themselves, return to discover their loss.
Dozens of exiles returned for Christmas. At Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, Father Emil roused himself from bed, where he’s been down with cancer since Columbus Day, and said Christmas Eve Mass. He was inspired by the sight of all the lapsed Catholics parading into church with their unbaptized children, and he gave them a hard homily, strolling right down into the congregation.
“Shame. Shame on us for leaving what we were given that was true and good,” he said. “To receive a great treasure in our younger days and to abandon it so that we can lie down in the mud with swine.” He stood, one hand on the back of a pew, and everyone in that pew – children of this church who grew up and moved away and did well and now tell humorous stories at parties about Father Emil and what it was like to grow up Catholic – all of them shuddered a little, afraid he might grab them by their Harris-tweed collars and stand them up and ask them questions. “What a shame. What a shame.”
They came for Christmas, to hear music, and see the candles, and smell incense, and feel hopeful, and here was their old priest with hair in his ears whacking them around – was it a brain cancer he had? Shame, shame on us. He looked around at all the little children he’d given first communion to, now grown heavy and prosperous, sad and indolent, but clever enough to explain their indolence and sadness as a rebellion against orthodoxy, a protest, adventurous, intellectual, which really was only dullness of spirit.
He stopped. It was so quiet you could hear them not breathing. Then he said that this was why Our Lord had come, to rescue us from dullness of spirit, and so the shepherds had found and so shall we, and then it was Christmas again.[39]
In reading the philosopher Spinoza, in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), I wrote down the following reaction to one criticism he had of the church of his day. As a Christian, I find it sad, but also true, that persons who profess their Christianity, and therefore commit themselves to love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all people, should also quarrel with such “rancorous animosity,” displaying toward each other “such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.” Well, such were the accusations he made against the church of his day. Could it also be true of us?
Let us allow our lives do the talking. Michener, in The Source, has one character comment, “If that man had a different God, he would be a different man.” I hope that statement is true of us.
Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr has a wonderful prayer with this theme.
O Lord, who has taught us that to gain the whole world and to lose our souls is great folly, grant us the grace so to lose ourselves that we may truly find ourselves anew in the life of grace, and so to forget ourselves that we may be remembered in your kingdom.
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[5] Stahlin, TDNT, VII, 348.
[6] Forester, TDNT, VII, 158-9
[7] Dietrich Bonhoeffer
[8] Gerhard Ebeling (Word and Faith, p. 424.)
[9] Paul Minear
[10] For some scholars, it has the historical problem that no evidence suggests that the cross became a symbol for self-denial or suffering outside of the later Christian context. Christians were facing persecution and martyrdom for their faith. Jesus provides the condition for following him.
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[15] Elie Wiesel
[16] Hannah Whitall Smith, God Is Enough, 1.
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[33] Inspired by Sadhu Sundar Singh.
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[35] Elie Wiesel
[36] Sidney Howard
[37] Hannah Whitall Smith, God Is Enough, 1.
[38] Robert Coleman, Written in Blood.
[39] (Garrison Keillor, “Exiles” in Listening for God, Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins, eds. [Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1994], pp. 199–120.
