John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets—that’s pretty good company.  Have you ever asked someone who he or she thinks Jesus is?  That could lead to some very rich conversations, or some very brief conversations.  People say all kinds of things about Jesus, good and not so good.  It’s important what we say about Jesus, and it is also important what we do about what we say.  How do our lives reflect what we say about Jesus?

“Who do you say I am?” (8:29).   I hope that you, along with Peter, say that Jesus is the Messiah: God’s Anointed, the long hoped-for, long-expected deliverer of God’s people.  Even if you aren’t sure—and it’s okay not to be sure—I am glad you are here, and I trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding you.  For Peter to affirm that “a homeless Galilean carpenter”[1] is the Messiah is sort of staggering: a homeless carpenter is not the one we might visualize to lead God’s armies to final victory and to be established on the throne.  Jesus is not the one we might expect to do all this, if our expectations were physical and material rather than spiritual.  People talk about spirituality.  Many people think of themselves as spiritual, though not religious, but there’s a whole lot of physicality in that talk.

Peter has the right answer; he speaks the truth, but neither he nor any of Jesus’ closest followers grasp what has just been said.  They have seen the power of Jesus.  They are more and more eager to see more of this power applied here and now, applied for God’s people, applied against enemies—God’s enemies, of course.  They are maybe not so secretly looking forward to everybody getting what they deserve.  I wonder what they want more: God, or retribution?

Jesus knows that these twelve do not know what they are saying, so he tells them to tell no one.  He isn’t telling us to tell no one.  He’s telling the twelve.  They have to learn more, see some more things, and hear what Jesus has to say.  They now have to hear what Jesus says about what being the Messiah, God’s promised deliverer, really means.  The long hoped-for, long-expected deliverer of God’s people, who will come to lead God’s armies to final victory, the one who will be established on the throne, “must suffer much,” “be rejected,” and “be put to death” (8:31).  Mark tells us that Jesus “made this very clear to them” (8:32).  No mistake, no way to misunderstand or to take what Jesus says and make it into something else.

Oh, and Jesus also told them, very clearly, that three days later he would rise to life (8:31).  It seems by that point that the apostles had stopped listening; they were overwhelmed, shocked, scandalized? by what Jesus so very clearly had just told them.  All their thinking was stuck upon what Jesus had already said.  He had just taken all their lovely hopes and dreams for this life and told them to forget about all that.  Could you?

The disciples had been hoping for, banking on, wealth, power, and prestige.  The Messiah was going to remake everything; they would be on top, and everyone else would be on the bottom, for a change.  Beloved, we will, and we do already, have wealth, power, and prestige, but not in the world’s terms, and certainly not in the world’s eyes.  Our wealth, our power, and our prestige do not come from anything material!  Our wealth is spiritual.  Our power is spiritual.  Our prestige is spiritual.  All of it comes from God, is for God, and returns to God.  God loves us not because we are so very lovely or even loveable, but because God is love.

But that’s not what the disciples wanted.  That’s not what Peter wanted.  Jesus was not saying things they liked.  What does Jesus say that you don’t like?  What does God’s Word say that you don’t like?  Peter rebukes Jesus.  There’s a great biblical word.  Where else do we ever hear or ever use that word?  Rebuke—sharp disagreement, strong disapproval.  That word comes from a very old French word that means to beat back.  The Greek word Mark recorded is sort of hard to express in English terms: it would be like me saying to someone who says or does something I don’t like, “Hey!  That’s no good!”

Peter wants power, wealth, and prestige in this world, in this life, now, so that everyone can see it, so that all those who were opposed to us—opposed to Jesus, that is—will be put to shame, crushed.  Peter, and the other apostles, at this point, are demonstrating that they are not thinking, are not living, spiritually, and that they do not actually understand or appreciate who the real enemy is.  We spend so much time, expend so many resources, waste so much life hurting and killing one another!  All along, however, the real enemy is sin, and how sin just loves to see what we do to one another!

To defeat sin, the victor must suffer, be rejected, be put to death.  Isaiah made this plain five hundred years before; only now, in the words and person of Jesus, this homeless carpenter, this Son of David, this Son of God, only in him does the meaning of Isaiah’s mysterious, holy words become clear.  Oh, and three days later the Messiah will rise to life.

Jesus turns Peter’s rebuke around and beats back what Peter is saying, what Peter wants, what these followers of Jesus want: revenge now, victory now, their way now, fulfillment now.  “Your thoughts don’t come from God but from man!” (8:33).  I pray two prayers, beloved: that we may know more of the thoughts of God, and that we will be able to recognize the difference between the thoughts of God and the thoughts of man, of this world, this fallen world with its fallen ways and fallen hearts and fallen minds.

But Jesus does not just rebuke.  If he must rebuke, he will.  He has come to proclaim, to teach, to heal, to save, to bless.  This is what he does.  He says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mk 8:34 NRSV).  Here is the proclamation, the teaching; herein is the healing, salvation, and blessing.

Deny themselves.  In the garden before his arrest, Jesus prays to his Father in heaven, “not my will but Yours be done” (Lk 22:42).  In the prayer that he teaches those who would follow him, he prays, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” (Mt 6:10).  When we deny ourselves, we live in such a way that we place God first.  Not what I want, but what God wants.  Not what I tell myself is right for me, but what God says is right for God.  Not God blesses whatever I want, but I bless whatever God wants.

Take up your cross.  Jesus takes up his cross.  What’s our cross?  Perhaps the weight of suffering, rejection, and the knowledge of death, of our own mortality.  That’s heavy.  People do almost anything, will do almost anything to themselves, will do almost anything to others, to try to escape out from under such weight.  It’s a crushing weight, until we remember who carried his cross before us, until we remember who promises to be with us, to get his strong shoulder under that weight, to get his arm around us, and to heft that cross alongside us.

Each of us bears suffering.  We don’t all suffer from the same things; each of us bears our own suffering.  Jesus comes to you and bears it with you, helps you bear it.  We suffer unjustly: we know all about that!  We also suffer justly—because of the things we have done—we live with the consequences of all our choices; we cannot avoid them.  This is the ground for repentance.  Jesus comes to us.  He says, Let me into your life and see what difference I make.

Each of us knows the pain of rejection, rejection by others, others who matter to us, even others whom we love.  The powers of this world reject us while telling us that their approval is all that matters in life, the thing that matters most—if you are not wealthy, physically attractive, popular, powerful, young, the powers of this world want nothing to do with you—you don’t matter.  How did we ever get to be so eager for the approval of so many who are not God?

We all know that we only have so much time.  Nobody gets out of life alive.  Eternity can be spent in one of three ways: (1) as nothing (the preference of “realists”), (2) with God, or (3) in darkness of eternal punishment—the eternal consequences of our own choices.  The first, as Scripture tells us, as Jesus tells us, is not actually an option, which leaves only two and three     .

The preacher of Hebrews encourages his congregation to be “looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame” (Heb 12:2).  We can think of so many things of which we are ashamed, so many failures, so many splinters from our cross.  Part of what made it possible for Jesus to make that long, difficult walk to the hill of his crucifixion was his knowledge that what awaited him after was joy, perfect, pure, eternal joy, so much better than anything that the world could offer, so much better than the very best this world had to offer.

Since when has suffering + rejection + death ever resulted in victorious life?!  The world says this is foolishness.  Many believe what the world says.  Jesus says something different, lives something different.  Three days later, Jesus rose to life.  Many people who had no reason to expect that or to believe it testify in Scripture that they were wrong and Jesus was right.  When we follow Jesus, we follow him to resurrection, life eternal, joy eternal, God eternal.

Jesus says follow me.  He does not promise us wealth, power, or prestige, as the world conceives any of these.  He does promise us spiritual wealth, spiritual power, and spiritual prestige, from God the Father, in Jesus the Son, through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

Pastor and biblical scholar W. Graham Scroggie wisely points out that “each of us is the disciple of him or that which we follow.”[2]  We follow what we really want out of life.  What do you really want to get out of life?  A comfortable home (or two), a nice car (or three), a boat, many thousands in the bank and invested, food, drink, the satisfaction of other bodily appetites, respect, prestige, position, authority, to be desired, desirable?

There seems to be this growing expectation lately of a downturn in the stock market.  So much for investments.  About ten years ago, foreclosure signs seemed more common than for sale signs.  That diabetes and kidney disease are now among the top ten killers of Americans tells us something about what we do to our bodies, our lives, in the pursuit of happiness, comfort, pleasure, the idea of satisfaction.  Not long ago, Harvey Weinstein was one of the most respected, prestigious figures in Hollywood.  He had position and authority.  See how he used it.  Position, power, authority—I’m reminded of what Heidi Klum always says during each episode of Project Runway (not that I, you know, watch that): “One day you’re in, the next day you’re out.”

We follow, devote ourselves, to what we really want out of life.  What do you really want to get out of life?  “Whoever wants to save his own life will lose it;” Jesus tells us, “but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:35).

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

                [1] The phrase is William Barclay’s.  Gospel of Mark.  Daily Study Bible Ser.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1975.  192.

                [2] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark. Study Hour Ser. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976.  151.