Peter isn’t happy about what’s going to happen to Jesus.  Neither are we.  Suffer?  Killed?  Terrible!  Let’s be followers without the suffering.  In seminary, no one quite knew what to do with the suffering, except reject it.  Let’s have a faith with no space for suffering, no thought of it, no equipment for handling suffering.  Let’s have a Bible that has nothing to do with suffering and nothing to say about it.  Then we’ll be happy.  Then we’ll have a happy Jesus, and what is Jesus, really, if he isn’t happy?  Why would we ever want him, if he weren’t happy?

          Jesus isn’t happy about what’s going to happen.  He doesn’t like it, doesn’t want it.  He isn’t eager for it.  He knows it must be, but no one else understands how he knows.  Why?  Why must this suffering be?  He has something that helps: faith, and joy.  At the end of it all, after the suffering, the death: joy, victory.  Sad is followed by wonderful, sorrow by glory, a moment by eternity.  Neither Peter nor the others picked up on that last part, that rising again on the third day.  Well, Jesus says all kinds of things—who can keep track?  Who knows what he means?  They don’t.  That’s not what matters to them most, in that moment.

          They know about suffering, more than they want to, for years.  They know about death.  They don’t want any of that.  Jesus was the way to happy.  They want a happy Jesus.  Victory now, power here.  Jesus is telling them he didn’t come to make them happy; he came to give them invincible joy.  The way to that joy, that victory, mysteriously, is through suffering, rejection, and death.  Well, sign me up!  Said no one.

          Jesus is telling them where his life in this world is unavoidably heading.  We are living because of Christ; our life, now, is in Christ.  We are surrounded and held by him.  One consequence is that our life in this world will necessarily include suffering, rejection, and death.  Everyone has acquaintance with suffering.  We’re all trying to escape it, run away from it, deny it.  We don’t run to suffering.  We don’t seek rejection.  We’d do almost anything rather than die.  What about accepting it all, dealing with it in spiritually mature, spiritually healthy ways?  What about listening to Jesus, who tells us there is a way through, a way to victory, joy, and life?  It’s not a way around, under, or over difficulty.  Jesus offers the way through.  It looks hard, though, and feels fearful.

          If we pay close attention, we’ll perceive that Jesus is always teaching, guiding, correcting, encouraging, always holding the way open to us, the only way.  We may sometimes feel as if the way is closed—to us, anyway!—but that’s not so.  Jesus always holds the way open, for us.  Yes, there is suffering, rejection, and death—as though we could escape such things in this life.  The proud and powerful in this world, and those who follow their ways, want us silenced, one way or another.  Jesus assures us, shows us, there is something on the other side—victory, life, joy.

          Jesus wants Peter, and all of us, to have these blessings, this hope.  We can, as we get our minds and hearts right.  God is at work in us to get them right.  Jesus speaks words to Peter that stung, like a hornet’s sting, two hundred hornet stings.  Jesus speaks these sharp words to cut to the disease impairing, crippling Peter’s hopes, expectations, and faith.  Jesus practically asks Peter, directly, plainly, if he wants to be a disciple.  He asks us, too.  He’s talking to you.  He’s talking to me.

          It seems as if Jesus would have the least reason of all to ask Peter: maybe Thomas, doubting Thomas, or Judas, the trembling, clutching betrayer, but not Peter, one of the very first.  Jesus isn’t asking Peter, or any of us, only whether we want to be his disciple.  Jesus also asks us why.  Why do you want to be my disciple?  What do you think he’s offering?  What do you think he can provide that you don’t already have?  What is it he only can provide?

          Jesus is clear about what he is offering: exactly what he experiences in this life, what this life doles out to him—suffering many things, rejection, and death.  And after, victory, life, joy.

          We see what the world claims to offer: excitement, wealth, adventure, pleasure, fulfilment, beauty, self-discovery.  We do not see what Christ is offering, except by keeping our eyes, hearts, and minds focused upon Jesus, continually refocusing ourselves upon Jesus.  The world will not help you; it offers no help, that way.  You’re not supposed to focus on him, not as he presents himself, not as he speaks of himself, not as he is.  We get distracted, we lose focus, we become confused.  We misplace our flashlight—where’d that little light of mine get off to?  God offers us His flashlight, His Word; all we have to do is take it from His hands, ask Him to turn it on for us, and then use it.

          And Jesus begs us not to be ashamed of it.  Ashamed?  Why would any believer, disciple, be ashamed of Jesus, ashamed of the Word of God?

          Jesus isn’t really an imposing figure, is he?  I mean, he’s not a star athlete, not a glamorous celebrity.  He’s not a high-powered politician or businessman.  He’s no military man, square-jawed and lean in a perfectly crisp uniform.  Movies try to figure out how to show he really is an imposing figure, so he gets dressed in impractically white clothes in a dusty, dirty place and time.  He’s given backlighting, as though he was always sort of glowing, but glowing is more eerie than imposing.  Movie Jesus typically has blue eyes, piercing blue eyes, but blue eyes aren’t really imposing, just sort of pretty.

          Jesus is just sort of pretty, most of the time, isn’t he?  Long hair, soft eyes, smooth skin, not toughened.  His hands would be soft, maybe even delicate.  He wouldn’t remotely smell of wood dust, fishing boats, or fields.  Nothing to be ashamed of, because he doesn’t require anything of us that we aren’t already ready to give, doesn’t require us to be anything other than what we are right now.  Movie Jesus, our cultural imagination of Jesus, just asks that we gaze upon him passively and feel vaguely happy.

          Ashamed of Jesus?  Just look at him!  Ah, but look at him upon the cross, the shameful, cursed-of-God death upon the tree, on that dusty, rocky, wind-blown hill far away.  Who wants to be rejected?  Rejection hurts!  Suffering.  No thank you!  I’ve already had enough.  Killed.  I want to live!  I imagine how each disciple felt, looking at Jesus dying and dead upon the cross.  I don’t imagine a single one of them remembering a thing Jesus said to them about rising again.  Dead Jesus was the end of all their happy hopes.  They didn’t want him dead!  What use was he to them, dead?  To follow Jesus in this world, to try to walk with Jesus through this life, it gets you right where Jesus ended up.  What a shame.  Shameful.

          If everyone who is someone is telling you you’re going the wrong way, why would you think they’re all wrong and Jesus is right?  If following Jesus only adds to the challenges and obstacles we face in this life, if following Jesus makes this life more difficult rather than less, why would we ever choose to follow Jesus?  We love a good challenge?

          Beloved, we are immensely talented at removing the challenges Jesus creates, immensely talented at making Jesus into no challenge, or the right kind of challenge.  Our Jesus challenges us the way we want, in what we want to be challenged.  Whenever and wherever we don’t care to be challenged, our Jesus doesn’t challenge us.  The challenge of caring about the poor, the hungry, the homeless; the challenge of  justice, of the environment; the challenge of rights.  And what of the challenge of hearing and receiving all God’s Word?  The challenge of obedience?  The challenge of faith?

          I’ve read the Bible often enough to know there are parts I don’t like.  Not just that I don’t understand—there are plenty of those.  No, there are parts I don’t like, that I would just as soon not have in the Bible, and, if I were bolder, I’d probably just cut them out, or at least act like they’re not there, or at least find a way to explain them away so that they had no authority over me, my life, my choices, or my faith.  Are there no such parts of the Bible, in your experience?  The Bible can be very inconvenient, in these times.

          What we’re ashamed of we want to keep out of sight—others’ and our own.  We don’t want it to be known, don’t want to talk about it.  A friend, who is not a Christian, began a conversation this way: “You believe in Jesus, don’t you?”  Oof.  I couldn’t really dodge that one, could I?  The two of us were alone.  It’s not like this was in a classroom, or a coffee shop, the office, or the job site, or the bar.  What if it had been?  What if it was on facebook, or Twitter?  When people are being shamed en masse for expressing thoughts or beliefs, when you will not be considered for employment because of thoughts or beliefs you have expressed, the picture begins to change.  It’s not so easy to be happy and a Christian in this world, anymore.  So which will it be?  No.  Think.  Carefully.  Your faith now has consequences here that it did not seem to have, before.  Consider what comes (in this life) with choosing Christ.  Oh, it’s still possible to opt for just a loose association with the name, you know, nothing really serious, more of a vague familiarity, a distant, so slight nod of the head—we PC(USA) folk are gifted, that way.

          Beloved, there are two ways.  There always have been.  Two and two only.  The way of self-indulgence—more politely, self-preservation—and the way of faithfulness to Christ, to God’s Word.  If you follow this way, faithfully, the world will call it and you foolishness, then insanity, then dangerous, then criminal, then death.  Jesus shows us the way.  He lived it, right before our eyes.

          The world kills Jesus, is always killing Jesus and saying end of story.  Jesus says that, after, there is victory, life, and joy.  The world cannot end this story.  The world cannot end Jesus.  It’s not the goodness of his words or the beauty of his example that render the world powerless to erase him.  The world cannot erase Jesus because Jesus is God, because he accomplished for us, and is accomplishing in us, what only God can.

          With being a disciple of Jesus Christ—a God-enabled choice, a choice into which we live more and more, or less and less, each day—there come requirements and responsibilities.  They are demanding for us fallen, sin-weakened, temptation-addled people; what Christ asks of us is difficult for us, and costly.  To be a disciple of Jesus is to receive the discipline of Christ.  This discipline expects, and teaches, self-control, self-denial: these hurt—how we yearn and burn to indulge ourselves!  To go our way, a way that suits us, now, here.  Jesus can come along.  It’s not like we’re telling him to go away!  In this life, discipline is inseparable from pain, of whatever sort.  The pain, however, can become tolerable, when we remember, focus upon the higher purpose of disciple-ship, the point of our devoted pursuit: we are being trained for life, life with God, life forever.

          We’re spiritually flabby; our morals are closer in consistency to jelly than to steel.  We lack focus.  We lack perseverance, endurance, and resolve.  Spirit, firm morality, focus, perseverance, endurance, and resolve—these empowered Jesus to bear his cross, to go to the cross, die to this world, to rise, to live, to be radiant with hope, peace, joy, love, and grace.  Radiant still, radiant always, our light, our life.

          As we follow in this way called faith, Jesus will show us, as surely as we breathe, Jesus will help us to know that our limitations are further out than we had ever imagined: Jesus gives us room to become so much more.  He gives us himself so that we can.

          Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!