“Setting
Our Minds”
Mark
8:31-38
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
March
8, 2009
Lent
2
It always is helpful
to me in the season of Lent to try to remember why Jesus was so passionate about
the
Abide
with us, (O God) that so, this life Of suffering overpast,
An Easter of unending joy We may attain at last.
Joy is the faith that
all of the incongruities of life someday will be resolved and rectified.
Joy is the conviction, as
The Benedictine Abbey
of Christ in the Desert is located about ten miles north of
So, yes, even when
what Jesus says sounds harsh or hard, it is always for the purpose of raising us
out of dead-end paths and
pursuits into the joy of a closer walk with God.
For instance, do you remember when Jesus said, “Do
not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring
peace but a sword. For I have come
to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of
one’s own household. Whoever loves
mother or father more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the
cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those
who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will
find it”?
Is that hard enough?
Jesus was not denigrating family relationships but he did mean to say
that, in the reign of God, there is no joy to be found in false peace or
accommodation. The gospel is like a
sword or a dagger that impales any obstacle, idol, or relationship that gets in
the way of true joy and authentic peace. Even
one’s own family should be no excuse to hold back in serving the gospel, in
playing one’s part in helping to build the beloved
community on earth, and in caring profoundly for the larger human family,
for we all are one.
Another hard saying of
Jesus? How about when he said to
Peter in today’s gospel reading, “Get
behind me, Satan!” Though it
might seem at first blush as if Jesus was a candidate for a good anger
management course, Jesus once again was keeping his disciples’ attention
focused on the reign of God and, ultimately, on joy.
“Get behind me, Satan!
For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things,
not on God’s ways, but humanity’s ways.”
Let’s back up.
Earlier in chapter 8 of Mark, Jesus and his disciples had been
ministering in the foothills of Caesarea Philippi, a region that in the first
century had been known for natural springs that flowed from the mountains into
the Sea of Galilee and on to the Jordan River from where it finally emptied into
the
As the source waters
flowed out of the springs in Caesarea Philippi and rushed downhill to become a
river and a sea, they increased in size and danger.
Just so, as Jesus and his disciples followed their route from the springs
of those northern foothills to the Sea of Galilee, then down to the Jordan River
Valley, and finally into Jerusalem, they walked into increasing danger.
As they made their way, Jesus told the disciples what he was sure would
happen to him: he would suffer and be rejected; he would be killed; and he would
be raised from the dead (1) (though this latter
word about rising from the dead is thought to be a later addition by Mark who
wrote after the resurrection and is not something Jesus would have said to his
disciples).
That is when Peter
began to scold Jesus for his prediction. Peter
believed that a Messiah should be a wonder-worker with the power to forestall or
overcome every difficulty and danger. He
thought that Jesus should be able to extricate himself from the gallows.
So Jesus said to him, “Get behind
me Satan! For you are setting your
mind not on divine things, but on human things.”
It is not that Jesus was accusing Peter of being the incarnation of
the devil, but that Peter was functioning as a tempter, trying to seduce Jesus
from following the wisdom of God who said that power is made perfect not in
violence and might but, paradoxically, in seeming weakness.
Peter is accused not of satanic thoughts but of human ones, and thus
failing to perceive that God can make positive use of suffering, that suffering
can be redeemed and redeeming.
Writing his gospel as
he did to the Jews who were suffering at the hands of the
Jesus told the people
– by this time a crowd had gathered around him in addition to the disciples
– that if they followed him they would experience chaos, conflict, and
confusion. They likely would suffer
for their devotion and commitment. They
may well become misfits to the dominant social order.
But, but, but…he also told them they would experience the powerful and
poignant presence of God in their lives and, even in the face of suffering and
the jaws of death, they would feel more alive than ever before and experience
the joy that comes in and with the reign of God.
“If
any want to become my followers,” Jesus said, “let
them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose
their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their
life? Jesus was not referring to
personal problems as the crosses we must bear.
The clue to what Jesus means is found right in this same passage when he
said, “Those who are ashamed of me and
of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man
also will be ashamed…” Cross
bearing means to be willing to be shamed in front of others because of one’s
indefatigable faithfulness to Jesus and his teaching, and to the reign of God.
So, in Mark’s
gospel, there is no room for a question like, “I
always have lived a good life; why should this bad thing happen to me?”
Jesus lived a good life, a life perfectly in consonance with the
reign of God, and yet he suffered. Living
the gospel is not an inoculation against hard times, bad breaks, and suffering.
Indeed, it may be their cause as the reign of God calls the wisdom and
ways of the world into question and the world strikes back with its incessant
pressure to conform.
I want you to know
something about me, if you don’t already.
I preach the gospel better than I practice it.
I talk about Jesus better than I follow him.
But it is my goal and hope to journey ever more deeply into God’s
reign, or else what I am doing here? So
in these weeks of Lent I am trying to be more open to God’s Spirit who will
teach me, enable me, and ennoble me to set my mind more on divine wisdom than on
human wisdom. When fear fades, joy
rises.
What about you?
Could it also be that you are here at least in part because you want to
set your mind more on God’s ways than human ways?
As Isaiah exhorted, do you want more and more, and perhaps finally, to
spend your life on that which satisfies? Do
you want to enter into the Master’s joy?
Denise Levertov has a
poem entitled The Servant Girl at Emmaus based
on a painting by Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez with which I would like to
conclude:
The Servant Girl at
Emmaus (A Painting by Velazquez)
She
listens, listens, holding
her
breath. Surely that voice
is
his – the one
who
had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as
no one ever had looked?
Had
seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
Surely
those hands were his,
taking
the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands
he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
Surely
that face - ?
The
man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The
man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The
man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?
Those
who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t
recognize yet with whom they sit.
But
she in the kitchen, absently touching
the winejug she’s to take in,
a
young Black servant intently listening,
swings
round and sees
the
light around him. (2)
Whatever
light you see around Jesus, follow it and let it illumine your way as you set
your heart and mind and feet to sojourn ever more deeply into the reign of God,
to journey more deeply into joy.
Amen.
(1)
Shaia,
Alexander, Beyond the Biography of Jesus: The Journey of Quadratos.
(2)
Levertov, Denise, Selected Poems.