SERMON FOR SEPTEMBER 12, 2021.                TEXT: MARK 8:27-38

          Jesus has just informed his disciples that he must undergo great suffering and rejection and be killed. He rebukes Peter for objecting to this dark prospect. When he then tells his followers to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him, Jesus is preparing them for martyrdom. Just as his prediction of his passion ends with the promise of vindication — “. . . and after three days rise again” — so now he promises them ultimate triumph: “ . . . and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” It is an honest warning of what lies ahead and a rallying cry to steadfastness. It is both an honest assessment of reality and a vision of the transcendent.    For Jesus’ ministry is a paradox:    it courts disaster at the hands of the powers-that-be and is at the same time beyond their reach. If you die with him, you will live with him. It is that simple. A life must be lost to be saved, lost, that is, according to the pattern of Jesus’ own, rather than forfeited to the demands of a sinful world. Mark gives prominence to this story about Jesus because his community faced opposition and rejection. It was now their turn to follow their Lord to a martyr’s death, if need be.

          Once persecution was no longer a threat, Christians had to re-think what it meant to take up the cross. In the first century St. Paul could write to the church in Corinth: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong . . . .” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27). However, the situation changed dramatically in the generations after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century. What had once been a despised sect became the established church of the Roman Empire. The educated, the wealthy and the powerful now marked themselves with the sign of the cross.

          Some saw this as a great victory for the Christian faith and thanked God for bringing it to pass. Others were troubled by the church’s apparent success. They felt the danger of gaining the whole world and losing one’s life was dangerously heightened when so many already occupied positions of privilege. If, as some theologians claimed, the blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the church, who would set the high bar for discipleship now?    Who would inspire ordinary believers as they sought to be faithful in the face of worldly temptations? Here lie the roots of monasticism. Men and women who felt a call to this life of holiness in a sense martyred themselves by dying to the world. They took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and lived apart, leaving their families and neighbors, their property and position behind. Their pursuit of godly perfection was a witness to the whole church.

          At the time of the Reformation, however, Luther rejected monastic life as an egregious form of works righteousness. As if somehow the keeping of vows made one superior in the eyes of God. As if our human efforts could add something to the saving power of God’s grace, especially practices of holiness of our own devising.    According to Luther, Jesus does not call his disciples to abandon the world to escape sin or to protect themselves with vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Rather, God’s first command recorded in Scripture is to be fruitful and multiply and then to get on with the endless business of loving and serving our neighbors. We have no need to create crosses to bear, like the disciplines of monastic practice. No, Luther is convinced that everyday life in the midst of family and community, work and recreation, will provide more than enough crosses and opportunities to follow the Lord through death into life.

          Clearly over the centuries circumstances have continued to change from those of Jesus’ original audience. Every generation of disciples hears the same call — “Take up your cross and follow me”    — and then has to make sense of it in their particular time and place.

          Elisabeth Johnson, a Lutheran missionary in Cameroon, writes: “Jesus speaks of losing our lives for his sake, and for the sake of the gospel. Taking up our cross means being willing to suffer the consequences of following Jesus faithfully, whatever those consequences might be. It means putting Jesus’ priorities and purposes ahead of our own comfort or security. It means being willing to lose our lives by spending them for others — using our time, resources, gifts, and energy so that others might experience God’s love made known in Jesus Christ.” Our lives are shaped and measured by our everyday connections to people and places and causes. The ties that bind us are complicated; sometimes it’s the closest ones that prove the hardest to navigate. Look at Peter — he gets the answer to the question right but then shows that he doesn’t understand Jesus at all, as much as he cares for him. Still he continues to follow Jesus, right up to the night of his arrest, when we find him following at a distance into the courtyard of the high priest and sitting with the guards by the fire. When Peter is challenged as to his own identity, rather than denying himself, he denies Jesus. It is a dark echo of the question “Who do you say that I am?” This time Peter responds, “I do not know this man you are talking about” (Mark 14:71). He abandons his friend and betrays himself.

          A broken-hearted woman I much admire once said to me, “When you love someone, you don’t walk away. You help them.” Jesus does not walk away from Peter. Part of the tie that binds them is forgiveness, leading to a future of    deeper understanding and unbroken love. And so it is for us as we learn to follow Jesus through the ties that bind in our own lives. They are the crosses that we bear. They are the crosses that lift us up to God. Amen.