TITLE: “When Losing it All is Winning”

 

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.  Our text for today is from the Gospel lesson just read, with particular focus on the words of Jesus, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 

Jesus in this text really takes the gloves off, doesn’t he?  The battle between heaven and earth is in earnest, and Jesus wants to tell His disciples, the ones He loves, what is going to happen to Him in this war, and what will come of them as well.  So He tells them.  He’s going to suffer many things, be rejected by the religious establishment of the Jews, He will be killed and then He will rise from the dead.  No more parables, no more stories that have other meanings or veiled references to his upcoming “departure.”  Jesus lays it all out for them to hear.  The Son of God must die.

So what is their reaction?  Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him.  Can you imagine it?  The Son of God plainly tells them God’s plan of salvation for the world, and Peter, trying to be helpful, I’m sure, pulls Jesus aside and says something like, “Jesus, we don’t talk like that.  We’ll never get converts by being morbid and always speaking about death.  It’s depressing.  Tell us about how we’re going to rule!  Tell us how great things are going to be once we crush the Romans!”  Leave it to Peter to completely miss the point of Jesus’ ministry.

Jesus then turned and looked at the other disciples, and rebuked Peter, Get behind me, Satan!  You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.  Satan could have his way even in the heart of so great a disciple as Simon Peter, Jesus’ right hand man.   This is something Jesus can’t overlook; He can’t ignore or pretend it didn’t matter.  Martin Luther once said that a theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.  And Jesus is the ultimate theologian of the cross.  Any attempt on the part of Peter, or anyone else to move Jesus away from Jerusalem and the cross is nothing less than the work of Satan Himself.  As one theologian put it, “The glory of the Father is beheld in the crucified Son raised from the dead” (Gregory of Nyssa).

So what does this have to do with you?  What does this have to do with Messiah Lutheran Church?  No one hear would ever be guilty of such a crime, could we?  No one here would ever suggest that we take Christ down from the cross, or that we should put our focus somewhere else in the Church, would we?

Yes, we would and we do.  Everything in your nature as a fallen creature wants to keep Jesus away.  By nature you want to keep Jesus away from the cross and the tomb.  Because the problem is this isn’t just about Jesus 2000 years ago.  It’s about your life as a Christian.  Jesus said, If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lost it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.  If you can take Jesus off the cross, then you don’t have to suffer, either!  That’s what made Peter afraid.  He was afraid that his so-called victorious living was going to come crashing down.

Jesus said that He must suffer, die and rise again from the dead.  It wasn’t an option.  It wasn’t one path among many.  It was the only path that would bring salvation.  It was the only way that you will be saved from your sins.  That’s why Jesus is so harsh with Peter.  Jesus knows that He had to go this path.  For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.  God loved the world so much that He gave His Son over to death.  And so it must happen.  And in the same way, in order to truly hear Jesus’ message, you must deny yourself.  You must deny that you are the master of your own fate.  You must reject the false life that the devil and the world would give to you, and lose your life to gain Jesus’ life.

Jesus is the one who defines who we are as Christians.  His life is our life.  Our lives as baptized children of God are patterned after the life, death and life again of Jesus Christ.  If we are going to follow Jesus, we are going to follow him through suffering and death to eternal life.  That’s the only way to get there, my friends.

But this life is hard, make no mistake about it.  What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?  All the scrambling for a buck, all of the striving and fighting to get ahead, all of the financial planning will amount to absolutely nothing without Jesus.  In fact, as Jesus Himself says, you can very easily create a false god out of these things.  You can very easily put your money, your life, your family, you work or a thousand other things in from of Christ and the Gospel.  You want to believe that you can do it yourself.  You want to believe that you can make it on your own.  You want to believe that you can work your way out of the mess of your life.  As the hymnist wrote:

It was a false, misleading dream, That God his Law had given

That sinners could themselves redeem And by their works gain heaven.

The Law is but a mirror bright To bring the inbred sin to light

That lurks within our nature. (LW #355, v. 3)

This false dream lurks within our nature.  It lurked within Peter’s nature, until it bubbled up through his mouth.  But Jesus does not let Peter’s unbelief remain.  And so He rebukes Him, and then gives a beautiful picture of the Christian life, the real life under the cross.

So what is this picture of the Christian life that Jesus paints?  It is this: as long as your possessions define who you are, they enslave you.  If your possessions define who you are, then you are not worshipping the Creator, but the creation.  You are worshipping the things of this world, and not the creator of this world.  I think this is why we have such a hard time giving to the Church.  It’s all fine and good to talk about faith and Jesus and love, but put it into practice?  Well, that’s a little bit more trust than I’m willing to have.  What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

We work under the mistake that our possessions are ours.  They aren’t.  Everything you have, everything you are, is from God.  They are God’s, just like you are God’s.  So to let go of these possessions for the sake of the Gospel is to believe that Jesus will take care of you.  Hard?  You bet.  Impossible, if left to your own devices.  But you aren’t left to your own devices.  God is the one who creates faith.  God is the one who gives you Himself.  Jesus is the one who grasps on to your life and holds you tight.  He is the one who frees your from yourself.  He is the one who will teach you His way, the way of the cross.  And when you are freed from the things of the world, when you believe that God is the one who takes care of you, your whole life comes into focus.  Faith in the cross of Jesus is what gives you the lens to understand everything else about your life.

Saint Paul speaks about this faith of the cross in our Epistle lesson.  Paul wrote, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand (Rom. 5:1-2).  This great work of God, what we in the Church call justification, is given to you through faith, that is, through hearing and believing the message of Jesus Christ.  And what is the result?  The result is peace, peace that only God can give.  Peace which frees you from the things of this world to contemplate the great things of God.  When you have that peace, then you can come to truly enjoy the gifts of this earth.  God has given you a great many gifts on this earth: family, friends, house, a job, a life, and other possessions.  All of these gifts are icing on the cake, compared to the gift of eternal life.  But we can enjoy them, because God gave them to us!  And we can give to God, because He has so richly given to us.

Yes, the theology of the cross is a mystery.  On the one hand, we are to look to Christ as our life.  On the other hand, God has given us the things of the world to enjoy.  They aren’t in conflict as God intended it, but we work so hard to put our possessions in front of God.  When you do that, the things of the world block out the things of God.

God, however, does not leave us to our own devices in this mystery.  As Paul wrote again in our Epistle, For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!  God loved you when you were His enemy.  He died for you, even though you hated Him.  Now He is the one who gives you His life.  He gives you His life in simple words, in water, and in His very body and blood.  For with these earthly things God seals in you a heavenly life.  You are His adopted child, and He loves you more than life itself.  That is the theology of the cross.  That is what it means to be a Christian.  Believe it, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Lent 2B (March 19, 2000)

Mark 8:31-38

 

 

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Last Revised: March 20, 2000