“Serving the Suffering Servant”

Mark 8:31-39

Read Mark 8:34, 35 (Barclay): If anyone, [Jesus] said, wishes to walk in my steps, he must once and for all say No to himself; he must decide to take up his cross; and he must keep on following me. Anyone who wishes to keep his life safe will lose it, but anyone who is prepared to lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Good News will save it.

[Prayer]

Grace is free; it is not cheap. Our salvation cost God the Father his only Son. By way of the ultimate gift of love and mercy that was Jesus Christ God kept his covenant. He was faithful to all the promises he had made.

God’s faithfulness is an act of his grace. We don’t have to earn it; it’s already bought and paid for. All we can do is accept it. It’s free, absolutely free.

But not cheap. The children of Israel, misinterpreting God’s covenant with David, assumed that the covenant was perpetually one-sided. No matter how they behaved they believed, that when push came to shove, the Lord would save them. They blatantly ignored the warnings of Moses in Exodus and Deuteronomy. God had promised blessings to those who kept his covenant. He had also promised curses to those who broke it. As Israel so painfully discovered, God keeps all of his promises.

Grace is not cheap. We do not accept God’s forgiveness with our fingers crossed. Somewhere in the process we need to own up to our sinfulness and then repent of it. Having repented and experienced the forgiveness that only God can give, we open ourselves to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Because we love the One who first loved us, we seek to walk faithfully in the footsteps of Jesus.

This is where, in the words of William Barclay, “Into the budget of every Christian’s life must be written a possible loss.” Following Jesus isn’t always a mountaintop experience. Following Jesus is not about what we hope to get; it’s about what we are willing to give: our time, energy, resources, and even our lives. Sometimes following Jesus will lead us from riches to rags.

Following him also means living a life that is at odds with cultural expectations. Living as faithful disciples requires us to walk to the beat of a different drummer, that drummer being the Holy Spirit. It means living in our surrounding culture, to quote Will Willoman and Stan Hauerwas, as “resident aliens.” Sometimes we’re just not going to fit in. And we shouldn’t.

We have no choice but to be in the world. It’s where God has put us. But we must not be of the world. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “[We must] not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds, so that [we] may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

But the world doesn’t always take kindly to those who refuse to conform to it. When we seek and follow God’s will rather than the dictates of culture, the culture can inflict pain upon us. In most cases it is simply the discomfort of being on the outside looking in. In extreme cases it can become the pain of persecution. Culture often tries to rid itself of those who will not conform. So Christians have learned over the centuries – in the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Red China, and in many places where militant Islam rules the roost. In such places a Christian’s choices are often limited to two: renounce Christ or die.

In today’s text Jesus was up front with his disciples about things like crosses, but they didn’t want to hear it. Peter thought it was a bunch of nonsense and said so, “Come on, Jesus, be real. Crosses don’t cut it. That can’t be what you’re all about.”

Then Jesus fired back, “Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works.” Peter’s thinking was so conformed to that of his culture that he couldn’t imagine a crucified Christ. Jesus was the Messiah. Messiahs are supposed kick the Romans out and return Judea to the glory days of David and Solomon.

But Jesus was a different kind of Messiah, a Suffering Servant. It was appointed to him to go to Jerusalem and die on a cross. He would be raised again, but first there had to be suffering and death. The will of God was being worked out through him in ways Peter just could not grasp. Furthermore, Peter’s rebuke echoed Satan’s temptations in the wilderness: be a popular king, a political whiz, a savvy ruler, a supplier of bread and circuses. Be the leader of the world’s only superpower. Conform your Messiahship to cultural expectations. Skip all that crucifixion stuff and head straight for the glory.

And Jesus said, “No.” And then he made it clear that faithfully following him had more to do with servanthood and suffering than it did with fame and fortune. “If you want to follow me, get ready to deny yourself. Saying yes to me will involve saying no to yourself and your culture. Saying yes to me involves a willingness to pick up a cross, to intentionally choose the possibility of pain and death as the cost of being my disciple. If you bail out on me in this world, I’ll not be there for you in the next. What’s it going to be, following me or chasing after the false promises of your culture’s idols? What’s it going to be, the short-term security of a life saved by denying me, or the long-term gift of life eternal? There is no such thing as bargain bin discipleship.”

Jesus was the Suffering Servant Messiah. We who claim his name are his servants. Where Jesus leads, we follow. Part and parcel of that is the process of being transformed into the kind of servant he was that Passover night in the Upper Room. Pride and arrogance must be transformed into humility. Self-centeredness must be transformed into Christ-centeredness. Our wishes must make way for the real needs of others. Impulsiveness must give way to patience. Our indulgence in our culture’s out-of-control consumerism must be replaced by a healthy frugality that enables us to be generous: in our gifts to God and our gifts to other people. Lip service to Christ and his Gospel must give way to the spiritual disciplines of prayer, study of Scripture, financial stewardship and God-centered worship.

Marva Dawn wrote that we only pick up a cross to die on it. This death can take many forms. But more than anything else it is the death of self. The self must die in order for Christ to live in us. This dying to self is hard. Servanthood, sacrifice, and humility are jarringly out of place in a culture that glorifies wealth, status, winning at all costs, and the notion that he who dies with the most toys wins. Doing what is good and acceptable and perfect in a world that rewards ethical shortcuts and the practice of going along in order to get along is extremely difficult.

So, too, is putting our wants and wishes on hold in order to keep doing something God has called us to do or to go in that place where God has planted us. I struggled mightily during much of my ministry in West Virginia. Part of it had to do with things beyond my control. Part of it had to do with not wanting a commuting marriage. Part of it had to do with some major personality conflicts with a couple of families that wanted their pastor to be their own private chaplain rather than the spiritual leader of the church. In retrospect, most of it had to do with my own ego and spiritual immaturity.

God led me there for a number of reasons. The one for which I am most thankful is Sandy. She was the best part of the whole experience. Others had to do with learning some humility, acquiring some patience, and finally developing both the tender heart and tough hide required of a pastor. And, O yes, growing up: spiritually, emotionally, and vocationally. As some of us used to describe a particularly difficult course in seminary, it was a good learning experience.

As crosses go my ongoing need to die to self was and is a relatively light one. But it was still a burden I had to bear if I was going to be a faithful follower of Jesus and grow where I was planted. I’d be lying if I said that I always carried it gladly and suffered in silence. There were more than a few times when I was not a happy camper. Even though I despise whining, I still do it extremely well. I’ve been known to throw a pity-party or two.

Whatever, here I am. Coming here has been a resurrection of sorts. But without the crucifixion of self I experienced in West Virginia, I would never have been spiritually or emotionally prepared to be your pastor. Without keeping those covenants I made in West Virginia I could not keep this one – neither with you nor with God. Odds are that I wouldn’t have even been considered a valid candidate for the position. The greater tragedy, however, is that I would never have learned just how faithful our God is in keeping his promises to those who are willing servants of the Suffering Servant. Amen.