Hard Gospel, Hard Choices, Hard Discipleship

“…He said all this quite openly” (Mark 8:32)

Genesis 9:1-7, 15-16

Psalm 22:23-31

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

 New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

(Year B: Second Sunday of Lent, 28 February, 2021)

(with minor updating adjustments this blog was written on the Second Sunday in Lent – Year B – in March 2018. The points considered seem as relevant today as they did 3 years ago).

Being a disciple of Jesus the Christ in the world today certainly has its challenges; perhaps more than in the past when not to be a believer or a disciple was often looked at with disdain in this part of the world. Today’s readings remind us that the call to follow God’s call demands sacrifice, suffering and above all love and trust.

Although we do not hear about it much, sisters and brothers of ours are daily martyred in parts of the world where diabolical attempts are underway to exterminate Christianity where it has flourished in strong little communities going back to the 2^nd Century. After we emerge from some of the strictest social restriction measures in Europe concerning public worship, we might wonder about whether to go or where to go on a Sunday morning. On the same time, Christians in the Middle East put their lives and the lives of their loved ones at some degree of risk in walking to Church and staying there to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection every Sunday. They might await in fear and trust that noise of commotion or banging at the front door some night.

The call to follow Jesus as recounted in Mark 8:31-38 is blunt. We may have our own notions of what following Jesus means. We may cultivate our souls, bodies and minds thinking that following Jesus is about conforming to some pattern of intellectual compliance and a ‘theology of works’. We might be still persevering with our little bit for Lent this second week of the season.  However, in the Gospel reading for this Sunday, we are reminded that following Jesus means putting our lives – our very ‘souls’ on the line for the One who faced death and resurrection ahead of us. We do this not on the basis of our own strength or virtue but that of our Saviour who has gone before us.

Does this matter for us today? I suggest it does. If we take our vows at baptism seriously then we are invited, urged, commanded to make the love of God the cornerstone of our lives. In big ways and in small ways this might call for ‘heroic virtue’.

Is all of this martyrdom talk over the top? I suggest not.  Christians serving in our health and related services in Ireland are faced with tough life-changing choices. The face of medicine is dramatically changing from what it was as the means to save and protect all live.

Would I speak and act out in respect for all human life – unborn, born, mothers, fathers, women, men? Would I have the courage to do the right thing and refuse?  Or, would I register some protest?

Will I acknowledge the need for real and genuine compassion, sensitivity and humility in the case of each complex individual case?

It is easy to pontificate on how others – especially vulnerable, poor, sick and traumatised women – should or should not do. Would we give our very lives to make life better for everyone and not just that life that is in the womb? Do we take all life for all of the time seriously?

Would I remain silent while fundamental changes have taken place to our laws that redefine who is unworthy of life (the practice of Lebensunwertes Leben familiar to Christians in Germany in the 1930s)?

Would I put my career and promotion at risk – were I working in areas of the health service – by exercising my conscientious objection to lethal practices or the administrative processing of same?

Would I be prepared to lose my job?

Will I act, protest and vote in such manner as to attract the misrepresentation, ridicule, judgment, incomprehension, exclusion and ostracism of others including, perhaps, those very near and dear to me at home, at work, in the Church or in the wider community?

Will I listen to the experiences, wisdom and insights of those who know more than I do about complex issues of health, life and personal tragedy? 

Who do I listen to? What experiences and insights do I choose to shut out?

Is it right and convenient to live a comfortable life because these matters have nothing ‘directly’ to do with me?

Do I have the courage to lovingly question the teaching, stance or silences of my own Church or that of other Churches?

Will I, together with others, join up the dots and acknowledge the bigger picture of social injustice and dysfunction that provides the backdrop for the difficult question on hand?

Would I do something about that bigger picture when these current controversies abate somewhat?

Would we work, all of us, tirelessly to address the economic, social and gender discrimination conditions in which many feel they have no life-affirming options?

Is anyone out there up for the challenge of being the ‘King’s faithful servant but God’s first’? (Saint or Sir – depending on your ecclesiology - Thomas More, 1478-1535*).

Are there any Dietrich Bonhoeffers** out there today in Ireland and right now who are going to take the road of costly discipleship while eschewing ‘cheap grace’?

Indeed, we are living in truly challenging times and this is why Mark 8:31-38 has particular salience this second Sunday of Lent in 2021 as it did on the same Sunday in February of 2018.

And the Lord of Love says to us again today:

‘For those who want to save their life will lose it’ (v. 35)

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*“He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true.” (St Thomas More, Utopia).

* Sir/Saint Thomas More was, apparently and curiously, hailed by Mark, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin for his witness and service to the ‘liberation of humankind from oppression, arbitrariness, and exploitation.’ (source:  Thomas More – Wikipedia)

**  “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945, in The Cost of Discipleship).

 (words above = 922)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

In this passage, Mark fuses the ideas behind that of the ‘Suffering Servant’ (Isaiah 53:3) with the ‘Son of Man’ (Daniel 8:17)

31:   We have been warned

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 

Where the Son of Man leads there we go, too.

32-33:   Peter still doesn’t get it

He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

The way of thinking revealed by Jesus in this passage of Mark is challenging. It was challenging for Peter who would not hear of the cross and the way of much suffering. Yet, it is Peter – again – who speaks up and takes the lead where others drew back and waited. The impetuous, reckless, sometimes faithless Peter who sticks his neck out only to have it pushed back – in this case by attracting the undiplomatic expression ‘get behind me Satan’.

34:  Losing to gain

 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 

Denying or forgetting self runs counter to our natural instincts. It is, also, counter-cultural.  To take up our cross is not just about imitating our lives on that of Christ: it is about being marked with the sign of the cross as in Baptism. (It is suggested by some scholars that the cross such as + or x or the Greek letter Tau marked on the body signified repentance and branding as God’s own among Jews ever before Jesus arrived on the Jewish scene.  One thinks of the seal of baptism and the cross on the forehead whether at baptism or at the beginning of the Lenten journey when, in the Western Christian tradition, ashes are marked in a cross-like shape on our foreheads.)

35-37:  The meaning of Christian life

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? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 

‘life’ or ‘ψυχὴν’ or ‘psyxḗ’ could mean soul, breath, life or living being.

38:   Without shame or fear

Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

It takes courage and wisdom – which are among the gift of the Holy Spirit – to speak out, to act out and to renounce our dead selves. Discipleship is, always, costly. We would be deceived to think otherwise.