2nd Sunday in Lent

2^nd Sunday in Lent: March 4, 2012

Mark 8:31-38

Preacher: Pr. Carrie B. Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

When I was a brand-new college student at Oklahoma State University—a freshman eager to begin my studies as a piano major—I thought I knew exactly what it meant to be a musician. After all, my dad was a music professor, and my grandfather had spent his entire career as a high school band director. One whole side of my family was involved in music in one way or another, and I had always known I would be following in their footsteps. The only difference, of course, is that I would be a performer, not a teacher like my relatives. I walked into the music department that first day ready to begin my glorious career as a professional pianist.

But first, there was an assembly of all freshmen music majors. A professor stood to welcome us to the program, and then he said: “I know you all want to be musicians. But if there is anything else you can do in life—if there is anything at all that will make you happy and fulfilled outside of this profession—you should do it. The life of a musician is hard. Most of you won’t make it. You’ll need side jobs to make ends meet. Only a few of you will have a go at a career. So if you think you can be happy doing anything else—go do it.”

How’s that for a pep talk? But of course, he was right. The life of a musician is rarely one of glitz and glory. Record deals, NPR interviews and concert dates at Carnegie Hall are few and far between. The reality of life as a musician is long hours in the practice room, late night gigs at senior proms, playing in a wedding polka band to pay the bills, and working every other waking hour at Subway. It’s a hard life, and not one to be entered into lightly. You should know what you’re getting into.

When Jesus gathered his disciples together in the days just before he entered Jerusalem, he gave them a similar sort of reality check:

³¹Then 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. ³²He said all this quite openly.

The disciple Peter didn’t like this pep talk one bit! In fact, he had the nerve to disagree with Jesus and rebuke him in front of the others: “No way, Jesus! I refuse to believe it! It doesn’t have to be that way!” I can picture Peter as the starry-eyed freshman music major, determined that these words weren’t for him—it can’t really be the way he is describing--he would certainly be a star, no matter what the professor said.

But Jesus, turning and looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter right back and said,

“Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

And then, gathering the whole crowd around to listen along with the disciples, Jesus continued his “come to Jesus” speech:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For 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.”

Scripture tells us that Jesus said all these things “quite openly.” The time had come to get real about what discipleship would mean after Galilee, and especially after Jerusalem and Golgotha. Following Jesus would no longer mean being a roadie, on tour to new villages to see his astonishing teaching, healing, and feeding miracles. Now, according to Jesus, if you wanted to be his disciple, you would be carrying a cross, and losing your life. Not exactly glamorous or full of glory, is it? But, it’s a hard life, and you should know what you’re getting into.

This appears to be a terrible marketing strategy. It’s hard to imagine anyone signing up for voluntary cross-carrying duty as a lifestyle. And perhaps this is why we rarely speak “quite openly” about the realities of life as a follower of Jesus Christ. Instead, we focus on the attractive qualities of the Christian life in general, and church in particular. When we do speak openly, we often present the situation like this: (Yes, these are all real phrases from Chicagoland church websites)

· “You're invited to check out our church this Sunday for creative teaching, meaningful worship, an unforgettable kids program and a church that knows how to have fun! We provide complimentary coffee.”

· Or we extend invitations like this one: “If you're looking for a church home, we'd love for you to come by and see if we're a good fit. We believe God is in a good mood, and His heart is for you.”

· We create state of the art websites that promote our “talented live band and a style consistent with today’s culture” as well as “dynamic guest speakers from around the world”. We might even include a link for purchasing “bold Christian apparel.”

· And in a last ditch effort to get people in the door, we promise that “All weekend services last for ninety minutes – you can always expect them to start and end on time.”

Now, just to be clear, I have no problem with most of these individual features of Christian worship or of our life together on Sunday mornings. In fact, complimentary coffee, good music and services that start on time are a definite draw for me! But I wonder how different it would be if we told the truth, quite openly, about what Christian discipleship is like the other days of the week.

I wonder what it would be like for us to say, quite openly, something like this:

· If you want to follow Jesus, you’ll have to leave your own priorities and values at the door.

· If you want to follow Jesus, you’ll spend less time in the church and more time on the streets.

· If you want to follow Jesus, keep in mind that the church won’t always conform to your needs, but Christ always transforms you for his needs.

· If you want to follow Jesus, you should know that suffering goes beyond sitting through a bad sermon or eight verses of a hymn. As a disciple, you will carry the sufferings of others in your heart and on your back.

Perhaps this also is a crummy marketing campaign. On the other hand, being a Christian isn’t easy, and you should know what you’re getting into.

The time has come to tell the truth about Christian discipleship. Why? Because Jesus was quite open about the necessity of picking up your cross to follow him. But we confuse the message:

1. We either bypass the cross altogether and promise people they will find a life of perfect joy and no pain if they become a Christian; or:

2. We confuse our own personal life struggles with Jesus’ invitation to discipleship.

The first problem—leading others to believe that being a Christian is all sunshine and rainbows—results in new disciples who feel side-swiped and lied to when the struggles of life don’t disappear upon joining the church.

But the second problem—confusing our own sufferings with Jesus’ invitation to discipleship—is also a lie. We get a cancer diagnosis, or we have a problem teenager, or we lose our job, and we find ourselves saying: “Ah yes, this is the cross I must bear.”

And indeed: Cancer sucks. Unemployment is heart-breaking and home-ruining. Burying a loved one is unimaginably hard. It takes a mountain of faith and strong shoulders to bear such crosses. But these sufferings are not the cross of discipleship! Suffering and grief are the result of a broken and sinful world, which the cross of Jesus Christ has redeemed.

When Jesus says “Take up your cross and follow me”, he’s not speaking to the cancer patient—he’s speaking to the one standing by the bed of the cancer patient. He’s speaking to the neighbor of the jobless father. He’s speaking to the friends of the struggling or grieving parent. And he says: “You there—yes, you!—pick up that cross and follow me.”

If you want to be a disciple, take up the sufferings of your neighbor. Lighten their load. Walk next to them. Go where they are going, even if (and especially if) it leads to suffering and death.

If you want to be a disciple, stand with the Kearns family as they grieve the loss of Jennifer, age 19—not only for many hours at the visitation, but in the months and years to come.

If you want to be a disciple, be there for the Vito family, helping Kelly with the burden of raising a family without Frank.

If you want to be a disciple, stand with the illegal, homeless, unpopular, mentally ill, foreclosed upon, imprisoned, heretical, or just plain unpleasant people in your midst, even if it means you, too, are reviled and ridiculed and gossiped about.

If you want to be a disciple, speak out—quite openly—when the speech, actions, and laws of others cause your neighbor to suffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who was hanged for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, once wrote: “How is a disciple to know which is his or her cross? We receive it upon entering the discipleship of the suffering Lord, and come to recognize it in the community of Jesus.”

It is by living in community—worshipping, praying, laughing, crying, and breaking bread together, that we learn the cross we are to bear. We will know it when we see the suffering of our neighbor. We will know it when the love of God in Christ Jesus compels us to reach out and pick it up. And with the help of Christ, our Savior—and in his footsteps—we carry our neighbor’s cross, for the sake of the Gospel.

Jesus said: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For 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.” It’s a strange marketing strategy. It’s an unpopular church growth model! But faith tells us this: The way of the cross is also the way of life, and hope, and resurrection. This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! This is God’s Good News, which is poured out on us and which we receive, quite openly, in the Word, in the waters of baptism, in bread and wine, and through the cross-bearing love of our Christian brothers and sisters. Amen.