A death dealing diagnosis is hard to hear and even harder to endure, but when God is in control it leads to a new vision of life.
When you first receive a diagnosis of death, your world spins. You are filled with questions that are not easy to answer. There is a moment of disbelief. This cannot be happening. Not now. Not to you. The days ahead are transformed. Priorities shift. Vacation plans change. Leveling the low spot in the yard and laying new sod is suddenly no longer important. A night at home with the kids is welcomed as a blessed gift. Even though it is in the midst of terrible questions, such news draws us closer to one another and closer to God.
A death dealing diagnosis has a way of stirring up the remaining embers of life, so we see certain things in a different light. We see life. Not life as we want it to be, but life as it is. Every day, every hour, every second, is a treasured gift from God.
In our text for Lent 2, the disciples first hear a death dealing prophecy from Jesus. “And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (verse 31). Jesus “began” to teach these things. Such news would necessitate frequent retellings. Three times in Mark Jesus predicts His passion (Mark 8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34) and three times the disciples do not understand.
Although Jesus keeps opening the door, no disciple wants to enter that building. The house of death is rarely a place people willingly enter. They need to be thrust through the door. And this passion prediction, this first announcement of His dying, this one is perhaps the hardest of them all. Later, the disciples listen in fearful silence (9:32), but this time Peter responds.
Mark tells us Peter rebukes Jesus. Peter has just confessed Jesus to be the Christ and now Peter rebukes Him. Perhaps we need to linger on that moment... a disciple rebuking his teacher, a believer rebuking his Lord.
Have you ever struggled with God? Questioned His ways in your life? Such conversations are filled with passion, because God is at work, challenging and changing the things we value, opening our lives to a direction we do not want to go. When we rebuke God, it is a good time to stop and look around and listen. Because, in those moments, God is asking us to see things not as we want them to be, but as they really are in His Kingdom.
Mark does not record Peter’s words. He trusts we know what such resistance would sound like. Suffering should not happen. Not to God. Not to God’s people.
Why not? Why should this suffering not happen to Jesus?
Perhaps it should not happen because Peter trusts the religious authorities would never do such a thing. One expects the Church to act faithfully, to abide by the ways of God, to treat others with love and respect, and to reach out with the Gospel. Yet, the Church does not always act in the way God desires. The leaders of the Church can act out of power rather than love. For this to happen means I may need to change my whole understanding of the Church and how the Church works in the world.
The leaders of the Church can act out of power rather than love. For this to happen means I may need to change my whole understanding of the Church and how the Church works in the world.
Perhaps it should not happen because Peter understands Jesus to be the Christ and the Christ would never suffer in such a way. To be the Christ means to be an anointed one. God would never abandon His anointed one. He would deliver Him, rescue Him, save Him from death, and not let Him suffer it. For this to happen means I need to change my whole understanding of God and how God works in the world.
Perhaps it should not happen because Peter has followed Jesus. He has left everything to be part of these disciples. He has gone all in. This is not just his future Jesus is talking about, it is our future as well. We believed in Him and followed Him and want it all to go well. We need it to go well because this is all we have. For this to happen means I need to change my whole understanding of discipleship and what it means to have a future with Jesus.
The death dealing diagnosis from our Lord changes the way we see the world. The Church is a gathering of sinners, constantly needing to confess its sins against its own people and its God. The Messiah is a Savior of sinners, enduring the punishment of their sin unto the point of death and rising from the dead to rule over the strange and disorienting Kingdom of God. Discipleship is not an easy road, a harnessing of God’s power to fulfill our projects of self-fulfillment. It is a loss of life, a dying to self, a carrying of a cross, which brings us closer to God.
“Whoever would save his life will lose it,” Jesus says. “But whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it” (9:35). Jesus did not come to save our dreams of what the Church and the Messiah and discipleship should be. He came to suffer the punishment of our sin to save us, to die under the reality of a corrupt church, so He might rise to build a new community of forgiveness. Jesus bore the reality of death that He might rise to lead His disciples to new life in a dying world.
A death dealing diagnosis is hard to hear and even harder to endure, but when God is in control it leads to a new vision of life. It may not be life in the way we imagine, but it is life in the way only God can provide.
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out out 1517’s resources on Mark 8:27-38.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Mark 8:27-38.
Text Week-A treasury of resources from various traditions to help you preach Mark 8:27-38.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
Lectionary Podcast-Dr. Peter Scaer of Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, IN walks us through Mark 8:27-38.
