Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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I like it when Jesus heals people – and when he calls God “Father” -- and when he assures us that this fatherly God knows each one of us, that he’s counted the hairs on our heads, and that he loves us neverendingly, and can be counted on to care for us more carefully than he cares for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field (which is astonishing, when you think about it). What’s not to like? But, I’m with Simon Peter: I don’t like it when Jesus talks about the cross, his and mine. And all the cross-stuff, all the dreadful talk begins right here in Chapter 8. Mark’s Gospel flows along like a river, and we’re sailing comfortably on it, but when we come to the eighth chapter there is a huge waterfall. It’s all rapids and whitewater the rest of the way. I would like to turn my eyes away, keep on sailing peaceful waters, but (truth is) trouble’s at the heart of the gospel. We can’t stop when the going gets tough.

Peter has just declared that Jesus is Messiah, long-awaited savior of Israel. (The Greek word is christos, “Christ.”) Now the cat is out of the bag! There’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Jesus must now explain who he is. He praises Peter for his insight, but warns them all not to talk about it. Why? Because Jesus must now dispel in these disciples all their built-up expectations about Messiah. He would not be the messiah of power and success which they were expecting, which Israel was expecting, and had been expecting for hundreds of years. His would be a messiahship of sacrifice, suffering and service. This is at the heart of everything. Mark says, “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.” The days of wine and roses are over. It’s time to get serious. And, he tells them, it’s not only he who must suffer.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.

“If any want to become my followers,” he begins, (Yes, Jesus, we want to be your followers – tell us about it.) -- “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life…will save it..” And then the question of the ages: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
Jesus’ Messiah was a gigantic contradiction of everything Messiah was supposed to be. Jesus’ Gospel was, and remains, a gigantic contradiction of everything success is supposed to be. How do we measure Messiah? How do we measure success? Is Messiah, or success, measured in power, riches, admiration? If so, Jesus didn’t come close, and those who try sincerely to follow his teachings are, and will always by, losers. To see what Jesus is saying here is to be jolted out of our skin. He sees life upside down and inside out. This is the essence of being born again: we adopt a new way of seeing, thinking, feeling, being which is so radical that it’s like being born all over again.

Our world needs a new definition of success. What makes us worth something? We ask of a man, “What’s he worth.” And we don’t mean how valuable he is in his church or in his community, or how good a parent he is, or how moral a life he lives. We mean how much gravy’s on his plate. But we should mean the other. And I believe we’re finally beginning to understand that we’re measuring a person’s worth with the wrong ruler. We’re beginning to suffer what has been called “the poverty of success.” A cartoon shows two well-dressed men with briefcases running – but the cartoon reader sees immediately that they are running in a squirrel cage! One of the men is beginning to look over the side, is beginning to see what’s going on and to wonder about the wisdom of all this running. The other says to him, “If you question the system, you’ll never get ahead.” We’ve started to question the system. Not because we’re moral geniuses but because we’re hurting. We’re hurting over the breakup of the family, over the loss of community, over the poverty of love in homes, over the irrelevance of churches, over all the addictions and perversions that plague us. We’re hurting. And yet, by most worldly standards, we are successful. Consumer spending is up, interest rates are down. That’s what the government says should make us happy. But something’s wrong, and we know it. We’re experiencing the poverty of success. We’re ready to consider once again Jesus’ question, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

One minister tells of a church member who called one day and asked to speak with him. “This was one of the most successful men in my congregation,” the minister later said. “He made a huge salary as an advertising executive, and he seemed to have everything. But when he arrived and collapsed into my sofa he looked beat.” “I know people think I have a wonderful job,” the man began, “but let me tell you what it’s really like. When you go to work for my company you get a hundred points. Every time you fail, or dissatisfy someone, they take points away. If it’s a small failure, maybe you made a client angry by telling him the truth, it’s just one or two points. If it’s a big mess-up, maybe you failed to sell an important account, it’s seven or eight points. When you get down to eighty, they fire you and hire somebody else.” The minister asked, “How can you put points back in your column?” The man said, “You can’t. It’s unforgiving.” Looking back on that conversation, the minister said, “I realized again how drab, how discouraging, how empty is the world of gaining and getting. How we desperately need forgiveness and compassion and humanity. How we need to listen to Jesus when he talks about getting by giving, and finding by losing, and living by dying.” Could it be true, this topsy-turvy way which Jesus preached? Could we try it? “Give and it will be given unto you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over.”

We should remember this always, but especially during Lent. In our pursuit of success, and in our relations with other people, Jesus calls us to do just the opposite of what we are programmed to do. It’s all part of the cross – giving up what seems important, so as to make room in our lives for greater things. He tells us to give up our defensiveness. “If someone strikes you on the one cheek, offer him the other.” “If he steals your vest, give him your coat.” That is very difficult for us to do. But the saints do it. Henry Ward Beecher was one of the finest preachers of the nineteenth century. He was known not only for his sermons, but also for his kindness…especially his kindness to those who had done him wrong. (That’s the Jesus sign.) Maybe the nicest thing ever said about Beecher was a saying that was popular in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he preached. People would say to each other, “If you want a favor from Beecher, kick him.”
. That’s the Jesus sign. And it’s not that we don’t know it. It’s not that we haven’t been told. A magazine publisher introduced a new computer system which would automatically send a notice to a customer whose subscription was about to expire. But, when the system was introduced, something went terribly wrong. It sent 11,834 notices to the same man. The local post office had to designate a special truck just to carry the man’s mail to his house. After he had opened 250 of the notices, all exactly alike, the man wrote a note to the publisher. It said, “I give up. My check is enclosed.” God has sent us plenty of notice that we’re measuring human success and a person’s worth in the wrong way. He’s sent us notice in the Bible, in the teachings of Jesus, and in the cruel and self-destructive world we’ve created for ourselves. We have no excuse for not receiving the message. It’s time to say, “I give up. My check is enclosed.” Teach me to look at the world upside down and inside out, as Jesus did.