Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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The story is familiar, of course. And important. It splits Mark’s Gospel in half. Before this hard conversation on the road to Caesarea Philippi, we are reading about youthful idealism, sprinkled with innocence and naivete. These are the early days of Jesus’ ministry, a ministry of teaching and healing, mostly in sun-lit Galilee. After this conversation we read the tragic “second act,” as Jesus and the disciples face increasing opposition and find themselves heading toward Jerusalem, and death.

The story is also familiar (and important) because it describes a fork in the road of that perilous “heart journey,” that faithful pilgrimage, all Christians take with Jesus, a divergence where the disciples (and all true followers) must, sooner or later, make a choice. Usually, we meet Jesus in the sunshine -- like Peter and Andrew mending their nets by the sea. There is exhilaration, enthusiasm, sometimes even ecstasy -- we love this man. He’s saying wonderful things about God’s love and human brotherhood. He’s helping the blind to see and the lame to walk. What’s not to like? We would follow him to the ends of the earth. And, so, we set out with him. But one day he turns to us and says, “It’s been good so far, hasn’t it? I can see you’re enjoying yourselves. You like traveling with me. You even proclaim me “Christ,” but, really, what’s it to you? Is it just a lark? Don’t tell me what other people say They will be worthless to me when the time comes. I need to know if I can count on you. There’s a terrible road ahead. Will you go with me? A fork in the road. John Wesley asked his congregation, “Will you have the crown or the curse? To say you will make no decision is to make a decision.”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Gospel is a gigantic contradiction of what the world calls success. We are woefully unprepared for that message, just as the Twelve were unprepared. Peter, panicking, pulls Jesus aside and tries to hush him up. Peter knew, from his Jewish upbringing, what Messiahship/Christship would be. It would be victorious, glorious. This ain’t it, babe. He begs Jesus to stop talking so much, and so publicly, about suffering, and rejection, and dying. (Peter’s like a corporate CEO, whose accounting scandal has just been uncovered, and who is scurrying to protect the company’s image. “Put the bad news in the small print. How’re we going to sell this thing, Jesus, if you go around talking like that?) But the Gospel never “sells” in this world. Jesus taught that the world values all the wrong virtues and rewards all the wrong behaviors. The Gospel is a threat to this world, an enormous contradiction of what most people call success. And, sooner or later, we have to decide how success, for us, is measured. Sooner or later we come to that fork in the road.

Wealth? No. Jesus tells the parable of the Rich Fool, who thought he had a lot, all safe and stored away, but in the end had nothing. Power? No. Pilate asks Jesus if he realizes that he has the power to condemn him to death, and Jesus says “Without my heavenly Father you wouldn’t have any power at all.” Feel good? (With drugs, alcohol, lies and fantasies?) No. There’s not a shred of evidence that Jesus, or any of the disciples, felt good during those last days. And yet it was in the last days that God shown through. What about other people? (Loved ones, friends?) We can put our faith in love and friendship, can’t we? No. They all die, even the best and the bravest. And sometimes in an instant. Nine-eleven taught us that. Jesus said we’re like grass. Here today, gone tomorrow.

With rue my heart is laden

For golden friends I had,

For many a rose-lipt maiden

And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping

The lightfoot boys are laid,

The rose-lipt girls are sleeping

In fields where roses fade.

Jesus scolded Peter, saying, “…you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” A fork in the road, you see. From this moment on, Peter, I need you to think like God, and not like the man you are? Here’s how God thinks, he said (and it’s just the opposite of the way you think): “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross….He who would save his life must lose it. He who loses his life for my sake will save it.” Precisely contrary to worldly wisdom. And then the question that haunts the ages: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” What, of all his wealth, could he give to get it back? A beautiful young woman, from a small town in Pennsylvania, had gone to New York City and “made it big” among the wealthy and famous. She had rich friends, was receiving expensive gifts and attending high-society’s finest dances and dinner parties. But she had gotten there not only by her good looks and charm, but also by winking, now and then, at the old-fashioned morals she was taught as a girl. One evening, as she sat at a splendid dinner party, a message arrived for her saying that her mother was dying. She rose and excused herself. “I have received word that my mother, back home, is in her last hours. I must go to her. She thinks I’m a waitress, and my God I wish I were.” What does it profit one to gain the whole world and lose one’s soul? What could one give to get it back?

Several years ago the film, Three Men and a Baby, scored big at the box office. It was the story of three talented, powerful, affluent men (their lives completely under control) who had their worlds transformed, turned upside down and thrown into chaos, by the presence of a baby. Overnight their values shifted. What seemed important yesterday, no longer mattered. What seemed foolish and sentimental and weak yesterday, became paramount. Many a strong and affluent man or woman has had his or her life transformed by the baby Jesus. Or upon hearing the grown-up Jesus ask, “What does it profit a man…?”

In this “second act,” this second leg of our journey, the cross becomes the standard by which we measure success. As Christians we believe that the cross is the exhibition of the nature of God. Perfect love. Love willing to die for the beloved. And we are the beloved. It is a standard so different from the world’s standards that when one sees it and adopts it one feels he has been born all over again. It is the most sublime, and most difficult teaching of our faith. The disciples were about to learn it.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.