Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16, Mark 8.27-38*
The Second Sunday of Lent, 28th February 2021 - online
You’d think we’d have given up on messiahs by now. For they always fail us. But we do persist in looking to these people to save us.
We thought the banks could save us, investing our wealth in them - we ended up bailing them out.
We thought the internet would save us, bringing the world to our homes, speeding up business, opening up new realms of leisure - it ended up enslaving us in new addictive habits and harmfully distancing us from those with whom we differ.
We thought the celebrities would save us, filling our hearts with laughter and song - they ended up hiding from us behind high-security fences, and withdrawing from public life.
We thought our priests could save us, offering us words of comfort to assuage our grief and pain - they ended up abusing our young ones and covering up the evidence.
Have you ever noticed how in the gospels the only people who called Jesus the Messiah were devils?
In Luke 4.41 Jesus performs a series of exorcisms and ‘Demons … came out of many, shouting, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Messiah.’
In Luke 23.39 the unrepentant criminal hanging beside Jesus at Calvary kept devilishly deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’
And here in Mark’s gospel today, his most devoted disciple Peter calls Jesus the Messiah - and shockingly, to Peter and to our ears, Jesus says, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’
Those who call Jesus the Messiah are devils, speaking Satanically. Jesus’ rebuke of Peter makes clear that those who follow Messiahs ‘are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
This is an argument between two different views of what a Messiah is and does. Peter was expressing the common view of the time that the Messiah was one powerful to save Israel from its Roman oppressor by force. By contrast, Jesus viewed himself as the Human One - the one whose power would be revealed through weakness, whose victory over the forces of evil would come through his suffering. Peter couldn’t countenance a Messiah who would suffer and die at the hands of others. Jesus couldn’t countenance a follower who wanted him to rule through force; because in Jesus’ worldview the Messiah comes in vulnerable love and forgiving grace.
Jesus warned his followers against false Messiahs who would lead them astray. [2] But Peter had swallowed the lie put out by Satan the father of lies, that there is no alternative to the competitive forces of the world, with their aggressive and power-grabbing Messiahs. Jesus wanted his disciples to see that following him means ceasing searching for salvation among those who wield such powers, and to find salvation in him who spent all his time serving those who suffer at the hands of such powers, the One who carries another kind of power altogether, a gentle, gracious power fostered by the pure force of nonviolent love. The power of life over death.
Let us be clear - that as far as Mark is concerned there is total opposition between these two powers, there is no accommodation to be made, no compromise to be had between the power of death in the world of Satan and the power of life in the love of Jesus. To follow Jesus means to oppose the Messiahs of this world. And so the expression, ‘Take up your cross and follow me’; as a statement of what Jesus requires of his followers it cannot be clearer. [3]
‘Take up your cross’ offended Peter’s view of who his Messiah was, and of how he should live as a disciple. Jesus’ opposition to the bankers of his day - the moneychangers in the Temple; Jesus’ critical questioning of the celebrities of his day - the king and the highly-regarded religious leaders; Jesus’ devoting most of his time and energy to the little ones, the struggling ones of society - this offended Peter as it wasn’t what a leader did, and it required Jesus’ followers to act the same.
The late Billy Graham often preached a sermon entitled The Offence of the Cross. He would say,
This expression “the offence of the cross” sounds strange to our modern ears. Because, you see, we have a beautiful cross on our churches. We have crosses in the lapels of our coats. We have crosses around our necks. We have crosses embossed on our Bibles. We never think of it as a scandal and as an offence. And yet the Bible says it’s a stumbling block. It’s an offence. It’s a scandal among men. It’s a base and despised thing.
The cross was a place to execute criminals. It was a place where the vilest died. And when I see Christ hanging on the cross, I say with Isaiah, “There is no beauty that I should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). Paul says that in his day it was an offence.
(Graham said that) I’ve found in my ministry that I can preach anything else, and it’s called popular. It pleases the ear. But when I come to the heart of Christianity, when I come to the cross and the blood and the resurrection, that is the stumbling block. That’s the thing people do not want to hear. That’s the thing that is an offence, and yet it’s that very thing that is the heart of the Gospel. Without the cross, there is no salvation, there is no forgiveness. [4]
We can imagine the pressure Billy Graham must have felt to become Messianic, to save his followers by wielding his substantial power. But he is a fine example of one who carried his cross. By deliberately not founding his own church; by avoiding getting involved in controversial public issues, but working quietly to challenge injustice in society; by imposing strict discipline and rules of accountability on himself and his employees in matters of finance and relationships - this was Graham carrying his cross, fighting hard to avoid the Messiah Complex to which so many other leaders in all walks of life, have succumbed. To do otherwise would have been Satanic. He worked tirelessly to deflect attention from himself and direct his audiences’ attention onto Jesus - this Jesus being the One whose leadership model was and is to meet aggression with gentleness, to defy violence with peace, to renounce wealth for generosity and to repay hatred with love. [5]
This is the way of the wilderness; to resist the temptation to be seen as the one who can save other people. This is the way of Lent; to nurture a spirit which gives a gracious and generous God space to work through us. This commitment to a life of humble, faithful service to the poor and the outcast and opposing those forces who exploit and oppress them: all of this will lead us to Easter; all of this is what it means to carry our cross.
Notes
*NB The Lectionary gospel passage is Mark 8.31-38 but this longer extract includes Peter’s crucial ‘Messiah’ confession.
[1] This talk draws on previous sermons on this gospel passage, including The Scandal of the Cross and What it Means to Carry Ours (Somerset, 2018), On calling God names (Somerset, 2015) and What’s in a name? (Devon, 2012).
[2] Mark 13.5-6; 21-22.
[3] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus. p.244
[4] Billy Graham, Why Does The Cross Offend People? Decision Magazine, March 3, 2016.
[5] Sources for Billy Graham biographical details: Obituary: William Franklin Graham, Church Times, 22 February 2018; Harriet Sherwood, Billy Graham, famed Christian evangelist, dies aged 99, Guardian, 21 February 2018; John Sharman, What is the Billy Graham rule?, Independent, 21 February 2018; Bob Smietana, The Other Billy Graham Rules: They have nothing to do with sex, Christianity today, 31 March 2017.
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