Following Jesus: Renouncing Power
Mark 8: 31-38
This reading takes us to the very heart of the matter. I know of no passage that captures so deeply and richly the essence of Jesus life and death. It takes us into his mind. So let’s move slowly today and take our time.
I want to begin with a thesis which I hope will open up our reading. Christians are those who worship the one they have killed – and know it. To put it another way: Christians are takers of life, who know it, in the face of a God who gives life. This is the Christian experience at its core. We stand before a God who gives life to us who are takers of life.
In this sense the disciples in our story were not Christians. Sure they were followers of Jesus. They may even have been followers of Christ, in a sense. After all, when questioned, Peter speaks for all the disciples as usual and declares ‘You are the Christ’. So he understood himself as a follower of the Christ. “Christ” meant anointed one. The Christ as a ruler, a coming divine ruler. Peter has a kingly vision of Jesus.
Peter proves that it’s possible to be a bona fide follower of Jesus and an enemy of God’s kingdom all at the same time. He does not know God as the one who gives life, nor does he count himself among the takers of life.
Last week we read that, no sooner had Jesus been declared the “Beloved Son of God” at his baptism, was he taken by the Spirit to a wild and lonely place and was tempted. And even in that lonely place the temptation to worldly power comes to him, in the voice of Satan the deceiver.
Today is a kind of parallel pattern in Mark’s gospel. This time in the midst of his friends he is declared to be God’s anointed coming King. And then immediately, the one who speaks for the disciples, Peter, becomes his new tempter. Satan is at the heart of this group of disciples.
What’s more the NT remembers this fact, it does not paper over it. Those who became the first witnesses – the Christians – knew themselves to be among the takers of life, addressed by their victim, a God who gave his life. They were people reconciled to their victim.
It is impossible to appreciate the gospel if we do not understand that Jesus interrupted the world in a radical way. And so he made no sense. Even those who had been with him for several years on the road were freaked out by him.
The memory is clear in the three synoptic gospels. Three times in each gospel Jesus told them that he was going to die. And this time his prediction culminates in a conflict between Jesus and his friends. He came to bring a dividing sword. He did not wield that sword himself, he told his disciples not to wield the sword, but he brought a division, which even divided him from his closest friends – leaving him alone in the midst of his accusers.
In this sense God who interrupts the world is profoundly alone. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone. He was to remain alone until his resurrection.
Peter’s reasoning is simple and clear. How can the king die? Kings may die, but God’s king cannot die. God cannot die. A divine venture that fails is quite simply not a divine venture.
All of this leads to Jesus reflection on what it really meant to follow him.
Mar 8:34-36 NRSV He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (35) For 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. (36) For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
Deny themselves – take up their cross… Is this a kind of metaphor for suicide, for self-hatred? I don’t think so. Jesus own cross was not an act of self-hatred. To hate one’s self is to take life, to suicide is to take life. Jesus own cross was an act of self-giving, not taking of himself. It was simultaneously an act of self-giving and of resistance to evil. In refusing to fight evil with evil, he conquered evil in resurrection.
He interrupted the whole world by giving his life, not simply losing it, but giving it for others. But he gave it, in a way that unmasked the Satan, in a way that revealed the world to be driven by the taking of life.
“For those who want to save their life will lose it.” And those who lose it, not just lose it though, who lose it for the other, who lose it “for my sake and for the gospel”, will save it.
Jesus next phrase takes us back to his first encounter with the Satan, his first temptation. “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and to forfeit their life or soul.”
Profit is one of those words associated with gaining power in the world – like effectiveness. How effective will it be? How cost-effective? What competitive advantage will it confer?
Woody Allen produced a fantastic movie called Match Point which is all about what people will do for success and whether the ends justify the means, and whether it’s all about luck. The main protagonist gets lucky and marries into a rich family. However he also falls in love with another girl and has an affair getting her pregnant. She threatens to expose his fraud and undo his luck if he doesn’t do the decent thing and support her. He decides to kill her… and does so. The plot reaches a knife edge when we don’t know whether he will be found out or not. Which way will his luck go? In the end he gets lucky you might say. If that’s what it is. To all appearances, all is idyllic again. He gains the world… but he cannot escape from himself. He loses his soul.
Nietzsche thought that this radical idea of Christianity (emerging in Jesus own understanding here in Mark) was simply a fraud. That such self-dispossession, such self-giving with no thought for security or territory, or effectiveness or advantage was simply impossible and profoundly unnatural, and should be eliminated at all costs.
For him it could only be a disguise for the resentment of the poor – their way of struggling to succeed in the world, a sleight of hand to catch the powerful off guard. For him the only way to be truly alive was to save your life (and if need be crucify others on the way). For him death is part of the cycle of life to be celebrated like all the rest.
For Jesus death was the last enemy. He gave his life not as an affirmation of death, but to defy the rule of death, to take the sting of death, that death might die.
This contrast between Jesus and Nietzsche highlights the decisiveness of this moment. The truly radical call of Jesus to us.
Who is right? Is sacrifice of others part of the flow of life itself, something to be celebrated? Is death our friend? [Dionysus and Nietzsche]
On the other hand has death been conquered? Is it truly possible to follow Jesus?
The story of Peter as Satan tell us that it is only possible as those who worship the God we have killed. It is only possible as those who stand before a God who gives life to us who are takers of life. It is only possible as we are constantly interrupted by our risen forgiving victim – it’s only possible by the Spirit of this Jesus.
Bruce Hamill 8.3.09 at St Clair and Green Island
