ROME IMPROVEMENT 09/12/2021

MORE POWER!  MORE GLORY!!  MORE SPIRIT!!!

SURVEYING THE SITE—Mark 8:31-9:1

Following the vision of the blind seer where the fullness of God’s reign is seen as people, living crosses, walking around, and following Peter speaking Jesus to be the Christ, the title given to Jesus in Mark 1:1 (“In the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”), this week, Jesus gives instruction on what discipleship looks like. And it looks a lot like the vision of the blind seer with the sufferings that might accompany radical self-giving living.

READING THE BLUEPRINT

And [Jesus] began to teach [the disciples] that it is necessary that the Son of Man to suffer many [things], and to be rejected by the elders and the high priests and the scribes and to be killed and after three days to rise/stand up and in boldness the word he was speaking.

And having taken [Jesus] to him [Peter], Peter began to denounce him. But having turned and having seen his disciples, [Jesus] denounced Peter, and he says, “Go away [to the back of the class], Satan, because you are not devoted to the things of God but the things of men.”

And having called before [him] the crowd with his disciples, he said to them, “If some want to follow after me, let [them] deny themselves thoroughly and let [them] lift up the cross of him and let [them] follow after me.

For…

Whoever would wish/desire to save [their] true life, [they] will lose it. But [those] who wish/desire to lose [their own] true life [or die] on account of me and the Good News, [they] will save it.

What benefits the [one] to gain the whole world and to lose [one’s] true life?

What might anyone exchange for their true life? 

Whoever might be ashamed of me and my words, in this adulterous and sinning generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of [that one] whenever he comes in the splendor of his father and with the holy messengers.

And [Jesus] was saying to them, “Truly I say to you that there are some here of the ones having stood who would not taste death until they would see the reign of God having come with power (“fully engaged”).

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

Again, how you read a passage determines the outcome. If this is a pre-crucifixion narrative, then the necessity of suffering “many things” falls solely on Jesus. As such, it is the first of three prophetic statements of the crucifixion cross to come in the gospel of Mark.

Like history, most prophetic writing is completed after the event has taken place. It’s similar to setting the calendar back in your computer in order to recover a setting or document that inadvertently was deleted or like digging through the files of the Wayback Machine to hold politicians accountable for what they believe has been erased. By doing this, it is possible to accurately report the past with certain understanding of the future. It is always possible to have predicted with accuracy the events of the future of today when you actually write about them in the present.

Jesus begins to teach his disciples that it is necessary for the Son of Man suffer many things. We know this is true because, since we are with the disciples in Galilee where we have been promised that Jesus would meet us, we already know that the crucifixion has occurred and that the tomb is empty.

Thus, as a post-resurrection account, these words take on new meaning for us. We know that Jesus has just been named by Peter as the Christ/Messiah and that Jesus has shifted the title from Christ (anointed one) to Son of Man. This descriptor is understood from the Old Testament (cf. Daniel) and leads to the title of Messiah.

In addition, Mark has another reason for using “Son of Man” at this point. Although it claims Jesus’ true humanity and points to the Messianic promise, “Son of Man” also claims all of humanity. We might translate this passage as, “[Jesus] began to teach [his disciples] that it is necessary that the Children of Humanity [must] suffer many things.”

From the perspective of Mark, the suffering of Jesus has become the reality of the persecuted church of his time. It is a reality they endure because of their confidence in the empty tomb. It is possible to speak of the rejection of the elders, the chief priest, and the scribes, because the temple is destroyed. As such, the elders, etc. are not so much those notable for crucifying Jesus as they are the Roman authorities persecuting the early church.

Consider the times. Claudius evicted the Christians from Rome in 49; Paul writes his letter to the underground Christian community sometime in the 50’s; the Christians are blamed for the burning of Rome in 64; and the war with Rome has resulted in the temple being destroyed. The Christian community is right in the middle of much of the conflict going on in the world. All before the gospel of Mark is written.

As a result of the siege of Jerusalem, the early church was impoverished and starving. By some accounts, only Paul’s Macedonian collection and other relief efforts made it possible for the Church in Jerusalem to survive at all (Romans 15:26 and 2 Corinthians 8). These people knew suffering was necessary; cross-lifting was part of discipleship as they continued to bear witness to the resurrection-offered hope amid intolerable life conditions.

This post-resurrection image of the cross is not the defeated crucifixion cross of death. This is the life-giving, “like trees walking around”, resurrection cross. The Christian mindset by the time Mark writes his Gospel, although it includes suffering, self-denial, and cross-lifting as part of following Jesus, already recognizes “for the death [Christ] died, he died to sin once for all” (Romans 6). Therefore, for the disciples and us to die in persecution does not save, but the discipleship witness in death testifies to confidence in the power of the risen one—the one who has already suffered many things, died, and is risen from the tomb.

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

In the first century worldview, honor and shame balanced one another. There was a finite amount of honor. If one were to gain honor, then someone else had to suffer shame. Therefore, the words, “deny oneself, take up your cross, and follow”, was a radical concept. The idea that those with honor would intentionally give that honor away was beyond thinking unless one could realistically expect future benefit, like favors owed.

Although this worldview is not as common in our culture, we still see political favors given with the expectation that future favors will be returned. Therefore, Jesus’ words of self-denial and a cross-lifting way of living continue to challenge us. Indeed, the Children of Humanity must continue to suffer as long as we put our own needs first.

Self-denial is not for the sake of self-improvement, pious status, or self-righteousness. Self-denial is for the sake or welfare of the neighbor. It is a way of living that lifts the needs of those around us to being as, or more, important than our own.

For example, I hate wearing masks. I am vaccinated and therefore have a high degree of resistance to the Delta COVID virus. Yet, knowing I am relatively safe, I continue to wear masks because I can potentially transmit the virus to others who are unvaccinated and remain more vulnerable. In this simple way, we deny ourselves for the benefit of those around us.

But self-denial is not enough to follow Jesus. An article on ψυχή, psuche, (true life) in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (vol. 9, p. 643) considers Mark’s addition of the words “on account of me and the good news” to earlier known sayings. Doing so indicates “only orientation to Jesus and not to the [self] can lead to this [true life]”.

Consider the act of fasting. For many, fasting is, in fact, persistent hunger. It is not voluntary or spiritual. It is a way of life. For these people, they simply don’t have enough food. When fasting is chosen, it may be a beneficial practice for health, or it may be part of spiritual discipline which is undertaken to make food available to those who did not have food. If the food we do not consume does not benefit those who need food, then the fasting we do is self-serving and not an act of denying oneself “on account of me and the good news”.

I once asked a friend who was giving up chocolate for Lent, “For the benefit of whom?”

She looked at me quizzically and finally answered, “I guess for the benefit of my wallet and the ten pounds I want to lose.”

I suggested she give the money she saved from not buying chocolate to something like the Heifer Project or ELCA Good Gifts. She said, “But then I wouldn’t be saving anything.”

Giving up chocolate for her, even during Lent, was not a true spiritual practice because such practices need direction, and the direction is always out into the world. If our spiritual practices don’t benefit others, they are simply self-improvement. Self-improvement has its place, but it is not the cross-lifting, tree-walking-around discipleship that Jesus speaks of or that the blind man saw.

Many people do model this self-denying, cross-lifting discipleship. We recognize them and even reward their behavior with medals and honors—Gandhi, Martin Luther King jr., Mother Teresa, William Barber, and others. Although we admire them, we rarely let their examples change our lives. In part, this is because we live in a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” world. We are focused on self-improvement, self-advancement, and self-satisfaction.

But when we are able to deny ourselves for the sake of Christ and for the Good News, we recognize the importance of denying self and cross-lifting. Seeing the possibility of what the world might be, we stand on the threshold of the kingdom of God coming in power. We have a moment when we stand with Christ and those who exemplify self-denial in order to bring good news to the oppressed, the poor, and others who are marginalized and, in that moment, we can believe that the reign of God is “engaged”. This indeed is not a distant, someday vision. It is present to us today.

HANGING THE TRIM

The hope and the promise of the resurrection cross, walking-around-tree living, is found in denying oneself for Christ and the Good News brought to others. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream …”. John Lewis encourages us all to, “Get into good trouble.” How will we speak that Good News into being today?