“Saying Yes to God”

(Mark 8:27-9:1)

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priest, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.  He said all this quite openly.  And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  But turning and looking at his disciple, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come after me, 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 for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?  Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?  Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”  

Most of us have undoubtedly had the experience of being in a situation or setting when we could forget ourselves totally.  It might be during a good conversation or reading something that takes our whole attention.  We might be in a place where we get so caught up in what is going on, that the time literally flies by; we trust the group or the experience so much that we don’t even think about what we have said or done.

            I guess I would call that “self-forgetful trust.”  I like it when that happens, but since we humans tend to be essentially self-centered creatures, this sort of trusting does not come naturally.  We do spend a lot of time being concerned with ourselves and those around us.

            So, when I hear the following words from Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson, I get curious and maybe a bit nervous: “If anyone would come after me, let him or her deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  I wonder if many of us swallow really hard when we hear the “denying ourselves” part.  Or maybe we just skip it because it seems like it’s going to be too hard.

            But for today I want to drill down on it.  It’s easy to get hung up on that mandate to deny ourselves, not so much because we have or we want so many possessions nor because we are so very prosperous, not because we need to say no to that extra helping at dinner or the snacks in the evening or even the new dress or piece of furniture….

            The whole idea of denying ourselves is hard because it is natural for us human beings to place ourselves and our overall destiny first and foremost, at the center of our life stage.   Always first.  But, clearly, placing ourselves first is NOT the message of the Gospel.

            That message is that God is over all, God is first, God is to be worshiped…not our obsession with ourselves in this time and this place.

            A little side trip….  We talked a bit about this on Wednesday at the first meeting of the Lenten study.  I read a quick blurb the other day about a black hole in the universe that is 12 billion light years away from us.  It is the brightest spot that can be seen with a large telescope in Australia.  It gobbles up hundreds of stars.  Or we could say, gobbled, because the light that that telescope picked up happened 12 billion years ago.  It took that long for that black hole to appear to that telescope here on earth.  Isn’t that just mind-boggling?  I can’t even wrap my mind around it….

            And yet, when Jesus tells us that we are to deny ourselves, take up the cross and follow, it focuses us in on the right now.  It becomes, once again, all about us, doesn’t it?  And Jesus isn’t going to let us off the hook.  He calls us over and over to repent of our self-centeredness.  He calls us to say yes to God, right here, right now.  So, we’re to hold these two ideas at the same time.  I’m not the center of the universe and I need to deny myself.  AND, at the same time, I need to focus on myself so that I can hear Jesus’ call to repentance.

            The thing is, we will never be able to wrap our minds around God’s universe.  No matter how much we know (and we’re learning more all the time), our knowledge of the universe continues to expand, but we’ll never fully grasp it or get to the final answer about God or God’s creation, much as we would like to claim that we know all about it.  God’s ways are beyond our understanding. 

And, let’s be clear, the world’s ways are not God’s ways.  We hear it in today’s lesson: “Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man (that is, the ruler who would exert God’s power on earth) must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed and after three days rise again.”  Jesus said this plainly.  The world’s ways are not God’s ways.  Why else would the person representing God’s power on earth have to suffer and be killed?  That seems to be a contradiction in terms.

            Well, the answer seems to be that the Son of Man (Jesus) brought God’s ways to the world, and the world rejected them.  Consider how Peter received this announcement.  Peter TOOK Jesus and rebuked him.  Peter got physical with Jesus.  He was angry, and so he physically got Jesus’ attention.  This is the way that Peter rejected hearing how God’s way was going to play out in Jesus’ time on earth.

            Jesus’ words were challenging Peter and the disciples (and us, for that matter), to accept a new understanding of God and God’s ways, but Peter is also challenged to accept a new understanding of himself.  He has been determined to cling to his own well-worn, comfortable self-image.  So his response to Jesus speaking about what was going to happen was to try to straighten Jesus out because God’s way for the world and Jesus’ role in that way threatened all that Peter had hoped for, that is, power and victory in this life, right here, right now.

            …The death of Alexei Navalny has most of us questioning the way of the world.  Some of us are even going as deep as to ask ourselves what gives life– a life, any life–meaning?

            You know Navalny’s story.  It’s all over the news right now, but his story has been before us for a number of years.  His bravery, intelligence, persistence and determination (not to mention his good looks) caught the world’s attention.  He was a lawyer, opposition leader, anti-corruption activist who ran for office to advocate for reforms against corruption in Russia and against Vladomir Putin.  Navalny was imprisoned a number of times, was poisoned a couple of years ago by the Russian government and nearly died.  We all knew after he recovered in Germany from the poisoning and returned to Russia that his life would be in danger.  Still, with his wife’s support, he went back into Russia and was immediately arrested.  He continued his activism in prison and was ultimately sent to a horrible Gulag in Siberia which finally resulted in his death this past week.

            My wish for how the world should work was that that amazing young man would continue his work for change and for human rights outside of Russia.  That would have at least given him and his family a fighting chance to continue living.  Instead, he walked right into the gaping mouth of evil and continued his work in trying to give the Russian people some sense of hope in a dark and desolate nation led by an autocratic leader who cares nothing for human life. 

            …I admit that Jesus’ disciple Peter and I see the world in the same way.  I want things to be safe and secure.  I want Navalny to be alive working on his computer, composing messages of hope and strategy, in front of a microphone making a podcast to be broadcast to his beloved Russian people, safely hidden away. 

But, alas, God’s way for the world is that we deny ourselves, that we reject the world’s understanding of power, that we accept God as ruler—God as God, not some bogus God who in our minds gets made in our own image.  To make that a bit clearer, Jesus goes on to say, “Whoever would save his or her life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel, will save it….  For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and give up their life?”

            The world tells us there is nothing more important than success in our careers which is almost always measured by the amount of money we make and/or the power that we wield in our little corner.

            The world tells us there is nothing more important than being well-thought of by those around us—being praised by many.  And the world tells us there is nothing more important than protecting our lives.  The world says there is nothing worse and more frightening in life than death.

            God’s way, on the other hand, tells us, in a story of what’s to come, that none of this matters.  Jesus preached and taught and healed and loved, yet ended up suffering much and dying on a cross.  Raised, yes, but not in order to blot out the lessons that came before.

            We will discover that, finally, what matters is seeing ourselves in relation to God, not the God that the world has fashioned and would have us believe in.  But the God who is revealed in Jesus.

            If we are obsessed with maintaining a certain kind of life: moneyed, secure, ambitious, well-thought of by all, without faults, we may have lost sight of God in our lives. 

            We must be careful because we are all like Peter, who fought back when Jesus declared what was important, who tried to maintain the world in which he felt safe.  We do that too.  Whether or not it is God’s way.  Whether or not others are hurt or trampled or overlooked in the process.  Jesus pushed back on Peter saying, “You are setting your mind on human things rather than divine things.”

            What we need to seek is a “self-forgetful trust,” a higher joy that will come when we tap into the power source that is God, when we trust God enough to let go of the old secure well-worn safe ways of living that we operate under every day.  Hopefully we won’t have to be on the path of someone like Alexei Navalny, but it really is about the risk of taking on God’s new vision of what it means to be Human.  The new vision requires that we recognize how we become blind to our self-centered ways and the unhappiness that being so self-absorbed creates in us.  The New Vision requires that we face our fears about life and death.  Saying yes to God and no to our old selves allows us to begin to let go of the unhappiness and the fear—sometimes….

            These are big asks that Jesus is speaking about.  For us, his words will constitute a lifetime of reflecting and living and learning.  But, for today, we can be learning to say yes to God and to God’s ways, not the world’s.  It’s another step in our Lenten journey….  Amen.   

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