The Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews is the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church. The sermon for Sunday, February 28, 2021, was preached as a response to Mark 8.31-38. The sermon was based on the below manuscript, typos and all.
Disicpling,
not disciplining.
If any want to become my disciples,
let them deny themselves
and take up their cross
and follow me.
Peter has just professed
that he believes Jesus
is the Messiah
God’s chosen and anointed.
Peter and all the disciples,
all the folk with any expectation
were expecting a messiah
to come in power
and throw off
the tyranny of Rome.
Jesus throws a wet blanket on that
and tells them for the first time
that he will be put to death
and rise again.
Peter and all the disciples
all the fok with any expectation of a Messiah
aren’t expecting one who will die.
They can’t expect a Messiah
who can defeat death itself.
They can’t imagine Jesus or anyone
rising from the dead,
so a dying messiah
is not something they’re signed up for.
Peter,
acting more like a patron than disciple,
takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him
the same way Jesus rebukes demons
elsewhere in Mark’s gospel.
Jesus calls him Satan,
an accuser,
someone sent to test and tempt him.
We too face
tests and temptations in our lives.
Most of those
are not what Jesus is talking about
when he says to take up one’s cross.
As James Cone writes in The Cross and the Lynching Tree,
“The cross of Jesus
is the key to [Martin] King’s
willingness to sacrifice his life,
not only for the freedom of black people
(“I will die standing up for the freedom of my people”)
but also for the souls of whites
and the redemption of America.”[1]
King himself said,
“If physical death
is the price I must pay
to free my white brothers and sisters
from the permanent death of the spirit,
then nothing could be more redemptive.” [2]
Tackling and rejecting white supremacy,
baked into every aspect of our lives together
inside and outside the church
is a cross our country
must bear.
The cross that Jesus tells his disciples
both those setting course for Jerusalem
and us hearing now
is not an uncomfortableness.
It’s not an allergy
or some plan we had falling through
or someone who annoys us
being around too much.
The cross Jesus raises today
is Black Bloc organizers
telling people to bring
their respirators and armor —
no matter how peaceful they are
there will be teargas and rubber bullets.
“Risking that particular kind of suffering
is not a form of accepting an oppressive order,
but a way of challenging it.”[3]
Disicpling,
not disciplining.
If any want to become my disciples,
let them deny themselves
and take up their cross
and follow me.
Even as he has predicted his death and resurrection
Jesus is inviting his friends
into his work of redemption.
“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?”
Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth
and tells us here and now
how to live our fullest lives:
denying ourselves
taking up our crosses,
and following him.
Lamar Williamson elaborates,
“The call is not to deny oneself something,
but to deny self…
Nor is the call to reject oneself.
Self-hatred is not the way of Jesus…
The cross Jesus invites his hearers to take up
refers not to the burdens life imposes from without
but rather to painful, redemptive action
voluntarily undertaken for others…”[4]
Jesus is on the road
to his own death,
his own redemptive action
voluntarily undertaken
to redeem the whole of creation.
Disicpling,
not disciplining.
Jesus calls us to deny ourselves,
take up our crosses,
and follow him.
Jesus invites us to
surrender ourselves,
to empty our lives and egos
to make room
for his life, teaching, and grace.
Through this denial of self
and acceptance of him
we gain fullness of life,
and not just in the world to come.
“‘Not tomorrow, not next week, but now!’
was the persistent cry for freedom
among people who had never known it”
Cone recounts.
Fred Shuttlesworth said,
“You have to be prepared to die
before you can begin to live.”
That’s exactly what Jesus
tells his disciples through time
in this passage.
It’s what the church asks us to contemplate
as we move toward the font at the Easter Vigil
and engage this Lent
in discipling
not disciplining.
That’s good news!
Our salvation
is in losing ourselves to Jesus
and following his gospel
of repentance
and belief that
the Kingdom of God
is at hand.
Jesus knows that he’s on the way to the grave,
and in Lent and a pandemic
we all know we are too.
We know, too,
that Jesus has conquered
sin, death, and the grave.
Disicpling,
not disciplining.
If any want to become my disciples,
let them deny themselves
and take up their cross
and follow me.
Those who lose their life for my sake,
and for the sake of the gospel,
will save it.
Amen.
[1] Cone, James H.. The Cross and the Lynching Tree . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Placher, William. Mark: Belief, a Theological Commentary on the Bible (Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible) (Kindle Locations 2407-2411). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
[4] Williamson Jr., Lamar. Mark: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (p. 154). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.