Sunday, February 25, Second Sunday in Lent
“Ashamed of Jesus?”
Psalm 22:23-31; Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Romans 5:1-11; Mark 8:27-38
Service of Prayer and Preaching
Hymns: #425 “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”; #524 “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds”; #537 “Beautiful Savior”; #837 “Lift High the Cross”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
When I was a child, the worst thing I could ever hear from my mother was, “Oh, Larry, I’m so ashamed of you.” Ouch, Ma. Give me a spanking, lock me in my room, make me do dishes and laundry for a month, ground me for a year; anything but that. To hear that she was ashamed of me, that I’d let her down, that I’d “embarrassed her in front of the whole wide world,” was just the worst thing ever.
The Greek word for “ashamed” in our Gospel, aischunomai, means to disgrace or dishonor, or, more literally, “to make one blush.” We’re living in a world that seems to have lost its ability to blush at anything. Remember when it was impolite to talk about certain things or use certain words in the presence of women and children? Remember when the FCC had a long list of words that couldn’t be said in public? Words that you never used to hear in public are now blasted over the airwaves, in primetime TV, music and movies, and what passes for art. I remember my Grandma being shocked and embarrassed when they started showing underwear ads on TV. Now almost any manner of filth or perversion is fair game, and wide open for anyone to see; and don’t even talk to me about the internet. G and PG and R ratings don’t seem to mean much anymore. (Do they even make G movies anymore?)
Do you know what is treated as shameful, though? Try talking about religion, God, or Jesus, in the media, or on the public airwaves, and see how fast they’ll shout “racist,” “hater,” or “bigot,” and move to cancel you, ban you, and shut you down. The trouble is, cowards that we’ve become, we sometimes find it easier to back down and give in and not say anything at all. I hate to see it when an athlete, actor, or politician finds the courage to thank God or Jesus for their success, and then the cancel crowd takes aim at them, and they back down and apologize for ‘hurting someone’s feelings.’ Ever kept your mouth shut when you had a chance to speak up, or backed down when someone was ‘offended’ at the mention of your Lord? We Christians really need to find our courage and stop doing that. Our being ashamed of Jesus is part of the reason the world is in the shape it’s in. Never, never apologize for your faith in Christ. Never be ashamed of Him.
In our Gospel this morning, Jesus is preparing His disciples to answer the question they’ll have to un-blushingly answer for the rest of their lives. “Who do people say I am?” That’s a very divisive question, don’t you think? It forces us to come to a conclusion and make a choice about Jesus. Life and death, heaven and hell, are hanging in the balance with that question. There’s only one right answer, and an awful lot of wrong ones. Jesus won’t allow for middle ground or riding fences; there’s no possibility of our remaining neutral. Jesus is “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” And there’s no hope at all for those who don’t believe, or won’t.
The disciples answer Jesus, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." Those are wishy-washy answers, answers that try to leave a little wiggle room in the question, wiggle room that honestly just doesn’t exist. John the Baptist, come back to life; prophet Elijah, come back from his ride in the fiery chariot; one of the Old Testament prophets, come back from the dead -- all of those would be wonderful, awesome, miraculous things, if they should happen. But none of those answers come even remotely close to the reality of who Jesus is.
John the Baptist, Elijah, and all the prophets, were all only men, and nothing more. If Jesus was only a good man, or a prophet, or a great Teacher, He could be safely ignored. But if He’s the same God who spoke to Father Abraham, the same God who soke to Moses and established the Covenants and laid down the Law, and the same God who created and now rules the world, and will one day stand in judgment upon it… now isn’t that a different thing? If our Lord was a “buddy Jesus” who only wants to be our friend and never asks or demands anything from us, a Jesus who was only a good man, dispensing good advice, we could take or leave Him. But a Jesus who’s truly God and holds our souls and our fate and our eternity in His hands? That’s someone we really ought to listen to. It will be a disaster, in fact, if we don’t.
Jesus, in our Gospel, gets more direct with His disciples, and makes the question uncomfortably personal: "But what about you?" He asks. "Who do you say I am?" What the world thinks of Jesus, and what other people think about Him, is one thing; but what about you? You and the Lord are going to have to go one-on-one and have this thing out. Is Jesus who He says He is, or isn’t He? Is He the Holy Son of God, who loved you enough to give His life for you on a cross, or is He something less? Is He just a character from some old Sunday school story? Or is He risen from the dead and very much alive, and coming again one day soon? And if He is all that He says He is, what does that mean for your life? And more importantly, what are you doing about it?
Peter, because it’s all he could do, answered for himself: “You are the Christ.” We can picture the other disciples nodding and agreeing, but we’re not told here what their answers were, so we can’t speak for them. No one can believe for someone else, or answer for someone else, or have faith for someone else. We all have to stand or fall before God on our own.
The name “Christ” means “The Anointed One;” the One chosen by God to be the Savior of the world, the One who came down from heaven to give life to the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He’s our one and only Savior, the One whose cross has brought us peace with God, the One through whom we have access by faith to the grace of God, the One whose resurrected glory allows us to live our lives with hope. There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we must be saved. “Jesus, You are the Christ,” says Peter. That is the good confession, the one thing God wants and needs to hear from us. “Confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved.”
“Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about Him,” our Gospel says. That’s because it wasn’t time yet. There was a trial and a cross waiting for Him, a cross that He’d willingly, voluntarily, even joyfully carry, for our sakes. Jesus had to die to save ungodly sinners like us. The cross was the means by which God “poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.” It was His poured out blood that would wash away our sin.
Then, in our Gospel, Jesus began to teach His disciples what the cost of their confession would be. The cost for Jesus to save us was rejection by the powers that be in the world, who wouldn’t give up their power or place or position, or bend their knees to God, for the sake having their sins forgiven and having His grace. “He came to that which was His own, but His own would not receive Him.” The cost for saving you and me was the blood of God’s holy Son, poured out upon the ground until He breathed His last and died. Only after that terrible thing had happened could there be a blessed Easter morning miracle, that would bring us the grace to live forever, if only we’d believe.
For the disciples, the cost of their good confession would be all the suffering they’d have to go through for the sake of their testimony about everything they’d heard and seen. Before their time came to receive their reward and go home to Him, their own road to heaven would be a difficult one. They’d all die as martyrs for the sake of Jesus, crucified, beheaded, and run through with spears. If we’re willing to confess with our mouths in this world that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, we can’t expect our own road to heaven to be any easier. St. Paul, who should know, says, “We rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
If you don’t like the sound of that, quite frankly, I don’t either. Better a Jesus who wants to wrap me in a bubble and ease me through life without a scratch, than the Jesus who says, “Come follow Me through the valley of the shadow of death.” Peter didn’t like the sound of it, either. He confessed Christ as Lord readily enough, but he balked at the Christ who had His eyes fixed on the cross. Peter was even bold enough to take the Lord aside and begin to admonish Him. “No, Lord, this shall never happen to You,” he says in Matthew’s Gospel. No, Lord no. Not that way, Lord. You can’t go that way, and You can’t take me that way, either; that’s not the way this thing is supposed to go. We could turn our backs on Jerusalem, and the Jews, and Pilate, and Skull Hill and the cross, and all of it, and walk on to someplace else, someplace safe - couldn’t we, Lord? Couldn’t we?
“But when Jesus turned and looked at His disciples,” says our Gospel, “He rebuked Peter. ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ He said. ‘You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.’” Jesus called him Satan, and for good reason; he was using Satan’s talking points! Satan didn’t want Jesus going to the cross. The cross would be the death of our sins, and the resurrection would be the end of death, and the end of sin and death would be the end of the devil’s kingdom and his power to populate hell. Much better for him that Jesus would turn from His Father’s way and go off in another direction. (And the devil tried and failed to tempt Him to do that).
And the devil still tries to turn us to our own things. Our own wants, our own desires, our own feelings, our own comfort and security, rather than walking down the narrow and sometimes scary road that Jesus wants to lead us down. But His road is the only one that will get us where we’re going, and there are lots of side roads that won’t. “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” Jesus says. “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
“Then He called the crowd to Him along with His disciples,” says our Gospel, and said: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” What does it mean to deny yourself? Literally, it means to disown yourself. Jesus won’t force anyone to follow Him. He’s going to pick up His cross and walk to Jerusalem, and you can pick up your own cross and follow, or not. Your “cross to bear” isn’t the ordinary sufferings the world puts us through; everyone has those. A Christian’s cross, by the classic definition, is “anything you have to suffer in this world for the sake of belonging to Christ.” Your cross is all the things you’re willing to suffer and put up with because you will not deny Jesus or hide your faith in Him, no matter what consequences may come your way. (And if you’re not suffering anything for the sake of your faith in Jesus, you might want to take a hard look at what you’re doing and what road you’re on. “If you’re taking flak, you’re over the target,” the old saying goes).
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it,” Jesus says, “but whoever loses his life for Me and for the gospel will save it.” If you decide that saving your physical life means more to you than defending the name of Jesus, you’ll end up with a life not worth living. If you choose the things of men over the things of God, it won’t end well for you at all. C.S. Lewis said, “Aim at heaven and you’ll get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you’ll get neither.”
And losing your life for Jesus and the Gospel doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have to die for Him; maybe you will one day, the way things in this world are going, but probably not. More likely it means that He’ll ask you to live for Him; that your life will be His, and your will will be His, and His will and His Way will always come first ahead of any other life consideration. Losing your life for Jesus means giving your life to Jesus. That means God doesn’t get just the corners or the side bits or the leftovers of your life, but that He gets the first of your time, your talents, your treasures, your energy, and your loyalty. (That’s what it really means to “tithe”).
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Jesus asks. “Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” If you want to try and gain the whole world, go ahead and jump in with both feet; have at it. There’s no end of wealth and possessions and happiness (whatever that is) that a person can choose to pursue. But the truth is, time is going to rob you of all your earthly things, bit by bit (or sometimes all at once!) and there’s nothing you can do about it. And then what? “Death makes equals of us all,” so the saying goes. What is a soul worth? What is your precious soul worth? What would you trade it for, or sell it for? God has determined that that soul of yours was worth sending His only Son to a cross. It all comes down to priorities, I guess…
Jesus says in our Gospel, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." I can still hear my mother say, “I’m so ashamed of you,” and it still makes me blush! Oh, my goodness, Lord Jesus, anything but that from You. Anything but hearing one day that You’ve been ashamed of me or my cowardice or my conduct. Have you ever been ashamed of Jesus? Afraid to speak His Name in “mixed company?” Afraid to get in trouble at work, or at school, or at the family dinner table, for being open about your faith? May we all today repent of that sin, and be bolder and stronger to talk about the One we love! St. Paul says in Romans 1: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes.”
O Lord, that we may walk in Your grace, and live by Your power, as we unashamedly, un-blushingly hold out Your name to a disbelieving world, a world in desperate need of You. May the words we speak and the love we show, show people who You are. This we ask in Jesus’ name; Amen.