2nd Sunday in Lent.

When my mom was pregnant with me, she thought that she was going to have yet another girl, in addition to the two she’d already had. The longer the pregnancy went on, the more certain of this she became. She had one of those, deep in your bones kind of feelings about it. Of course, the day eventually arrived. My mother’s labor started on June 28th, but it would only be brought to perfection at 2:32 AM on June 29, when I emerged.

The obstetrician said to my mother, “You have a little boy!”

My mother said, “What?”

The OB said, “You have a son; a little boy!”

My mother said, “Are you sure?”

The doctor said, “Yes, I’m pretty sure.”

I’m sure we’ve either had ourselves or we know someone who has had a similar kind of experience. The kind of thing where you can’t be quite sure what you heard at first. It doesn’t quite compute, or it seems beyond belief. And so you have to be told more than once. A variation on this would be when someone shares something with you which has a big emotional impact. It could be something terrible or something amazing, but because it’s so emotional the first response is, “What?!?” So, the bearer of said news repeats what they said before, and it slowly starts to sink in. You’re beginning to wrap your head around what it means, and you begin to understand why it’s such big deal. The lightbulb finally goes off and you’re pulled into the emotion of the moment. OH! OK!! And then you’re more a part of things.

Evidently Abram is the same way, except that he represents the other extreme. Instead of taking a few moments to realize what’s going on, it takes Abram years to finally realize what’s really happening with him and God.

It starts all the way back in Genesis, chapter 12: 1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing... When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. (Genesis 12:1-2, 5b-7)

And yet Abram seems to have trouble really believing this.

Fast forward to chapter 13: 14 The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; 15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. (Genesis 13:14-16)

And yet Abram continues to doubt the promises that God has made to him. 1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” (Genesis 15:1-3)

So, God reiterates the promise: 4 But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5 He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” (Genesis 15:4-5)

But then in chapter 16, Sarai convinces Abram to sleep with her slave-girl so that they’ll have some semblance of an heir. Finally, then, we get to today’s reading in chapter 17. And finally, on the fourth try, Abram finally gets it! And we know this in two ways: First, up until this time Abram has been running around building altars to the Lord willy-nilly, wherever he’s had an experience with God, and in doing so laying claim to the land. But this time is different! This time Abram “falls on his face”, he prostrates himself in worship.

Second, there is the name change: 5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:5-8) 15 God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” (Genesis 17:15-16) Interestingly, God makes it pretty darn clear that there is no covenant without Sarah.

To be clear, what God is asking of Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah is huge! "Leave your country, your family, and your father's home for a land that I will show you. 2 I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make you famous; you'll be a blessing. (Genesis 12:1-2) There’s nothing there about where, or when; why or how. So it’s no wonder they have a hard time wrapping their heads around all that God is promising them. It takes them 24 years.

The disciples have the same kind of difficulty in grasping what Jesus means. Up until this time, things have been going pretty well. The first half of the story is set around Galilee – on the margins. People are eager and receptive to Jesus and his message. There is some opposition, but it comes from the “outside” – particularly from Jerusalem and the Temple.

But now Jesus changes direction and focus. He is beginning a new journey whose destination is Jerusalem. The journey towards Jerusalem is the Way of the Cross. This journey will reveal who Jesus is (the one who must suffer) and intensifying conflict and direct confrontation with the powers of empire.

There’s a really clear pattern to “the way”. It occurs again in 9:31 and 10: 32-34, and in each case – as here – the pattern is repeated: Jesus tells the disciples that “the way” is the way of suffering and death; the disciples resist this; Jesus then teaches them further about discipleship and what it means to follow him.

That is why the change of direction results immediately in Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” Who do you believe Jesus is? Which Jesus will you follow – the Jesus who travels the Way of the Cross? Or the glorious, triumphant Jesus whom the disciples desperately want him to be? Or will it be a Jesus of your own making?

Peter’s confession – “You are the Messiah” – is followed immediately by the first of the passion predictions. “It is necessary for the Son of Man to undergo great suffering … etc.”, says Jesus. The stress here is on the inevitability of what will happen. Jesus isn’t talking about predestination. This is not a story about Jesus following a divine “script”, in which he, the Romans and the Jewish authorities are actors whose lines are already mapped out for them. It is a divine script only in the sense that the message of God’s Kingdom must necessarily provoke the opposition of the powers – those whose final ability to coerce and maintain privilege resides in their power to kill. Jesus is saying, “I want you to have your eyes wide open. This is not about a messianic gravy train on which you have special seats! This is going to end in blood and tears: mine – and yours, if you choose to stick with me”.

This is not what the disciples want to hear! Peter’s immediate reaction is to rebuke Jesus. He’s saying, in effect, “Listen, Jesus, when I said ‘Messiah’, this is not what I meant! Being the Messiah has nothing to do with failure, suffering and death! It’s about being the king – about success and power and sovereignty. So, let’s not hear any more about suffering and death. Stick with us, Jesus – we’ll show you the way!”

Now it’s Jesus’ turn to rebuke Peter. And he could not be more shockingly harsh. “Get behind me, Satan!” We’re immediately back in the wilderness of temptation, where Jesus has wrestled with Satan and the wild beasts.

Let’s be clear about something: Jesus’ principal mission was not to suffer and die. When we pull back a bit and consider the whole of Jesus’ life, we find that the overarching narrative offers a simpler, but no less profound, explanation of Jesus’ death: Jesus dies because powerful humans oppose both his healing mission and, more specifically, the disruption that mission brings to established law and order.

However, unbeknownst to Jesus’ opponents, they are opposing the in-breaking reign of God. Jesus is unflinching in his insistence that the divine mission to welcome and reconcile sinners overrides the stigma of associating with them (2:15-17). He is also unflinching in his insistence that the divine mission to alleviate human suffering overrides any application of religious tradition that might impede it (2:23-28; 3:1-6; 7:1-23). To be clear, this is not a “Christian” correction to supposedly “legalistic” Judaism as much as it is a radical channeling of longstanding Jewish belief in God’s compassion for the marginalized. As the messianic emissary of this divine mission, Jesus inevitably elicits antagonism—eventually violent antagonism—from those invested in maintaining the status quo.

So, the real epiphany of Mark 8:31 is not that Jesus’ mission is to die, but that his faithfulness to God’s healing mission will inevitably result in his death. In Mark, Jesus “must” die because his commitment to human healing will not falter.

With two millennia of Holy Weeks under our belts, we can easily underestimate the power of this epiphany. Essentially, Mark is saying that the Son of God will not dial down his ministry to spare his own life, or even to ease his suffering. His commitment to the healing of humanity literally knows no limits. And neither—Easter tells us—does God’s life-giving power.

It is not hard to see why Peter so quickly “rebukes” Jesus’ prediction. Mark gives a rather straight-forward presentation of disciples captivated by hopes of earthly glory and therefore preoccupied more with Jesus’ messianic title than his life-giving mission.

Of course, the title “Messiah” is helpful for establishing Jesus’ God-given authority. But that same title is dangerously misleading when detached from Jesus’ own counter-cultural mission on behalf of the broken and outcast. Mark would rather see people following Jesus unpretentiously in this mission, and actually participating in this holy work, than waving signs or posting memes in Jesus’ name. So consequential is this point that Jesus calls Peter “Satan” for his self-serving confusion!

Interestingly, Peter does seem to understand that his own vocational future is wrapped up in, and defined by, the mission of Jesus. On that point he and Jesus agree. The question is whether Peter will embrace Jesus’ definition of his own mission—which is the only definition that matters—and the consequences of that definition for his own vocation.

At the same time, Mark’s audience most likely knows that the risen Jesus will re-gather his disciples and empower them for faithful mission in his name. These apostles were some of the first to epitomize Jesus’ teaching on the cost of discipleship: denying themselves and taking up their crosses, saving their lives by first losing it for the sake of the gospel, seeing past the worldly shame of Jesus’ crucifixion to the glory of his final appearance. For Mark, discipleship is not some comfortable affiliation with Jesus but a life-changing—and potentially life-threatening—commitment to him.

It is a difficult message for North American Christianity. For many of us, Christianity has been reduced to a comfortable affiliation with Jesus. The fact of the matter is that there is often little cost to our discipleship. Of course, some Christians are persecuted in certain parts of the world.

The point is that for Mark, discipleship amounts to participation in Jesus’ ministry. What makes the ministry of Jesus counter-cultural, and therefore the object of earthly hostility, is not that it is “Christian” per se but that refuses to condone any impediment to the immediate restoration of the broken and outcast.

As we stand poised on the first steps of the Way of the Cross this Lent, we are challenged to take Jesus on his terms, and to resist the temptation to remake Jesus into what we want him to be – to plan another Way for him that we find acceptable and controllable and which does not put our identity on the line.

We are challenged to confront our own deep resistance to the Way of the Cross – and to the Jesus whom we profess to serve. We are faced with the awful possibility that the Jesus whom we follow is none other than a Jesus of our own construction and our own choosing – one whom we find comfortable, and who blesses our hopes and endeavors, our projects and our prejudices. This is the Jesus who follows after us – who has to deny who he is.

The Jesus we meet in Lent is the Jesus who refuses any way other than the cross. John 14 is John’s meditation upon these same events. Thomas asks the right question, which the disciples fail to see in Mark’s account: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus replies, “I am the Way – and the Truth and the Life!” (John 14:6)

AMEN